New York, NY, January 1, 1997--"There's no denying it: the Internet is reshaping old questions about sexuality and identity," enthuses gender theorist Theresa M. Senft, who is the co-editor (with cyber-salon owner Stacy Horn) of Sexuality & Cyberspace, a new book about identity politics in the digital world. "Our book uses an arsenal of techniques--first-person narrative, substantial online experience, feminist, queer and postcolonial theories--in order to address the latest intersections of identity, sexuality, and the Internet."

A special issue of the ten-year-old New York University journal Women & Performance, "Sexuality & Cyberspace" (Women & Performance Project Press, 1996) is already being praised as one of the first comprehensive anthologies of its kind by leading experts on the social impact of computers and the Net. "Senft and Horn understand that what makes this technology so revolutionary is its intimacy," says Mike Godwin, columnist for Wired and Internet World and lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Those who think that computers are dehumanizing ought to be first in line to buy this book."

Although the hypesters of cyberspace still argue that online life separates our minds from our bodily constraints, more and more longtime Internet users are beginning to disagree, Senft says, and her co-editor concurs. "After spending years online, I don't buy the picture of cyberspace as 'bodyless,'" argues Stacy Horn, President of Echo, the "virtual salon of New York City." "Too often, it seems to me that the statement 'we're all equal on the Net' really means everyone is assumed to be American, white, heterosexual and male--until proven otherwise."

"ECHO has an industry-high 40% female user base," Horn adds. "The people coming here who only understand cyberspace through the media or a larger service like America Online are often shocked to find that the people on our board are absolutely not anonymous, and never will be."

Senft criticizes the accepted view that the leveling effect of online communications derives from any removal of gender bias or perception. "Most longtime Net users, especially women, know that leaving your body behind at login time is a marketing ploy, and little else. Regardless, with the promotion of the Internet as the newest 'hot beat' for writers, the same tired mythology gets propped up again and again." According to Senft, one of the most popular examples of "tired mythology" is what she calls "gender swapping--masquerading as the opposite gender on the Net."

Laughs Senft, "If I had a dime for every male who argues that gender-swapping online permits them to 'experience being a woman,' I'd be the next Bill Gates." According to Senft, "people who argue that the Internet erases sexual or gender difference seem to believe that you put on gender, like a change of clothing, but that gender doesn't wear you." Senft adds, "There are more than enough books on CyberSex and masquerade out there, and that's great--it's just that I'm just not that interested in hearing about how a guy masquerades as a woman online, when I am still trying to figure out how *I* do it."

Senft continues: "Logging on to our computers is just one way to blur the boundaries between our bodies, our sexuality and our machines." Arguing that "we are all cyborgs"--bodies mixed of human and technological components, Senft suggests that wired or not, everyone is already on the road to cyborg-dom: "If you are disabled, use a sex toy, utilize telephone messaging services, are chemically dependent in any way, if you have sent e-mail or keyed a bank ATM lately, then you are, yourself, a cyborg."

But that revelation is only the beginning, adds Horn. "Saying we are all cyborgs is a little like saying we are all capitalists. It may be true, but what does that mean? Who are 'we' and what politics does the cyborg give us?" Rather than focusing on media hype, Horn points out that "there are much more interesting questions to ask long-time Net users--for example, How do your offline ethics affect your online judgments? When you log on to the Net, where does your body go?"

"For instance," Horn continues, "We have a piece in this book that tracks the case of a male-to-female transsexual granted entry to an all-female space on Echo. Now, making the decision about whether a transgendered woman should enter an all-female space online was an ethical dilemma for us, and it happened differently than it would have had we been charged with making the same decision in real life." The piece, entitled "Modem Butterfly, Reconsidered," has garnered early praise from both the mainstream and the academic Internet communities. "It's rare that a work of this kind comes off so well, and it's also rare to find so good a discussion of the issues," remarks cybertheorist Allucquere Rosanne (Sandy) Stone, author of the recent War of Desire and Techology at the Close of the Mechanical Age.

Part of the challenge of writing a book that practices "cyborg politics," according to Senft, is to give voice to those "not normally heard on the Net--women, the disabled, people of color, and queers." Horn notes, "We have a blind theorist of the Internet, Mia Lipner, who talks about how she 'hears the Net.' We have a report from Emily Poler, a health care worker in the South Bronx, who argues that "'Creating equal opportunity through the magic of telecommunications is about as likely as making the world a better place with a Coke and a smile.' Another one of our contributors, Patti Whaley of Amnesty International, discusses ways that the world is growing more wired, while at the same time reporting that 2/3 of the world's population has yet to make a phone call, let alone go online."

"One difference between the Net and real life," remarks Senft, "is that the Net contains its own digital history--a sort of electronic 'paper trail' that makes the venue particularly appealing for writers and activists. Citing one essay in the collection entitled "On Space and Being Stalked," Senft adds, "There are women currently being stalked on the Net. It seems laughable to someone who doesn't understand that women conduct formal business affairs online, as well as have social relationships there. Our argument is that the Net functions both like and unlike offline spaces, bringing pleasures and dangers that are yet uncharted."

According to EFF's Godwin, "this book has instantly become required reading for those of us who care about the Net's effects on individuals and society." Adds Godwin: "I may not agree with everything in these essays--I still distinguish physical stalking from cyberspace harassment, for example--but I regard Sexuality & Cyberspace as a critical first step toward understanding what the immense freedoms the Net gives us will mean to us in the near term, and, ultimately, what it will mean to our children, who will grow up with a deep knowledge of the new social worlds we have only just begun to explore."