One from the Vaults
05-08-2013, 04:09 PM
(disclaimer: I just found this essay after years of not looking at it, and my guess is it's probably shit and I'd totally rewrite it now, but here it is its original form anyway)
Title: Internet, youth and the social construction of sexual deviance
Body:
Conceptions of deviance and the social construction of sex among teenagers are only faintly reminiscent of those from just ten years ago. This essay attempts to examine the role of the internet in this shift. It is worth noting that I have a rather severe and insurmountable selection bias, as most of the teenagers I know I met either at the Rocky Horror Picture Show – a cultural event in which deviance is lauded and paraded for fun – and the rave community, in which the standard of “peace, love, unity, respect” colours the relationship of its participants to sexuality, exaggerated further by my involvement in it through the TRIP Project, as a volunteer trained to talk candidly about sex and to provide safer sex supplies. In other words, my perception of youth sexuality is coloured by my exposure to a segment of youth who may well be far more sexually open than youth as a whole. Nevertheless, I believe my analysis holds true, and does not rest upon factors which play only on either of the above communities
Paraphilia, deviance, kink, fetish. Each of these means something different, but rather than vainly attempt to categorize the whole world, I’ll instead expose one corner of the morass of my mind by attempting a rigorous definition of “paraphilia,” which will in its form reveal my bias and perspective as regards the others as well, despite not referring to them specifically. I have, it would seem, no intention either of defining each rigorously, nor of forgoing their use in this paper.
My attempt at a rigorous definition of “paraphilia:” any symbol, behaviour, or situation which an individual finds arousing despite its not being part of the accepted mating rituals of that individual’s culture, or any behaviour which is not considered to be “sex,” but which the individual views as the end goal of an erotic “scene.” In other words, non-normative foreplay, or non-normative sex. This distinction is necessary because a thing normally thought of as “foreplay” could become dominant and “steal the stage” from the so-called “main event” of sex; and similarly something which is not normally associated with sex could be used as “foreplay,” as a lead-up to normative sex. This perspective recognises that sex is socially constructed, and not necessarily procreative: as a culture, we accept that what gays and lesbians do is sex, even though it is not procreative. Therefore, something is only paraphilic in the sense of non-normative sex (as opposed to non-normative foreplay) if it falls outside of the wider, commonly accepted definition – simply being non-procreative is not enough. Because paraphilia is based upon a shifting definition of sex, it is shifting as well, and what was once paraphilic may not be anymore. The word “paraphilia,” however, is still confusing because it requires the reference point of “sex,” which may not be agreed upon by author and reader, so I will instead, while still essentially referring to this concept, favour the phrase “fringe sexual characteristic/behaviour/identity” to refer to anything which is on the “fringes” of the normative concept of sex, well aware that the borders implied by “fringe” are in a state of constant flux, thereby forgoing the only word I have chosen to define.
Deviance is quite slippery. Fellatio, I’m told, used to be considered deviant. It is, after all, non-procreative, and if “sex” is defined as procreative only, desire for fellatio could be considered paraphilic. Today, however, fellatio is considered sexually normal: in some cases as a periphery of or lead up to sex, but in others as an acceptable form of “sex” by itself. We did not hold a meeting to decide this, nor was it because an academic somewhere decided that this should be the case, nor was a memo sent out to all those concerned. Yet the transition happened.
As a bit of an aside, it is interesting that we, as a species, are working to diminish our own fertility through social, cultural and chemical means, both consciously and unconsciously. The decrease in male fertility as reflected in a reportedly falling sperm count, the surprisingly large portion of young women currently consuming contraceptive hormones, widespread teaching that condoms are a nigh-necessary part of penetrative sex, a transition from the institution of marriage as somehow connected to procreation to being about “love” and the increasing acceptance of non-procreative sexual activities are all happening concurrently, though the same reasons, of course, do not necessarily apply to all equally. The cultural deemphasization of procreation as the “point” of sex opens up the possibility for many things which do not contribute to procreation to lose their status as “paraphilic,” and, more importantly, the definition of “sex” is opened up such that nearly any activity could, hypothetically, gain inclusion in our definition of sex, even if it has not yet done so.
