12
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Upon completion of this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
· 12.1 Identify the importance of digital social networking to queer and trans community building.
· 12.2 Report on the issues of censorship and corporatization of queer and trans content.
· 12.3 List significant uses of the internet in queer and trans activism.
In the previous chapter, we examined the cultural work done by filmic and televisual representations of queer identities and lives; those representations have been important to many LGBTQ people. Nonetheless, they are still static; that is, viewers of films and television must work with what they are given—not images that they themselves create. In this chapter, we examine the internet, asking questions about the way it, as a space where viewers are transformed into participants, allows LGBTQ people the opportunity to exercise some control over their own self-representation while it uses many of the tools offered by other visual media. The internet’s “webbed” environment poses some unique challenges for us writing in a textbook format as issues consistently embed themselves in and complicate one another. What appears as a statement at one point reappears as a question, and what seems true when talking about one kind of site seems extraordinarily inaccurate when talking about others.
Some of the scholarship about how LGBTQ people use the internet focuses on the seemingly limitless opportunities for queers to connect with each other. Joanne Addison and Michelle Comstock, for instance, point out that many queers are “establishing cyberzines, discussion groups, and support services through the Internet” (371). While we share some of the general enthusiasm about the creation of what Nina Wakeford has called “cyberqueer spaces” (410), we also want to think critically about “queers on the Net.” We examine some of the major myths about the internet and its uses by sexual minorities, focusing on ongoing problems related to access, censorship, and surveillance as well as the capitalist underpinnings of much queer-related internet content. Looking at social networking and activist uses of the internet allows us to consider not just how queers represent themselves but also how they form communities and launch sites of political resistance and coalition. What’s more, taking a global view of internet usage provides us the richest context for understanding how queers have—and have not—connected via the internet.
QUEER SOCIAL NETWORKING
Since its inception as a public communications tool in the mid-1990s, the internet has garnered much attention as a means of disseminating information quickly and effectively. Many have hailed the internet as a powerful source of information, but others have critiqued the inconsistent level of access that potential users have to it. While rates of use in the United States and other countries in the Global North are relatively high, that access still depends on users being able to afford both computer equipment and access charges necessary to use the internet (Fallows). Fortunately for many, access is increasingly available in public places, such as libraries and community centers. However, the idea that the internet provides interaction and information on a global scale and in an unequivocally egalitarian way is problematic; it does not consider issues such as nationality, social class, and general access to resources—reliable electricity, for instance—needed to use the internet. It also does not account for the fact that some governments prohibit access to specific sites and information or for the fact that, in the United States, access can be limited for people whose primary internet usage occurs in schools or libraries.
For those with access, the internet, with its multiple venues for textually complex and visually rich expression, offers LGBTQ people some opportunity to articulate their concerns, interests, and desires. Given the highly interactive nature of the internet, users can not only represent themselves but also exchange ideas, form a variety of communities, and meet others from around the world. Social networking sites are a significant way for queers to feel connected to a larger community of like-minded people. Working with basic templates that ask users to provide information on personal likes, dislikes, and identities, users can identify their romantic, emotional, and sexual interests and augment this information by uploading images and videos. Users can also create groups to affiliate with others of similar interests. Facebook, for instance, offers hundreds of queer and LGBTQ interest groups. LGBTQ affinity subgroups also function in less predictable online locations—within knitting websites such as Ravelry, for instance.
Indeed, the advent of what has come to be called social media has complicated how people, including queers, use and interact with one another on the Internet. Social media sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are places of expression, education, and collaboration. The use of hashtags (#) can help demarcate specific content or associations to groups (i.e., #alphbetfamily #rainbowfriends). But of course, not everything is always as it seems on the web. For instance, the popular blog “A Gay Girl in Damascus” purported to follow the life of a young lesbian living in Syria, whose culture is hostile to gay people. However, the site was a hoax written by an American man (Wardrop). At other times, though, the proliferation of legitimate coming-out blogs, sites, and videos can provide a kind of queer “strength in numbers” (Alexander and Losh 48). YouTube has become an important site through which LGBTQ users post coming-out videos; share information about sex, gender, and relationships; and connect with others with like-minded interests. For many transgender individuals without access to trans-affirmative care, it has also been a place to get guidance, troubleshoot issues, or follow the journeys of other LGBTIA folks. YouTube, for example, has been a space for many transgender individuals to learn about things such as gender affirming surgeries, HRT (hormone replacement therapy), and even safe sex principles.
