The Healing Potentials of Cybersex

by Penny Sautereau-Fife

Yes you read that title right. No I'm not any kind of doctor. I am however slowly dying, trapped in a broken down, crumbling body wracked with constant excruciating pain that can barely function. So that's the direction I'm coming from as I write this.

Now, first of all, yes I'm aware of the fact that saying cybersex out loud more often than not is met at best with polite looks of pitiable disdain, and at worst by the giggles of sniggering teenagers making jokes about typing one-handed. Many people don't really understand cybersex. Why on earth would anyone want to masturbate to words on a screen?

Well, first of all, masturbating to words is hardly a new concept. Erotica has been around for centuries. The imagination is one of the most potent and powerful sexual characteristics of most human beings. Seriously, why else do you think a woman coyly biting on a pencil or eating a banana can make men into gooey puddles just as easily as any full frontal nudity in Playboy could? Sometimes your imagination can be more arousing than the real thing.

But, you may ask, even considering this fact, how then can cybersex be healing? Isn't it still just typing one-handed to pornographic text?

Well, that depends on the context. Positive thinking people will always try to say there's someone out there for everyone. Negative thinking people will insist if you have to get sex online you must be pathetic. Those of us in the middle who are just simply realistic know the truth is in the middle. We live in a very shallow beauty-obsessed society. And very often, people who are too fat, or too plain, or physically crippled or disfigured simply won't be able to get past the pre-conceived notions most people in real life have.

So where does Cybersex come in?

First of all, online, you aren't held back by the stigmas that may be attached to however it is you look. I'll use the MMO game Second Life as an example as that of late is where I spend most of my time. Let's first do a quick comparison, of my own case.

REAL LIFE

- Suffering from several health ailments and debilitating conditions. In so much pain moving is a painful chore. Sex life with my wife is nearly non-existent without serious painkillers. Severely limited wardrobe due to minimal finances. Must use a wheelchair to get around outside of the house. Overweight, very plain-looking at best, putting on make-up is far too huge an effort to bother with except for important events. Generally unable to get out to meet people or socialize. Very few local friends who could visit me.

SECOND LIFE, ONLINE

- No extra body fat. All the intricate tattoos I ever wanted, arranged sexily. Nearly unlimited wardrobe of sexy clothing, limited only by my imagination as to what I can create in Photoshop. No mobility issues. Beautiful body and face. Pain never an issue. Sexual function limited only by my imagination. More friends than I can count.

Are you seeing the pattern here? I'm not pretty on the outside in real life, and except for my wits and hands I'm barely functional. But on the computer, my mind and personality are freed of all my limitations.

Now you may still be asking at this point, but how does cybersex have healing potential just because you can be sexy online?

Well, it's simple. Cybersex is still human interaction, even online. It requires to people to open up sexually and mingle. And when it's good, it spurs the imagination, getting your brain working in overdrive on several levels. The more excited you get reading your lover's sexy innuendos or blunt passionate statements, the more endorphins you release. The more you excite your partner with a creative and arousing turn of a phrase, the more your self-esteem gets a boost from knowing that, with only your fingertips typing and your imagination flaring, you're giving someone miles away joy and pleasure, making someone feel better, making someone happy.

I can't speak for everyone but in my own case my physical pain is so great I can't even masturbate, so I don't do the much yapped about "one handed typing" like most. I am however capable of achieving orgasm purely from intense mental stimulation, and I get that by pleasing those I love online. As does my wife, who also plays on Second Life to compensate for my real life inabilities. Freed of my physical limitations and open to letting my imagination show me the freedom cybersex gives me to do things my body just never could manage in real life, the emotional pleasure and intellectual stimulation I get from my online interactions, I can honestly say, keeps me going some days. The happiness I derive from making my wife and my online lovers happy and joyful through my imaginative typing gives me the drive to keep living through the mess of my real body.

And for others, who are perhaps only limited by societal definitions of beauty, it's a chance to feel loved for their personality. I know a lot of people who have in fact met their wives and husbands this way, because with the awkward social limitations out of the way and not influencing the getting to know you process, they were able to connect on a more personal and layered level, falling for the person rather than the looks. I know several other people who are perfectly content to keep things online alone. I know people who consider themselves married to people they'll never meet in real life and are happy that way, because their online relationships fulfill their needs and they get to keep their real life unfettered.

Emotional healing can be more important sometimes than physical healing. There's nothing that can be done for any of the conditions I live with. I know I am GOING to die within the next few years, barring my own will to live. But my soul is kept healthy and strong by my interactions online and my wife.

And the will to keep going is better medicine than damn near anything. Not that I'll be giving up my percosets anytime soon, but the life I live online makes the life I have offline worth muddling through.

Reporters of Gor: The Kajira Chronicles Book 2

This article, this instalment of the Reporters of Gor series will likely be the last such for a good long while. (at least if I can help it) I have seen Gor, I have spent weeks within it, but overall, the experience was a negative one. I realize now I hung on for as long as I did simply because I've always enjoyed roleplaying, but even this was not terribly entertaining since I personally don't consider “Get me some Paga Beast” to be terribly engaging roleplay. It is for this an other reasons I feel that I am done with gor, but here are some of my final thoughts on the matter, submitted for your consideration and for my inevitable rise to fame and glory.

