In regards to cyber-rape, I set out to do the reading in a state of self-conscious, highly self-policed open-mindedness, aware of how absurd I would likely find the material and seeking to move beyond my initial reactions. I sat in Blue State, laughing out loud at phrases like "cyber-rape survivor." My reactions were because I saw cyberbodies as farcical, a virtuality whose ontology was game-like in origin. What fascinated me, however, was that I came to understand the validity of a cyber-body, and of cyber-rape. Still, though, I was plagued by questions of reality. Specifically, I accept (and even embrace) that the (neo)human exists through multiple media on multiple platforms, and yet I can still be dismissive of cyberness. Why?
I think it is related to a valuation of the corporeal over the virtual~ again, notions of the body being "realer," or of more impact to the "self" than any external(?) projection or manifestation of identity. Maybe it has to do with the seat of agency-- I am my body, I do my avatar; in light of the notion of performative identity, however, this has little ground.
In the end, I realized that virtual bodies seemed ridiculous because they are so finite, separate, capricious... again, they cease when the batteries die, and we persist beyond them. However, the corporal body is no different. The body, too, dies. The physical avatar--the body--is just as thin as the virtual avatar. Final realization: virtuality, in its ontology rooted in phenomenological (read: not the philosophy, just the adjective) limitation, reflects human mortality. I think that virtual bodies, then, offer us a paradox: the chance to proliferate ourselves, to embody multiplicity, as well as address and embody finitude and mortality.
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