Human Sexuality and the Internet.

¶ … human sexuality and the Internet. There was one source used to complete this paper. Cyber-Sex and Human Sexuality The advances in technology recently have brought mankind to heights never before dreamed possible. Today, with the click of a mouse, one can manage stock portfolios from home, plan and purchase travel trips, shop around the globe and chat with people from different cultures.

The social aspect of the Internet has garnered much attention over the past few years as people sign up for dating services, friendship networking and other groups meant to provide fellowship and social contact. One of the more controversial aspects of Internet use has always been the use of the Internet for human sexuality purposes. People are using the Internet on a global level to meet and become intimate with others that they otherwise would never have had the opportunity to meet.

News updates commonly report a wife and mother leaving her family to go live with the man she met on the Internet, or a father walking away from his responsibilities because of a love he found through the mouse and a monitor. The focus of this discussion will be an article that examines Internet mediated sexuality and its impact on social theory.

The main ideas conveyed in this article are that the Internet provides an interesting allure between reality and fantasy which has always attracted a certain element of society with regard to sexuality. It is why people solicit the services of call girls, dress up in the bedroom for spouses and take part in telephone sex lines. The Article The article: "Typing, doing, and being: sexuality and the internet. The Journal of Sex Research.

November 1, 2005 by Michael Ross," explores the many facets of Internet sexual activity that make it interesting and acceptable by those who use it. According to Ross there are many aspects of Internet sex that appeal to the masses. He provides an overview including the fact that one can become whatever one wants to be through the Internet. One can become skinnier, darker, lighter, more outgoing, more confident or any other element that one wants to portray (Ross, 2005).

One of the attractions according to Ross is the fact that one can cross gender lines. If one is secretly curious about homosexual relationships, one can go on the Internet and explore that curiosity. If one wants to know what it would be like to be a member of the opposite sex and attract partners, one can do that with a fake picture and some well thought out text.

This article was of interest to me because I have always been interested in how far people are willing to go to deceive others in the interest in Human Sexuality. We have read about and seen talk show segments in which men have pretended to be wealthy, or single or doctors when they are not. We have seen the same of women who lure men into their lives based on a well prepared web of lies.

The Internet provides an opportunity to completely invent oneself as something else and sell it online to those willing to take part in the fantasy. This article reviews the social literature in an attempt to assess where internet sexuality fits within social theory and which social theories offer useful directions for exploration.

Secondly, it seeks to position internet sexual research as a potential method for approaching the study of sexuality in a social context; and thirdly, it questions whether the internet may have created a new domain of sexuality, cyber sexuality (Ross, 2005)." The Facts Used The author uses many published articles to drive home the points he wishes to make with regard to human sexuality and cyber-sex and how it impacts social theory. According to Ross the Internet has brought a new element to intimacy.

It provides and permits people to have intimate contact through an electronic base that allows the safety of distance and the ability to be anonymous when needed. The Internet allows people to shed social cues and norms and cross barriers that they otherwise would never cross in face-to-face contact. Ross argues that "the internet, while not transforming sexuality, has transfigured it: it has illuminated certain aspects of it so that they stand out from their equivalent social sexual interactions" (Ross, 2005).

The Internet has provided the means to take away emotional and physical attributes leaving in their place, raw, animal cravings that can be satisfied without the social restrictions and cues that face-to-face meetings would mandate. Foucault (1981) suggested that modern social life is bound up with the rise of "disciplinary power," which could be controlled and regulated (Giddens, 1992). Foucault termed sexuality "an especially dense transfer point for relations of power," a point which can become a focus of social control.

We might see internet sexuality as reflecting a change in the locus of power, where the internet has become a dense transfer medium for those relations of power. Specifically, the internet has become a place where simulation of sex, and sexual barter, occur with minimal control and regulation (Ross, 2005)." The Internet provides the forum for one person to have several different sexual personas with different ages, genders, preferences and desires. This has held true through other readings I have done in the past.

In fact, news shows are constantly broadcasting the fact that people use the internet to pretend to be something other than what they are. An extreme example is that show that sets people up with a decoy and they believe they are coming to meet a 12-year-old girl and the cameras are waiting when they arrive.

Outside of such illegal and immoral behaviors articles have supported the idea that the Internet is an alluring sex arena because it allows participants to "try on" various personas and act out their sexual fantasies while remaining safely hidden behind invented names, genders and pictures. An additional point that Giddens (1992) raised is that the body is in some sense the domain of sexuality. In the sense that sexuality is felt in the body, he is correct.

But the internet allows for a surrogate body to experiment and to be experimented upon. Not only may a false body be presented (being pictured as younger, thinner, or even represented by a picture of someone else), but "robots" may be created that act in the place of the person and advertise and respond (Ross, 2005)." The Internet also provides the removal of barriers geographically, physically and emotionally allowing participants to act out their fantasies without physically cheating.

The premise is that typing is not actual cheating so one can participate in intimate chats, web cams and other sexually explicit activities while remaining faithful. This disagrees with articles I have read in the past that indicate spouses who catch their mates engaging in cyber-sex.