Transcendental Relationships? A Theological Reflection on Cybersex and Cyber-relationships
Abstract
Cybersex, i.e. sexual interactions through new media such as chat clients or email, is a phenomenon that combines two important developments of contemporary society: its increased mediatization through communication and information technologies (ICT), and the new importance that sexuality seems to have in many people’s lives. Rather than an opposition between offline and online world, a closer look at cybersex activities reveals a continuity between “real” and “virtual” realities. This paper proposes a theological reflection on some aspects of cybersex that have an immediate bearing on theological anthropology and its thinking about human existence in relation to a transcendent reality, God: the role of imagination, the relationship between body and mind, the transformed understanding of space and time and the dimension of play and fantasy in cybersex.