Can the internet ever become a sex-friendly place?

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Have you ever been stuck thinking about a topic when, by sheer luck, you happen upon the perfect piece of writing about your recent obsession? That’s the feeling I had when I came across the Manifesto for Sex Positive Social Media.

I’ve had a few strands of thoughts about sex and the internet swirling around in my head recently. At the launch of author, researcher, criminal lawyer (and friend of mine) Katrina Marson’s new book Legitimate Sexpectations, she spoke about how some people spend their time concerned with how mainstream pornography is providing harmful sex education to children.

Marson’s response was something along the lines of: there’s not anything any of us can really do about the porn industry, so it’s better to spend our time thinking about how we’re proactively educating young people about sex and relationships. We should equip them to contextualise the potentially harmful behaviours and attitudes they see in porn — because they will see it, sooner rather than later.

Her comment got me thinking about the depictions of sex we see online. Most major social media platforms ban sexually explicit content (Twitter being the exception). Yet porn is one of the most popular types of content on the internet even as it’s firmly locked outside of the mainstream.

There’s a critique of “deplatforming” people for extreme views that argues their audiences will follow them to more extreme and toxic parts of the internet. Are we funneling people towards content with more extreme and damaging types of sexual attitudes because we refuse to platform healthy behaviours? More than just harm, what good things are we missing out on by not showing it?

Then I came across the excellent 2021 essay Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny. Using the increasingly muscle-bound and shredded physiques of today’s Hollywood stars, author RS Benedict documents how the human body in cinema has become fetishised and extreme while simultaneously becoming desexualised. She attributes this in part to the ever-growing influence of capitalism (“[Six packs, thigh gaps] exist not to make our lives more comfortable, but to increase the value of our assets” is a choice quote).

This prompted me to think about how the adtech surveillance capitalism business models of tech platforms makes them inhospitable to sex, at least as they’re currently constructed. For example, automated digital advertising systems depend on a blacklist of words — like “sex” or “disaster” — to ensure that Disney won’t have their graphic for the latest Marvel movie placed on an article about a mass shooting or another piece of content deemed not brand safe.

Businesses are well within their rights to want to take this kind of cautious approach, but there are downstream consequences. In practice, these blunt systems in practice can demonetise and therefore discourage LGBTIQA+ content or even stories about the Duchess of Sussex “because her title contains the word ‘sex’” (mark down another example of how tech is often a lot dumber than we assume). A puritanical attitude towards sex is built into the very infrastructure of the internet.

I had begun to idly think about what the internet — and by extension, our lives — could look like if it wasn’t like this. That’s when I stumbled across the manifesto, launched late last month.

Born out of a collaboration at a virtual conference featuring community organisations, advocates and academics, the manifesto is a refreshing and practical document that lays out some basic ideas about what a sex-positive internet could look like. Principles include destigmatising sex, integrating sex into social media, building safe spaces and more. It’s quite a short and engaging read, I really encourage you, dear reader, to give it a look.

What really struck me is how the manifesto’s principles are just good guiding ideas for all of the internet (insert the Rainier Wolfcastle “that’s the joke” meme here). The authors wrote that “because dominant social media platforms see sexual content as a source of data, profit and surveillance, and simultaneously see the removal of it as a means to political capital, creating sex-positive social media will therefore require structural and systemic changes to the current assemblage of power, labour and value”.

It follows, then, that changing these would have flow-on benefits beyond just sex. Principles like valuing the labour of content creators, tech platforms improving their accountability and cultivating consent around people’s privacy rather than ubiquitous surveillance are all ideas that even the most prudish person can get behind.

Hyperlinks

A trans software engineer is trying to keep Kiwi Farms offline with new Australian internet powers

One of the biggest stories on the internet had an undercovered Australian aspect — hate forum Kiwi Farms’ online existence relied on Australia’s internet. (Crikey)

The CEO who might have too much power over the internet

Speaking of — an interview with the man who was responsible for Kiwi Farms staying online as long as it did. (AFR)

Social media users looking for the perfect shot put on notice by nervous farmers as canola crops bloom

Don’t ruin a farmer’s crop for clout. (ABC)

eSafety asks big tech to explain how they tackle child exploitation material

Something to keep an eye on: the eSafety commissioner has for the first time used its Basic Online Safety Expectations powers. (Gizmodo)

Avi Yemini admits donation page was set up before he was denied entry to New Zealand

I was shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that Yemini was ready to exploit a situation for financial gain. (Crikey)