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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN LANGUAGE,
GENDER AND SEXUALITY

Online Sex Talk

and the Social World
Mediated Desire

Chrystie Myketiak
Palgrave Studies in Language, Gender and
Sexuality
Series Editors
Helen Sauntson
York St John University
York, UK

Allyson Jule
School of Education
Trinity Western University
Langley, BC, Canada
Language, Gender and Sexuality is a new series which highlights the role
of language in understanding issues, identities and relationships in rela-
tion to genders and sexualities. The series will comprise innovative, high
quality research and provides a platform for the best contemporary schol-
arship in the field of language, gender and sexuality. The series is interdis-
ciplinary but takes language as it central focus. Contributions will be
inclusive of both leading and emerging scholars in the field. The series is
international in its scope, authorship and readership and aims to draw
together theoretical and empirical work from a range of countries and
contexts.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15402
 Chrystie Myketiak

Online Sex Talk and

the Social World
Mediated Desire
Chrystie Myketiak
School of Humanities
University of Brighton
Brighton, UK

Palgrave Studies in Language, Gender and Sexuality

ISBN 978-3-030-53578-0    ISBN 978-3-030-53579-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53579-7

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 Acknowledgements

The arguments that form this book have germinated for fifteen years.
During that period, my ideas were shaped by many people across various
mediums. Although it would be impossible to name everyone to whom I
owe much, I apologise to those I have inadvertently omitted.
This book is only possible due to the generosity of Walforders. Thank
you very much for participating in the community and for being your-
selves. I’m not convinced that this is a book that any of you thought
would emerge, but I hope it captures a part of that moment in time.
My editors at Palgrave, Cathy Scott and Alice Green, have been
extraordinarily helpful, patient, and supportive from the time that I sub-
mitted my proposal, as have series editors Helen Saunston and Allyson
Jule. Lara Perry, Ann Light, Katie Moylan, Deborah Cameron, and Tara
St.John have each helped me to frame parts of my argument that seemed
impossible to articulate. The constructive feedback I received from anon-
ymous reviewers has also been invaluable.
I have been fortunate to make my intellectual home at the University
of Brighton, where I have a great deal of intellectual freedom to research
and teach at the intersections of language, gender, sexuality, and desire. It
is in this culture and community where my work is enriched by inspiring,
creative, and generous colleagues and students. Special thanks to Kate
Aughterson, Monique Bhaker, Sara Chayani, Jagon Chichon, Irralie

v
vi Acknowledgements

Doel, Federica Formato, Lauren Greenslate, Ying Liu, Stephen Maddison,

Lara Perry, Mengyang Qiu, Ashley Thornton, Tim Wharton, and Gemma
Williams as well as to members of the Centre for Transforming Sexuality
and Gender and the Performance and Communities Research and
Enterprise Group.
This book is the culmination of work that began with my PhD project
at Queen Mary University of London which was jointly supported by the
Linguistics and Computer Science departments, and despite my back-
ground in sociology and gender studies, I was warmly welcomed into the
communities of both. Colleen Cotter’s influence is evident throughout
the book, and I am grateful for her kindness, suggestions, and advice; she
made me a linguist. Graham White and Patrick Healey also supported
my research from its earliest days. Paul Curzon and Peter McOwan were
generous with their support, providing opportunities and creative
breadth. The world shines less bright without Peter in it.
As much as the writing and intellectual culture that supports it has
been important, so too has been the time away from university life. My
parents have been both encouraging and supportive of my academic
career and scholarly pursuits, offering an escape in the prairies. My neph-
ews, Gavin and Jase Myketiak, encourage me to look at the world with
wonder and possibility, which has been a gift.
In 2009 the UK Border Agency rejected one of my visa applications.
Everyone at Queen Mary was incredibly helpful during the two-year
period that I worked on finishing my PhD at the same time that I dealt
with the visa quagmire. It wasn’t until three years after my PhD was
awarded that I picked up this research again to write an article, and it
took another two years after that article was published before I started to
sketch this book. During the long stretch of years when I worked to suc-
cessfully delineate the visa experience from my research, there was what
often felt like a single voice encouraging me to write. This was always
done in her unique style, but I am grateful to Jennifer Jarman for believ-
ing in me and this book from the beginning, her emphatic conviction
that the book needed to be written, and her unwavering faith in the idea
that if she kept reminding me to get on with it, there would be a time
when I would.
 Acknowledgements vii

