Being female thru virual reality?

[Carolynn]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/ ... woman-body

This was a study published in an online journal and a popularized version was in the Guardian. What do you think? Is it a potential tool to have men and women come closer?

[CJ]

Hi all,

This is a fun subject to discuss. Thanks for the link, Carolynn.

This work opens up another avenue for virtual reality, which is not just to transform your sense of place, but also your sense of self, says a researcher.

Hmm... it seems to me to be the case that our sense of place and our sense of self both stem from the same soil. When asked, most people will actually locate their mind within their skull (even though they may not necessarily equate their mind with their brain). In other words, a sense of self presupposes a sense of place. The "I" that I am, that I feel myself to be, is always somewhere. Isn't it?

While I don't doubt the "displacement" effect on the self that virtual reality technology can have (hell, any immersive video game player or Second Life resident can feel as much, even if only on a smaller scale), I'm not sure such technology "transforms" our sense of self and that's precisely my point; what changes (when I inhabit the virtual body of, say, a woman) is not the "I" that I am but, rather, the place where I now believe that "I" to be residing... in this instance, in the body (or skull) of a virtual woman, rather than in my own flesh-and-bone body. If the "I" that I am is a fighter and a survivor, I'll fight back and defend myself if someone--even someone in VR--tries to slap me... whether I inhabit the body of a woman or of a man (or of a robot or chimpanzee, for that matter). What's not quite clear to me is whether or not I'd try to "instinctively" fight back if I were virtually inhabiting a form radically different from my own (say, a slug, for instance, or a yellow-bellied sapsucker).

As to whether or not such technology could help us experience the, ah, experience, of other human beings, sure. Seems likely, at any rate. The article was quick to point out that the "displacement" effect was only temporary and vanished once participation in the study ended. I wonder how long we'd have to be "in the other body," so to speak, before we started truly feeling as though it had become a rather more permanent "residence" for our mind or sense of self. Such extended virtual stays--and I do mean extended--would eventually cause transformations at the cortical level (e.g., the creation of new neural pathways) that could--and I do mean could--lead to actual transformations in the sense of self.

Would all this help bridge the gap between men and women? I doubt it. Virtual reality experiments (or, who knows? rape sentences, for instance) are, by themselves, insufficient, I think. Alleged transformations of the sense of self would need to be accompanied by transformations in our social structures that tend to relegate--still, in the 21st century--women to second-class citizenship. I've thought that, maybe, just maybe, the rise of genderqueer identities (or, at the very least, the rise in their visibility), could be the sign that such a social structural transformation is, in effect, occuring. Maybe VR tech could be seen as the other side of the same coin in the whole process; one the one hand, this is what it feels like to be a woman, socially (when men have lower paying jobs with less clout) and, on the other hand, this is what it feels like to be a woman "in the (virtual) flesh."

I think a mixture of these two sides of the "transformation" coin could possibly--and I do mean possibly--lead to a gender "rapprochement." Just my coupla pennies, anyway.

So. Uh... where do I sign up for the next study?

Love,
CJ

[Carolynn]

I thought about the use of the virtual experience too, CJ. It might be fun.

An interesting little scifi story by Tanith Lee sorta did that, in that the main character seemed to be a physically unremarkable girl in a world where everyone else was beautiful. She lived on the dole, though with a deadly boring job to earn it, and was unhappy. Along comes this guy who offers her the ability to live as the beautiful woman, though it was a construct, if she did his bidding. She was kept "grounded" in reality by having to "serve" or take care of her sleeping real body, which prevented her from sinking into the fake experience, or does it? Who might live and who might die?

Then the recent movie with Bruce Willis called Surrogates is about an entire society who can experience life as their "perfect" selves, but always have to come back to the imperfect sooner or later.

So see, in this case as many times before, the concepts are being played with in the human imagination before the reality is even close, but what is impressive is that there is a degree of reality now being researched.

[Absaroka]

We need to remember that the virtual reality is programed by a person. So was the "experience of a womans body" programmed by a man? even if it was programmed by a woman, it is that womans experience.

This is a tool that could be used to provide a vast amount of distortion I would think.

I also imagine people thought the same thing about books when the general population became literate. And there is truth to this. Reading about the experiences of others can be very educational.

On the other hand Carol Ann's comments about Do Men Love War are entirely germane to this discussion.

[April Rose]

Ultimately, I think, we are still products of our environment; our larger experiences. Some individuals experience truly transformative events, perhaps , but they are a minority. U.S. Americans think like U.S. Americans, Canadian Americans think like Canadian Americans, British think like British. In spite of a lifetime of Macabre corruption, mass starvation, and clownish incompetence, North Koreans continue to revere their "Dear Leader". Years and years into space exploration, and the Hubble telescope notwithstanding, people still think of heaven as being somehow "in the sky'".

A generation hence, they might gain some insight into whether living with all these simulations has had any real effect on society. I suspect that the answer will have more to do with sheer numbers than the specifics of the games themselves.