Such online spaces can also be used as sites of resistance. In 2017, when then vice-president Mike Pence was running a campaign promoting conversion therapy and conversion camps, teen TikTok creators created a viral trend where they would record TikTok of them hypothetically going to conversion camp to meet friends, find potential dates, or bask in the presence of other queer youth experiencing this trauma. Meant as parody, some youth used this trend as a social-political signaling of the harm involved caused by ex-gay activities, as a place of respite for those at risk of being forced to endure conversion therapy, and as a creative outlet to represent the oppression they feel in everyday life.
Sometimes, these expressions of identity and education are more visceral as in the examples of transgender individuals tracking their bodily transitions—months on testosterone, voice change, and growth of breasts. Two YouTubers for example have created a platform on moderating and sharing these changes. Ty Turner, who has over 316,000 subscribers, has welcomed audiences to digitally follow along during his transition. Another YouTuber, Stef Sanjati, who has 585,000 subscribers, has also allowed viewers to follow along her transition journey. She makes videos about her bodily changes, dating advice, and reactions to anti-transgender videos [λ Chapter 7].
Digital spaces like YouTube have also been somewhat of an equalizer, allowing many people of color platforms where there may not otherwise be access. Kat Blaque, a transgender illustrator, animator, and public speaker, created a digital show called “True Tea” (tea being LGBTQ-specific jargon to mean information) where she dissects issues of gender, race, and culture through the lens of a trans woman of color. These videos not only serve as a space for education, but also a place for discussion where Kat interacts with current media, social commentary, and current events. “True Tea” created a formula that many queer YouTubers of color have followed to this day. Young queers have also been experimenting with even more ambitious uses of the web, including full-length web series about their lives and interests. These series commonly play out long narrative arcs, often fictionalized, in which LGBTQ folk create complex stories about being queer. Such web series, frequently released as a series of webisodes on platforms such as YouTube, show queers writing, designing, and acting out dramas reminiscent of television shows such as “The L Word,” or other long-form TV narratives [λ Chapter 10]. One extremely popular web series, “My Gay Roommate,” bills itself as “the saga of homo-hetero dude love!” Written and produced by two friends, one gay and one straight, the series’s first season is set in a college dorm as a gay and a straight student learn to negotiate living together; complications and hilarity ensue. With such a plot, “My Gay Roommate” speaks both to increased tolerance for queer lifestyles and the ongoing need to grapple with what such tolerance means. The roommates, despite their best intentions, still have a lot to learn from each other.
Curiously, the COVID pandemic, which started in China at the end of 2019 and reached the United States in the late winter of 2020, prompted lockdowns and the widespread move to conduct both professional and personal lives via internet technologies. LGBTQ folks, like many others, moved much of their socializing to the online world, using services such as Zoom video conferencing to stay in touch with each other. But while the internet and social media sites allow LGBTQ people to connect with one another and even create media, digital platforms of communication can also be used to surveil and even harass queers. In 2010, a young Rutgers student named Tyler Clementi committed suicide after learning that his roommate had been spying on his sexual encounter with another man through a computer web cam. The roommate “tweeted” on the social media site Twitter about Tyler’s sexual activities. One of several suicides by young queers at the time who had been bullied or harassed, such tragic events prompted comedian and columnist Dan Savage and husband Terry Miller to create the It Gets Better Project in 2010. Their site displays, as of this writing, more than 50,000 videos of adult LGBTQ people and allies who talk about their lives and experiences growing up and who offer encouragement to young queers who may be facing difficult personal circumstances. Even President Barack Obama contributed a video to the site. Some queer theorists, such as Judith “Jack” Halberstam, have critiqued the It Gets Better Project, noting that, for many young queers, “It Gets Worse” often long before it gets better. Not all young queers have the material or emotional wherewithal to just wait out bullying and harassment until they are adults. So, while the internet offers opportunities for a variety of LGBTQ folk to connect, such connection and visibility alone aren’t a panacea for homophobia.
