Net.SeXXX. Readings on Sex, Pornography, and the Internet

Abstract

In his introduction, [Dennis D. Waskul] reminds us that there are traditionally two leading narratives around the advent of a new technology: the Utopia and the dystopia. In our case, we all know that the Internet has changed the way some people experience their sexuality. For the Utopians, the Internet has given rise to possibilities never thought before, enabling a user to have an orgasm while virtually making love live with someone far remote from her living room. On the other side, the dystopians claimed that this vision of "unfleshed" sexuality was inhuman, machinist, and decadent. Reflecting on Laurence O'Toole's book Pornocopia (2000), Waskul suggests a third narrative, that of the normality. Sexuality and the Internet could be experienced not as a revolution giving birth to a sexual Ubermensch, and not as a tool that could bring schizophrenia to the addicted user, but rather just as a technology that could be used as a valuable sexual resource. That makes three points of view and three realities that have to be dealt with. This is why Waskul affirms that "this book does not seek to expose 'the' truth about Internet sex. Instead, this book explores various truths and places them in a context where readers can assess them for themselves" (p. 7). In so doing, it gives the reader six perspectives on the subject, which frame the six parts of a deeply interesting book. The first part deals with personhood and Internet sex. In the first chapter, Waskul holds that while "we all engage in self-games any time we knowingly attempt to portray ourselves as this-or-that kind of person. . . , what makes on-line environments unique is how the remoteness of a physical body expands the fluidity of self-enactments" (p. 21). In the case of textual communication, the presence of the other is purely semiotic, its very body contained in verbal traces that can be interpreted in dozens of ways. But when the text is coupled by images, as it is studied in the second chapter, the encounter is different: "Participants themselves are spectators unto their own bodies, as they must see and respond to the images of their bodies and thus act toward, manage, and interpret that image as others might" (p. 57). An interesting aspect of these two texts that form the first part of the book is that the information they give has been drawn from personal interviews with people practising cybersex, instead of sole reflection.