Sexual Healing

I postponed writing about sexuality until my very last blog because the idea of people milling around, having sexual interactions in a virtual world with virtual characters creeps me out.  It makes me feel icky on the inside to think that people get all hot and bothered by being sexual with other virtual characters.  That is one fetish that I just do not understand.  Anyhow, I've spent a lot of time in Small Worlds and I really have not noticed anything too crazy when it comes to sexual exchanges.  I've read a lot of other people's blogs and some of my classmates have experienced some really obscene things in their virtual worlds.  I'm sure there are plenty of variables that effect that kind of experiences we have in our virtual worlds.  One of them might be the time of day we log in.  I tend to log on to Small Worlds during the morning hours (between 7am and 11am) whereas some of my classmates might log in later on in the day.  In the morning, there are probably less avatars to interact with than there are later on in the day.  As a result, I have seen avatars flirting but nothing more.

Furthermore, there is a lot more to sexuality than sexually explicit interaction.  As a male avatar, I am mostly approached by female avatars which means that most characters in Small Worlds assume that Hank is heterosexual.  This seems to be the basic assumption under which Small Worlds operates.  I see a lot of female-to-male flirty interaction.  I also see a lot of females conversing with other females but it seems to be friendly conversation rather than flirty conversation.  I have rarely observed two or more male avatars having conversation which supports my theory that most people take a heterosexual approach to Small Worlds.  Again, there is the realm of the unknown meaning that we do not exactly know who is behind each avatar.  It might be true that some people wear an avatar that is opposite their real gender in order to have virtual interaction with characters who are of the same sex as they are.  

With all of this said, I think that there might be some barriers for homosexual characters in virtual worlds just as there are for real homosexuals in the real world.  In everyday life, homosexuals are surrounding by, for the most part, a majority of heterosexuals.  I think the same is true for homosexuals in virtual worlds.  This leads me to my questions for the class.  Do you all think it is easier for homosexuals to interact with other characters in a virtual world or do these virtual interactions pose just as many obstacles as homosexuals may experience in real life?