While social networking sites offer queers a potential sense of community, they also unfortunately increase the ways in which one can encounter homophobia. For instance, when searching for “queer” groups on Facebook, we are just as likely to encounter homophobically tinged groups as LGBTQ-friendly communities. Users can create communities “for fun,” such as “Jerry is SO Gay,” to ridicule their friends and others. A surprisingly substantial number of groups use gay slurs. Moreover, self-identification on social networking sites may leave LGBTQ people vulnerable not only to virtual assault but also to attacks in physical space. In 2006, Jason Johnson was dismissed from the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky, when administrators learned that he had come out as gay on his MySpace page. Johnson wrote the following passage on his site: “I’m just starting out a wonderful dating adventure with a beautiful boy named Zac. I’m excited because I’ll be moving close to him soon. Next semester, I’ll be transferring to the University of Kentucky to finish my degree in theatre” (Bene).
Officials at the University of the Cumberlands, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, told Johnson that he was being expelled because they did not approve of his “gay lifestyle,” and even though Johnson had been on the dean’s list, his grades were all converted to Fs. The university dismissed him since a 2005 revision of the student handbook indicating that students participating in premarital sex or promoting homosexuality would face expulsion. The handbook revision was not finalized, however, until after Johnson was already attending the university. Johnson eventually settled with Cumberland, which agreed to allow him to finish his in-progress course work, reinstated his grades, and promised not to characterize his departure as an expulsion (Bene). This story highlights a reality about social networking sites: while they function as important venues for making connections among LGBTQ people, what appears on them can also be accessed and used maliciously—sometimes years later—to “punish” LGBTQ people and to control expressions of sexuality.
Beyond the facilitation of social interaction, the internet can also provide LGBTQ people with an efficient way to find one another for sexual liaisons. Craigslist and a host of other sites enable people to locate others interested in a wide range of sexual practices. People also use internet technologies, such as chat and video chat, to engage in virtual sexual behavior. Shaka McGlotten notes that “[i]n video chat, the possibility for constructing alternate intimate scenarios [is] intensified.” Furthermore, he argues that “[y]ou might do something a stranger asked you to do without question, an act that carried none of the delay or frustration that might come with having to explain to your partner [for instance] why spanking doesn’t necessarily mean you want to be abused” (129). And sites such as Tumblr allow individuals to collect and share a variety of erotic and pornographic images, sometimes using such visuals to cultivate sexual partners both on and offline. At a time when awareness of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections is heightened, particularly in the West, virtual sex can seem like a safe alternative to risky in-person encounters. And, as McGlotten’s example illustrates, participants in virtual sex can explore a variety of nonnormative sexual practices and fantasies. Some queer and queer-friendly groups use the internet to promote sex-positive practices; women-focused and queer-friendly Good Vibrations, for instance, uses its website to “enhance our customers’ sex lives and to promote healthy attitudes about sex.” At the same time, we should note that queer-identified people are not the only ones accessing queer porn and erotica on the internet. Some observe that many so-called lesbian porn sites are merely “representations of all-female sexuality … so inaccurate, and so clearly geared toward a straight male audience, that very few could truly be considered lesbian” (Theophano). More disturbingly, the internet has been used by those seeking sexual encounters with minors.
One important dimension of how people, typically but not exclusively men, use digital technologies to hook up lies in the emergence of dating apps. Such apps, usually accessed through smart phones, are hardly the domain of just gay men, with numerous apps targeting “straight” users. But the popularity of an app such as Grindr within the gay male community attests to the creative uses to which technologies can be put in the service of facilitating sexual connections. Grindr and similar apps such as Scruff allow those looking for sexual liaisons to locate one another, often detailing how far away potential sexual partners are, as well as preferences and interests. Some apps cater especially to sexual fetishes and kinks and are used by many in the pansexual community, sometimes bridging straight and gay communities. Such apps also frequently disseminate messages about safer sexual practices and information about sexual assault.