With what, then, do we associate sex? I do not believe that there is any static answer to this; instead, we have a word – sex – which gains associations through exposure to cases. We think kissing has to do with sex because the two are often presented in the same context by the producers of culture, not because the exchange of saliva is part of some platonic form for “sex.” Our definition does not directly depend on what exists in the world, but rather on what we are aware of, such that the more we are exposed to a certain symbol in the context of sex, the more we will come to associate it with sex, even if we would not have otherwise.
Until very recently, the number of people with whom one was likely to discuss sex was quite limited: family members and peers within the immediate community, if one even discussed it with them. The smaller the “sample,” the narrower we should expect the definition of sex to be. Alfred Kinsey’s largest contribution to the study of human sexuality was simply to get people to talk about sex and learn a little of what others do in sexual contexts, but no appreciable transition in the culture could have been possible without a medium by which to spread this awareness of sexual behaviour. In Kinsey’s time, the relevant medium was books, and his ideas slowly seeped into the broader cultural understanding, at least in a distanced, academic sort of way: the fetish as something that somebody, somewhere does, known of in the theory, while actual examples of actual fetishists remained lacking. In this way, alternative modes of sexuality entered our social reality in a potential, rather than an embodied, state.
Ethnographers will assure you that their work is precisely what I describe as lacking in Kinsey. This is, however, not actually relevant, as the vast majority of people do not read ethnographies. Those few exceptions who do will, of course, attest to the existence of real people who have the fetishes described, but all that the claims of those few will establish in public consciousness is the same theoretical understanding of the fetish being “somewhere out there” that is provided by statistical analysis. In other words, it doesn’t matter what academics include in their texts, as the message people will actually receive will be the same: “so apparently there are people into ____. Weird, eh?” Books, then, are only sufficient to produce so much change so quickly in the culture, and it has been the incredible popularity of a new medium – and not academics – which has been responsible for the rapid transformation of sexual mores in recent years. That medium is the internet.
The role of the internet in the social awareness of fringe sexual categories is twofold: it has given us an unparalleled exposure not only to fringe sexual behaviours as hypothetical concepts which we understand to exist “out there,” but also as embodied. We do not need to rely on either our immediate peer group or on ethnographers to supply us with examples of real people who indulge in any particular activity: they are easy to happen across on the internet, their admission of “deviance” being protected by an element of anonymity, and if we are curious, it is easy to find pornography which puts an end to any ambiguity over whether the activity in question is just a joke or something people actually get off to. This functions like the contribution of Kinsey, except in fast forward. There is, however, another, even more powerful function of the internet in understanding fringe sexualities: a recursive effect, where individuals who embody any given identity or behaviour can transform their conception of that same identity and behaviour through participation in online community.
To demonstrate what I mean by a transformation of self identity, I’ll present an example. Steven finds testicular pain arousing. Putting aside the possible explanations for his fetish – traumatic childhood experience, a like of power-reversals, hatred of his maleness or just a desire for pain – he still has the actuality of his intense arousal at the thought of being subjected to an experience (being kicked in the balls) which is not commonly thought of as either desirable or as part of sex. It is possible that, in the absence of the internet, he might reveal this desire to lovers in the hope that they would indulge him, and possibly even to friends, although it is likely that both shame for liking something aberrant and puritanical training not to reveal sexual details will make this difficult for him. Even if he does share it with his friends, it is not unlikely that none of them will share his desires, and they may in fact be made uncomfortable by his admission, that he likes it ******* them to think of something they consider very unpleasant, maybe even posing a threat to their sexuality.
