Queer Online

This collection draws together contemporary research into queer theory and practices, as they intersect with new media and communication technologies. It provides a synthesis of critical debates in these fields followed by empirical analyses of current and historical internet activities. These include, among others, a study of changing leathersex identities as meeting spaces moved from bars to online chat rooms, an investigation of the dynamics of racial identity as social sites moved from text-based to visually-based media and the tensions between community and audience identities inherent in commercial affinity portals.
The chapters investigate the relations between the technical, legal and industrial organization of online media and the queer practices that they facilitate. While scholarly and theoretically rigorous, its rich empirical detail makes Queer Online vital reading for activists and members of queer communities, in the academy and beyond.

Contents: Larry Gross: Foreword - Kate O'Riordan/David J. Phillips: Introduction - Kate O'Riordan: Queer Theories and Cybersubjects: Intersecting Figures - David J. Phillips/Carolyn Cunningham: Queering Surveillance Research - Irmi Karl: On-/Offline: Gender, Sexuality, and the Techno-Politics of Everyday Life - Nathan Rambukkana: Taking the Leather Out of Leathersex: The Internet, Identity, and the Sadomasochistic Public Sphere - Marjo Laukkanen: Young Queers Online: The Limits and Possibilities of Non-Heterosexual Self-Representation in Online Conversations - Adi Kuntsman: Belonging through Violence: Flaming, Erasure, and Performativity in Queer Migrant Community - Shaka McGlotten: Virtual Intimacies: Love, Addiction, and Identity @ The Matrix - Andil Gosine: Brown to Blonde at Gay.Com: Passing White in Queer Cyberspace - Debra Ferreday/Simon Lock: Computer Cross-Dressing: Queering the Virtual Subject - Christy Carlson: Is This because I'm Intertextual? Law and Order, Special Victims Unit and Queer Internet Fan Production - John Edward Campbell: Virtual Citizens or Dream Consumers: Looking for Civic Community on Gay.Com - Sharif Mowlabocus: Life Outside the Latex: HIV, Sex, and the Online Barebacking Community.