Hot Connections: Why Sexual Platforms Matter

A rethinking of “the social” in social media which includes the sexual.

What can we learn from including sexual platforms in definitions of social media and, by extension, from including sex in definitions of “the social” itself? Hot Connections explores three locally operating sexual platforms: the Swedish Darkside, used by kink and BDSM practitioners; the Estonian Libertine Center, used mainly by nonmonogamous people; and the Finnish Alastonsuomi, used for a wide variety of nude and sexual displays of self-expression. What avenues do these platforms open for understanding the role that sexuality plays in people’s networked routines, social bonds, and forms of relating?

Sexual social media affords freedom of worldmaking, belonging, and a right to sexually exist. While providing vital spaces for sexual self-expression—and indeed, hot connections—platform connectivity also involves friction as expectations, wishes, and desires clash and collide.

Intervening in debates on the value of sexual social media, Hot Connections discusses what it means to research sexuality when sexual data is understood as sensitive by default, what platform governance may look like if viewed from the margins, and how sex and intimacy are not the same thing in networked sexuality.

Jenny Sundén is Professor of Gender Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. She is a coauthor of Who’s Laughing Now? (MIT Press) and Gender and Sexuality in Online Game Cultures.

Susanna Paasonen is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. She is the author of Carnal Resonance and Dependent, Distracted, Bored, as well as a coauthor of NSFW and Who's Laughing Now? (all MIT Press).

Katrin Tiidenberg is Professor of Participatory Culture at Tallinn University, Estonia. She is a coauthor of Tumblr and Sex and Social Media and the author of Selfies.