Then Steven gets the internet. He is aware of internet pornography, and therefore thinks of the internet as a potential source for titillation, and so he uses it to seek out images and videos of men being kicked in the groin. By doing so, he quickly learns of a new word to describe his fetish: ballbusting. Before looking for it online, he did not know that this word existed. Soon he finds not only the videos and images he was looking for, but also whole communities of people who admit, at least online, to being into the same thing as him. Sifting through YouTube videos and Google Image searches for arousing content being a rather inefficient process, the pooling of common resources of this sort becomes a source of community, and a message board membership initially procured out of a desire to increase access to such materials quickly leads Steven to exchange written communication with people who share his fetish. Although content on the message board may primarily be focused around proliferation of materials the members find erotic, discussions of how members got into ballbusting in the first place, or what about it they find erotic, emerge with some regularity, and Steven, writing under a pseudonym, participates.
Soon, Steven’s understanding of his sexual desires has been transformed from a loose understanding that some particular things turn him on to actually identifying as having a characteristic shared by other people. By being asked to explain himself to them, and by reading their explanations, he has learned a great deal about both what exactly it is that turns him on, and why that might be. For instance, while before it was the pain that had dominated his understanding of his fetish, through participation in discussion he becomes more acutely aware of the role that the – in his case necessarily female – “ballbuster” has in his fantasies.
Thanks to this transformation in understanding and creation of self identity, which would likely not have happened had it not been for the internet, Steven is now better equipped both to ask a potential partner for precisely what it is that he wants, and to admit to his peers that he has this fetish, fear of ostracism having been mitigated by the knowledge that there is a community he can always turn to for support if somebody reacts negatively to his admission. This pattern is common for many fetishes.
Thus we have the internet as a means by which new identities can propagate and find embodiment: a community of people into the particular activity emerges and individuals find themselves involved in that community, making them more likely to self identify as having any particular sexual characteristic, while at the same time becoming examples of people who have that characteristic, increasing its visibility to those who do not share it. This process of increasing visibility, I think, warrants some discussion.
Message boards and pornography websites devoted to particular fetishes are not the only places on the internet where those fetishes are discussed. A particular internet user may find examples of fringe sexual behaviour intentionally (as a result of curiosity, seeking it out), incidentally (stumbling across a reference to it amidst other materials) or as accidentally (a “troll”1 deliberately exposes our hypothetical internet user to “shocking” materials in an attempt to produce a visceral reaction). Trolling probably accounts for only a small portion of increased awareness of sexual variation, usually using tried and true shocking images rather than new and various ones: this author does not recommend that the reader perform a Google Image Search for “goatse” or “tubgirl.” Incidental exposure to mentions of fringe sexual categories is, however, very common, particularly in certain online communities, especially those which already have a sexual overtone: where one form of stigmatized behaviour is considered normal, others are likely to spread. As shown with the example of Steven above, intentional exposure is also incredibly easy to obtain. Between the three, in any case, the rate of exposure to a variety of modes of sexual expression is far higher on the internet than off.
As discussed above, the more modes of sexual expression to which we’re exposed, the more flexible our definition of sex becomes, and the capacity of the internet to accelerate this process must not be underestimated. It is worth contemplating briefly how this expresses itself between generations, and, in particular the effect this has upon those for whom ubiquitous internet access preceded their sexual maturity. For Steven, sexual desire preceded internet access, and while the internet provided him with an outlet and a community through which to come to terms with his sexual identity, this was not until after a period of isolation and shame where he felt of his desires as deviant, and that sense of deviance has meant that he continues to be secretive regarding his unusual sexual inclinations, as I am with my own.
