49. Sexual Subcultures and Online Spaces

This chapter examines the connection between sexual subcultures and online spaces and the evolution of this connection. As societies becoming increasingly more democratic, the acceptance of subcultures once considered sexually deviant uses political processes to gain recognition as normal. These same processes alter the perceptions of subcultures/behaviors once considered normal to recognition as deviant. A brief history of sexual subcultures is presented as well as the impact of online spaces on the creation and proliferation of sexual subcultures. We outline the evolution of models to explain sexual subcultures by examining Gagnon and Simon’s (Sexual deviance. Harper and Row, New York, 1967) pre-Internet model and Quinn and Forsyth’s (Deviant Behav 26(3):191–207, 2005; Deviant Behav 34(7):579–585, 2013) and Forsyth and Quinn’s (A swell of the nasty: the waves of sexual behavior in the back places of the Internet. In: Dretsch E, Moore R (eds) Sexual deviance online. Carolina Academic Press, Durham, pp 9–23, 2014) updates: two reformulated models that focus on sexual subcultures in online spaces. A discussion of how this model can be used to describe, explain, and predict the processes of sexual subcultures in online spaces is posed.