Product Description

Learn how gay men use Internet technologies to connect with others sharing their erotic desires and to forge affirming communities online!

Getting It On Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity examines the online embodied experiences of gay men. At once scholarly and sensual, this unique book is the result of a three-year ethnographic study chronicling the activities on three distinct social scenes in the world of Internet Relay Chat (IRC)—virtual spaces constructed by gay men for the erotic exploration of the male body. Examining the vital role the body plays in defining these online spaces offers insight into how gay men negotiate their identities through emerging communication technologies. The author combines a critical look at the role of the body in cyberspace with candid accounts of his own online experiences to challenge conventional views on sex, sexuality, and embodied identity.

Getting It On Online provides an inside look at three specific online communities—gaychub (a community celebrating male obesity), gaymuscle (a community formulated around images of the muscular male body), and gaymusclebears (a space representing the erotic convergence of the obese and muscular male bodies emerging out of the gay male "bear" subculture)—in an effort to unsettle those models of beauty and the erotic depicted in more mainstream media. The book demonstrates how the social position of these men in the physical world in regards to age, race, gender, class, and physical beauty influences their online experiences. Far from a realm of bodiless exultation, Getting It On Online illustrates how the flesh remains very much present in cyberspace.

Getting It On Online examines topics such as:

why people chat online
the history of IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
how people construct their identities in cyberspace
how some online spaces function like virtual gay bars
the concept of online disembodiment
the role the body plays in online social relations
the future of online communication
ethnographic research in cyberspace
mediated images of the male body and the gay male beauty myth
and much more!

Getting It On Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity is an essential resource for anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists; academics working in gender studies, queer theory, cultural studies, and cyber-culture studies; and anyone interested in gay and lesbian issues and/or cyberspace.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2058417 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 242 pages

Review
"Captures the richness and complexity of this online culture... Offers startling insight into gay male sexuality. -- Henry Jenkins, PhD, Director, Comparative Media and John E. Burchard Chair in the Humanities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This is queer cyberstudies at its best—fond, critical, & illuminating... Puts torest awkward and untenable assertions about disembodiment in cyberspace. -- Lisa Henderson, PhD, Associate Professor of Communication, University of Massachusetts at Amherst