Виртуальное тело и нормативный гендер в киберпространстве

Abstract

The participants of virtual communication can be described, with some reservations, as cyborgs: such communicators are presented in the cyber space not as real individuals with natural bodies, but only as a few bytes of information written with zeros and ones. Nevertheless, gender self-presentation is a necessary condition of virtual communication. Such self-presentation does not always correspond to actual biological sex. The article shows that the virtual sex change and gender perversion are very popular in cyber communications. However, users do not go beyond binary gender matrix that is actual in our culture. The games of the “gender Other” occur through the transfer of the accepted cultural symbols, meanings and stereotypes on the “virtual body”. Thus, gender system in the cyber-space is constructed by analogy with the normative reality.