More than just give the impression that individual fetishes are real and acceptable, the internet fosters a sense that fetishes in general are acceptable and even common. As a result, there is a cohort of youth now reaching sexual maturity who have been aware of fetishes, and not held them in contempt, since prior to puberty, meaning that the fear and shame which was a reality for me and for Steven, just a few years ago, is simply not so important anymore. “Kink,” defined as non-normative sexual expression, has ironically now become so normative that its exploration in sexual relationships is often just as taken for granted as fellatio – even if neither member of the relationship self identifies as a fetishist – and I know more than one young woman who has expressed a certain shame at being “vanilla,” which means not having any fetishes. The emergence of a term, sometimes taken to be negative, to describe the absence of kink – vanilla – is in itself fascinating. That fetishes have gone from deviant to normal parts of collective sexual consciousness is astounding considering how quickly the transition happened. What this means for the “youth of tomorrow” is not yet perfectly clear, although I for one see widespread acceptance of sexual diversity, and a cultural value of safe, sane and consensual experimentation as fundamentally positive. The implications of this for extant sexual communities are also interesting: my prediction is that we can expect an increase in people willing to identify as each fringe category, countered by a decrease in the need for support-group style communities by the new cohort. Practically, this means that the average age of some groups will rise due to the young not feeling like they need the support offered, while that of others will fall because it now caters to a wider audience, and the reason for why one group and not another will be the type of services offered.
For many youth who grew up with the internet, fringe sexuality has been stripped of deviance, and deviance itself has been reified where it remains. The relationship between normative sex and forms of sexual expression which fall outside of it has been radically altered, and the way that youth think of sex and sexuality as a result is fundamentally different even than the adults who provided, and still provide, the impetus for change. Only time will show whether this will stabilize in a new, arguably healthy and generally self-aware standard of sexuality, or continue to evolve into something quite unexpected.
A couple things I didn’t talk about but which might provide food for thought, and about which you can email me if curious:
Homeovestism – dressing as the “appropriate” gender – as a possible paraphilia, providing an interesting case study with which to look at what is or isn’t a fetish. In brief, if it is done as part of a sort of “mating ritual,” that’s different than if it becomes an end of itself.
A discussion of the role of taboo in the formation of fetishes. If taboo leads to fascination and therefore to generation of sexual interest, what does the removal of taboos mean for the popularity of certain fetishes?
The “furry” community as a case study. This is a community which would not exist without the internet and within which nearly any fetish imaginable can be found, the stigmatization of “furries” in society making it relatively easy for furries to “come out” about fetishes to one another
Title: Internet, youth and the social construction of sexual deviance
Body:
Conceptions of deviance and the social construction of sex among teenagers are only faintly reminiscent of those from just ten years ago. This essay attempts to examine the role of the internet in this shift. It is worth noting that I have a rather severe and insurmountable selection bias, as most of the teenagers I know I met either at the Rocky Horror Picture Show – a cultural event in which deviance is lauded and paraded for fun – and the rave community, in which the standard of “peace, love, unity, respect” colours the relationship of its participants to sexuality, exaggerated further by my involvement in it through the TRIP Project, as a volunteer trained to talk candidly about sex and to provide safer sex supplies. In other words, my perception of youth sexuality is coloured by my exposure to a segment of youth who may well be far more sexually open than youth as a whole. Nevertheless, I believe my analysis holds true, and does not rest upon factors which play only on either of the above communities
Paraphilia, deviance, kink, fetish. Each of these means something different, but rather than vainly attempt to categorize the whole world, I’ll instead expose one corner of the morass of my mind by attempting a rigorous definition of “paraphilia,” which will in its form reveal my bias and perspective as regards the others as well, despite not referring to them specifically. I have, it would seem, no intention either of defining each rigorously, nor of forgoing their use in this paper.
