Title *

SummaryDoes a deep online gender identity change what we define of as gender offline?

Description *There is gender and there are gender roles. Like all things it is a continuum and has no absolutes; but like all things it is a landscape with peaks associated with concepts here in the west like 'masculine' and 'feminine'. In India it even includes concepts that we can only perceive of as a third sex. What we attach to those peaks is culturally subjective; be it dresses, kilts, piercings, gesture, promiscuity, aggression or the like. Gender is also entangled with so many other aspects of what it means to be human; age and ageism, maturity, power, need. But those things aside - gender by itself is a trait - and it is a trait that may be undergoing a cultural rewriting. We've all been playing with gender roles; fags, dykes, hets, trangendered and the like have all been examining ourselves through the lens of gender for millenia. At social gatherings, parties and even in day to day activity there have been members of these communities that either consciously or helplessly fragment and recompose features associated with traditional roles. There's a Shakespearean quality of playfulness in juxtaposing one trait against another - from the full fledged switching of gender roles - to just tweaking one historical gender trait. But online this goes a step further. Gender roles online can be deep in the sense of indistinguishable - reaching a Ru Paul pitch of perfection. People can become deeply associated with these online genders - having sex in them - thinking of themselves as them. Online this kind of exploration may be more than just donning a mantle of a gender role but something that changes oneself. The same can be argued for non digital spaces; but the verisimilitude is more accessible digitally; on the net nobody can tell if you're a _. Paige asks if this deep gender play changes what we think of as gender in the real world? How pervasive real world are the effects of digital gender roles?