Cybersex
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Cybersex or computer sex or net sex or "r/p" is a virtual sex encounter in which two or more persons connected remotely via a computer network send one another sexually explicit messages describing a sexual experience. It is a form of role-playing in which the participants pretend they are having actual sexual intercourse, by describing their actions and responding to their chat partners in a mostly written form designed to stimulate their own sexual feelings and fantasies. It sometimes includes masturbation. The quality of a cybersex encounter typically depends upon the participants' abilities to evoke a vivid, visceral mental picture in the minds of their partners. Imagination and suspension of disbelief are also critically important. Cybersex can occur either within the context of existing or intimate relationships, e.g. among lovers who are geographically separated, or among individuals who have no prior knowledge of one another and meet in virtual spaces or cyberspaces and may even remain anonymous to one another. In some contexts cybersex is enhanced by the use of webcams to transmit real-time video of the partners.
Cybersex is sometimes colloquially called "cybering". Channels used to initiate cybersex are not necessarily exclusively devoted to that subject, and participants in any Internet chat may suddenly receive a message with any possible variation of the text "Wanna cyber?"
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Characteristics
Cybersex is seen by some as a humorous, pointless, insignificant and meaningless act that carries no real emotional weight or emotional repercussions. Others believe that the sexual feeling exhibited by participants in virtual intercourse is very real and can be just as emotionally significant as feelings that occur during sexual intercourse. It also can play an important role in long-distance relationships.
Cybersex is most commonly performed in Internet chat rooms (such as IRC, talkers or web chats) and on instant messaging systems.
The increasing popularity of webcams has also resulted in an increase in couples using two-way video connections to "expose" themselves to their online chat partners, enhancing the act by giving it a more visual aspect. There are a number popular commercial websites that have taken advantage of this and allow people to openly masturbate on camera while others watch them. Couples can also perfom on camera for the enjoyment of others. Usually those watching are masturbating to the arousing images. These websites often also contain videotapes that people have taken of themselves. Some of the most popular parts of these websites are videotapes of men who have powerfully strong ejaculations. The act of exchanging sexually explicit email or SMS messages is also sometimes considered cybersex. Such activities facilitated by webcams are often used for the purpose of enhancing masturbation or as an introduction to arranging a meeting for sex. While these activities are common, it is difficult to know just how widespread they are, and there is a paucity of statistical data on this subject.
Cybersex differs from phone sex in that it offers a greater degree of anonymity and allows participants to meet partners more easily. In fact, a good deal of cybersex takes place between strangers who have just met online, and unlike phone sex, cybersex is rarely commercial.
One approach to cybering is a simulation of "real" sex, when participants try to make the experience as close to real life as possible, with participants taking turns writing descriptive, sexually explicit passages. Alternatively, it can be considered a form of role playing that allows a couple to experience unusual sexual sensations and carry out sexual experiments they cannot try in reality. Amongst "serious" roleplayers, cybering may occur as part of a larger plot - the characters involved may be lovers or spouses, or a character could be raped to initiate a plotline. In situations like this, the people typing often consider themselves separate entities from the "people" engaging in the sexual acts, much as the author of a novel often does not completely identify with his or her characters.
Cybersex is often ridiculed because the partners frequently have little verifiable knowledge whatsoever about each other, not even their partner or partners' gender. However, since for many, the primary point of cybersex is the realistic simulation of sexual activity, this knowledge is not always desired or necessary.
Dangers and advantages
Advantages
Cybersex is seen positively by its defenders - it satisfies sexual desires without the risk of sexually transmitted disease, is a safe way for young people who have not engaged in sexual activity to experiment, it allows participants to carry out elaborate sexual fantasies and allows "real-life" partners who are physically separated to continue to be sexually intimate. Additionally, some people with long-term ailments (including HIV) engage in cybersex as a way to safely achieve sexual release and gratification without putting their partners at risk. In long-distance relationships, it can have an important function in sustaining the sexual dimension of a relationship in which the partners see each other only infrequently face to face. Quite often, the activity of cybersex is carried out with the aid of webcam, so both parties can see each other, and there are many websites dedicated to this practice.
Cybersex can also enhance the role playing aspect of MUDs or MMORPGs, as it can give the characters that people are playing a more lifelike quality. It's very hard to portray a realistic relationship within a game without addressing the sexual aspects of the relationship.
It is also fairly frequent in on-line role-playing games, such as rpol, MUDs and MMORPGs, though approval of this activity varies greatly from game to game. Cybersex is sometimes called "mudsex" in MUDs. In TinyMUD variants, particularly MUCKs, the term "TinySex", abbreviated "TS", is very common. See also yiff.
It can enable people to participate in fantasies that might be too risky in real life, or are not possible or practical to pursue with their partner, such as BDSM, homosexuality, zoophilia or rape.
Cybesex has also been used in therapy to help those who are too shy or are unsure of how to (re)enter the dating and sexual scene. For example, some therapists have clients practice flirting skills and rehearse how to ask for what they want sexually in chat rooms.
Disadvantages and problems associated with
Debate continues among moralists on whether cybersex is a form of infidelity. While it does not involve physical contact, critics claim that the powerful emotions involved can cause marital stress, especially when cybersex culminates in an Internet romance. In several known cases Internet adultery became the grounds for which a couple divorced.
There is also the separate risk factor of Internet addiction, which is perceived to be a cause of social isolation and loss of work productivity.
Cybersex during an on-line role playing game carries an extra disadvantage. It is possible for one of the participants to use the wrong command and end up sending an explicit and erotic message meant only for their partner to several other people, if not to everybody currently playing that game.
The relative anonymity of cybersex encourages pedophiles and ephebophiles to seek out underage cybersex partners; it is more often that ephebophiles seek out encounters through these means, not always illegally. In the course of such conversations, such individuals sometimes try to send child pornography to others or arrange real-life meetings. See also grooming a child and age of consent.
In the United States, police officers sometimes pose as minors in chat rooms in order to bait underage-sex predators (see "Who's 14, 'Kewl' and Flirty Online?; A 39-Year-Old Detective, and He Knows His Bra Size", The New York Times, April 7, 2003). On one occasion, an elderly man from Georgia flew into Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta to meet what he thought was an underage girl he had met online with whom to have sex, only to meet sheriff's deputies instead. Another time, a teacher from Minnesota was arrested by FBI agents in Yuma, Arizona's airport, after he had arranged online to meet and have sex with what he thought were two eight-year-old girls.
This practice is sometimes somewhat controversial, and in some cases may be considered a form of entrapment. In one case, a gay male journalist who was known as an advocate for gay youth had been corresponding with a person he thought was a gay teenage boy; the journalist was arrested after the boy asked to meet him. The case was dismissed when it was revealed that all talk of sex had been initiated by the "boy", and the judge ruled that the prosecution had failed to show the journalist had any intention of meeting the "boy" for sex.
The prevalence of predatory pedophiles in some forms of online communication has attracted many civilians to mislead or troll those trying to groom underaged children. One example is a self-described civilian watchdog group Perverted-Justice.com.
References
Deuel, Nancy R. 1996. Our passionate response to virtual reality. Computer-mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social, and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, p. 129-146. Ed. by Susan C. Herring. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Philadelphia.
See also
External links
da:Cybersex de:Cybersex es:Cibersexo fr:Cybersexe mk:Сајберсекс nl:Cyberseks pl:Cyberseks fi:Kyberseksi sv:Cybersex