Pandora’s vox: on community in cyberspace
by humdog (1994)
When I went into cyberspace I went into it thinking that it was a place like any other place and that it would be a human interaction like any other human interaction. I was wrong when I thought that. It was a terrible mistake.
The very first understanding that I had that it was not a place like any place and that the interaction would be different was when people began to talk to me as though I were a man. When they wrote about me in the third person, they would say “he.” it interested me to have people think I was “he” instead of “she” and so at first I did not say anything. I grinned and let them think I was “he.” this went on for a little while and it was fun but after a while I was uncomfortable. Finally I said unto them that I, humdog, was a woman and not a man. This surprised them. At that moment I realized that the dissolution of gender-category was something that was happening everywhere, and perhaps it was only just very obvious on the ne