Online Sex: My Space or Yours?

By Scott Stiffler, Edge. Posted April 9, 2008.

We all know that men are pigs -- when they're not busy being dogs. We also know, from meticulous research conducted by our efficient, delicious and highly suggestible Edge interns, that what separates mankind from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to use sex as a means of pioneering technological advances. From the printing press to photography to motion pictures to VCRs and DVDs -- every new form of mass media has smut to thank for its initial success and subsequent development. But those were mere warm-ups for how sex sold the world on a little thing called the Internet.

What began as a twinkle in Al Gore's eye and a networking tool among academics quickly blossomed into the most prolific titty and prick show the world has ever known. Just Google the word "sex" and you'll see the pursuit of happiness easily dwarfs the quest for reasonably priced airline tickets as the most popular on-line pastime. But how did the Internet change the face of hooking up; and what does the future hold? Edge spoke, sans our yummy interns, with a few pundits, entrepreneurs and academics to get the skinny on online sex.

Before there was Cyberspace, gay men were compelled to get out of the house if they wanted to get laid. Long before a bar and an event called Stonewall, public spaces were repurposed as clandestine places to hook up.

"Back in the 50s, as an oppressed community that did not have access to spaces to meet, we created spaces for social and sexual reasons." says Michael Reece, Director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University. "Lots of older men who identify as gay today report that some of their earliest sexual experiences were in public places -- locker rooms and rest rooms."

With the advent of the Internet, the need for hooking up in public diminished. "When we talk to young guys on campus today about cruising, many would never have felt a need to go looking in a public space for sex, because they grew up with the Internet."

But even though the forum has changed, the song remains the same. Reece sees clear parallels in how the visual and verbal language of public cruising has been adapted by on-line hook-ups: "At the end of the day, the behaviors are the same. In earlier generations, men managed their identities in by clothing. Today, they do it by the profiles and screen names they put up. They are very selective about the photos they might put in a profile; photos chosen to portray a certain image or persona."

Hooking Up Online

When John Edward Campbell, currently a doctoral candidate at the Annenberg School for Communications (U of PA), went back to grad school in the late 90s and began doing research on the online experiences of gay men, the existing literature on cyber cultural studies "was all based on heterosexuals. Sexual minorities were almost completely omitted. This was glaring oversight, considering gay men seemed to be early adopters of this technology."

Around the fall of 1997, Campbell launched a study that would become the basis for his book: Getting It on Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality and Embodied Identity. The study was inspired by Campbell's frustration at the disconnect between generalizations made about the purpose of going online and how gay men were actually using the Internet. Early research quickly shattered "the popular notion that people were going online to escape their bodies; this notion of this disembodied experience of cyberspace."

The same year he began his study, MCI came out with its famous Anthem commercial; which, Campbell recalls, showed "flashing images of different people saying 'no race, no gender, only minds. Utopia? No, the Internet.' There was this excitement that people were going online to escape gender or race; but gay men were going online for exactly the opposite reason -- to find people who shared their erotic desires, that were the type of people they were attracted to."

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