My attempt at a rigorous definition of “paraphilia:” any symbol, behaviour, or situation which an individual finds arousing despite its not being part of the accepted mating rituals of that individual’s culture, or any behaviour which is not considered to be “sex,” but which the individual views as the end goal of an erotic “scene.” In other words, non-normative foreplay, or non-normative sex. This distinction is necessary because a thing normally thought of as “foreplay” could become dominant and “steal the stage” from the so-called “main event” of sex; and similarly something which is not normally associated with sex could be used as “foreplay,” as a lead-up to normative sex. This perspective recognises that sex is socially constructed, and not necessarily procreative: as a culture, we accept that what gays and lesbians do is sex, even though it is not procreative. Therefore, something is only paraphilic in the sense of non-normative sex (as opposed to non-normative foreplay) if it falls outside of the wider, commonly accepted definition – simply being non-procreative is not enough. Because paraphilia is based upon a shifting definition of sex, it is shifting as well, and what was once paraphilic may not be anymore. The word “paraphilia,” however, is still confusing because it requires the reference point of “sex,” which may not be agreed upon by author and reader, so I will instead, while still essentially referring to this concept, favour the phrase “fringe sexual characteristic/behaviour/identity” to refer to anything which is on the “fringes” of the normative concept of sex, well aware that the borders implied by “fringe” are in a state of constant flux, thereby forgoing the only word I have chosen to define.
Deviance is quite slippery. Fellatio, I’m told, used to be considered deviant. It is, after all, non-procreative, and if “sex” is defined as procreative only, desire for fellatio could be considered paraphilic. Today, however, fellatio is considered sexually normal: in some cases as a periphery of or lead up to sex, but in others as an acceptable form of “sex” by itself. We did not hold a meeting to decide this, nor was it because an academic somewhere decided that this should be the case, nor was a memo sent out to all those concerned. Yet the transition happened.
As a bit of an aside, it is interesting that we, as a species, are working to diminish our own fertility through social, cultural and chemical means, both consciously and unconsciously. The decrease in male fertility as reflected in a reportedly falling sperm count, the surprisingly large portion of young women currently consuming contraceptive hormones, widespread teaching that condoms are a nigh-necessary part of penetrative sex, a transition from the institution of marriage as somehow connected to procreation to being about “love” and the increasing acceptance of non-procreative sexual activities are all happening concurrently, though the same reasons, of course, do not necessarily apply to all equally. The cultural deemphasization of procreation as the “point” of sex opens up the possibility for many things which do not contribute to procreation to lose their status as “paraphilic,” and, more importantly, the definition of “sex” is opened up such that nearly any activity could, hypothetically, gain inclusion in our definition of sex, even if it has not yet done so.
With what, then, do we associate sex? I do not believe that there is any static answer to this; instead, we have a word – sex – which gains associations through exposure to cases. We think kissing has to do with sex because the two are often presented in the same context by the producers of culture, not because the exchange of saliva is part of some platonic form for “sex.” Our definition does not directly depend on what exists in the world, but rather on what we are aware of, such that the more we are exposed to a certain symbol in the context of sex, the more we will come to associate it with sex, even if we would not have otherwise.
Until very recently, the number of people with whom one was likely to discuss sex was quite limited: family members and peers within the immediate community, if one even discussed it with them. The smaller the “sample,” the narrower we should expect the definition of sex to be. Alfred Kinsey’s largest contribution to the study of human sexuality was simply to get people to talk about sex and learn a little of what others do in sexual contexts, but no appreciable transition in the culture could have been possible without a medium by which to spread this awareness of sexual behaviour. In Kinsey’s time, the relevant medium was books, and his ideas slowly seeped into the broader cultural understanding, at least in a distanced, academic sort of way: the fetish as something that somebody, somewhere does, known of in the theory, while actual examples of actual fetishists remained lacking. In this way, alternative modes of sexuality entered our social reality in a potential, rather than an embodied, state.
Ethnographers will assure you that their work is precisely what I describe as lacking in Kinsey. This is, however, not actually relevant, as the vast majority of people do not read ethnographies. Those few exceptions who do will, of course, attest to the existence of real people who have the fetishes described, but all that the claims of those few will establish in public consciousness is the same theoretical understanding of the fetish being “somewhere out there” that is provided by statistical analysis. In other words, it doesn’t matter what academics include in their texts, as the message people will actually receive will be the same: “so apparently there are people into ____. Weird, eh?” Books, then, are only sufficient to produce so much change so quickly in the culture, and it has been the incredible popularity of a new medium – and not academics – which has been responsible for the rapid transformation of sexual mores in recent years. That medium is the internet.
