Feminist perspectives on cybersex

Abstract

In my thesis, I am arguing that cybersex does bring real and actual benefits to some individual women in terms of expansion of their sexual autonomy, but these benefits (for the moment at least) affect only some individual women in their online life. However, the negative phenomena of cybersex such as rape, sexual objectification, and coerced prostitution systematically affect women as a social group both in their online and offline lives. I am defending my thesis by, firstly, giving the definition of cybersex and researching how it affects our understanding of sexuality. Secondly, I am considering all positive effects that cybersex brings to women and arguing that they can be summarized as the expansion of women's sexual autonomy. Thirdly, I am researching negative phenomena of cybersex and how they are limiting women's sexual autonomy. Fourthly, I am describing other feminist views on cybersex (the empowerment approach by Doring and the relative indifference view by Collins) to show how they are different from my view.