Queer Spaces, Modem Boys, and Pagan Statues: Gay/Lesbian Identity and the Construction of Cyberspace

Randal Woodland

Computer-mediated communication has had a particularly dramatic impact on the lesbian and gay community, whose members may live in geographic or psychological isolation. Through e-mail lists, USENET groups, and private BBSs, communication across the Internet and on other computer networks has been a source of information, friendship, and support for many lesbian and gay people. Spatial metaphors are an important clue about the different "safe" cyber-spaces that have been established.

Even in ways users aren't always conscious of, space is a common metaphor for the different ways computer networks make information accessible. Such differences are the subject of this paper. An overview of the gay and lesbian spaces on four different computer systems and a survey of their dominant features reveals both the constraints of each system and the particular constructions of gay and/or lesbian identity that undergird it.

i. not in Kansas anymore

We exist in a world of pure communication, where looks don't matter and only the best writers get laid.
legba, a player on LambdaMOO1
Let me begin with a personal experience that suggests how important these online place descriptors can be. This experience took place on a computer system known as a "MOO."2 MOOs are more easily experienced than described: these text-based virtual realities allow users from different sites to interact over the Internet. While logged into such a system, a user is "in" one room or another, each with its own particular description. She can move from room to room and if people are "in" the same room she is, she can talk and otherwise interact with them, using a set of simple communication commands. She can create her own character, choose from one of ten genders, and even create a room of her own to call home.

One evening I was logged on to LambdaMOO, the original system of this kind. I was in one of the public spaces the lawn in front of the large abandoned mansion that is the central architectural feature of LambdaMOO where many people came and went on their way to other places in the MOO. One passerby asked about the pink triangle that I was "wearing" as part of my self-description; I explained that the symbol originated as a Nazi concentration camp badge and that it signified gay rights. Though my new acquaintance immediately made it clear that he was straight and had a steady girlfriend, he seemed intrigued by what I said; once I confirmed that I was gay, he had a number of questions he wanted to ask about homosexuality, some fairly explicit. Drawing on my experience talking to psychology classes and community groups over the years, I answered as best I could, as his questions and my answers got more and more graphic. My clear sense of him at the time was that his curiosity had no ulterior motive; nor did my responses: in other words, this was a conversation about sex, rather than a sexually charged conversation. Since our conversation took place in an area with a fair amount of traffic, unsuspecting passersby might inadvertently eavesdrop on our conversation. Mindful of a central principle of netiquett that one should not subject other users to unwelcome explicit language, I began feeling that we should move. I explained this to my new acquaintance, and asked, with as little sense of cliché as I could muster, if he wanted to come back to my room.

He said no.

Now this "move" that I suggested would simply have meant that we were reading information (the room description) from a different section of the LambdaMOO database in Palo Alto and that the text we were producing was no longer accessible to other users, but the real life implications of that invitation, translated by my interlocutor into "real life" terms, were too much for him to deal with. He did agree, much as he would have in real life, I think, to move to a more secluded part of this public park so that we wouldn't disturb other users. We had reached a curious compromise. Our discourse seemed to me inappropriate for the public space of the front lawn; the spatial implications of "going back to my room" suggested to him a discourse he found threatening. Yet both of us understood that spatial descriptions and appropriate discourse were linked in this particular virtual world.

This incident suggests the ways that MOOs in particular, but other online services as well, use place descriptions and spatial metaphors to in form appropriate discourse. Bulletin board systems often use the metaphor of a "room" to announce and segregate different topics. More elaborate systems such as America Online present a detailed articulation of spatial metaphors; on America Online these range from "Center Stage," an area where a large number of members can interact with celebrities or other special guests to more specialized and ephemeral chat rooms with varying degrees of privacy. Taking the spatial metaphor to an extreme are systems such as MUDs and MOOs, in which the database of information is organized in and experienced through a fully realized virtual space.

This intuitive affinity between place and discourse goes so deep in our understandings of online communication that it can be difficult at times to realize we are speaking in metaphors. That reminder from my Chair to turn in my annual report is in my electronic mailbox; I'll move it to the Trash when I'm done. Where did you find that list of gay and lesbian studies programs? What's the address of the NewtWatch Web page? all of these constitute metaphors for locations in cyberspace. Even such a political Luddite as Sen. James Exon, sponsor of the "no cybersmut" rider to SB 314 warns about turning the "information super highway into a red light district" (Schwartz).

This use of space to inform discourse has a long tradition. Classical rhetoric, for example, had a very concrete appreciation of place. Different types of rhetoric were associated with specific places such as the law court, legislative hall, or battlefield. The topoi of possible means of persuasion were "places" the speaker could look for possible arguments. The department of memory trained the rhetor to associate sections of his speech with specific columns or other features in the room where he would deliver the oration. More recently, Jay David Bolter points out how computers extend and modify the "writing spaces" that have been with us as long as have used writing.