INTERNET CENSORSHIP AND CORPORATIZATION
Issues of access are often complicated by state-supported censorship, through which some governments and legal jurisdictions impose their ideologies. In China, for instance,
censorship, monitoring, rules, and enforcement make for a much more controlled Internet. Within China, maintaining this situation already requires tens of thousands of Internet police and many layers of accountability and potential punishment. (To give one relatively unpublicized example: ISPs [Internet Service Providers] convicted of hosting pornographic sites are in principle eligible for the death penalty.) (Fallows)
The Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO) features on its website pictures of gay men who have been flogged for hosting queer gatherings in Iran, where sexual acts between men are punishable by death. In the words of its founders, the IRQO site exists “in the hope of building alliances and creating solidarity among Iranian homosexual, Bisexual and Transgender” people. The site, however, is banned in Iran, limiting communication and connection among LGBTQ Iranians.
While such cases may seem extreme, it is important to keep in mind that censorship of queer content on Western internet service provider (ISP) servers is not uncommon. Many public servers are programmed to prohibit access to information with LGBTQ content or to websites with streaming video. This is particularly important because public servers are often the only means of accessing the internet for people who cannot afford to pay for high-speed lines in their homes. Increased internet sites that contain information about and facilitate interaction among LGBTQ people require high-speed connections. Some governments censor the internet by limiting the kinds of sites that can be offered by ISPs; in the United States, a similar kind of censorship occurs at the local level when public servers such as libraries and schools limit access to sites with LGBTQ content—ostensibly in the interest of “protecting children” from “sexually explicit” material.
While national governments or local boards of education can suppress some kinds of internet content for ideological reasons, another form of control occurs when internet content is shaped by market forces. In the West, the internet, despite being figured by some as countercultural and even anarchical, betrays at every turn its capitalist underpinnings. It is common knowledge, for instance, that 20-something geeks Steven Chen and Chad Hurley sold their YouTube invention to Google in October 2006 for $1.7 billion. In 2012, Facebook went public with a $5 billion initial public offering (Swartz, Martin, and Krantz). David Kushner, writing about the “Baby Billionaires of Silicon Valley,” shows how popular applications, such as Facebook, are inextricably tied to commercialism and commodity capitalism. Even Craigslist, which offers “[l]ocal classifieds and forums for 450 cities worldwide” and claims to have a “service mission and non-corporate culture,” has been incorporated as a for-profit company since 1999 (“Craigslist”).
Earlier in this book, we referred to Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality and John D’Emilio’s “Capitalism and Gay Identity” as works that argue, in separate ways, that contemporary gay identity could develop only within a capitalist economic framework that imposes social control through categorization [λ Chapter 2]. While categories allow queers to identify one another and thereby facilitate the creation of community, they also allow marketers to target potential consumers. Take, for example, the growing phenomenon of online “television” networks such as the lesbian-and gay-focused Logo TV site, which proclaims, “Watch Logo on TV. Or online. Or on your iPod. And that’s only the beginning!” LGBTQ people might be excited to know that there is a network whose purpose is to offer “the LGBT world … a place all its own … [which] brings you the stories, shows and news you won’t see anywhere else. From original series and films to groundbreaking documentaries to LGBT news and more” (“About Logo”). The issues of access addressed here come into play; access to TV shows on the internet requires high-speed connectivity and up-to-date software. Furthermore, the “free” access to the Logo site that most internet users expect is supported by corporate sponsors. Again, LGBTQ people are the subjects of marketing, so the price we pay for virtual queer space is the price we pay for the services and equipment needed to access that space and for the products sold by those who underwrite it.
Even scholarly projects focused on the internet can have corporate connections. The Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, one of the best known organizations researching internet usage worldwide, describes its work in this way:
In addition to its flagship surveys of America’s involvement with the Internet and digital media, the Center administers the complementary World Internet Project in two dozen countries, manages the Annenberg School’s On-line Communities Project, and is currently surveying Internet use by military personnel for the U.S. Department of Defense. (“Collaboration”)
It is difficult to find LGBTQ-focused research on the Annenberg site, but LGBTQ and sexuality-related attitudes are part of what Annenberg surveys. Tellingly, Annenberg’s research is at least partly funded by its corporate partners, which include Coca-Cola, whose advertising on the internet has become pervasive, and Microsoft, AT&T, and Time Warner, which have clear investments in encouraging internet use. As is true of other mass media, then, what we know about and can access on the internet is often influenced by corporations that stand to benefit from that information.