My writing has been generously supported by the University of

Brighton Sabbatical Scheme, with special thanks to Andrew Church and
Anne Galliot. Prior funding, as a PhD student, included an Overseas
Research Student Award Scheme scholarship, Queen Mary University of
London Overseas Postgraduate Research Student Scholarship, Queen
Mary University of London departmental scholarships from the
Department of Linguistics and the Department of Computer Science,
University of London Convocation Trust research award, and numerous
travel grants that allowed me to present my work at international confer-
ences and participate in the summer doctoral fellowship programme at
University of Oxford’s Internet Institute. Time to write the article that
appeared in Discourse and Society was generously funded by the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Thank you to Sage for permission to republish parts of the article, “The
co-construction of cybersex narratives” that appeared in Discourse and
Society, in Chap. 7.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
Introduction   1
Euphoric Internet Culture   5
Online Sexual Activities   7
The Discursive Construction of Sex Talk   14
Communities of Practice   19
Chapter Summaries  22
References  25

2 Theorising Sexuality in Talk 33

Introduction  33
Bifurcated Consciousness  36
Everyday Experience and the Social   40
Social Norms  45
Laws and Norms   47
Heteronormativity  51
Hegemonic Gender and Sexuality   56
Identity and Signification   60
Transgression  62
Conclusions  66
References  67

ix
x Contents

3 Walford and Methods 73

Introduction  73
MUDs, Linguistics, and Investigating Sex and Desire   76
Navigating Walford  81
Conversing and the Command System   84
Privacy and Ethics   89
Conclusions  94
References  95

4 Coding Spaces and Marking Practices 99

Introduction  99
Male/Female… Neuter?  100
‘I’m Not Gay’: Indexing Heterosexuality  103
Nerds and Geeks  113
Nerds in Walford  116
Nerds and the Gender Divide  124
Conclusions 128
References 129

5 Sex Talk Intimacies133

Introduction 133
Sociosexual Norms in Online Conversation  134
Humour and Sex  143
Sharing Sex Content  147
Displaying Gender: Images and Webcam Conversations  151
Sexual Self-Disclosure  160
Conclusions 161
References 162

6 Automating Desire167
Introduction 167
Automated Kissing  172
Automated Shagging  178
Sexual Storytelling Through Automation  181
Conclusions 183
References 184
 Contents xi

7 Co-constructing Desire185
Introduction 185
Heterosexuality in Cybersex  187
Cybersex Narratives  190
Style Shifts and Person Reference  193
Performing Heteronormative Sexualities  201
Encoding Desire in Dimension  205
Adjacency and Intimacy  208
Conclusions 210
References 211

8 Sex Talk Futures215

Introduction 215
Re/designing Sex Talk: Living Dolls  221
Sex Robots and Social Responsibility  224
Conclusions 229
References 230

Index233
 1
Introduction

Introduction
More than twenty-five years ago the New Yorker published a cartoon by
Peter Steiner with the caption “On the internet nobody knows you’re a
dog” which became both an adage and a meme that summarised internet
anonymity and online behaviours. The assumption behind the statement
is that while internet protocols may identify users, web connections and
mediated technologies provide people with opportunities to play with,
exaggerate, or even fabricate characteristics and identities. The potential
for this to be dangerous is underscored with the image and text—after all,
the person on the other end of the computer may not even be human.
This metaphor draws on fear but can alternatively highlight the poten-
tially liberatory effect that is seemingly inherent in the notion that
‘nobody knows’. Either interpretation requires differentiating between
online and offline social contexts. This separation is at once artificial and
absurd for multiple generations who have come to age with (and on) the
internet, and it creates a binary between the two in which one side envis-
ages technological futures as enabling new patterns of social behaviours,
relationships, and organisation, while the other views those same devel-
opments as constraining people and their interaction. Such a binary

