Kitchener Waterloo Internet Users Group

KWIUG Link: Get a cloud based solution and work with banks that are suitable for your business model.

"A Fun Place to Learn About the Internet"

Sex on the 'Net (The New Sexuality)

Pete Dixon

Thesis: Ignoring Sex on the Net is impossible, so fear and all joking aside let's try to understand what's going on to drive all this activity.
Will the Net change our ideas of sexuality?

Sexuality used to be easy; it was simply a matter a what kind of genitalia you owned. Now on the Net you can play any role, any personality or any gender you choose to present to the world. Any feelings not previously expressible can now be easily and convincingly expressed. And of course, vice versa (on the Net nobody knows you’re a Dog - old Net joke).

There is plenty of representations to validate any instinct or desire, including:

fetishes

trans-sexuality

cross-dressing

submission/dominance/older/younger

mixed races

homosexuality

groups

pretty much anything and anything goes on the Net

The form of this validation can come in the form of pictures, fiction, journalism, chats with people already involved in those activities, or protesters ( as in I’ll believe in anything they don’t believe <g>).

What type of conventional information is available?

Straight, authoritative information regarding sex-oriented topics like:

anatomy

disease

health

societal statistics

relationships (incl. Dr. Ruth-type people dispense behaviour advice)

normal development ( for that perennial question, am I normal?)

Sources: magazines on the Net, public health vehicles, SIGs.

How will the new access to information change our views?

For years many people's ideas on values have been dictated largely by the views of their community. Now alternate viewpoints on any topic, no matter how taboo, are only a mouse click away.

Some of this advice will be good, some indifferent, some bad, and some downright dangerous. Remember: there is no quality control enforcement on the Net.

Commercial services: what's being offered, by whom and what are the economics behind it?

There are currently 1000's of sites offering a range of services, ie.:

Download of JPEGs, Movies, Stories - any and all flavours

Live video feeds of 'exotic dancers' offering live performances

Interactive CHAT sessions with beautiful women who are presumably

naked on the other side of the keyboard <g>

Voyeur sessions like the JenniCam site

Questions:

Who runs these sites (do their parents know what they are doing <g>)?

How do they make their money, especially the supposedly free ones? Click-thrus?

How many people sign up for this sort of thing, do they belong to more than one service?

Where is the money coming from? Percentage Men vs Women, Ages, other demographics.

Services are typically charged out at a monthly subscription fee.

Trial

Weekly

Monthly

Quarterly

Flat fee

A model site: WWW.FRIENDFINDER.COM

A number of positive aspects to this site:

Seems to have hit critical mass - all sectors are well populated with people

Interest areas are broken up well

Great esthetics

Data entry, questions asked very well put together

Logical relationships and business loops well tied down

Incentive for the user to experiment cheaply and progress upwards as a client

Speed is good

Overall credibility of the site is high

Bandwidth requirements of this sort of site is low

What can or should parents, educators, religious figures do in the face of this potential threat to their teachings?

The Catholic Church comes to mind as one group who has traditionally found it in it's interest to restrict some sorts of information.

Answer: probably not much but to forbid access and try to teach kids how to interpret the information when they inevitably receive it.

Contacts being made

Dating services

CHAT rooms

Multi-user games

Names off of web-sites

Marriages and other liasons certainly result from these sorts of contacts. People get a chance to see more of the nature of their contact than they might in casual social contact; especially if these contacts are beyond their usual geographic range. Are the results better? I don't know.

Role of fleshy contacts as opposed to virtual contacts

Real people and relationships with real people can get very messy. Virtual people generally put their best face forward and invest more energy in typed relationships. Also, online you don't learn about your virtual friend's faults as quickly and they are easier to ignore. Is reality important when the impact is only on the emotions and thoughts of the people involved. Would these people ever connect in real life without visual cues. What will happen when vidcams become commonplace aspects of PC's?

Effects on the porn industry

1 out of ever 2 magazines sold in North America is a porn magazine. Even pieces like Cosmo which are very visually orientated could be construed as soft porn. Will all this paper disappear when availability and quality goes up and price effectively drops to zero?

Views by males and females

Do females view their males looking at Net porn as competition? Do males worry about their mates meeting fast talking males in Chat rooms?

Activities by world governments to restrict and tax services

Governments hate being excluded from reaping taxation dollars from any and all economic activities.

Back to the Archives

Kitchener Waterloo Internet Users Group

"A Fun Place to Learn About the Internet"

Home | History | Meetings | Calendar | Listserver | Sponsorship | Archives | Reviews | Editorials | Feedback