Gay Internet Witches on the Internet Get More Kisses

So you would think that being some sort of queer (and I use queer and gay interchangeably) dramatically reduces the availability of sexual encounters. And well… it does, if you spend most of your time in meatspace. On the internet though, everything gets flipped on its head. I’m queer and trans and only date other queers and I’ve got 3 primaries (see: polyamory) and somewhere over a dozen people that I flirt with regularly. This isn’t a rare thing in my friend groups! It’s an intentional effect of purposefully curated internet culture.

“Haha, because lesbians right? They have sex with girls.”

Last year I was looking at my emails while at a job that I have since quit. I had gotten an email for the “Lesbians Who Tech” conference. My, sadly heterosexual, boss looks over my shoulder and tells me something to the effect of “Lynn, you shouldn’t be looking at inappropriate content during work time”.

(BTW: I have so many complaints about the phrase “not safe for work”. First, it reinforces the (bad) idea that sex work is not work. Also calling out sexuality specifically as not safe for work implies that sexuality, in the space of things that could distract one from their current work, is particularly bad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Farmville described as not safe for work? </end_rant>)

I, of course, did not see anything inappropriate at all about the “Lesbians Who Tech” naming, so I just blew him off. Because lesbian is an identity! Simply because lesbian, sexuality, and sex are related does not mean that talking about any given queer identity should be inappropriate for work.

Except he was right, partially. Being in that group does make me have the “lesbian […] sex!” thought a bit more often than I would otherwise. Then when you start compounding queer identities (i.e. I’m trans, pansexual, and a lesbian), the amount of ways discussing identity can tie into sex increases significantly. Thusly by the rules of logic, being any sort of queer automatically makes you more sexy (assuming you want to be, of course).

“Hi I’m Gay” … “Same”

So when I was straight, I wondered often how people could easily broadcast sexual / romantic availability. Well, when your identity can be associated with sexuality, you can easily broadcast it as a means of showing availability. So an interaction where I say “Hi, I’m gay” and someone likes it and replies “same”, there is the potential, but often likely, subtext of:

• “Hi I’m queer and maybe available so I’m interested in who else is queer around here”
• “Hi! I’m also queer and interested enough in you to state my queerness in conjuction with you stating yours!”

Bam! Potential availability broadcast in just 4 words. Combine that with the internet and you can potentially find out how available over a dozen people are in just a few seconds. I use those specific numbers because this is a thing I’ve done, several times, and then I have in fact gone on to making kisses with some of those people.

The year… is 2200. Everyone is gay, every word is lewd.

So queerness has been under assault since its inception. Because of this queers often have an inability to define their thoughts and feelings. The queer echo chambers on the internet have circumvented this by a dramatic reclamation campaign of words that the standard cishet would see as slurs or insults. For example:

• “you’re gay” == a compliment
• “get fucked in the butt” == a fun thing to do
• “demongirl” == a gender
• “evil” == probably a dom (see: BDSM)
• “Satan” == a cool and rad thing to be

Because of the way that (repressive Christian) society has worked, the words and phrases that queers reclaim are often sexual. So the queer echo chamber on the internet has slowly been becoming slightly more lewd over time, purely with its use of language.

Leagues of Professional Cuties

Another aspect of queerness that comes into play is economic oppression. Queer (and particularly trans queer) people are constantly being pushed to the edge of the mainstream economy. Due to a variety of social effects (misogyny, whorephobia, …) sex work tends to be a job the many queers are pushed to. Add the internet to this, and you’ll find there are many well-known trans queer cam girls. And while cam girls are generally not having sex with their clients, them being a professional internet cutie can contribute to having a bit more sex than average. It also gives a boost sexiness of your social network as a whole when it’s very likely at any given time that someone is [consensually] posting [their own] nudes onto your news feed.

Gay Internet Network Effects

The networks the internet queers build up have effects beyond making it tons easier to get kissed, obviously. Another thing internet queers, particularly trans queers, are known for is activism. Being known for activism is very much an effect of structural economic oppression, and there is a group of activists are known for their particularly aggressive tactics:

(this is all a really long quote that I LOVE but cannot source for the life of me)

History as according to cis

• 2007: Tumblr invented
• 2010: Trans invented
• 2012: Trans begin cis oppression
• 2020: Trans commit cis genocide, no cis left

That an internet sphere can obtain so much influence is mainly due to the fact that the internet is such a great networking tool for queer people. Also a lot of these activist queers are probably dating each other.

Go out into the twitters. Become more gay. More powerful!

On any given day on twitter dot com, all of these factors are usually active for me at once. After about 9pm it’s fairly likely that a conversation will end in lewd puns. Also someone might decide to post some after-shower nudes, or getting-ready-for-bed lewds. Or someone will retweet a lewd phrase from their friend and you follow them because queer + lewd (…and not explicitly a bigot) = instant follow. Now that social effects have created these lewd queer networks, a lot of people really like it and go out of their way to grow said networks. And specifically in the groups I am involved with, there is a lot of emphasis on respect of consent and ethical polyamory. So what you end up with is very long chains of internet queers who all consent to sexy times with one another. AND IT’S GREAT! It’s great and wonderful and made possible by the social effects of queerness and the powers of the internet.