© The Author(s) 2020 1

C. Myketiak, Online Sex Talk and the Social World, Palgrave Studies in Language,
Gender and Sexuality, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53579-7_1
2 C. Myketiak

emphasises technology at the expense of individuals, infrastructures, and

social practice, presuming that the form, function, and structure of lan-
guage use in general, but especially in technologically mediated contexts,
exists beyond and outside of hegemonic discourses that perpetuate struc-
tural inequalities.
In Online Sex Talk and the Social World, I analyse how people in the
online community of Walford, a multi-user domain (MUD) that is
socially focused but is not sexual in its scope or purpose, talk about sex,
sexuality, and desire in order to make sense of their relationships, their
community, broader social structures, and discourses of gender and sexu-
ality. In order to do this, I examine their language use and relate covert
language patterns to manifestations of power in online talk. Steiner’s car-
toon has been in the back of my mind in the years that I have researched
and studied this topic, with earnest colleagues asking, “But how can you
tell that these people really are who they are online?” My interest, I hope
I have made clear, is not in evaluating how people present themselves in
one interactional context and comparing it to another, but in analysing
how participants in a specific synchronous chat community use language
in this conversational context to discuss sex, sexuality, and desire. I then
apply those findings to contextualise the role that this talk—and gender
and sexuality discourses—plays in how people realise and constitute their
social worlds.
The conversations that are analysed in this book are from an online
community that is structured through text to represent an English vil-
lage. This text-based village was created in the mid-1990s, and people
from all around the world connect to the platform to synchronously chat
with others in various locations or ‘rooms’ in the virtual town. During
the time period when this data was drawn, there were approximately
1500 regular monthly users and an average of more than 300 people con-
nected each day. Advancements in technology have rendered entirely
text-based MUDs like Walford nearly obsolete, but their legacy lives on
in popular multimodal massively multiplayer online games such as
Fortnite, World of Warcraft, and Black Desert Online.
While there are conventions that govern all language use and some
topics and conversations are both regulated and ritualised (e.g., greet-
ings), sequestered topics are those that are generally removed from the
 1 Introduction 3

public sphere or have high levels of constraints governing how people

approach them. This is to say that these are the areas of human experience
that require an extraordinary amount of ‘communicative competence’
(c.f. Hymes 1972) to effectively navigate. Communicative competence
addresses four questions of language use that range from the theoretical
to the social: is an utterance formally possible; is it feasible; is it appropri-
ate in the context; and finally, is it actually done? Hymes (1972: 282)
gives an example of how a speaker may produce a sentence that “may be
grammatical, awkward, tactful and rare” depending on how they address
these four questions and combine their knowledge with their use of lan-
guage. Both the third and fourth questions relate to the sociocultural
world but in different ways. The third question relates to tacit knowledge
about linguistic and cultural appropriateness. The fourth question
attempts to further contextualise things by forcing a reckoning of sorts: a
statement may be grammatical, it may be feasible, it may be appropriate,
but does anyone actually say it? This is the area where speakers account
for norms, probabilities, and responses. Speakers may think through
issues of who they can raise a topic with, what they can discuss, the ways
they can discuss it, where it can be brought up, how it can be introduced,
and so on. None of this knowledge is innate or universal; speakers rely on
the people around them and the interaction they are participating in and
observing to develop this situational competence. Throughout our lives,
we interact with some people who flout norms and conventions about
what topics to talk about, with whom, and in what settings, and with
others who seem to effortlessly know and navigate the limits of language
and discourse that children are taught from the time they first learn to
speak, often through disavowals that police their perceived transgressions
(e.g., don’t ask that, don’t say that, apologise for saying that) and provide
them with notions about the boundaries of the ‘sayable’.
Coming at this from a different direction, but arriving at roughly the
same place, the sociologist Giddens (1986, 1991) develops a theory that
arguably explores wider aspects of communicative competence. He pro-
poses that there is a dualistic social system in which people (agents)
develop memory traces of rules and resources (structures) that inform
what they are knowledgeable to socially act upon. These memory traces
are in three areas which will be familiar to discourse analysts and
4 C. Myketiak