Various gay-related online venues share this use of place metaphors to suggest appropriate discourse, but to very different ends. Gay/lesbian spaces offer a particularly interesting set of examples, both because questions about lesbian and gay identity are contested in many ways‹from the personal level to the social, from the academic sphere to the political‹and because assertions about such identities often draw upon spatial constructs. As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has pointed out, the closet has long been a central signifying space for gay and lesbian people. The counterpoint to the silence of the closet is the speech act of coming out. This tension between private and public space maps the emergence of gay and lesbian identity from a shameful secret to a public affirmation.

Such public demonstrations as the 1993 March on Washington draw on the rich activist tradition of moving common concerns onto the avenues of political power, of a community coalescing around the monumental symbols of national tradition. Personal journeys from countless closets merge in this most public of spaces; Paul Monette writes evocatively of how "whatever is left of the hurt is washed away the longer you march, arm in arm with a comrade, rallying to the mustering of the tribe" (166-67). The potent affirmation of the slogan used by Digital Queers (a group of computer professionals) at that march, "We're here, we're queer, we have e-mail!" with its in-your-face assertion of presence, suggests the importance of claiming place as a central trope of gay activism.

Cyberspace has become a distinctive kind of "third place" for many gay and lesbian people; Howard Rheingold notes that many virtual communities serve as the "third place" envisioned by Roy Oldenburg‹an informal public place, distinct from both home and work: "The character of a third place is determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood, which contrasts with people's more serious involvement in other spheres" (Rheingold 25). These online "queer spaces" I discuss are "third places" in another sense, as well, in combining the connected sociality of public space with the anonymity of the closet. Tom Rielly, one of the co-founders of Digital Queers, explains the importance of electronic communities for lesbians and gay men this way: "Our vision is a national electronic town square that people can access from the privacy of their closet‹from any small town, any suburb, any reservation in America. It's like bringing Christopher Street or the Castro to them" (Vaillancourt 61).

A note on terminology: it has become standard trope of gay and lesbian studies to include an apologia for the particular terms (homosexual, gay, queer) the author uses to discuss his or her subject. My departures from the pairing of "lesbian and gay" ar e generally deliberate: "gay" by itself when my focus narrows to male-centered spaces; "queer" to more broadly include such forms of sexual expression and identity as bisexuality and transgenderism.


ii. queer spaces: four examples
The computer's writing space is animated, visually complex, and to a surprising extent malleable in the hands of both writer and reader.
‹Jay David Bolter, Writing Space
The four online systems I discuss here represent a range of online communities: some local, some national; some commercial, some non-profit. The users of one system are almost exclusively gay male, the others draw variously diverse users; some systems have developed mechanisms for tight "social" and topic control, other areas remain almost anarchic. Each system uses spatial metaphors in distinctive ways reflecting its overall purpose, user base, and general ethos. These queer spaces inform discourse in two ways: on each system individual spaces indicate topicality and appropriateness: this is the particular place to argue about gay legal issues, this to offer support for lesbian parenting, this just to gossip. Collectively, the spaces on each system constitute a distinctive construction of queer identity. Such constructions of identity, however provisional, necessarily precede constructions of virtual spaces. If we are to create spaces for queers, we must first agree on what queers are‹or agree at least on what they might be, with further elaboration and differentiation reserved for the discourses embodied in the spaces thus constructed.

After describing each system individually, I will turn to a consideration of what these systems suggest more broadly about online discourse and the ways in which gay/lesbian identity is constructed online. The chart below highlights the major features of each system:

The first two systems, though both commercial enterprises accessed entirely or primarily by modem rather than over the Internet, have little else in common. One is tightly structured and targets gay men, mostly from a limited geographical area; the other has a sprawling organization with a huge national user base.

Modem Boy

ModemBoy is a private gay-male oriented BBS (bulletin board system) located in Los Angeles.4As a private business, full access to its services is based on payment of regular fees. It has the most elaborately developed spatial metaphor of any of the systems I consider. The central conceit is that the system is Modem Boy High School; virtually every aspect of the system is made part of this metaphor, often humorously: users are STUDents, the Sysop is a crotchety old maid principal named Ms. Krump, areas devoted to different subjects are classrooms, each with a moderator called a teacher. The different levels of user access, based variously on the payment of membership fees, progress from Freshman to Senior. There's more than a touch of cleverness here: the real-time chat area is the Cafeteria, with both Roundtables for group discussion and Tables for Two for more intimate conversations; e-mail takes the form of passing notes in class, and downloadable files are found in the library. I must leave to the reader's imagination what is rumored to take place in the Locker Room. 5

On one level this textual play allows for an appropriation and redemption of negative high school experiences, much as a campus lesbian and gay group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill once sponsored "The Prom You Never Had" with tuxedos, evening gowns, corsages, and enough crepe paper streamers to cover the Reichstag. Though the desired effect o f ModemBoy's central conceit is to encourage a tone of playful camaraderie among users, the implications of this elaborate textual game, particularly for a definition of gay identity, are enough to give pause. It constructs gay men as horny, sexually compulsive adolescent boys ("in real life," all over 18, to keep the enterprise legal). ModemBoy builds on images common in gay male subculture and in society as a whole. Journalist Frank Browning notes the prevalence of this particular kind of idealized male beauty both in the gay male press that uses "hairless white boys" to sell magazines (193) and in national advertising campaigns that reach beyond the gay community:
Subtle or blatant, the homoeroticism that now pervades ads for blue-jeans, underwear, whiskey, cologne, even milk, acknowledges unconventional desire‹but only if the most conventionally beautiful bodies are used to display it. The irritant . . . is that the boy in the sheets is always a gym-toned blow-dried WASP from Central Casting, trendy urban division. (191-92)

Through its playful focus on a particular strand of gay iconography, ModemBoy gains the comfortable uniformity of a consistent spatial metaphor but potentially disenfranchises more diverse expressions of queer identity.

