Also, message boards that are organized around a specific principle, like Noah's photography critique group, tend not to be nearly as gender-focused as the public chat rooms. Still, the original claims that the Internet would revolutionize our attitudes about gender have not really been actualized. Gender identity remains a troubling issue, just as it still is in the real world. He is saying that by acting the gender, you become it. Partly, I agree with this.
Gender is a performance in the real world just as much as it is on the Internet.
There is, in fact, a very complex range of gender codes that everyone uses and manipulates to some degree in the construction of gender. On the Internet, there is also a set of codes, often overlapping with the real world, which people employ and enact when gendering themselves. Partly, however, I am troubled by the idea that simply getting on-line and calling yourself a man or a woman makes you one or the other. The casual rhetoric surrounding on-line gender identity sometimes makes me uncomfortable. To me this seems over the top, despite my belief in gender performativity.