The role of the internet in the social awareness of fringe sexual categories is twofold: it has given us an unparalleled exposure not only to fringe sexual behaviours as hypothetical concepts which we understand to exist “out there,” but also as embodied. We do not need to rely on either our immediate peer group or on ethnographers to supply us with examples of real people who indulge in any particular activity: they are easy to happen across on the internet, their admission of “deviance” being protected by an element of anonymity, and if we are curious, it is easy to find pornography which puts an end to any ambiguity over whether the activity in question is just a joke or something people actually get off to. This functions like the contribution of Kinsey, except in fast forward. There is, however, another, even more powerful function of the internet in understanding fringe sexualities: a recursive effect, where individuals who embody any given identity or behaviour can transform their conception of that same identity and behaviour through participation in online community.
To demonstrate what I mean by a transformation of self identity, I’ll present an example. Steven finds testicular pain arousing. Putting aside the possible explanations for his fetish – traumatic childhood experience, a like of power-reversals, hatred of his maleness or just a desire for pain – he still has the actuality of his intense arousal at the thought of being subjected to an experience (being kicked in the balls) which is not commonly thought of as either desirable or as part of sex. It is possible that, in the absence of the internet, he might reveal this desire to lovers in the hope that they would indulge him, and possibly even to friends, although it is likely that both shame for liking something aberrant and puritanical training not to reveal sexual details will make this difficult for him. Even if he does share it with his friends, it is not unlikely that none of them will share his desires, and they may in fact be made uncomfortable by his admission, that he likes it ******* them to think of something they consider very unpleasant, maybe even posing a threat to their sexuality.
Then Steven gets the internet. He is aware of internet pornography, and therefore thinks of the internet as a potential source for titillation, and so he uses it to seek out images and videos of men being kicked in the groin. By doing so, he quickly learns of a new word to describe his fetish: ballbusting. Before looking for it online, he did not know that this word existed. Soon he finds not only the videos and images he was looking for, but also whole communities of people who admit, at least online, to being into the same thing as him. Sifting through YouTube videos and Google Image searches for arousing content being a rather inefficient process, the pooling of common resources of this sort becomes a source of community, and a message board membership initially procured out of a desire to increase access to such materials quickly leads Steven to exchange written communication with people who share his fetish. Although content on the message board may primarily be focused around proliferation of materials the members find erotic, discussions of how members got into ballbusting in the first place, or what about it they find erotic, emerge with some regularity, and Steven, writing under a pseudonym, participates.
Soon, Steven’s understanding of his sexual desires has been transformed from a loose understanding that some particular things turn him on to actually identifying as having a characteristic shared by other people. By being asked to explain himself to them, and by reading their explanations, he has learned a great deal about both what exactly it is that turns him on, and why that might be. For instance, while before it was the pain that had dominated his understanding of his fetish, through participation in discussion he becomes more acutely aware of the role that the – in his case necessarily female – “ballbuster” has in his fantasies.
Thanks to this transformation in understanding and creation of self identity, which would likely not have happened had it not been for the internet, Steven is now better equipped both to ask a potential partner for precisely what it is that he wants, and to admit to his peers that he has this fetish, fear of ostracism having been mitigated by the knowledge that there is a community he can always turn to for support if somebody reacts negatively to his admission. This pattern is common for many fetishes.
Thus we have the internet as a means by which new identities can propagate and find embodiment: a community of people into the particular activity emerges and individuals find themselves involved in that community, making them more likely to self identify as having any particular sexual characteristic, while at the same time becoming examples of people who have that characteristic, increasing its visibility to those who do not share it. This process of increasing visibility, I think, warrants some discussion.