America Online

One of the largest commercial online services, America Online accommodates the needs of gay and lesbian users in two significant and quite distinct areas: a rich and well-organized collection of resources in the "Gay and Lesbian Community Forum" (GLCF) and a free-form, constantly changing array of rooms in "People Connection," the real-time chat area. In essence, the queer spaces in AOL give gay and lesbian content to the existing place genres that AOL has established systemwide.

The GLCF was established with official support from AOL management in 1991. This officially sanctioned space has both political and cultural resources, with a popular series of message boards. Daily AIDS reports from the Centers for Disease Control are available, as are pictures of members and PG-rated pinup photos, mostly of men. Sexually explicit material is prohibited here, as in fact it is throughout AOL (though perhaps it is more accurate to say that prohibition is enforced with greater consistency than in the chat rooms discussed below). In any given week, there are 25 real-time conferences scheduled on issues ranging from family issues to alcoholism to trivia and bodybuilding.

Lesbian and gay content on AOL is not restricted to these official GLCF spaces, but can be found throughout the system, thanks in part to official policies designed to combat homophobia and verbal bashing. In a recent listing, there were over 100 gay-related message folders outside the GLCF, in such broader subject areas as movies, religion, and politics. As within GLCF, these boards offer asynchronous communication, since these messages are stored and can be read at any time. Real-time, or synchronous communication, by contrast, links users in real time: communication tends to be more informal and ephemeral‹though users can easily keep logs of a particular session, the system itself does not store these texts.

The People Connection section of America Online is the center for synchronous interaction. Public Rooms on specific subjects such as sports, Start Trek, and trivia are established by the system, each room holding up to 23 people at a given time. Among these officially sanctioned rooms is a "Gay and Lesbian" room. Yet users are not restricted to these official rooms; any user can set up a Member Room with an identifying title. On a busy evening, hundreds of these rooms may be listed, with a substantial number named in such a way as to invoke what we might term a sexually compatible discourse community; of these, a substantial number incorporate the tag "M4M," unofficial AOL shorthand for "men [looking] for men." By naming a room, a user can gather a group of users based on a range of preferences, geography, age, body type, or other desired common bond. Not all Member Rooms are sexually related, but many are. In part because parents can bar children from this area of the system, the ban on sexual discourse (of various sorts) is effectively relaxed. For even greater privacy, users can create a Private Room accessible only to those who know its name. Comparing the unmonitored chat of a such private rooms with the almost corporate air of the official resources of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force suggests the range of queer discourses available through America Online. Exactly where the discourse appropriate to a particular space falls on this continuum is conveyed by generic and topical demarcations of space.

The last two sites are non-commercial sites located on the Internet. Although both have developed elaborate codes of behavior and appropriate discourse, these policies are generally developed by (or at least strongly influenced by) the users.

ISCA

The ISCA BBS is run by a University of Iowa student group, the Iowa Student Computer Association. Of its almost 200 available forums on a wide range of topics, perhaps no others have garnered such recurring debate as the boundaries of its three rooms of primary interest to lesbians, bisexuals and gay men: a public forum (LesBiGay Issues), a "family-only" safespace (Queerspace), and a chat room (Stonewall Cafe) for queers and supportive straights. Confidentiality is a dominant concern on this system and particularly in these rooms. Systemwide, users can choose whether to make their real name public or be known only by their screenname; in these spaces, as in a few other forums, anonymous postings can be made without the screenname appearing.

€ The LesBiGay forum resembles other subject-centered areas on the board. Many other spaces allow discussion of lesbian, gay, and bisexual issues, which in fact may be considered more "on-topic" there than in the LesBiGay forum. ISCA has developed several mechanisms for encouraging users to stay within the posted topic of a particular forum; this is necessary because only the most recent 150 posts in each of the almost 200 forums are saved.

€ Queerspace has much the same function as the LesBiGay forums, but its membership is limited. Though the room is open only to those who self-identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, there is no attempt to verify that information (difficult as such verification would be). Clearly this is not a high level of security: a woman-only space, by contrast, requires in-person or voice verification; sexually explicit spaces require proof of age.

€ Stonewall Cafe is designated as a more casual space for informal interactions. Serving as a queer-centered counterpart to similar rooms for the general user base, Stonewall Cafe offers a social space free of potential harassment. It supports more synchronous (real time) discourse than other forums and scrolls rapidly, often within an hour or two during busy times as friends trade greetings and one-liners. ("Scrolling" is the process by which new postings drive out old, due to the 150-post maximum in all rooms.)