linguistic anthropologists: power, meaning, and norms. The areas that are
sequestered require significant memory traces because these are fields of
human experience that are often moralised or raise existential questions:
criminality, mental illness, sickness, death, and sexuality. On one hand,
these areas are treated as ‘private’, yet on the other there is a great deal of
state involvement that governs how people are permitted (and in which
circumstances, settings, and permutations) to ‘do’ them. Foucault (1998)
wrote about sexuality, mental illness, and criminality and how some dis-
courses, forms of knowledge, and ‘truths’ become authoritative, while
others are silenced. It is possible to look within language research for
examples of how this informal social regulation occurs. For example,
another cultural theorist, Sontag (2013), examines the rich metaphorical
language embedded in the discussion of illnesses, including cancer. One
of her main points was that the discussion of cancer is laden with battle
metaphors, such as references to fight, battle, and loss. She argues that the
rhetorical language that constructs cancer as a battleground is not the
same for other illnesses and contrasts this with the euphemistic language
used for tuberculosis and AIDS. The association of cancer with battle
runs deep: in everyday linguistic practice, speakers refer to a third-party’s
cancer as a ‘courageous battle’ or ‘valiant fight’ and discuss the disease as
something that was either ‘won’ or ‘lost’. These war metaphors, working
alongside adjectives that position the human agent as a soldier, construct
both the illness and the person with cancer as different from other ill-
nesses and those with those other illnesses or conditions (e.g., ALS, dia-
betes, hepatitis C). Medical linguists researching cancer metaphors
continue to find that conversations about cancer are structured around
violence and battle metaphors (e.g., Semino et al. 2017a, b). Thus, these
‘memory traces’ of how certain illnesses are constructed are not internally
based or individualistic but are themselves culturally ingrained, domi-
nant discourses with legacies of their own. Whether coming at this from
a perspective that values communicative competence or one that places
primacy on the constitution of society, the result is the same: issues of
power, meaning, and norms help speakers to decide what to linguistically
or socially act upon and that even within the same broad topical area
speakers may need to engage in a great deal of work.
 1 Introduction 5

Euphoric Internet Culture

This book is situated in an internet culture that no longer exists. If the
first phase of internet culture was the scientific, pre-commercial text-­
based period prior to the development of the World Wide Web in 1993,
then the second phase was the “euphoric, speculative period” in which
the internet became widely available (Lovink 2013: 7). Replacing the
second phase was one characterised by increased immersion and surveil-
lance. Text-based MUDs, such that which is examined in this book,
blurred those first two phases by being pre-commercial and text-based at
the same time as they were also emblematic of the creative, speculative
middle ages of the internet. Wellman’s (2004) assessment of this transi-
tion period of internet culture uses figurative language such as similes and
metaphors to characterise it:

The internet was seen as a bright light, shining above everyday concerns. It
was a technological marvel, thought to be bringing a new Enlightenment
to transform the world. Communication dominated the internet, by asyn-
chronous email and discussion lists and by synchronous instant messaging
and chat groups. All were supposedly connected to all, without the bound-
aries of time and space. (Wellman 2004: 124)

While there is a critique of naivety in Wellman’s description of this

period, it is not without nostalgia for the playfulness that came with it.
This playful aspect of mid-internet culture, emphasised in the notion that
people were afforded the ability to transcend time and space, and that
technology was a democratising force free from the constraints of power
relations, is echoed elsewhere. For example, Baym (1995: 156) writes,
“The extent to which people use CMC [computer mediated communica-
tion] as a means to invent new personas, to recreate their own identities,
or to engage in a combination of the two and the ways in which they do
so are issues central to the construction of a computer-mediated social
world”. Here Baym summarises the apparent freedom associated with
internet culture and the open speculation attached to it. Not only did the
development and deployment of internet technologies involve invention
and creation, but there was a widespread belief that the technology itself,
6 C. Myketiak

