Gender-Bending in Cyberspace

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Nowhere on earth is gender as fluid as it is in cyberspace. In the world of MUDs, or multiuser domains, players role-play and imagine, manipulating fantasy-based characters unbound by traditional gender hierarchies. In this complex, multilayered online universe, impersonation is the norm; players often pretend to be another gender or even invent new ones.

When I first logged on to a MUD, I named and described a character but forgot to give it a gender. I was struggling with the technical aspects of the MUD universe—the difference between various commands such as "saying" and "emoting," "paging" and "whispering"—and gender was the last thing on my mind. This rapidly changed when a male-presenting character named Jiffy asked me if I were "really an it." I experienced an unpleasurable sense of disorientation that immediately gave way to an unfamiliar sense of freedom.

When Jiffy's question appeared on my screen, I was standing in a room of LambdaMOO—one of the first very popular MUDs—filled with characters engaged in sexual banter, Animal House–style. The innuendos, double entendres, and leering invitations were scrolling by at a fast clip; I felt awkward, as if I were at a party I'd been invited to by mistake. It reminded me of kissing games in junior high, where it was both awful to be chosen and awful not to be chosen. Now, on the MUD, I had a new option: Playing a male might allow me to feel less out of place. People would expect me to make the first move, and I could choose not to. I could "lurk," stand on the sidelines and observe the action. Boys, after all, were not considered prudes if they were too cool to play kissing games. They were not categorized as wallflowers if they held back and didn't ask girls to dance. They could simply be shy in a manly way, cool, above it all.

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