ABSTRACT
The birth of Horizon, a platform that will completely shape the Metaverse into a parallel universe has raised an enormous number of reflections regarding the implications that this innovative webspace could have on human life. Considering this, the text aims to explore the implications that this new technology may have on sex/gender epistemology and sexual practices in the near future. The first paragraph focuses on providing a framework for transfeminist critiques of the web. The second paragraph goes deeper into the analysis using Preciado’s (2021) thoughts on the future change of the sex/gender epistemology to ask how the Metaverse could be useful for this purpose. The final section delves into the topic of the body and sexual practices that could inhabit the Metaverse arguing that the Metaverse will be a complex space characterized by violence and deeply in need of transfeminist practices based on non-violence and consent, such as post-porn.
KEYWORDS
Transfeminism, Metaverse, Gender, Sex, Post-porn.
The birth of Horizon, a platform that will completely shape the Metaverse into a parallel universe, by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has raised an enormous number of doubts about the implications that this innovative webspace could have on the unfolding of human life. Presenting it (CNET Highlights, 2021), its creator gave a speech that contains some interesting points of analysis from a transfeminist perspective. The first moment is when Zuckerberg explains the many possibilities that users of the Metaverse will have in creating their avatars. Quoting his words: «You’ll probably have a photorealistic avatar for work, a stylized one for hanging out and maybe even a fantasy one for gaming» (CNET Highlights, 2021). The openness to the plurality of bodily presentation contained in this sentence lets us imagine a world in which people can become the authors of their own space and body as never before. At the same time, however, it proposes social norms of “good behavior” that derive directly from those currently in play in the offline world and leaves many questions regarding the affordability of customizing one’s avatar open. The second key point is when the entrepreneur announces the need for the construction of new norms and governance to protect users’ property rights. This perspective confronts us with the fact that, in its evolution, the web is beginning to take on more and more the characteristics of a parallel world and invites us to ask ourselves what relationship this world will have with the offline one. What can we say about this from a transfeminist perspective?
Utopia and dystopia are the keywords we must bring up to delve into the transfeminist critiques of the web. Following Foucauldian reflection, it is necessary to remember how the structures of power are characterized by dynamic and processual networks and that, as Judith Butler also expressed, it is in these dynamics that we find both the reproduction of hegemony and the resistance. Being aware of the fact that the web and social networks play a fundamental role in the contemporary world and that it would be almost impossible to eliminate them at the moment, practicing feminist resistance through them is necessary. In order to understand the basic processes of the Web, it is essential to analyze its language. On the one hand, we have no difficulty in pointing out that programming is still strongly dominated by cis-hetero white men and that from such a privileged position it is easy to reproduce the hegemonic narrative in one’s own creations, but is it just that? Safiya Umoja Noble’s (2018) text Algorithms of Oppression stems from the desire to highlight and analyze the discriminatory practices inherent in programming (especially from a racial and gender perspective) but also reflects on the future of online communication from a collective point of view. Two points are central to Dr. Noble’s (2018) book: the link between power networks and categorization, and the difficulty in promoting inclusive and quality information in the context of the neoliberal market. Quoting the author: «Google is a powerful and important resource for organizing information and facilitating social cooperation and contact, while it simultaneously reinforces hegemonic narratives and exploits its users» (Noble, 2018:163). It is incredibly complex to work on the basics of how the online world works, so how can we move to promote greater inclusion and critical thinking? How can we harness the value of knowledge sharing and community building and reduce its negative impacts?
Algorithms have the power to push people to stay within culturally dominant narratives. Founded on targeting, they can open spaces for radicalization and the expression of patriarchal violence, examples of which are the so-called INCEL1 groups that use Reddit and other platforms in order to propagate violence against women. Community building and reimagined practices, however, can also be an excellent opportunity for resistance. How, then, is it possible to maximize the benefit of new technologies? In a nutshell, the answer is to work on reducing inequalities in offline life. How, for example? Firstly, we should focus on decreasing the digital divide by working against the neo-liberal and neo-colonial logic inherent in the global market. Secondly, this would require the demand and diffusion of platforms and search more inclusive engines that are more inclusive and, above all, public in nature and no longer linked to profit-oriented companies. What practices can we imagine to achieve these goals?
I do not know with what enthusiasm, with what urgency to tell you that we are living in a moment of unprecedented historical importance: the epistemology of sexual difference is in mutation. [...] The processes that lead to epistemological change involve profound technological, social, visual and sensory modifications. [...] It is this regime of integrated world capitalism, as Félix Guattari puts it, that we are abandoning today (Preciado, 2021:95-97).
