Class Discussion: "Why do people want to have cybersex?"

• According to Lance Olsen, as quoted in Cybersex "Bots" (Jones , p.19), "…human beings make love to their machines because they cannot make love to other human beings."
  
  Most generally speaking, people have cybersex to achieve some sort of sexual satisfaction. But some people, particularly women, seek a form of intimacy. A ZDNet news report, "Modem love: sex and the Net" (1998), detailed a study by San José researcher, Al Cooper:

  Cooper's team wrote and analyzed the nonrandom survey posted on MSNBC.com during March and April. Over 9,000 responses from readers who had visited a sexually oriented site at least once and completed the 46 questions were analyzed. (Despite the overwhelming response to the survey, MSNBC.com always notes that by their very nature, surveys posted on its Web site are nonscientific.)...
  
  While the word cybersex often dredges up images of hard porn, the survey reveals that most females are skipping the erotica sites in favor of chat rooms. More than half of women said they never download sexual material, Cooper noted.
  
  Most men, on the other hand, frequently opt for visual erotica - a finding that makes sense in a society whose rites of male passage often include Playboy, the cybersex therapist said.
  
  "Men are the biggest consumers of sexually explicit materials," Cooper said, "while women online, as elsewhere, prefer more interaction, are looking for some sort of relationships."

  Why are men and women turning to cybersex to fulfill their needs for sex and intimacy? Perhaps those involved in cybersex cannot find mates in real life (IRL), and therefore seek mates for sexual interaction in cyberspace or in the real world. Maybe they would like to have casual sex, or to lose their virginity, but refrain to preserve social propriety. Perhaps they have mates who are rarely home, or rarely willing to have sex or share intimacy, and they want more. Maybe they have cybersex to fulfill a need for sexual variety without physically cheating on their partners. Maybe they are no longer interested in sex with their partners at all. Or maybe they want to anonymously explore their sexual orientation, live out fantasies, or indulge fetishes that they would otherwise be ashamed of (or that would be better kept as a fantasy) in a potentially accepting environment.
  
  Cybersex allows for a degree of control over an otherwise uncontrollable situation and a simplification of one's otherwise complex relationship to sex. IRL, sex can involve another person, wooing, wondering, waiting, working it, skill, bodily fluids, the possibility of acquiring diseases or getting pregnant, birth control, responsibility, nudity, making and hearing noises, smells, self-consciousness, fear, joy, and other strong emotions, and the possibility of being hurt or ridiculed. In cybersex, no one gets pregnant, no one gets AIDS, and, without video, no one can tell if you have a small penis. You can be who you want to be. When you are done having cybersex, you can pull the plug, and it is all over—no muss no fuss. You have kept your distance.
  
  (This distance between humans is reminiscent of the early combination of sex and technology. As mentioned earlier, in the late 1800s, doctors created sophisticated (for their time) devices to bring "hysterical" women to "paroxysm," rather than perform manual vulvular massage (women caught masturbating received clitoridectomies). The first electromechanical vibrator came to the aid of physicians who "sought every opportunity to substitute other devices for their fingers" (p. 4). "Like many husbands, doctors were reluctant to inconvenience themselves in what was, after all, a routine chore. The job required skill and attention...")
  
  Still more possible reasons for turning to cybersex include boredom and habit. For those with a taste for pornography, cybersex may be a natural progression from this habit, as the Web provides an easy and sometimes inexpensive way to find porn of many flavors. Many people spend so much time in front of a computer that they feel very comfortable in and habituated to this computer-mediated lifestyle. In Al Cooper's study (1998), according to a ZDNet news report, "Who's Surfing for Sex in *Your* Office?," one in five respondents admitted to engaging in cybersex while at work. According to the New York Times 12/16/99 (*as presented by NewsScan or EduPage?), "employees caught surfing forbidden Web sites are increasingly being fired. At Xerox, for example, 40 employees were fired after software recorded them visiting Web sites pertaining to shopping or pornography and spending inordinate amounts of their work day online."
  
  Cybersex can also be an exciting complement to masturbation. Robin Hamman's masters thesis "Cyborgasms: Cybersex Amongst Multiple-Selves and Cyborgs in the Narrow-Bandwidth Space of America Online Chat Rooms" (1996) includes a case study of a young woman named Rebecca. "Rebecca, who prefers physical sex to cybersex, prefers cybersex over solitary masturbation. Engaging in cybersex of the interactive masturbation type defined in an earlier chapter, she achieves orgasm faster during cybersex than during solitary masturbation." (Rebecca must be a hell of a one-handed typist.)
  
  Disability or sexual dysfunction may also turn a person to cybersex. Cybersex may allow a person who is unable to experience physical sex to find much pleasure in the virtual sexual experience.
  
  Or maybe they seek cybersex out of mere curiosity or sexually experimentation.