The Trouble with Cybersex

So, if spending a considerable chunk of one’s leisure time looking at sexual images is no worse than spending it train-spotting or buying designer clothes, then why the strong objection to cybersex?

Regina Lynn, author of Wired News, an on-line sex forum, believes that it’s partly to do with vested interests. Much of the evidence on the dangers of cybersex, she asserts, has come from people who operate addiction clinics and on-line therapy services, who are keen to maintain the myth of cybersex addiction alive.

But perhaps Goldstein comes closer to revealing the real reason, when he says that what Brody and her supporters are really objecting to is the sexual material available on the internet and the threat it poses to conventional sexuality.

Even though, he says, critics of cybersex say that they are not pushing any moral agenda, much of the talk about cybersex addiction is nothing more than an objection to the fact that this hobby involves the enjoyment of sexuality that falls outside the boundaries of “loving”, monogamous relationships. The Internet has made this kind of sex more accessible and is enjoyed with more privacy than ever before, and they would like to see an end to it.

The private nature of the internet makes it difficult, if not impossible, to control and suppress the consumption of pornography and the articulation of sexual fantasy in chat-rooms. It’s this potential for the internet to subvert conventional sexual morality, notes Goldstein, that Brody and others find alarming.

And, any sexual behaviour that is disapproved of and cannot be suppressed, it must be pathologized.

Goldstein says: ”Brody herself has a long-standing bias against deviant sex. In the 1970’s, she did several front page stories promoting therapies that claimed to convert homosexuals to heterosexuality. Now, he says, she’s trying to pathologize so-called internet abusers.”

The constant exposure to pornography that’s possible on the internet, explains psychologist Debra Corley, corrupts the mind by giving cyber-users a taste for more explicit, taboo, and even violent, sexual images. In the anonymous and permissive space of the chat-room, sexual fantasies will be played out with other cyber-users. Together they will encourage each other to explore even more extreme forms of sexuality, until no form of perversion, whether it be incest or pedophilia, will be off-limits.

Some commentators even claim that there is a direct link between cybersex and “real-life” sexual assaults on adults, and even children.

And so, cybersex makes monsters of all those who use it. But, as Regina Lynn points out, no explanation is given by Brody and her supporters as to why most cyber-users end up being neither addicts nor sexual psychopaths. They also take no account whatever, she says, of the benefits that cybersex has had on the many people who write in to her forum.

Perhaps my friend is right. Perhaps much of the objection to people enjoying sex on the net is just another gripe about naughty sex, articulated in the language of psychology, and fear of a new technology that they cannot control. Severe psychological addiction is no doubt a very real problem for some people and for their loved ones. And perhaps time and more research will reveal that cybersex is more of a problem than many people think. But, at least for now, there is no substantial reason to think that sex on the net is a risk to public health. The trouble with cybersex may be no more than mere prudery.