Cyber-intimacy is on-line communication in text and pictures, to explore personal fantasy and affinity. For those who have access to Internet - it is an alternative reality, where self representation can take any form the sender wishes. How Cyber-intimacy manifests itself is a very provocative issue. It is a reality that scores of men and women find significant, and engage in regularly as exciting, on-line connections. Likewise, the number of URL's for sex ssites, mail order businesses, and erotic personal home pages, increase daily. A subject search will bring as many as 2000 related sites (with hundreds of thousands of users tabulated - and noted - logging in daily).
When the subject "intimacy" is considered in our real daily life - it is usually thought of as a form of private, and physical connection, individual human contact that is familiar-- and generally considered to be romantic. Intimacy, in its fullest sense, is the link to the deepest and most meaningful moments of human experience: it is a secure and fearless sharing of the worst fears and the highest hopes one can have.
To establish intimacy in Cyberspace, one must be willing to loose one's
physical body and find one's Cyber-identity. This transition has few
precedents in pre-existing human interaction, and can perhaps best be
compared to drug-related altered states of mind and meditation experiences.
Cyber-intimacy involves visualization, and fantasy that extends beyond one's
sensibility with contact of the corporeal functions of touch, smell, and
taste
We have learned from scientific studies, that --physiologically-- men
respond to erotic visual stimulation. On the other hand, women prefer to
talk, and respond intimately by the closeness established verbally with
another person. Statistics also show us that the Internet is currently
dominated by men of high sexual energy, between the ages of 18-40 years old.
It is also reported that only 10% of the existing on-line voices are women.
This obvious imbalance is serious, and frequently inhibits women from being
vocal partners in intimate dialogue, especially in group chats and MUD's.
The women who do inhabit electronic space often find it necessary to
represent themselves as men - to escape the harassment they experience in
what is reported to be "rape without a body" or, they join women-only news
groups. There are growing numbers of individuals practicing gender
switching, as well as the new Cyber-femism, which has declared a new
relationship between women and technology to be a normal and natural
liaison. In on-line relationships, because the environment for intimacy is
--at first-- primarily conversational, women are in the more dynamic --and
natural-- role as communicators.
What is extremely interesting are the developments on-line for new areas of
communication between technically literate women. The home pages for
Cyber-chix, Riot Grrrls, Techno Whores, Geek Girls, and Sexybabes ON LINE--
reveal that there are many girls with modems, and they know how to use them.
These 'Cyber-babes' are talking to each other, and teaching each other, they
are women communicating with women in the age-old female act of sharing
experiences, and supporting one another, in a new domain. The
Cyber-feminist ideology-- a term coined by Dr. Sadie Plant, is practiced by
artists like Linda Dement, and VNX Matrix (Australia), and many others.
Plant describes the subversive element that exists between women and machines
- especially new intelligent machines - which she points out clearly are no
longer simply working for men.
The presentation "Cyber-intimacy" will bring the female on-line world into
focus, and will outline the developments among women who use Internet as an
empowering and intellectual endeavor. Because women --generally-- are
focused on connection rather than status and failure, intimacy is a central
factor in the communication links they form. Dr. Deborah Tannen, one of the
few linguists who finds intimacy to be "key in the world of connection,"
says that although all individuals negotiate complex networks to develop
friendship, intimacy - for women - it is the act of having close, familiar,
private, and meaningful relationships. A new world of expression is
exploding on-line for women, and it can be wild and crazy, but it is always
as safe and secure as a kitchen coffee-chat.
Kathy Rae Huffman