With this sentence, Preciado (2021) tells us that the epistemological change of the sex/gender paradigm will take place. The question to ask, then, is not “if” but “when” and, in our context, “what” technological changes this will bring. The concept of the “monster” in Preciado (2021) refers to the social construction of antinormative sexualities. From a certain point of view, the woman is the first “monster” within a patriarchal-colonial society. In fact, she represents the alter-ego that is deficient and forcedly juxtaposed to man by the heteronormative order. Of course, in Preciado’s (2021) discourse monsterification expands as individuals have more and more antinormative use of the body and performance of gender. Breaking out of the cage of binarism is the ultimate goal of this re-appropriation of the body and expression that constructs more and more monsters by uniting transfeminist, crip, queer and anti-racist demands. Preciado’s (2021) perspective is reminiscent of Donna Haraway’s (1991) reflection on cyborgs. Transcending binarism and changing its epistemology has undoubtedly to do with new technologies. In the case of the Metaverse, the vaunted possibility of creating unlimited avatars may lead us to imagine a world of “monsterificated” bodies much closer to a possible new epistemology. At the same time, however, fundamental questions arise. For instance, will access to personalized skins be constrained by affordability? Are we in danger of reproducing a strongly class-based society, bringing with it gender and race inequalities, by advertising a final freedom of the body? Secondly, will there be limits? And if so, which ones? Decided by whom?
The new governance advocated by Zuckerberg to protect users’ property rights broadens the topic from an ethical and regulatory point of view. The news of a beta tester being groped (Mahdawi, 2021) by a stranger has already made the rounds of newspapers and is just the first example of a possibility of harassment that needs to be questioned. At the same time, an article by Maghan McDowell (2021) reports London College of Fashion’s Dr. Francesca Bonetti’s reflection on the construction of unrealistic avatars. As she points out, it is incredibly complex to analyze every facet of the personalization of online alter egos when it comes to experimentation from a racial or gender point of view or even in the construction of ultra-human beings that risk reproducing dominant aesthetic norms. It is essential not only to closely observe these practices in their development to guide users to a respectful use of their creative potential but also to spread our own practices more and more.
The struggle against heterocispatriarchy is something that must necessarily be done with and through bodies occupying every space: from urban to multimedial. Considering online space, for example, digital activism is becoming more influential by the day. Many activists are promoting a more complex vision of sexuality, based on a re-signification of bodies, relationships and practices. This trend is evident if we take a look at the profiles of activists who have a larger international following, an example being @queersextherapy (Casey Tanner) who associates psychological well-being, ethical non-monogamy, and body positivity with the goal of extracting practices and identities from the heterocispathriarcal model. At the same time, though, social medias still present the same issues as the offline world and, as previously noted, are inevitable tools whose function is established by our neoliberal structure of power.
Indeed, the resignification of bodies and practices operated by transfeminist movements must necessarily be linked to the promotion of systemic change. Post-porn and transfeminist porn are great examples of opposing heterocispatriarchal hegemony through the reappropriation of bodies and spaces. Heteronormed and mainstream pornography turns out to be evidently the product of rape culture (Herman, 1989) and, as Valentine shows, citing Preciado, it is itself a producer of gender and sexuality (Valentine, 2020:11). This vicious cycle can only be broken by the spread of new practices of rupture. Post-porn eludes precise categorization and binds itself to the self-determination of those who produce it by setting an overarching goal to «unmask the codes of traditional, sexist, racist and ableist pornography […] and subvert it» (Valentine, 2020:25). As Valentine says, unfortunately, post-porn is still scarcely accessible online. Transfeminist porn, on the other hand, has gained more notoriety. However, mainstream porn, supported by an exploitative capitalist economy, remains the most widespread and free. What can we imagine would happen inside this new Metaverse? Piçarra’s (2012) reflection is interesting in trying to imagine a transfeminist Metaverse. While utopic on the whole, especially in arguing that the online world can be considered an ideal world in which «all have the same opportunities to progress on merit, all are free to express and explore their true selves» (Piçarra, 2012:19), failing to consider the digital divide and structural violence, it raises some interesting questions with respect to «virtual world pornography» (Piçarra, 2012:21). Supporting the position that censorship ends up fostering the dissemination of patriarchal content based on stereotypes about women (Piçarra, 2012:23) he shows how interactivity and occupation of online spaces by people disseminating content based on consent and diversity can «contribute to our understanding of ourselves and of each other» (Piçarra, 2012:28).
Unfortunately, as previously noted, there are numerous obstacles in the path to this utopian perspective. Hegemonic practices of sexuality appear to be more accessible both for economic and social reasons. As Michel Foucault (2013) egregiously argues in his La Volonté de savoir the “device of sexuality” is what through which hegemony assumes its power over marginalized subjectivities. Pathologizing, marginalizing, and norming are the tools used to control human lives, a control that aims at profit. It is intuitive to understand how one cannot expect from a medium produced by such a system that it will become a suitable medium for a revolution in practices and sexuality. The contemporary challenge is precisely to occupy physical, mental, and virtual spaces that allow for the subversion of the colonization of reality operated by hegemony. In this sense, transfeminist sexual and relational practices are powerful tools to create new meanings.
