How do avatars have sex?

Mars in Scorpio (caught you at it) square Neptune (cheating on me) in Aquarius (online world). Venus conjunct Pluto, Uranus stations (I’m divorcing you!)

From BBC News

How do avatars have sex?

A couple have divorced after the wife saw the husband having online sex in the virtual world of Second Life. Amy Taylor and David Pollard met in an online chatroom in 2003, got married and shared their interest in Second Life, a virtual world in which users create avatars to interact with each other.

But the marriage ended after Ms Taylor's online character saw her husband's avatar having sex on a sofa with a female prostitute.

So how do computerised characters have sex?

"First you need to buy genitals," says technology journalist Adrian Mars, explaining the process in Second Life. "You start off with no genitals and then you buy some. These objects can do all sorts of things. You can have ones that ejaculate at the right moment."

"But there's not much in the way of exciting mechanics. What you see on the screen is what you get and the best you can hope for is a bit of sexual humour, although some people do have intense relationships. Obviously the sex is not the same as in real life, but you're still expressing yourself in a way that would, maybe reasonably, upset a partner."

"People customize their avatars with animations and enormous e-phalluses which you can buy. It's a player-generated economy and people exchange things they have created - someone builds it, someone buys it and someone puts it into action."

For people participating in this, he adds, the sexual chat is more important than the avatar having sex, which acts more like a prop to get their imagination going.

One blogger writing about his experience in Second Life describes the range of male genitalia on offer to buy, including skin colour control, sound, animations, ejaculation, urine and some that are touchable by other players to lead to arousal.

He visited virtual sex shops and sex clubs where he saw people having sex in a number of different ways. It is only to be expected in a world where players pick every detail of how their avatars will look, says Mr Mars.

Some Second Lifers have been known to misbehave - a US journalist was attacked by flying penises when conducting an interview in his virtual office.


And infidelity is not the only thorny ethical issue thrown up by virtual sex - some players have had sex with animals.