INTERNET ACTIVISM
As Jennifer Egan points out, internet access is crucial for many seeking information, community, and contact with LGBTQ people:
[F]or homosexual teenagers with computer access, the Internet has, quite simply, revolutionized the experience of growing up gay. Isolation and shame persist among gay teenagers, of course, but now, along with the inhospitable families and towns in which many find themselves marooned, there exists a parallel online community—real people like them in cyberspace with whom they can chat, exchange messages and even engage in (online) sex. (113)
However, as Sandip Roy observes, “The very convenience of the Internet can lull people into a sense of ‘keyboard activism,’ forgetting that the real grassroots organizing still needs to be down on the ground” (189). After all, writes Annie Utterback,
Who would want to be weighed down trying to resolve a history of sexualized and racialized hate crimes when they could simply express their support through a Facebook filter or … by supporting Visa, Starbucks, or Uber, which have displayed rainbow flags on social media?
The question becomes whether a one-to-one substitution can be made between the physical communities of family and town and the “parallel online community” described by Egan. We are inclined to believe that there is no easy equivalence between “real people” in physical communal space and “real people” online. If we also consider Roy’s concerns about the possibility that the internet can create the illusion of social change rather than actual social change, then we must also ask about the impact on “inhospitable families and towns” when community is sought online rather than transformed in physical space. When individuals check out into virtual queer space rather than live openly in the world as LGBTQ, those families and towns can maintain homophobic biases and sanctions unchallenged.
In terms of LGBTQ activism, the internet poses some interesting contradictions. As noted, much of what LGBTQ people have access to on the internet is dependent on corporate support and is therefore controlled and normalized in some of the same ways as television and film. At the same time, the internet provides LGBTQ people the opportunity to represent themselves in ways that are often creative, insightful, and political. What’s more, on the internet, LGBTQ people can learn about important sexuality-related activism throughout the world. For instance, internet users can easily locate sites hosted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (now called Lambda Legal). Especially in the United States, the proliferation of politically focused LGBTQ sites has undermined the notion that LGBTQ people represent a political monolith. While a quick search can lead internet users to sites like that of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) or those of student LGBTQ organizations on high school and college campuses, it can also lead one to sites like that of the Log Cabin Republicans or the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians (PLAGAL). These organizations’ websites facilitate membership as LGBTQ people look for others with similar interests. But they do something else as well: The presence of a carefully constructed site on the internet can create a sense that an organization is cohesive and powerful, that there are “bodies” behind the name, and that, if necessary, they might show up in force at physical locations to engage in loud, even disruptive, protest.
While some LGBTQ people see the Internet as a means of initiating political connections, others use it as a means of making those connections visible. Since the 1980s, one of the most controversial ways of doing that has been public outing, that is, forcefully identifying the presence of queer people in a variety of social, cultural, and political spaces. The practice of media outing of LGBTQ celebrities and politicians was originally associated with gay anger at the slow and a halfhearted response to the AIDS crisis in mainstream American culture [λ Chapter 4]. Journalist Michelangelo Signorile admits that “ACT UP’s rhetoric and shrill tactics fueled many of [his] early columns” in OutWeek, where he attacked columnist Liz Smith “for remaining closeted herself and for not reporting on the gay lives of some of the supposedly heterosexual celebrities mentioned in her column” (72). He also warned other closeted celebrities that if they refused to “[be] part of the solution instead of part of the problem. [W]e’re coming through and nothing is going to stop us. And if that means we must pull you down, well, then, have a nice fall” (73). This was shocking stuff, and Time magazine named it “outing.” At that time, Signorile made clear that only those “queers who are closeted and harming others” should be outed. For him, outing was more than “mak[ing] the revelation of homosexuality into a punishment” (77). It was simply equalizing—treating homosexuality as equal to heterosexuality in the media.
