So having just finished reading Algorithms of Oppression, I have been thinking all day about how we talk about three different yet entangled aspects of sexuality in online spaces. 1/
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Noble's work sort of only grazes by some of these things because her focus is on misogynoir not gender and sexuality material per se. 2/
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But obviously, when you're writing about racism and misogyny examples come up that involve sexually explicit material used in harmful ways. 3/
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The problem is that unless you are super mindful and have a lot of textual space to unpack things, the argument can begin to feel like "the Internet contains and prioritizes sexually explicit material and this is harmful." 4/
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But the problems Noble identifies are actually not about porn or sex per se. They are about consent, about privacy, and about the differential social consequences people experience for being sexual. 5/
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When ideas like "rape culture," "porn," and "sexuality" start slip-sliding together, as a researcher of sexuality I get nervous. 6/
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One complex example would be several stories Noble shares about women fired because material related to their previous work in the sex industry was found online. 7/
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Are these stories about algorithms biased toward prioritizing porn? Are these stories about labor rights? Privacy rights? Our collective freak out when certain bodies are discovered in certain sexual contexts? 8/
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(Spoiler: They are about all of these things, and more.)
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This thread rambled a bit. I'm still thinking. But the three things we need to disambiguate when we talk about sexually explicit online content are: 10/
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1) consent and mutuality
2) privacy rights and resoonsibilities
3) cultural narratives and consequences around sexuality
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This is an example of the sort of muddling of categories I am concerned about. (screepcap of figure on p. 180 of Algorithms of Oppression imagining an "ethics-based search"). 12/
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Note that "pornography/sex" is grouped together at the top, and "pornographic and mysogyinstic content" is a singular category one opts into below. 13/
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Pornography and sex are not synonymous, and neither are pornography and misogyny. If an imagined, faceted search solution to algorithms of oppression elides the differences between these things, the solution exacerbates part of the problem. 14/
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As a researcher with an interest in gender and sexuality as a historian and an information worker, and as a queer woman, and reader/writer of sexually explicit fiction, I find categorizing pornography with misogyny troubling. 15/
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