and computer-mediated communication in particular, contained within

it those same properties.
McMillan and Morrison (2006) collected narratives from seventy-two
individuals born between 1975 and 1980 who wrote about their experi-
ences of coming of age with the internet. While the euphoric, speculative
period of internet culture is typically characterised by the possibilities of
identity play, their participants tended to describe “the internet as a place
that helped them solidify their offline identities” (McMillan and Morrison
2006: 79). The opportunity to play with or transcend the markers of who
they were was how these individuals were able to self-actualise. This cor-
responds with other research from the same temporal period, such as
Livingstone (2002), who found that young people use technology in
ways that enable their self-definition within existing familial and broader
social structures. In the context of online dating, researchers found that
the anonymity of interactions worked to build trust and rapport between
co-interlocutors rather than functioning as a way to perform a fantasy self
(Hardey 2002). Basically, mid-internet culture afforded users the ability
to play anonymously and creatively, but users across various platforms
tended to connect their online selves with their experiences of the ‘real’,
whatever that might be.
In the case of online MUDs, people connect to the shared data-
base and interact with other people and the virtual infrastructure in
real-time. Turkle (1994) contends that the virtual infrastructure of
MUDs and community participants’ responsibility for developing
and implementing that environment allow the focus to be dualistic:
what happens inside the community is an emphasis but so too are
broader sociocultural themes. Two well-known studies of MUDs are
those by Cherny (1999), who examined ElseMOO, and Kendall
(2002) whose research focused on BlueSky. Both researchers found
that participants in these spaces formed connections and bonds with
each other, which manifested into the emergence of virtual commu-
nities but also provided participants with opportunities to engage
with broader cultural themes, such as gender.
 1 Introduction 7

Online Sexual Activities

The middle era of internet culture provided a modality for sexual content
and activities to flourish. Widely available internet access enabled people
to access sexual information, content, and practices with greater anonym-
ity, ease, and variety than was previously possible. Understanding online
sexuality practices within this internet culture typically led to polarised
positions. These activities were positioned in the literature as simultane-
ously having equalising, demarginalising, democratic, liberating, and
empowering potential for those who engage in them and the culture as a
whole (e.g., Attwood 2009; Campbell 2014; Doring 2000; McKenna
et al. 2001; Wysocki 1998) and the potential to be damaging, exploit-
ative, compulsive, addictive, and antisocial (e.g., Carnes 2003; Cooper
et al. 2000; Daneback et al. 2005; Delmonico and Carnes 1999; Putnam
2000). In addition, much of the research during that period relied on
secondary data, including discussions with participants about their online
sexual conversations (e.g., Attwood 2009; Ferree 2003; Schneider 2000),
surveys in which participants answered questions about their online sex-
ual behaviours (including their conversations) (e.g., Cooper et al. 2004;
Daneback et al. 2005, 2007; Ross et al. 2004), or the researcher’s partici-
pant observation in the community studied (e.g., Campbell 2014;
del-Teso-Craviotto 2006, 2008; King 2012, 2017; Mowlabocus 2016;
Nip 2004a, b; Wysocki 1998).
Psychiatrists, psychologists, and other clinicians made considerable
effort in detailing the potential of online sexual activities to develop into
sexual pathologies, including compulsions and addictions (e.g., Boies
et al. 2004; Cooper et al. 2000, 2002, 2004; Delmonico and Carnes
1999; Dryer and Lijtmaer 2007; Ferree 2003; Griffiths 2000, 2001;
Philaretou et al. 2005; Putnam 2000; Schneider 2000; Schwartz and
Southern 2000; Stack et al. 2004). Given the settings where these
researchers were situated, the emphasis on the ‘potential’ of the practice
and on individuals who may already be in clinical settings is not espe-
cially surprising. However, the emphasis on the clinical setting as the
basis for understanding cybersex has led to a distorted understanding: a
great deal is known about the practices of a specific population of users,
8 C. Myketiak

