1000-word Essay for Final Project

Journalistic Writing
Final Project---Individual Report
951002032
Sharon Yu

Sex and Trade in Second Life
The purpose of our survey is to explore the relationship between sex and trade on SL, and how people in the virtual world deal with this hot issue, sex acts. As everyone knows, there are free sex and commercial sex in general. Free sex gets involved in a broader aspect than commercial sex does, so we decide to shrink our survey topic from general sex acts to commercial sex, or sex trade in other words. When it comes to sex trades, we think of two counterparts right away, the offer side and the acceptance. Our participants are escorts and customers who have ever had sex trades experiences in sex clubs. Escorts mean someone who is paid to go out socially with another person. Escort is sometimes used as a polite way of referring to a PROSTITUTE. (definition from Macmillan English Dictionary)
The reason why we choose this topic is that we are curious about the different sexual aspect in virtual world. In real world, people are confined their sex acts to morality, public opinions, social stereotype, etc. Second Life is a new platform that provides free space to develop anything hard to achieve in RL and helps people feel competent with imagination. Also, sex is a controversial issue since human culture was first developed. Due to connections with trade, sex becomes more complicated. It relates not only to one’s pleasant feelings but also problems of fair business.
In our first discussion of Sex and Trade, we concluded that place, price, and service are three common factors influencing sex trades. In order to develop further, we raised a question that asks customers to point out other potential factors that would make influences when choosing sex partners. Their answers surprise me a lot, because they are those that never come up to me. Escort’s gender and experience are important. These two factors will stimulate customers’ excitements. The more experienced, the more satisfied customers are. Besides, one of my participants mentioned that he cares whether there’s affection between them or not. He pursues the physical excitement, and also looks for mental harmony. According to his speech, he would have some conversation with escorts first. If a escort strips directly or verbal flirting in the beginning, he would say “good bye” right away. Affection is a surprising and interesting answer that I didn’t expect to know. In my opinion, I think that people looking for sex trades just care about high quality excitements, so appearances or some sex tool would be the key factors however. I just ignore that there are still people who consider sex acts serious.
On the other hand, it’s an interesting to know in what condition an escort refuses sex trade. Many female avatars become escorts just for money. Someone claims that sex trade means nothing but exchanges of money only. Earning much more money is their ultimate purpose, and then what exaggerating situations will they reject the opportunities to gain money? My participant said that she can offer any sex services asked by customers. Complicated services are available when her counterpart pays enough money. Only one condition will be refused, rolesplay. She can’t bear having sex with an avatar that looks like a kid. According to her thoughts, this kind of behavior is moral.
How we decide our survey destination is that we use some key word such as escort and then choose the top three places to visit. Platinum is my destination for the whole process of finishing my survey. There are many escorts dancing sexily and flirting with customers. Sex trades means that we combine sex acts with business behaviors, which is different from the common sex acts between fixed couples. Escorts are someone temporarily providing people sex services depending on price levels. As far as I develop the field of sex on SL deeper, I know that cybersex and verbal sex are the most popular ones. When we first designed our survey questions, we assumed that blow jobs might be one of the most impressive services for customers. We were wrong. Cybersex is an extraordinary answer that I never think of. Cybersex, computer sex, internet sex or net sex is a virtual sex encounter in which two or more persons connected remotely via a computer network send one another sexually explicit messages describing a sexual experience. It is a form of role-playing in which the participants pretend they are having actual sexual relations. In one iteration, this fantasy sex is accomplished by the participants describing their actions and responding to their chat partners in a mostly written form designed to stimulate their own sexual feelings and fantasies. Cybersex may also be accomplished through the use of avatars in a multiuser software environment.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_sex definition from Wikipedia) Different from cybersex, avatars turn on their microphone and talk with all flirting words to raise each other’s sex feeling when carrying out verbal sex. Word work and voice work are both famous ways to do sex. As I mention before, most female avatars is eager to earn money through the escort job, so there are individual price table shown for customers. Long time and complicated service are factors in price ranges. There is the note card sent from my participant, Goldie, in the following context. The most interesting part is that she also offers her RL pictures on SL sex trades. Someone might avoid disclosing their RL identities. I’ve interviewed an avatar who was even unwilling to tell his nationality and real age. It depends.
Hi I am Goldie, a 27 year old dirty blonde escort from Australia. Since discovering SL I have never been freakier and get off on getting you off! I have a curvy juicey body and love sex....and have many RL pics to make you cum in your pants!
Pease contact me i would love to pleasure you and myself at the same time

My Rates:
600L for 30 minutes of dirty talk
1200L for 30 minutes of sex
2400L for 60 minutes of sex

RL pics 500L each

If you want more or less time just ask and we will work something out. Payments will be accepted in advance for services rendered.

Check out my profile for my RL pics and if you like what you see IM me...........cant wait to have fun with you and make all your dreams cum true xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
After finishing the survey, I discover that sex trade on SL is a common activity. People just do whatever they want without responsibilities. Having sex and then leaving away is the sex mode in virtual world. No wonder people enjoy a lot in role-playing games. There is something that is really impossible to realize in RL, so people tend to rely on virtual world to satisfy fantasies. I have a friend who is an escort as her job on SL. Her real age is about 60, but her avatar looks so sexy and is a young babe. In other words, SL is a platform designed for people to compete their real statuses. It is fun!