LambdaMOO

LambdaMOO is, quite literally, the mother of all MOOs. Developed by Pavel Curtis as an extension of other text-based virtual reality simulators, the Lambda software program forms of core of most, if not all, other MOOs. Though it contains several systemwide signifiers that appear (apparently by chance) to suggest a gay focus, the system has a broad diversity of users. 6 One prominent queer space on LambdaMOO has a different quality than the spaces I have described elsewhere. Through signification, this "neighborhood" is marked with features suggesting queer culture, but it is not obviously so designated a queer space as are spaces on either America Online or ISCA.

A distinctive feature of MOOs is that users can fairly easily create their own objects, including spaces, to expand the system and enhance their interactions with other users. Though the designers of a particular MOO will generally establish a central network of spaces to establish the distinctive themes of the space, most MOOs, including LambdaMOO, allow at least a limited amount of building by individual users. Although the central original construction of LambdaMOO is a large abandoned mansion where users were encouraged to create their own rooms along established hallways, the virtual geography has spread far beyond that original construction.

There's no easy way to discover these neighborhoods, no subject directory or address book of interesting places. Much as in an unfamiliar city, a newcomer must either be guided to them by a someone who knows the neighborhood or by exploring areas off the beaten path. If one wanders through the park south of the mansion, through the gypsy camp, and into an old barn, one might well notice a rug hanging on the wall, a rug which serves at the gateway to Weaveworld, the neighborhood to which I refer
On second glance, you are amazed by the exotic workmanship of the carpet. Its strange designs of people and places seem to describe an entire world, and you wonder if this magical tapestry might have been hidden away here. It beckons you to step closer.
Suddenly coming to life, the fabric and patterns of the carpet unravel and transform around you. You find yourself in a forest, and behind you the visually confusing frontier between tree and vine on one side and the weave of the carpet on the other. You follow a path to the east out of the forest.

Weaveworld is a skillful play of signifiers that imply queerness on the whole, though not specifically. Inspired by Clive Barker's novel Weaveworld , this is a neighborhood distinctively set apart from the rest of LambdaMOO.
You are standing on the top of a hill covered with fragrant and unfamiliar flowers and grasses. From this vantage, you see a large part of Weaveworld, a riotous patchwork of geographies hastily rescued from some ancient peril. Just to your north is a large nutmeg tree (which seems climbable). To your south is an old well, crumbling apart from age and neglect.
You walk along the path to the east until you enter the small village.
Here the road thru the village widens into a circular plaza of red cobblestones. On a large marble pedestal is a statue of two Greek warriors clad in bronze and silver armor. Inside the pedestal there is rumored to be a golden urn, like many ancient treasures, hidden away for safe keeping in Weaveworld.

Upon this plaque is inscribed upon is the passage from the Iliad where Achilles mourns his lover Patroclus. Further evidence of the ethos of this neighborhood might come as a user poked into the cottages and treehouses around this central space and found them inhabited overwhelmingly by male characters‹with a preponderance of strapping young men with artistic sensibilities. 7

There are also sly markers of paganism and sensuality, mostly notably a tree of "giddy fruit" which, when eaten brings visions:
You see Jorge Borges, saying "Oh time, thy pyramids!"
Quentin talks with what appears to be a box containing Schroedinger's cat.
You see the two boys from the statue, wrestling.
You see Michel Foucault in white pants and a leather jacket.
Weaveworld and its environs are spaces marked as queer, in the sense of non-conforming and strange; yet this queerness creates a safer space where sexual non-conformity can become the norm.

Other more literal queer-themed spaces have sprung up throughout LambdaMOO, including a Gay and Lesbian Community Center and a rather predictable sex club for gay men. Supplanted by such newer features as GAYLINE (see reponse by Stivale), Weaveworld has gone the way of Brigadoon, removed from the database by its creator in the summer of 1995. Yet Weaveworld, with its anarchic challenge to the main spaces of LambdaMOO, initially carved out the space in which these more literally-defined gay resources can exist. Weaveworld is largely the creation of one user, whose creative re-thinking of what a queer space might look like simultaneously broadened definitions of queer identity. This synergy of space and community suggests more broadly the manner in which online discourse and queer identity illuminate each other.


iii. how queer identity shapes queer space

Perhaps it was not a coincidence that one of the earliest developers of computing, Alan Turing‹who in World War II aided the Allies in cracking the Nazi's Enigma code‹was gay. Or that the modern gay movement and the computer industry were both born at roughly the same time in the late sixties by people who were breaking with convention. Or that both thrived and grew within the liberal political climate of northern California.
‹Michelangelo Signorile, Queer in America

Despite their obvious differences, these systems respond to many of the same dynamics, the different constructions of space found in each system suggesting differing resolutions to several issues. One issue, with implications for other online discourse, is how space functions as a constructive factor in online discourse. A second issue is how these spaces embody varied constructions of gay and lesbian identity.

