C C's List: 3225

• In the same light, the world of (and the worlds created by) technology need not only reflect current gender categories; instead they can become another arena for the reshaping of those categories
• effortlessly reshape their selves and their "appearance" through manipulation of words and images--representations--rather than through modification of the physical body
• gives them the power to redefine themselves outside of the historical categories of "woman," "other," or "object."
• the possibility that it may no longer be possible to make judgments based on the physical and biological images before our eyes, that instead we may be forced to deal with shattered categories and shifting identities

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• unparalleled opportunity to play with one's identity and to "try out" new ones
• All provide worlds for social interaction in a virtual space, worlds in which you can present yourself as a "character," in which you can be anonymous, in which you can play a role as close or as far away from your "real self" as you choose.
• Engagement with computational technology facilitates a series of "second chances" for adults to work and rework unresolved personal issues and more generally, to think through questions about the nature of self, including questions about definitions of life, intentionality, and intelligence.
• what can be counted on as real in virtual space.
• examine it, do something new with it, and revise her relationship towards it
• not for escape but as a vehicle for engaging in a significant dialogue with important events and relationships in her "real" life
• But of course, for most people such recreations of self are difficult. Virtual worlds provide environments for experiences that may be hard to come by in the real.
• play with no concern that "he," Peter, will be held accountable in "real life" for his character's actions, quarrels, or relationships
• possibilities the medium offers for projecting both conscious and unconscious aspects of the self
• Identity, after all, literally means one. When we live through our electronic self-representations we have unlimited possibilities to be many. People become masters of self-presentation and self-creation. The very notion of an inner, "true self" is called into question.
• game allows its players to experience rather than merely observe what it feels like to be the opposite gender or to have no gender at all
• Virtual reality is not "real," but it has a relationship to the real. By being betwixt and between, it becomes a play space for thinking about the real world. It is an exemplary evocative object.

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• multiple personae, romance, and what can be counted on as "real" in virtual space
• As players participate, they become authors not only of text but of themselves, constructing new selves through social interaction.
• The anonymity of MUDs gives people the chance to express multiple and often unexplored aspects of the self, to play with their identity and to try out new ones. MUDs make possible the creation of an identity so fluid and multiple that it strains the limits of the notion. Identity, after all, refers to the sameness between two qualities, in this case between a person and his or her persona. But in MUDs, one can be many.
• Creating screen personae is thus an opportunity for self-expression, leading to her feeling more like her true self when decked out in an array of virtual  masks.
• The integration of the social Achilles, who can talk about his troubles, and the asocial Stewart, who can only cope by putting them out of mind, has not occurred.
• And once we take virtuality seriously as a way of life, we need a new language for talking about the simplest things. Each individual must ask: What is the nature of my relationships? What are the limits of my responsibility? And even more basic: Who and what am I? What is the connection between my physical and virtual bodies? And is it different in different cyberspaces? These questions are equally central for thinking about community. What is the nature of our social ties? What kind of accountability do we have for our actions in real life and in cyberspace? What kind of society or societies are we creating, both on and off the  screen?
• The culture of simulation may help us achieve a vision of a multiple but integrated identity whose flexibility, resilience, and capacity for joy comes from having access to our many selves.

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• possibilities  opened up and promised by it to fashion new subjectivity  as fluid, decentered, heterogeneous, playful, and  malleable.
• inherent inequality of cyberspace in distributing  social resources among different classes or genders
• reduce forms of identity in real life to mere signs  floating freely in transmission and exchange on the net
• Identity becomes infinitely plastic in a play of images  that knows no end. Consistency is no longer a virtue but  becomes a vice; integration is limitation. With  everything always shifting, everyone is no one"
• he disruption and  multiplication of the old identity as the coherent and  homogeneous one into the fragmented and heterogeneous  many
• For  even though the modernist identity is quite stable, it is  still hard to argue that it is perfectly seamless and  totally cohesive without any leak and disruption.  Identity, in its general sense, is the result of  identification processes achieved by individuals on a  communal basis. If subjectivity is closely related to and  even equated with identity as writers mentioned would  argue, we have reason to believe that community is the  leading factor in the formation of identity and  subjectivity. Following this, even individuals in the  modernist period would never take part in or belong  merely to one community but many, some of which may even  stand in conflict with each other.
• How can a group of fragmented,  fluid, disintegrated subjects perform identification to  reach a possible identity?
• notion of  multiple identities runs basically against any  supposition of a community that is mainly "based  upon honest communication"
• aporia between theory and  practice

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• gender identity is fluid and flexible
• be another gender and have gendered encounters unlike anything we have in the real world (where we are bound by our physical bodies)
• gender is a huge focus of the Internet
• language use and gendered social or cultural references to just saying it out right; it is as if we can't really function in relation to one another without some sense of everyone's gender identity
• not a pure or neutral space where all genders have equal access to a single, ungendered discourse; it is not a space where all genders have the same experience
• radical because it is a space where anyone can be anything
• performance is itself the gendering
• by acting the gender, you become it
• Other people have to see you and believe in your interpretation of the concept of Romeo before you can say that you have really experienced the part.
• The severe anonymity of the Internet allows for general, social experimentation, but it also limits the extent to which gender identities can be deeply actualized.
• a man may know what it is like to "be" a woman on-line, but his experience may not hold true outside that setting; to "be" a woman off-line is a different kind of performance

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