The ease of posting on the internet has added a digital dimension to outing. The advent of the internet, as we have discussed, brought millions of people into what had previously been exclusively journalistic conversations, such as blogs and wikis. Not surprisingly, the internet flexed to admit eager discussants who created sites specifically designed to produce knowledge through collaborative participation. Wikipedia is probably the best-known online collaborative site, describing itself as “a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world.” As many web searchers agree, Wikipedia entries tend to contain vastly more (and more interesting) content than typical encyclopedia entries. Still, some believe it susceptible to “vandalism,” inaccuracy, or even incivility as contributors argue over content and interpretation (“Wikipedia: About”). For instance, Wikipedia has often served as an uncomplicated way to engage in homophobic false outings that assume that the label gay or homosexual is a slur. A recent example involved The Sopranos creator David Chase, whose Wikipedia entry was edited to read, “David Chase … is a homosexual American television writer” (TMZ). The article describing this piece of internet vandalism appeared in an online publication titled A Critical Look at Wikipedia, the Online “Encyclopedia” That Anyone Can Edit, and the assumption underlying the news item is that only a wiki thug would accuse someone of same-sex attraction. In the case of David Chase, the false outing seems to have been an expression of anger after the inconclusive ending of The Sopranos’s last show in June 2007. Similarly, Tony O’Clery, a disgruntled former devotee of guru Sathya Sai Baba, used QuickTopic instant online discussion space to accuse the president of India, a follower of Sai, of being a “gay pedophile” (“Tony”). In these and other cases, the outing appears to have originated with presumably straight accusers who construct homosexuality as obviously negating public credibility.
Figure 12.1 Michelangelo Signorile.
Jodi Buren/Getty Images
The internet is also a venue for organized attacks on the very idea of queerness. The notorious God Hates Fags site, developed by the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, is a prominent example of how some use the web to garner support for their antigay sentiments. The Westboro group believes that what it perceives as “toleration” of same-sex attraction dooms the world to divine punishment. Their site features, among other hate propaganda, the “Perpetual Gospel Memorial to Matthew Shepard,” which includes a counter indicating the number of days Shepard has been “burning in Hell” and a doctored photo of Shepard with animated flames beneath his face [λ Chapter 4].
More generally, pundits, social critics, journalists, and newscasters seem to revel in frightening citizens with the many dangers of the internet—not only for queers but also for the public at large. It should come as no surprise that the national media often present the internet as a danger zone. In part, of course, the hostile portrayal of the internet by national video and print media results from their economic conflict with the internet, which houses principal alternative news outlets—the Independent Media Center (IMC, or IndyMedia) or the Common Dreams News Center, for example. Both news outlets include LGBTQ issues among the progressive political causes they support. Given advances in civil rights for queers over the last decade, national media outlets are starting to cover stories once only reported in the queer alternative press.
Globally, even in countries where officials censor the iInternet to deny users access to LGBTQ-related sites, some are clearly receiving news of the political work and struggles of LGBTQ people in other parts of the world. Iranian activist Arsham Parsi, founder of the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization (PGLO), says,
We have been in existence for three years, and through this period we have become recognized by many gay and lesbian organizations throughout the world. We based most of our activities through Internet communication. We must communicate solely by Internet as we do not have the freedom to work in a public forum in our country. We do not have any sponsors locally in Iran as the religious extremists do not support gay rights but would rather see all LGBT people silenced. (Parsi)
Parsi is now living in Canada, and he continues to speak on behalf of the PGLO. His gay advocacy illustrates the global reach of the internet in that alone, or with a mere handful of like-minded associates living in exile from Iran, he could create an organization, give it a name, and insert it into the global online conversation. To put this in context, Parsi’s website gives his organization an import beyond its physical numbers, which it could not have had before the internet; it facilitates identification among Iranian LGBTQ people “inside and outside of their homeland” and makes their existence visible. His tiny organization is then treated by others worldwide as a going concern and taken seriously as a player in queer activist circles.
Chinese LGBTQ people sometimes experience a similar silencing as their counterparts in Iran, and like them, some Chinese activists have set up headquarters in exile. For example, the Institute for Tongzhi (Gay) Studies, located at the City University of New York, involves Chinese-speaking teachers and researchers in academic studies about LGBTQ people in China. In China itself, conditions may slowly be changing. In November 2001, a meeting of Chinese gay webmasters had to be held in secret. In a testament to the dangers associated with gay activism in China at the time, Yuen Chan’s article describing the Chinese webmasters’ meeting provides no URLs for the websites it discusses. But as China has gradually liberalized some attitudes toward homosexuals over the past decade or so, more opportunities have arisen for Chinese gays and lesbians to connect with each other; Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal, for instance, “rejected a ban … on public gay sex” (Hui). Still, censorship of queer content can occur. In 2015, The Guardian reported that “Filmmaker Fan Popo sued the government for taking his [queer-themed] documentary Mama Rainbow down from the internet. He won the case in December, but the film is still unavailable to see online on Chinese hosting sites” (Leach).