The most obvious use of online spatial metaphors, on these systems as well as others, is to encourage certain appropriate kinds of discourse and constrain others. Who defines such "appropriateness" is generally determined by the corporate or political structures that govern each system; the function of spatial constructions is to convey such decisions to users. When users have the opportunity to create such spaces themselves (as on LambdaMOO and in an ephemeral way on America Online), the power to encourage and constrain discourse is thus shared.

It's no surprise that one of the hotly contested questions in national debates the Internet, the issue of explicit sexual content, is dealt with in various ways on these systems. On ModemBoy, it's something of a selling point, and is encouraged for "Upperclassmen" whose membership fees earn them access to the aforementioned Locker Room, with its promise of more lurid conversations. All users, even non-paying ones, must affirm that they are over 18, though no verification was required as of 1993. Throughout America Online, as discussed above, explicit sexual discourse is officially prohibited, though in certain spaces the rule is more readily enforced. One of the functions of a Private Room on America Online is to serve a s an appropriate spot for more explicit conversation.

On ISCA, all sexually explicit questions and comments‹relating both to homosexual and heterosexual issues‹are on-topic only in a forum called "Kama Sutra," admission to which is gained only after the Sysops have verified a user's age. As part of ISCA's integrative strategy for gay, lesbian, and bisexual content, questions and comments regarding same-sex practices are welcomed in that forum and prohibited in the three primary queer spaces. Thus ISCA shares with America Online the designation of spaces for gays and lesbians where sexuality is, paradoxically, proscribed.

That LambdaMOO has a significantly different approach to regulating discourse is apparent; control of an individual room rests with its owner, who can lock the room so that no one other then the users in the room can read what is said or done. There are, however, no explicit rules on content of any sort: the disclaimer on the opening screen lays the foundation for this laissez-faire approach:

PLEASE NOTE: LambdaMOO is a new kind of society, where thousands of people voluntarily come together from all over the world. What these people say or do may not always be to your liking; as when visiting any international city, it is wise to be careful who you associate with and what you say. The operators of LambdaMOO have provided the materials for the buildings of this community, but are not responsible for what is said or done in them. In particular, you must assume responsibility if you permit minors or others to access LambdaMOO through your facilities. The statements and viewpoints expressed here are not necessarily those of the wizards, Pavel Curtis, or the Xerox Corporation and those parties disclaim any responsibility for them.
Thus the spatial metaphor of a metropolitan city suggests where responsibility for access to potentially offensive material (including sexual content) should rest.

Sexually explicit language is, of course, not the only kind of discourse that may be perceived as disruptive. One of the advantages of online systems is the ability to meet people with similar interests, yet for such discourse to be profitable to users, the noise level (in the form of off-topic or simply irrelevant talk) must be kept low. By suggesting what kind of talk is appropriate in various rooms, system administrators can shape appropriate discourses. Systems have a variety of ways to keep the content of various spaces generally in line with what has been established as the proper topic. ModemBoy uses volunteer "teachers," moderators who genially keep things on-topic and also have the responsibility for stimulating discussion in their "classrooms" when things get dull. Rooms in America Online are named to encourage appropriate postings, and moderators have some ability to regulate content.

Because of the limited message capacity on ISCA and the high scroll rate of popular forums, topicality is a major concern and often the subject of contentious debate. Due to storage constraints, each new post consigns a previous post to virtual nothingness: "off-topic" posts accelerate this process. Complicating this in interesting ways is the fact that gay and lesbian issues are on-topic in other relevant forums and users are directed to post there, for issues of love and dating advice, sexual technique, religion, AIDS, and so on. Someone asking a question or making a point about AIDS in the LesBiGay forum, for example is soon corrected, often sternly. On ISCA the broad signals about topicality generally given by a spatial description become rigorously disciplined, to the point of seeming absurdity.

Equally disruptive to serious conversation is the casual chatting which some users seek. (Conversely, of course, one could argue that serious conversation disrupts playful banter.) The system administrator of a California municipal BBS once compared the difficulty of making decisions in an online community to holding a committee meeting in a room with someone screaming in the corner. On many systems, the distinct provisions for both synchronous and asynchronous discussion also suggest separate spaces for formal and informal discourse. Chat gravitates to synchronous spaces, serious discussion to asynchronous ones. On America Online, Message Boards offer asynchronous, often more serious, topics of discussion while Chat Rooms are places to gather simply for conversation. America Online also provides for serious discussion in real time, through its topical Forums, where a moderator is empowered to keep things in order or through Center Stage, where many users can read simultaneously, but only invited guests may post. The metaphors of different physical spaces reinforce these distinctions.

The basic system architecture of ISCA privileges asynchronous discourse. Though users may send express messages to other users singly, no facility is offered for multiple-user real-time communication. In the forums designated for serious discussion, informal chatty posts are even more highly discouraged than off-topic posts. The forums designated for chatting and humor, including "Babble" and "Flirting," scroll rapidly, yielding something approaching a synchronous experience. The third queer space, Stonewall Cafe, serves this function for gay, lesbian, and bisexual users, as well as sympathetic straights. (An one point, non-queer users had to be sponsored by a member and voted in by the membership; this process proved cumbersome and was eventually dropped as being discriminatory.)

