[This posting originally appeared on zaadz.com on May 26th, 2007, and was subsequently published by Social Computing. It reappears with only minor changes because we are beginning to appreciate just how much sexuality is becoming a political issue. 

The most obvious example of this is in the steady rise of women's rights as a campaigning issue in the cultural struggle between the West and certain key Islamic allies and opponents such as Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, the trajectory of Western thought since the Victorian era has been towards accepting maximalist attitudes to sexual choice and liberty to the extent that many European if not American 'conservatives' (like David Cameron) have almost entirely ditched traditional conservative paternalism in favour of social libertarianism. 

Similarly, since the 1960s, the Left project has bifurcated sharply. Libertarian aspirations have developed an increasingly tense dialectic with the communitarian project that has replaced traditional socialism. Under the 'third way', the centre-left has tried to inculcate an ideology of rights and duties that makes it virtually indistinguishable from some forms of moderate conservatism. In other words, the sexual is the political and it seems timely to revisit an article that looked at how Web 2.0 might affect this aspect of culture.

The only additional comment to make after nearly five months is to note that divorce rates in the UK appear to be lessening and that middle class young people are becoming more conservative in their conduct but we see no sign of a new sexual puritanism. Technology may already be affecting culture. Better relationships and more stable personal behaviour may well, after a period of transition, be the consequence of a cultural environment in which sexuality is treated as either a matter of fact or as erotic/transgressive rather than, as formerly, something that was alternately sleazy and negative or 'naughty' and titillating. The exact mechanism by which British popular culture is being transformed is for other researchers to investigate.]

There is a remarkable article from Regina Lynn at Wired News that raises interesting issues about what the new world of Web 2.0 is doing to the human psyche. Lynn gives a lucid account of how, in a safe fantasy setting, she 'transgressed' into a new sexual identity that had no necessary day-to-day link to her persona in 'real life'. She neither denies the transgression nor tries to make it anything more than an insight into herself that might shift her perceptions but not her essential nature. How she 'plays' is not to be assumed to be 'who she is'.

What is remarkable to anyone over a certain age is the honesty of the piece. The taboo that is broken here is not so much that of being, or feeling to be, something different from 'normal' (that seems to have been installed as a possibility somewhere in the 1970s) but in saying or doing something transgressive and then not feeling obliged to make what has been said or done integral to identity. 

The Internet & Identity

Internet culture now allows someone to express an 'abnormal' part of themselves (often a very minor part) without being obliged to include it in the self-identity that is designed to accomodate social or community expectations. Although early days, this new sense of the possibilities arising from 'irresponsible play' could herald the beginning of the end of identity politics and the arrival of complexity and of multiple identity as factors in public life. 

The liberal revolution of the 1970s is now accepted even by most modernising conservatives.  It has allowed transgressive identities such as 'being gay' to be expressed as integral to persons on their own terms. It ended an atmosphere of repression, prejudice and stereotyping. The price, however, was that anyone with (say) gay inclinations came under increasing pressure to make a choice between being gay, being not gay or choosing some third identity (such as bisexual). A whole range of new sexual identities emerged in a constant attempt to 'fix' complexity.  

Similar processes of defining identity took place in other areas of formerly forbidden discourse - in alternative religion, in gender politics and in 'race'. But, in the real world of ordinary folk, few people actually belong to any fixed single category for very long. So, this was only relative liberation, of the dominant part of a person at the expense of the whole person, freeing individuals only on condition that they chose a category of their own instead of a category chosen by society.

What Lynn implies in her own experience of some rather innocent cyber-sex is that people, taken out of their normal social context and left free to be themselves with minimal risk, are immensely fluid and have complex sexual drives and multiple identities. If allowed to do so, people will shift their behaviour quite radically in different contexts. Research on 'evil' increasingly indicates that context is vitally important in determining when a person will do an 'evil' act in the real world.

Web 2.0 permits the construction of personal identity at different levels of 'personal privacy'. The feed-back of experience from one level transforms, I would say revolutionises, morality and behaviour at another. Necessary conformities in the office or even in the family are at one extreme (exemplified ultimately in the fixed public persona of the politician or celebrity). But there are other levels of self exposure within the internet open to people who are (say) not in public life, are self-employed or are single to varying degrees. The deepest level is reached where aspects of self that are frustrated in real life can develop in secrecy, not so much as as private fantasy but as shared psychotherapeutic play in chat rooms, on forums and in interactive games. And any of us can now visit this deepest level that was once limited to dream states, private fantasy or the risky business of entering into a 'deviant 'sub-culture.

Bourgeois Panic

This is very disturbing to many in the expert class. We see a snobbish horror of ordinary people expressing emotion when they do not have the writing skills or sensibilities of regular readers of The New Yorker. How many times do we hear that weary complaint about cliche on the sexual web as if everyone should be expected to write like John Cleland or Pauline Reage? There is moral panic about the sexual or emotional fantasies of the masses - probably because 'intellectuals' refuse to deal with theirs except through high literature and art. This current wave of comment about dumbing down, of fears about what happens to youngsters when their youthful indiscretions are seen by potential employers or husbands, and the growing paranoia about the retention of data, all miss the point. 

