Sexuality in the Tech-Era

Recent statistics show that almost 40 per cent of internet users in the world are living in Asia. For many Asians, the rapid expansion of networking technologies, including internet and cell phones, has transformed many aspects of their lives, including sexuality. To cite just a few examples, sexual jokes, images and ring tones are spreading over millions of cells phones; an increasing number of homosexually active men and women are logging onto web-based chat rooms where they can explore opportunities to find partners, and to play out their sexuality in most intimate, and yet anonymous, ways; and sex tourism has been made much easier, with web-based sites where clients can search for information and make appointments well in advance. It would be hard for internet users – mostly young people – not to get carried away by stereotypical images of how to be men or women, of how certain population groups and countries conduct their gender and sexual lives, and of how certain ways of living out one’s sexual life may be preferable to others. Young people in tightly controlled societies and cultures are now finding the internet to be their most important escape for their innermost desires, including those that are sexual in nature. And, reactive responses from governments throughout the region, seeking to strengthen their grip on the spaces created by the very technologies that they have sanctioned, are not new. This session will pay attention to these and other major developments in order to address such questions as: What possibilities and constraints do technologies bring to people in the region with regard to their sexual lives? What are the underlying power dynamics that shape the ways in which people use different technologies to explore their sexualities? How do these power dynamics also shape the inequalities, dependencies and exploitation that characterize the ways in which various groups in the region have access to and make use of technology to explore their sexualities? By addressing these questions, the session will aim to explore how the rapid expansion of networking technologies may be shaping the sexual lives of individuals and communities throughout the region, and even raise the question of how we might make use of the transformative aspects of technology for achieving sexual rights and sexual justice.