We need a perspective that promotes intersectional inclusion and the fight against global inequalities in the offline and online world. The hyper-individualism of the neoliberal system is dangerous for the majority of humanity, and from the perspective of improvement, we cannot think that one of its products will uncritically save us. Commodification in such an environment has no boundaries and is something we experience every day in the world of health, education and access to goods. Proportionally to these, any tool can be disastrous and drive us to dystopia. However, relationships are processual and complex. It is necessary to observe deeply to find the space of resistance, the space to «reproduce by displacing» (quoting Judith Butler) and this also applies to the online world.
For sure, we need to take action against the system at the base: to propose public and democratic policies, and to bring diversity in the language at the base of the online world. In short: closing the digital divide. But the digital divide is not just about the web. The digital divide is inequality in access to material goods, to representation, it is the product of structural violence operated on some human categories more than on others. We must therefore also work on our categories and perhaps embrace a world that is less dichotomous, more complex, processual and undefined. Obviously, the steps are great and time seems short. While I agree with Preciado’s (2021) analysis and believe that the epistemological shift will happen, it is sometimes impossible not to wonder whether it will happen before global phenomena such as climate change (itself caused by neoliberalism) suck us in. It is necessary, therefore, to exploit every possible space of resistance, to move and take more and more space, without underestimating the current positioning and origins of the tools we use (and, in a sense, of ourselves).
The online world is as intricate as the offline one. It is not always easy to understand what an achievement is and what is a risk. Extreme privatization is the enemy of transparency and does not benefit from inclusion, yet it can provide tools that can be used for its own annihilation. It is hard to imagine that the Metaverse will be a revolution. Materially we don’t have the technology to create 4D experiences and we certainly can’t do that for most of the population. Even if it were possible, we have no guarantee that it would change the basis of global inequality and, indeed, we have every reason to believe the opposite. The transfeminist critique raises some points of potential future interest. Although the Metaverse is an interesting tool in terms of bodily self-representation, it must be analyzed with at least four aspects in mind. First of all, one has to ask to what extent its diffusion could worsen the digital divide instead of reducing it. Secondly, it should be investigated to what extent it could reproduce and increase class differences also in the offline world. We should also reflect on how much its use as a preferred substitute, even if only for the workplace, has an ambivalent impact on population control (risking becoming an imposition for people from marginalized groups and locking them into career dead ends). Finally, the fact that such a tool in the hands of multi-billion-dollar private companies is a serious threat to democracy needs to be seriously addressed. Can we allow yet another universe to be created in which these companies own and rule everything? Feminist voices and resistance are needed now more than ever to take ownership of the spaces and rights that are threatened by such a perspective.
Considering this, it is evident how transfeminist sexual and bodily practices can have disruptive political force if they are constructed and acted upon within the framework of a profound resignification of hegemonic instances and language. In sum, a form of sex revolution that we can expect in the near future, especially for the younger and more globalized generations, but not only, consists in appropriating all heterocispatriarchal spaces of sexuality, in placing bodies, consent, non-violence and antinormative relational styles at the center. This perspective allows practices to be read as acts dense with meaning such that they can have the force to deconstruct the current power device and center subjectivities, well-being and pleasure such as advocated in Foucault's perspective (2013). In order to give them this strength, however, it is necessary to change power itself, redistribute wealth and ensure possibilities for self-determination and access to economic, social and cultural resources for as many people as possible. How we can succeed in doing this, with a view to moving from dichotomies to complexity and bringing marginality to the fore, must be the subject of future and fundamental analysis.
1 INvoluntary CELibate, groups of men who are hostile towards women blaming their emancipation for their celibate situation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Foucault M., La volontà di sapere. Storia della sessualità 1, it. trans. by P. Pasquino e G. Procacci, Feltrinelli, Milano 2013.
Haraway D., Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, London 1991.
Herman D., The Rape Culture, in Freeman J., Women: A Feminist Perspective, 20-44, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield 1989.
Noble S.U., Algorithms of Oppression. How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, New York University Press, New York 2018.
Piçarra E., Avatars and virtual worlds: unsettling the rules of porn, in «Agenda», vol. XXVI, n. 3, 3/2012, pp. 19-30.
Preciado P.B., Sono un mostro che vi parla, Fandango, Roma 2021.
Valentine aka Fluida Wolf, Post Porno, Eris Edizioni, Torino 2020.
WEBSITES
Casey T., MA, LCPT, CST. @queersextherapy. https://www.instagram.com/queersextherapy/.
CNET Highlights, Watch Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for socializing in the Metaverse, CNET Highlights’ You Tube profile, 2021, https://youtu.be/b9vWShsmE20 (Consulted on 4 May 2022).
Mahdawi A., Metaverse is just a new venue for the age-old problem of sexual harassment, in «The Guardian», 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/commentisfree (consulted on 4 May 2022).
McDowell M., Race, gender and representation: The grey area of the metaverse, in «Vogue Business», 2021, https://www.voguebusiness.com/technology/race-gender-and-representation-the-grey-area-of-the-metaverse(consulted on 4 May 2022).