Glenda Simms, Contributor
MOST OF the literature that speaks to the differences between men's and women's attitude towards and expectations of sex point to the fact that women tend to find it difficult to disengage sex from their need to be emotionally attached to the men with whom they carry out this activity.
Men, on the other hand, seem to be able to see sex as a commodity not necessarily connected with the emotional baggage of 'love'.
Of course nearly everyone who is honest in this discourse knows of individual men and women who do not fall into these broad generalisations.
The Internet has provided another arena in which men and women can struggle to meet their sexual needs in what they might consider a rather "anonymous and freer space". Such a space potentially could allow individuals to pursue their sexual fantasies and desires without the overarching sanctions of family, church and society-at-large!
In the February 13, 2004 edition of The Guardian, writer Laura Barton in an article entitled "No Strings Attached" discusses why thousands of women are turning to the Internet "in search of not love, but sex".
Ms. Barton highlighted several scenarios in which women make contact with anonymous men on the internet, through chatrooms and casual online community Web sites. On these Web sites, women of all ages establish a connection with a wide cross-section of men. If they are satisfied with the physical descriptors given and the photographic glimpses of various body parts, many of these women meet their contacts in bars, hotel rooms or in any other mutually acceptable venue.
These risk-taking activities forced Barton to wonder what these women were doing before the advent of the casual sex slots on the Internet. She also wonders if women have overcome the traditional idea that casual sex is a "no no" for a decent woman. She asks the question, "Have we reached a point in our sexual liberation where we have shaken of the stigma associated with casual sex?"
In her article Ms. Barton quoted psychologist and author, Dr. Pam Spurr, who argues that many women got to the Internet sites out of curiosity. However, once they get past that curiosity, they will place their own ads and follow through on the contacts that are appealing to them.
Dr. Spurr asserts that women who pursue sexual contacts through the Internet fall into two categories.
"On the one hand, you have the younger women for whom sex is a pastime". This is the generation that also pursues "no-string" sex on Friday nights and on the celebrated "Spring Breaks".
The other category is the slightly older, lonelier, career-orientated woman. This particular category of woman use cybersex "to satisfy their desires when perhaps they don't have time to nurture a relationship."
Such women might have used dating agencies or paid for escorts in the past. In a sense, cyberspace allows these career-oriented women to cut out the "middle-man" and take more control of their choices.
Another group of female identified by Ms. Barton are frustrated married women who are seeking the excitement that no longer exists in their marriages either because their husbands have too many extra-marital affairs or the relationship has become a "state of boredom and drab routine".
All these groups of women seem to be trying to find what is usually described as "a zipless sexual encounter." This is the kind of encounter that is seen as one that cancels out the "power game" in which the man is always "taking" and the woman feels that she is "giving" an essential aspect of her very self.
While a new generation of women might be seduced into believing that cybersex has given them a unique opportunity to do "what the hell they please", there needs to be a serious discourse around what true freedom for women should mean.
Women have to be careful that the new technology is not merely extending the opportunity for women's oppression through a more seductive process of the commodification of women's bodies.
As Dr. Spurr cautions, "true casual sex is rarely achievable". Furthermore she reminds us as women there are very few of us "who can detach our emotions from sex". In a real sense, whether through nurture or by nature we are "hardwired to nurture relationships".
Women, therefore, would be well advised to establish their own relationship with the new technologies, not in an effort to do what men do but in an effort to make sure that the desired aspects of all scientific development should be those that humanise, enrich and liberate all people (men and women) from the oppressive forces of the crass market place in which sex is merely another commodity.
Dr. Glenda P. Simms is the executive director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs.
