The bodies in virtual space are another realization of the physical body. The body constantly transforms to fit a situation and expectation: certain desires and needs are suppressed in favor of others, the reality of the body is redefined to suit a role: �The desiring body, the sexed body, the techno body, the consumer body, the narcotized body, the working body, the disciplined body: what is real or unreal?� (Kroker 16). If a physical body feels alive when in connection with a virtual one, is it, in that moment, more real?

Certainly the act of virtual love can seem anything but real. Introducing newcomers to the world of virtual sex, Bonnie Ruberg writes for the Village Voice explaining the technical realities of intercourse through the pushing of buttons. In �Click Me: Getting Started with Sex in Second Life� Ruberg describes the typical Second Life virtual sex experience: "Second Life sex is a combination of the visual and the verbal. Players strip their avatars down to their cyber skin, use pose balls (those floating orbs placed in romantic areas throughout the virtual world) to animate them into various sex acts, and keep up with the whole thing in IM." The possibilities in the pose balls are somewhat mechanical: once an animation sequence is started, it repeats again and again in what can become an endless animated courtship.

The pose balls are only the beginning--players who make money off designing for the game have created sex beds dedicated to allowing wide ranges of sex acts that the Linden Labs designers didn't account for. The difficulty in creating animations that express the range of what players� desire created an industry. This industry is not without its own political challenges, and already there has arisen a Second Life scandal turned lawsuit as the creator of one of the best sex beds in Second Life has seen his invention stolen and copied, sold on the cheap by a virtual patent infringer. The investment that goes into the making of these sex beds is substantial:

At Alderman's "Second Life" shop, shoppers can try out a dragon bed powered by one of his SexGen engines. Along with programmers and designers, he employs a sales staff who hang around the shop like real salespeople to pitch the perfect sex toys. He is investing in a $25,000 motion-capture suit, a low-end version of one used to create digital characters in movies, to create more realistic sex moves for "Second Life" avatars (Davis 2).

This effort is similar to that which goes in to any experience of a video game: constant enhancements are made in the physics of gaming to better create the trimmings of an immersive experience. And while an avatar sex bed may be an unfamiliar experience for many, the context of a video game is more known: ��games and role-playing are a familiar paradigm, even among people who don't indulge in either pursuit. And because video game characters are so exaggeratedly physical, it is not a giant leap to imagine them engaged in sexual activity along with traditional pursuits like acrobatics, fighting and collecting things� (Lynn Real Sex).

But as with many of the other activities video game characters engage in regularly, such as Grand Theft Auto�s characters engaged in carjacking and murder or Duke Nukem on a rampage through urban environments, this virtual sex is not without its opponents. The simulation is, perhaps, too real not to attract concern.

The virtual nature of sex connection can lead to actions others find disconcerting, chief among them "age play." Second Life separates teenagers from adults on their world grids, and acts presumably to prevent actual children from entering the virtual sex scene, although with the distancing factor of a keyboard and a parental account anything is technically possible. Child avatars are definitely present, and thus "virtual child" sexual actions take place within the world. It's not really virtual child pornography in no actual child is involved, but it does lead to discomfort in some viewers. However, if no real children are being hurt, where's the victim in sexual role-playing by consenting adults? The authorities at Linden Lab so far acknowledge that it is possible to limit this type of avatar interaction but are reluctant to take that measure:

�With technology, we can do exactly that if we felt it was necessary or important to do so," said Fleck. But "the data that we have doesn't support that that's a necessary action at this time. The other thing to remember about 'Second Life' is that it is a free-form canvass. You can do what you want, and be what you want, and that's what attracts people. So as you soon as you create restrictions, including about what you look like, that in itself causes different kinds of problems because of censorship" (Terdiman 2).

Adding a restriction to this type of interaction risks destroying the freedom these worlds represent: the freedom to indulge imagination, sexual and otherwise. The Marquis de Sade, the first great chronicler of the full annals of human desire whether popular or otherwise, would remind us that the hidden worlds are where the laws of public opinion can be ignored and desire fulfilled: �So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.�

Do these private "compensations" affect our loves in the real world?