…The politics of The Nether are rather more complex.  My own Financial Times review could barely touch on these matters, in particular mentioning “a medieval doctrine of essentialism in declaring one particular continuum to be the ‘proper’ one whose values apply also to all others”.  This struck me as being remarkably similar to the biological-essentialist view espoused by a number of radical feminists in order to deny transwomen (i.e. people who have undergone gender reassignment surgery and are now biologically women) status within women’s events or access to women’s facilities.  How you were born is how you are, full stop, they maintain with a Paisleyite obstinacy… just as the enforcement arm in Haley’s play argues that virtual behaviour must be judged as if it were the same behaviour in the physical world, even though it be entirely devoid of “real”-world consequences and may in fact serve to prevent such behaviour outside the cyberreality.  We have a lot of thinking to do.
    
Written for Theatre Record.