It's true that gender-switching does make gender research on the internet more difficult, though that hasn't stopped researchers from focusing on this topic.... I received an e-mail a while back from someone who wanted to comment on the article I wrote about gender-switching. He described a chat room situation where there were only males online at the time. Finally, in desperation, one of the (presumably) young users said "Can't someone at least PRETEND to be a female!!!"