ABSTRACT
This might sound a little bit like an advertisement for a holiday destination for young people. In fact it is from information about meeting people within a 3D virtual world: a whole online society called ‘Second Life’. If you join this society you create an online character or personality – several if you like. Each character is called an ‘avatar’ and you can choose what your avatar looks like. For example, I might choose a male avatar, rather younger than my ‘real’ self and perhaps make him black. I might decide, unlike
in my rather more sedate ‘real’ life, to go partying at nightclubs with young women (or at least female avatars) I meet in Second Life. This opens up all sorts of questions about gender and relationships and the possibilities open to us in doing gender within an everyday life that can include whole imagined worlds.