Message boards and pornography websites devoted to particular fetishes are not the only places on the internet where those fetishes are discussed. A particular internet user may find examples of fringe sexual behaviour intentionally (as a result of curiosity, seeking it out), incidentally (stumbling across a reference to it amidst other materials) or as accidentally (a “troll”1 deliberately exposes our hypothetical internet user to “shocking” materials in an attempt to produce a visceral reaction). Trolling probably accounts for only a small portion of increased awareness of sexual variation, usually using tried and true shocking images rather than new and various ones: this author does not recommend that the reader perform a Google Image Search for “goatse” or “tubgirl.” Incidental exposure to mentions of fringe sexual categories is, however, very common, particularly in certain online communities, especially those which already have a sexual overtone: where one form of stigmatized behaviour is considered normal, others are likely to spread. As shown with the example of Steven above, intentional exposure is also incredibly easy to obtain. Between the three, in any case, the rate of exposure to a variety of modes of sexual expression is far higher on the internet than off.
As discussed above, the more modes of sexual expression to which we’re exposed, the more flexible our definition of sex becomes, and the capacity of the internet to accelerate this process must not be underestimated. It is worth contemplating briefly how this expresses itself between generations, and, in particular the effect this has upon those for whom ubiquitous internet access preceded their sexual maturity. For Steven, sexual desire preceded internet access, and while the internet provided him with an outlet and a community through which to come to terms with his sexual identity, this was not until after a period of isolation and shame where he felt of his desires as deviant, and that sense of deviance has meant that he continues to be secretive regarding his unusual sexual inclinations, as I am with my own.
More than just give the impression that individual fetishes are real and acceptable, the internet fosters a sense that fetishes in general are acceptable and even common. As a result, there is a cohort of youth now reaching sexual maturity who have been aware of fetishes, and not held them in contempt, since prior to puberty, meaning that the fear and shame which was a reality for me and for Steven, just a few years ago, is simply not so important anymore. “Kink,” defined as non-normative sexual expression, has ironically now become so normative that its exploration in sexual relationships is often just as taken for granted as fellatio – even if neither member of the relationship self identifies as a fetishist – and I know more than one young woman who has expressed a certain shame at being “vanilla,” which means not having any fetishes. The emergence of a term, sometimes taken to be negative, to describe the absence of kink – vanilla – is in itself fascinating. That fetishes have gone from deviant to normal parts of collective sexual consciousness is astounding considering how quickly the transition happened. What this means for the “youth of tomorrow” is not yet perfectly clear, although I for one see widespread acceptance of sexual diversity, and a cultural value of safe, sane and consensual experimentation as fundamentally positive. The implications of this for extant sexual communities are also interesting: my prediction is that we can expect an increase in people willing to identify as each fringe category, countered by a decrease in the need for support-group style communities by the new cohort. Practically, this means that the average age of some groups will rise due to the young not feeling like they need the support offered, while that of others will fall because it now caters to a wider audience, and the reason for why one group and not another will be the type of services offered.
For many youth who grew up with the internet, fringe sexuality has been stripped of deviance, and deviance itself has been reified where it remains. The relationship between normative sex and forms of sexual expression which fall outside of it has been radically altered, and the way that youth think of sex and sexuality as a result is fundamentally different even than the adults who provided, and still provide, the impetus for change. Only time will show whether this will stabilize in a new, arguably healthy and generally self-aware standard of sexuality, or continue to evolve into something quite unexpected.
A couple things I didn’t talk about but which might provide food for thought, and about which you can email me if curious:
Homeovestism – dressing as the “appropriate” gender – as a possible paraphilia, providing an interesting case study with which to look at what is or isn’t a fetish. In brief, if it is done as part of a sort of “mating ritual,” that’s different than if it becomes an end of itself.
A discussion of the role of taboo in the formation of fetishes. If taboo leads to fascination and therefore to generation of sexual interest, what does the removal of taboos mean for the popularity of certain fetishes?
The “furry” community as a case study. This is a community which would not exist without the internet and within which nearly any fetish imaginable can be found, the stigmatization of “furries” in society making it relatively easy for furries to “come out” about fetishes to one another