So, to start from the beginning by the time I became a kajira I had already mostly gotten over my hatred for the philosophy of Gor, not because I didn't despise it anymore but simply because I no longer concerned myself with it. (In other words I did my best to repress that bullshit as much as I could.) Now I've been given to understand most Kajira become so either by being captured or by simply surendering themselves in general to a gorean city or “homestone.” I, being the smart slut, took the time to selectively choose and negotiate my enslavement before actually roleplaying it out. It actually worked quite well, resulting in a tragic roleplay of a women who feels she has lost her purpose in life submitting in order to find new purpose. Sounds cheesy I know but I assure you at the time it was an intense experience. Sadly though it was one of only a few worthwhile roleplaying experience I had.

So then I was a slave... now what? It's not like I am unfamiliar with being a submissive, I wanted to see what being a gorean slave was like though, and I rapidly learned the main difference was instead of simply being submissive to my carefully chosen master, I had to be submissive to almost everyone. (So fine? I can put up with that right? Might even be fun. Ya... Only not so much.) You see dear readers the main problem is that to far to many people, the ideal submissive kajira is one that never really says or does anything except when ordered to do so. If you don't see a problem with this, the fuck you. I own a few slaves myself and I know a good mistress has a responsibility to give her pets more to do then just “Sit down and shut up.” Those that think otherwise are mistreating their toys and are probably going to find themselves without any before terribly long, or at least without any slaves worth having. And as I have said before, no slaves, no Gor.

Now by this point some of my female readers are probably working themselves into a good “all men as chauvinistic assholes” ranting mood. But before you do, let me stop you. It was the men of tetrapoli who were actually the most likable (with one notable exception) and understood that Gor is roleplay and just because you can call me a beast IC (in character for those of you unfamiliar with the lingo) doesn't mean I'm not a real person with thoughts and the desire to express them. And they would make an effort IC to involve me in their roleplay, to give me something to do, some more successfully then others but the effort was made.

So it wasn't men of gor that were the problem as I though they would be. Nay in Tetrapoli I was in fact betrayed by my own gender. Yes, while the Free Men of Gor proved themselves to be mostly likable, the Free Women (FW) proved themselves time and again to be complete power-tripping BITCHES! (And here I had thought I was supposed to be the bitch.) regarding myself and my fellow Kajira with at best casual disdain but generally with a “How dare you speak in my presence whore!” attitude. (To put it generously) What's worse is that this attitude is not only regarded as acceptable but is even expected. Now I don't want to say that your a completely worthless facsimile of a human being if your biggest source of entertainment is being a complete bitch to people. I just want to strongly imply it. And thus I encourage a good 80% of the free women population of Gor to pucker up and kiss my sexy ass. (Hmm on the other hand thats not much of a punishment.) Find some other way to roleplay or go fuck yourself with a baseball bat. (For those of you without baseball bats, IM me and I'll happily provide you with one.) The other 20% of you get a kiss and a cookie (Again I'll happily provide them.)

It should be noted that yes, there were some redeemable FW in gor, I even attended a roleplaying workshop for them (though this was when i was a kajira, but then the major topic of discussion was roleplaying interactions between FW and kajira) and while a few of them including the lead speaker seemed to understand my point when I addressed the speaker and said that I felt too many FW roleplayed poorly with the kajira and that being a total bitch was hardly the best way to roleplay with others, it seemed many, including a particularly vocal specimen considered my arguments to be utterly without worth simply because i was a kajira and it is inappropriate for kajira to think or to form opinions, let alone express them, and if I were a good kajira I would never have thought up or voiced my arguments. Therefor I am not a good kajira and therefor I don't understand Gor and therefor my arguments must be totally false and groundless. Q.E.D. Faced with the bullet-proof logic I and my sister (who was watching over my shoulder) were left with absolutely no alternative but to burst into howls of laughter. (And frankly I still had to clean up their logic for your benefit readers.)

It wasn't long after that incident that I was freed from captivity, my owner realizing that I was never going to be a good little kajira. (Which I have taken as a compliment.) So, stopping only to set fire to few metaphorical bridges, I departed Tetrapoli, likely never to return. I will however, say one thing in the defence of that particular sim though not for Gor in general, just before I left there was a motion to improve the quality of roleplay for kajira and to organize more events, but I left before anything had really started.

So, to summarize....... Screw you guys, I 'm going home.

Though before I do I would like to take a moment to address some of the feedback from my last gorean article. Honestly I have little to say in response, some of you have offered potentially valid criticism of my work. While I myself feel that 3+ weeks of research was quite adequate, I am not and will not pretend to be gorean, I have never read any of the books, just quotations from them. That said, I am not some self-righteous puritan who feels that all BDSM is sick. I do and have owned slaves myself, and overall I quite enjoy some aspects of BDSM. And then of course there were those of you who's opinions have shown themselves be slightly less the valid. I'd say you know who you are, but I really doubt that, so I'll just have to say the rest of us know who you are.

Joan Sweetwater