Virtually Gendered

Caroline Basset studies gender relations of a virtual world.  Her findings are based on experiences gathered in a Multi User Domain chatroom called LambdaMOO.  The exploration into this virtual world supports Butler’s notion about the performed nature of gender.  Participants create, maintain, and perform their identity solely by the power of words.  The freedom of gender choice is not accompanied by the richness of imagination and invention.  Inhabitants of this ambiguous world construct their gender from exaggerated images of cultural achetypes of the real world.