Tens of thousands of people, with a very wide range of intellectual and educational accomplishment, are now engaged in a growing revolution in the collective mind. These (mostly under 40) are the many. The 'scared educated' (mostly over 30) are becoming the few. Society will inevitably bend in the direction of the many over time despite periodic authoritarian attempts to break the back of the revolution through scare tactics and regulation. Kids who display their sex life in public now will probably be thought no less of in twenty years. Their honesty will be seen for what it is, an important developmental phase creating wiser, more rounded people in their middle years than their ancestors were at the same age. 

As for the 'experts', for most purposes beyond the requirements of high technology such as the running of a railway system or a nuclear power plant, they are now surplus to requirements and will have to live with the new egalitarianism. But this revolution does raise many ethical and social questions - too many for this posting.  One is the negotiation of lies and honesty. 

Challenging Western Culture

The arrival of free secret play as a social norm is a direct challenge to the moral rigidities of Anglo-Saxon liberal culture. Assessing hypocrisy and lying are central to its self-identity: they are bad things in an absolute sense and not, more wisely, in a relative or contextual sense. Yet lying and hypocrisy are central to creative play. Some Anglo-Saxon liberals are now moving sharply towards authoritarianism and to the moralistic neo-conservative Right in horror at a new fluid world where nothing is fixed and where they have no role as natural arbiters of taste and morality. They do not like irrational exuberance. They do not like playfulness.

Europeans (in general) would not divorce their partner because of an online sexual game, and very often not over a mistress, but Anglo-Saxons are very likely to do so - and, if not, make their partner's life hell if they find out. The standard Anglo-Saxon attitude to sexuality implies that the partner is there as an add-on to personality 'for life' instead of a person in their own right, with changing needs and opinions. Anglos expect exclusivity and fidelity not merely in RL ['real life'] but deep inside the mind of the 'other'.  This is clearly, an absurd, totalitarian attempt to police another's brain. 

The internet now complicates matters further, especially as its effects are first felt within this same traditional Anglo-Saxon culture. Personality becomes diffused without being fragmented. The 'explorer' may unravel some of what he or she is through 'play' and then may ask just how much of this expanded self should be repressed in a world where time passes and life is short. Sometimes self-repression is accepted, sometimes changes are instituted without radical disruption, sometimes a person discovers that RL has been the 'dream' and the web-world reality and chooses to wake up. 

Where a couple will choose to split or get divorced within this unfolding of playfulness can be a very different line drawn in different cultures but we can safely predict that Anglo-Saxon liberal culture is not really very well fitted to cope with the fluidities of individual self-development. So, we are probably going to see a period of reactive moral panic and authoritarianism, ironically more from so-called progressives unable to cope with the reality of mass liberation than faith-based conservatives. After all, faith can be rediscovered on the internet too.

The more and the earlier that someone discovers who they are before they make choices that dictate their RL persona and station in life the better. The best thing that we can do for the generations coming up is to enable them to play safely. This may not suit employers, priests and government (or insecure wives and husbands wanting to lock in their partner to their needs) but it is my betting that the kids who go through this process may be more anarchic but a lot more intrinsically tolerant, free and moral than their parents. Their personal relationships, in turn, will be more rounded and more loving - and their kids will benefit too. Society should understand, embrace, facilitate and guide this revolution rather than try to resist it - we should leave strategies of resistance to the Islamists and the Chinese Communist Party!

How Honest Should We Be?

So how honest should one be on the internet in the classic areas of sex, politics and religion? Web 2.0 enables ever greater levels of self-expression and honesty at a mass level but discretion and RL functionality still dictate (and will always dictate) that boundaries are drawn.  The three rules of tact and discretion are mere glosses on the neo-pagan, “Do what thou wilt and harm no-one” (including yourself, of course): i) be aware of the effect of what you are writing on the feelings of others; ii) take responsibility for the effects on yourself; and iii) expect what you write to be read by anyone.

If you think on these basic rules of conduct, they come down to having a morality of regard for those around you, developing a sensible life plan and only doing in RL what actually works for you as you are and not as others would have you be. But it also suggests that where you do have a secret side that cannot fit into this model, then there is nothing wrong with accepting it and developing a persona that can 'play' out its private magic with others in a way that harms no-one. If all know the rules, no one can be accused of deception and those who are 'hurt' in the game can learn from the 'hurt' without physical or community harm. 

Though the morality of all this should not be accepted without question, I would guess that most 'games players' will enter into a private world only for a while, transform and move on - and that the addictive or truly deviant personality has other issues in RL that they or society just won't face. What should not be acceptable is excessive intervention by panicking authorities into what is really no more than the linking up of private minds. Government's role must remain the policing of wrongful conduct rather than 'wrongful' thoughts.  If there is a line to be drawn it is when a private fantasy becomes a conspiracy to do actual harm in the real world - then, and only then, this becomes a police matter.

www.tppr.co.uk