While these Iranian and Chinese activists are using the internet to organize politically, much as their counterparts in the United States do, they also struggle with whether to base their queer activism on a U.S. model. Roy asks important questions about what happens when one cultural model is imposed globally:
Will the very speed of dissemination that the Internet provides create a borderless world where the American concept of a gay movement can spread like a virus and infect all cultures? Does it now just take a modem to start a movement? And once that movement gets off the ground, will it merely borrow from existing movements in the West? Will countries with fledgling GLBT movements risk losing the process of building a movement that is about them and their needs and end up assimilating into Western models because they are more accessible? What happens when the seeds of the movement are sown by members of their diaspora in the West? Is there a danger that the Internet will not only pull together people across oceans but at the same time offer them ready packaged visions of a GLBT movement that does not account for cultural differences? Or will cultural differences cease to matter in a well-homogenized “gay” world? (181)
Roy seems to be seeking a balance between the U.S.-centric notion of what Dennis Altman has called the “global gay” and the unique positioning of homosexuality in individual cultures worldwide. It is important to recognize how the internet’s enabling of communally constructed conversation across national and cultural borders depends on resisting global corporatization, which relies on constructing LGBTQ people as a monolithic economic market to maximize profit. Roy’s questions highlight the need for a new way of thinking about the international LGBT community, one that imagines transnationality as transformational.
The internet’s ability to facilitate the building of a diverse, international LGBT community independent from corporate imperatives surely represents its most exciting potential. Further developments in digital technologies and the widespread (and increasingly global) popularity of social media apps, such as Twitter and Instagram, designed for shorter and more quickly disseminated communications, have aided a wide variety of activists and their causes. Both the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements in the United States have effectively used social media platforms to spread their messages, alert activists to upcoming protests and demonstrations, and even coordinate responses to legal and judicial challenges, educating new activists to some of the ins and outs of protesting safely and legally. Internationally, the Arab Spring of 2019 demonstrated a similarly effective use of social media, especially Twitter, in allowing activists in countries throughout the Mideast, particularly Egypt, to coordinate protests. LGBTQ activists have been paying attention to such developments. For instance, “Voices 4” on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/voices4_/) aims to connect queers everywhere around the world, alerting LGBTQ people to marches, protests, and other activist opportunities. The site’s tagline is fetchingly broad and inclusive: “Queer People Anywhere Are Responsible for Queer People Everywhere.”
It remains to be seen how queer and trans activists will develop and use digital technologies for further culture building and political intervention. But we would be remiss if we did not note that activists on the “far right” are also paying attention to developments in online and social media forms of activism. The fascist assault on the United State Capitol on January 6, 2021, was facilitated in part by connections cultivated through social media and proudly “tweeted” by rioters. The technologies themselves might be politically “neutral,” but the uses to which they are put never are.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. If you have access to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, keep notes on how queer-identified people represent themselves. How do gays and lesbians, for instance, use textual identifiers, images, and even video to mark their identities, their affiliations, their relationships, and their desires? Consider how bisexuality and transgenderism are comparably identified. Based on several observations, what might you assert about queer self-fashioning in online spaces, particularly on social networking sites?
2. Fact-check a pro- or antigay website of your choice. What do you learn from your research? Consider not only the content of the sites you examine but also their layout and design. How do different activists use the web—textually, visually, and aurally—to muster support for their positions?
3. Debate the value of LGBTQ pornography on the internet. Consider the position that the internet, with its proliferation of millions of sexes, erotica, porn, and fetish sites detailing a seemingly infinite diversity of sexual pleasures and possibilities, has done more to “queer” sex than nearly any other medium. Do you agree or disagree? What are the limits of this kind of “queering” of sex?
Contemporary LGBTQ people find representation and community through many forms of media. The internet can provide queer community in a virtual world. This chapter discusses myths about the internet as well as social networking and activist sites and their uses.