Stonewall Cafe operates as a kind of cheap MOO, a bargain basement virtual reality. In a communal act of creation, a casual cafe atmosphere is maintained entirely through individual posts. Actions are designated by paired asterisks (*bounces in* or *sips cappuccino*) and much of the interaction is of a "Who's here? Who wants to talk?" variety. Though serious discussion is not banned, it's often derailed by users pursuing more playful interactions. Through this corporate creativity, a stock of commonplace props, furniture, and other stage-setting devices are used to instill an ethos of relaxed comfort. Depending on the imagination of those writing entries, the room's amenities may contain a hot tub (or two, if separatists are online), a fully stocked bar with attractive co-gender bartenders and a range of comfortable furniture: a love seat, some dark booths in the corner, the "dyke couch" and the most recent addition, the "bisexual futon." Here a fairly developed spatial metaphor is developed and sustained moment to moment by the community of users to give the impression of a comforting and welcoming place.

Yes these spaces, potent and meaningful as they are, tell only part of the story. Without meaningful interactions, all of these spaces would remain pleasant fictions, no matter how clever or evocative. What the creators of these spaces intend to summon forth, much as mediums at a seance, are particular identities, shaped and given life by these peculiar geographies.

iv. how queer spaces shape queer identities


If you build it, they will come.
‹ ghostly voice in Field of Dreams

This heavenly dictum has become something of a commonplace, invoked to justify everything from the building of frozen yogurt shops to the offering of new courses in Arabic at a university. Yet its central mystical truth, speaking of the power of place to call forth appropriate inhabitants, survives such oversimplification. The builders of shopping malls and the presiders over religious ceremonies share with the designers of online spaces an appreciation of the potency of space to draw forth participants sharing a communal identity: the shopper, the worshipper, the computer-using queer.8 Ironically, the kinds of spaces that have evolved to present queer discourse can be taken as measure of what queer identity is in the 1990's.

One factor that links these spaces with their historical and real-life counterparts is the need to provide safe(r) spaces for queer folk to gather. Despite the increasing visibility of gay, lesbian, and even bisexual lives in the popular media, to live as a gay man or lesbian, to speak as a gay man or lesbian, is to open oneself to attack. The concern with confidentiality on these spaces, which at times seems obsessive, reflects the very real dangers of a time when gay bashing is on the rise and homophobic politicians hold sway across the land, from local school boards to the halls of Congress.

ModemBoy gains a certain degree of "safety" by being a service primarily marketed to gay men. No doubt there have been some gay bashers logging in on occasion, but there isn't the constant interplay of diverse populations that makes this an issue on other systems. LambdaMOO's primary protection against harassment is self-selection: as in real life, users choose their friends and the people they hang out with. Though the mediation process set up by users has yielded sanctions against some blatant examples of harassment including homophobic harassment (see Stivale), there is much less system-wide concern with setting up a rigid code of conduct. The software does offer the ability to take actions to bar hearing or seeing the words or actions of someone you wish to ignore. The bodily dimension of a MOO, however, opens up the field for a new kind of harassment based on actions and objects rather than just on "spoken" discourse (Dibbell).

Not surprisingly, America Online handles issues of harassment with a mix of official policies and software features. Every user agrees to abide by the "Terms of Service," a set of rules of acceptable behavior that prohibit harassment, including that on the basis of sexual orientation. (It is these same "Terms of Service" that restrict expli cit sexual content.) There are several ways of contacting an online guide or a "TOS Advisor," AOL staffers who enforce those policies and can take appropriate action. Nevertheless, determined bashers can render a room unusable to its gay and lesbian users, and the extensive efforts it would take to rigorously police the system may not be a high priority for a commercial enterprise that makes its money by letting people onto the system, not by kicking them off.

On ISCA repeated attempts to establish Queerspace as a "safespace" raise some interesting issues for online communities. This space and Stonewall Cafe share strict confidentiality policies: revealing any information obtained there (including the identity of other members) is grounds for banishment from the forum. Concern that the promotion of these spaces as "safe" might lead people to expect a higher level of confidentiality than actually exists has led to a recent redefinition of this as "safer" space‹it's safe from casual observation, and there is a concerted effort to keep the posting within the spaces clear of homophobic bashing, but users concerned about confidentiality should understand that almost any electronic system is subject to eavesdropping and that any communal norms are subject to individual digression.

There are competing views, however, on what makes a particular space "safe." One Forum Moderator, in a effort to create a space that was psychologically safe, established a policy that attacks against another member of Queerspace on the basis of sexual orientation anywhere on the system (gay-bashing by a closeted gay person, for example) would be grounds for expulsion from the forum. Her intent, based on a sophisticated understanding of the kind of nurturing space necessary for people to feel comfortable, ran up against concerns of free speech: this policy was eliminated and she was removed as Forum Moderator. This clash between two paradigms of online discourse‹as the kind of virtual community which Howard Rheingold envisions, or as a bastion of absolute free speech, where "information wants to be free" (in Stewart Brand's memorable phrase) (202) ‹is emerging as a crucial issue for the future of online communication.

