Sex(and love?) and the Internet

1) Sex on the Internet is a compendium of good, bad, beautiful, and ugly. It is big business comprising about 12% of on-line revenues. Billions. It was found that 7 of the top 10 searches had a sexual overtone (erotic, sex, XXX, porn, pornography etc).

2) The nature of human sexuality? That is what this course is considering and what I should stay away from but so what. It is a complex question. As an activity, it is an expression of procreation, recreation, and relation. Certainly the Internet can fulfill all three expressions, particularly recreational and relational. Bolton (1995) enumerated some of these manifestations of sex: sex as play, stress-seeking, adventure, fantasy, interaction, pleasure, break from reality, testing one’s limits, growth, giving, sharing, ecstatic experience, theatre, endorphin-producing, testosterone-generating, power, sacrifice, beauty, spirituality, and love. The Internet certainly can relate to all of these manifestations of sex but has concentrated on the more primal, erotic, endorphin, testosterone components.

4) Sexuality on the net has chose to avoid the spiritual/sacrifice areas has fostered the adult entertainment (euphemism for sex relate services) Purpose: designed to stimulate erotic fantasies and sexual arousal either masturbatory, individual or couple-oriented. Sexual fantasy arousal and orgasm.

3) Nothing new under the sun, however, erotic imagery cave drawings 5000 BC, Greek and Egyptian art, Gutenberg printing press produces erotic books, erotic photographs of the Civil War….Silent films, to the Playboy channel. There are some unique characteristics. We will get to that in a moment.

4) Internet Appeal: Primal urges (thanks Sigmund) Eros and Thantos (love/lust and war) Recent use of the Internet in the cold war to Kosovo highlights that the war component. Sex on the Internet represents sex in the real life but it does offer some characteristic differences: a)anonymity, accessibility, affordability and safety make it very attractive. These unique features make interactions more disinhibiting than ftf interactions A) Content: the major internet depictions are of heterosexual,stereotypicaly attractive, women but there are many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual and paraphilia. (fetish, bondage, what ever)

5) Let’s take a look at some of the sexual offerings on the net to get a sense of on-line cybersex. Is it really like having sex?

6) Religion, politics, mental health orientations and the American culture has framed sex on the Internet as prurient and initiated a unsubstantiated anti-sexual moral panic.

7) Internet sex-positive and sex-negative. Safe, pleasurable, experiential. How about the physically challenged. Negative. Losing control. When is overwhelms you. Loss of family, $, children job and friends.