which is framed within a discourse of health. A dialectic of healthy/

unhealthy online sexual practices means that clinicians have been less
focused on defining and constructing what constitutes the form, func-
tion, and structure of the behaviours themselves. Understanding sexual
practice as a ‘practice’ is outside of this purview, while a great deal of
attention is spent on hypothesising its possibilities on participants, their
communities of practice/s, and the wider society/culture.
The frame of online sexual practices as unhealthy, dangerous, and
pathological can be evidenced in rhetorical language, including meta-
phors some authors used in dissemination of their research results. For
example, Young (2008: 22) describes online pornography as “crack
cocaine”, likening it to a highly addictive, illicit, illegal substance—a
metaphor that stigmatises the practice of engaging with online pornogra-
phy as well as the person who engages in the practice. The use of addic-
tion metaphors can be found in other research too. Ferree (2003), a
clinical psychologist working within a ‘Christian’1 context, claims that
“for some people, web connections prompt almost instant addiction,
much like the highly addictive nature of cocaine” (2003: 390). The use of
the term “addiction” and the phrase “highly addictive” signify danger,
even when modified by “some people”. Further, “addiction” is a medical
term that usually implies chemical and physiological dependencies as
well as psychological dependence. It is unclear how that works here,
where the term addiction is used but not deconstructed. The comparison
with cocaine, a stimulant drug that users can develop physiological and
chemical dependence for, further develops the narrative of danger and
fear. Ferree’s points contribute to larger debates concerning the existence
of “sexual addiction”, more generally, and “cybersex addiction”, more spe-
cifically. Her use of addiction terminology and her likening of online sex
content to a “gateway drug” (Ferree 2003: 390) can be seen as pathologis-
ing cybersex through the use of language and stylistic choices (e.g., meta-
phors, similes) that create parallels with other types of behaviour that are

1
I have used inverted quotation marks here as a stylistic device to suggest that not all Christian
orthodoxies hold similar views. For example, Christian perspectives on LGBTQ+ can vary radi-
cally, not only between Catholic and Protestant belief systems, but also among Protestant
denominations.
 1 Introduction 9

considered socially deviant and as in need of therapeutic intervention

(e.g., substance addiction).
What Ferree and others seem to neglect is the context-dependent ele-
ment of their assertions. What is understood as sexual pathology varies
both culturally and over time (Foucault 1998), meaning that what is
defined as problematic or healthy is always dependent upon context and
time. Furthermore, Foucault (1998) argues that truths are partial and
multiple. Therefore, what may be illegal and pathologised as mental ill-
ness in one time period or space (e.g., homosexuality) may not be framed
the same way later or elsewhere. Supposed ‘truths’ about sexuality and
sexual practice may result in state-sanctioning (e.g., institutionalisation,
criminalisation, hospitalisation) and stigmatise individuals through
notions of the ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’. With this in mind, it is
useful to conceptualise online sexual activities outside of a dichotomy of
healthy/unhealthy practices. To avoid this paradigm means also consider-
ing online sexual activities beyond the universalising and minoritising
approaches that Sedgwick (2008) describes in relation to queerness,
which are discussed more fully in Chap. 2.
Daneback et al. (2005) can also be seen as framing sexuality and sexual
practices in a top-down matrix in which the individuals enacting the
behaviours are not at the helm of their own sexualities; rather, the empha-
sis is on clinicians who direct sexual practices away from ‘problematic
behaviour’. This model places clinicians in a central role, while the indi-
viduals who enact the practices are envisioned as possessing less agency.
The emphasis on the importance of clinicians in aiding ‘healthy’ sexuality
fits within the specialised clinical setting where they work, yet the differ-
ence between what they (Daneback et al. 2005) understand as an
“enhanced” sexuality that they steer people towards and aspirational het-
erosexuality, or a heterosexuality that is idealised, is not clear. For exam-
ple, definitions of healthy and unhealthy practices are variable, are
dependent upon time and space, and are inconsistent between profes-
sionals. For example, some clinicians continue to practice conversion
therapy with LGBTQ+ people, in which the therapeutic goals are to sup-
press same-sex (or queer) desire with heteronormative practices, while
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