Related to freedom from harassment are issues of privacy. Provisions for privacy are more important in lesbian and gay spaces than general public spaces. One of the reason Digital Queers encourages the use of America Online is its provision for members to have up to five screen names for each account, any of which can be anonymous. ISCA has an anonymous option, and even allows anonymous postings in the three queer spaces. Throughout LambdaMOO, real life identification (including name and e-mail address) is available only to Wizards (system operators), who must have a valid reason for checking. Since virtually all interactions take place in one's virtual body and identity, however, anonymity of one's online identity is not possible. Even here, though, spatial metaphor can generate new kinds of discourse. On DhalgrenMOO , a virtual space inspired by the works of Samuel Delany and William Burroughs, one clever programmer is experimenting with a "back room" modeled on the notorious back rooms of certain gay bars. In this virtual space, all identities are replaced with the word "someone." The visitor to this room might experience something like this:
Someone enters.
Someone brushes up against your leg.
You touch someone's arm.
For a regular user on a MOO, this divorce of identity from one's virtual body can be startling. What is striking about this room is that the spatial analogue of a back room has led to a further refinement of the discursive possibilities of MOOspace. In the anonymity that all these systems make available to users, each recreates the kinds of real life spaces that have allowed for anonymous expressions of sexual identity.

Paradoxically, even as these spaces offer virtual equivalents to anonymous trysting grounds, they also reflect a growing popular acceptance of gay men and lesbians, at least on an institutional level. By presenting queer spaces as equivalent to spaces for other identity groups, the system architecture suggests a moral equivalence (or at least neutrality). Shoe-horning lesbian and gay spaces into these less controversial spaces yields some interesting decisions and compromises; we can see this mainstreaming of the lesbian and gay community as either empowering or trivializing. The official gay/lesbian presence on AOL is one of 65 "Clubs and Interests" accessible from the Main Menu; gay and lesbian concerns take their place among forums devoted to such interests as woodworking, backpacking, genealogy, pet care, quilting, and Star Trek. Likewise on ISCA, the three queerspaces take their place among forums dedicated to Trekkers or sports enthusiasts or computer hackers. Though it might be seen as a public relations triumph fo r gays and lesbians to be no more controversial than Trekkers or woodworkers, there is also the risk of trivializing the concerns of queer folks by labeling them a "club" or (special?) "interest." The relevance of this to queer identity is two-fold: being queer is almost as socially acceptable as being a Trekker, but no more important. Such a minimizing of the distinctiveness of gay identity has its drawbacks: constructing homosexuality as this kind of "lifestyle choice" is a common tactic of the religious right.

On the other hand, these spaces are equivalent to spaces for other sociological groups that are less easy to trivialize. Other community-based areas on America Online include AARP, Christianity Online, Deaf Community, disABILITIES, Military and Vets Forum. Queer status on ISCA is roughly similar to that of women, African-Americans, and disabled people in that special forums are dedicated to the interests of these groups. Such an inclusion of the gay and lesbian community among other socially recognized groups suggests an inclusiveness distinctive of identity politics. We're listed on the Big Board now, our club is on the approved list: as the folks on Seinfeld might say, our "team" is in the major leagues, we've made it to "the Big Show." Yet such a perception assumes a unified and distinct Gay Community that exists only in the dreams of gay activists and the nightmares of religious fundamentalists. The realities of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities defy such simple definition.

The very inclusion of bisexuals and transgendered folk, for example, is as much an issue of controversy in cyberspace as elsewhere. Despite recurring complaints from some users, ISCA spaces are assertively inclusive of bisexuals, unlike either AOL's GLCF or ModemBoy as a whole. In fact, at one point, America Online policies reflected a view of bisexuality as even more threatening than homosexuality: the phrase "Bi" was prohibited as part of a screen name or Member Room name.

A second way of defining identity is less explicit, with more tenuous boundaries. Rather than contesting the specific boundaries of queer identities, this approach exploits what might be termed co-factors of gay identity. ModemBoy's atmosphere of narcissistic, sex-crazed boys exaggerates one cultural image of gay men and uses that as a signifier to give a sense of community. By contrast, and in a much more sophisticated way, the gay ghetto of Weaveworld uses markers of paganism, anarchy, and sensuality to delineate a "queer" space off the beaten path. Other offshoots of Weaveworld take a much more literal approach, but spatial metaphors need not be so literal. The Hollywood semiotic codes of the thirties and forties took such an indirect approach: an interest in antiques and a leather jacket was enough to suggest a homosexual subtext to the murder plots of The Big Sleep, for example. There are constructions of gay identity still that are suggested rather than denoted.

Another way such identify is formed and strengthened is by membership in a self-aware community. 9 Though it is generally the task of the academic observer to define the community by its members, our experience as community members is that we are often shaped, consciously or not, by the communities in which we participate. In the fluid geographies of cyberspace, community boundaries shift as the discourse changes. A LISTSERV mailing list that gives one a sense of membership in a worldwide professional community can become, in the space of few months, a squabbling gaggle of egomaniacs with all the unpleasantness of a real-life dysfunctional group.

Despite such difficulties, virtual communities do form and re-form themselves. Markers of community found on these systems include informal initiation rites involving both knowledge of the system and training in appropriate behavior. Blatant requests of a sexual nature may be deferred to more appropriate channels. A comment on a current issue may be met with the response that says essentially "we discussed that last week before you showed up, and we're all tired of it." The message to a newcomer that "this is the way we do things here" suggests a shared understanding, however undeveloped or unarticulated, of a we and a here. "We" denotes the particular community of discourse that centers on a particular virtual space: place, community, identity and voice are all inextricably linked. A colleague of mine confesses a sense of spatial disorientation when she is on a MOO, particularly when talking with a group of colleagues. Though she (happily) maintains enough presence of mind to understand that she is at her computer and not "in" the virtual room, she often catches herself imagining that all the other people she is talking with are in a physical room together somewhere else, and that she is the only one restricted to computer-mediated communication.

Communities often crystallize over crisis situations, either personal or institutional. An illness or suicide attempt can energize the cords of compassion that bind the community together. Howard Rheingold movingly describes the community bonding in the Parenting conference on the WELL (21-23); in these queerspaces, the act of coming out to one's parents and the process of dealing with subsequent acceptance and/or rejection often reveal the community at its most nurturing. A threat from the system administration to change the boundaries of the virtual space, or a perceived failure to take action against harassment can spark the moment where members speak of themselves as "we": "We have to do something. We're not going to take it any more." As Gordon Allport suggested in his classic study of in-groups, the act of saying "we" marks identification with a group. There are even moments when a conscious awareness of a community develops and members attempt to regularize and strengthen those defining boundaries: an ISCA user questions whether transsexuals belong in Queerspace; America Online members submit digitized photos for a Family Album. On LambdaMOO, a user has created a GAYLINE function for synchronous chat that preempts the spatial metaphor of the MOO altogether, substituting a communications channel more typical of IRC (Internet Relay Chat.) In this case, membership is formalized with policies for appropriate use of the channel, admission procedures, and other explicit markers of a formally organized community.

Yet we must not forget that these communities are, for the most part, rooted not in face-to-face interactions, but in discourse, more specifically in the kinds of discourse that take queer identities, however contested, as a given. The kinds of writing engendered by these spaces are informed by a perspective that moves queer discourses from the boundaries to the center. The effect is much the same as that observed by Harriet Malinowitz in her lesbian- and gay-themed writing classes:
Importantly, it wasn't a queer-only place, but rather a community forged by a coalition of discourses in which queerness claimed a visibility and authority it doesn't ordinarily enjoy in the world. The heterosexual students in the class became skilled at launching their acts of reading and writing from more advanced points of departure when it came to queer topics; the queer students learned that by articulating the complexity of the world from their own vantage points they could create the audience that they needed. (185)
Malinowitz created her queer classroom space by advertising a course and enrolling students, thus "queering" the space of an composition classroom. Online communities are gathered in a similar fashion, though much more informally. Community is the key link between spatial metaphors and issues of identity. By helping to determine appropriate tone and content, the permanency or transience of the discourse, these place descriptors help to shape a discourse community. When that community is also marked as queer, community identity also informs the voice and ethos appropriate to members of that community. These spatial metaphors are shorthand for establishing the rhetorical situation of computer-mediated communication.

Although the initial impulse for establishing an online queerspace may be to set up a "safe" environment where people can feel free to express their identities, such spaces also become the sites where identities are shaped, tested, and transformed, both individually and corporately. The fluid boundaries of online spaces prove an apt locus for this redefinition of queer identities. Frank Browning concludes his analysis of contemporary American gay cultures with a challenging observation that captures the shifting queerspaces I have described here: "The community of identity exists only in the state of transformation. In the culture of desire, there are no safe spaces." In these cafes and classrooms and quaint pagan villages, words shape, caress, inspire and challenge; words mediate and recreate the identities of the tribe.

Notes

1Quoted in Quittner, 95.
2MOO" is an acronym for Multi-user dimension, Object-Oriented, referring to the programming language used to create the virtual space.
3 http://www.cais.com/newtwatch/
4In a bulletin board system, users dial in via modems to a central computer system, where they can post messages and read messages that other users have posted. This dicussion of ModemBoy reflects the system as it existed in 1992­p;93.
5This is in part because what is rumored to take place there is much more intriguing than what actually does take place there.
6Most notable of these signifiers is of course, the name Lambda itself: the Greek letter lambda was an early symbol for gay rights; its source as a MOO name is an obscure reference to the Lisp programming language (Curtis, Section 2). Prominent system messages refer to "coming out of the [literal] closet" and to the movie The Wizard of Oz, long a touchstone of gay culture.
7Whether the real-life users who created these characters are themselves male cannot be so readily determined. The provisional genderedness of MOO interaction leads to some interesting situations, but for my purposes, the overwhelming maleness of the players who live in and around Weaveworld can be taken at face value in gendering this particular virtual space.
8For correspondences between shopping and worship, see Cole; for correspondences between spiritual and online experiences, see Davis.
9On the nature of MOO community, see Curtis, Section 2.3; Dibbell.

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