EROTICS: Sex, Rights and the Internet - An Exploratory Research Study

"How may emerging debates and the growing practice of regulation of online content either impede or facilitate different ways women use the internet and the impact on their sexual expression, sexualities and sexual health practices, and assertion of their sexual rights?"

This report emerged from a research project undertaken by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) to explore value of the internet in the exercise of sexual rights in 5 countries: Brazil, India, Lebanon, South Africa, and the United States (US). The EROTICS (Exploratory Research on Sexuality and the Internet) research aims to bridge the gap between policy and legislative measures that regulate content and practice on the internet, and the actual lived practices, experiences, and concerns of internet users in the exercise of their sexual rights. It aims to promote evidence-based policymaking.

According to the report, "The internet, because of its unique characteristics, has provided a critical space for the proliferation of multiple discourses that can act to challenge and rupture normative ideals of sexual hierarchies. It has become an important avenue to interrogate existing standards of sexual legitimacy, and to raise broader questions around justice, equality and non-discrimination. Due to its relatively low barriers to access and dissemination (as compared to, for example, traditional mainstream media), the internet enables perspectives and voices from the margins to infuse and trouble dominant discourses that anchor normative sexual hierarchies. The in-depth research with diverse communities and individuals who use the internet in the expression, articulation, exploration and realisation of their sexualities in the five EROTICS countries demonstrates the key function of the internet in the exercise of sexual citizenship and the advancement of sexual rights."

Case studies in the report focus on:

1. Online sexual publics and the debate on internet regulation in Brazil
2. Female internet users in Mumbai who negotiate intimacy and harm
3. Internet regulation and the queer movement in Lebanon
4. Transgender and lesbian use of the internet in South Africa
5. Youth, sex, and the law - content regulation in US publicly funded libraries

Some of the highlights that have emerged from the research include:

• "The unexpected and deeply engaged ways that young women in Mumbai negotiate risks online as they strategically use the medium to explore, define and challenge boundaries of gender and sexual norms.
• The contradiction between constitutional protections and legislative measures that have the impact of censorship, and how this can constrain the internet's democratising and empowering potential for lesbians and transgender people in South Africa who use it to construct and perform their identities.
• The parallel development of the internet and the queer movement in Lebanon, how this has supported the critically valued self-representation of its politics and identity, and how the openness of the internet is currently under threat with the introduction of new punitive legislation.
• The arbitrary and unaccountable nature of mandated internet filtering in publicly-funded libraries in the United States, and how this may not only fail to meet its intended objective of protecting young people from potentially harmful content, but may place them under further risk by denying them access to critical information.
• The disjunct between the centrality of sexuality in the dynamic and complex policy shifts on internet regulation in Brazil, and the relatively muted awareness and participation by women's rights, feminists and sexual rights movements in the debate offline, in contrast to the vibrant activism, investment and engagement in the topic demonstrated by a diverse range of individual users online."

One subsection under a report topic of "Control and regulation of the internet" explores culture and social norms: "It bears reminding that even with the liberatory potential of the internet, many women and girls still need to negotiate existing cultural and social barriers in their ability to fully and meaningfully engage with online spaces. The research in India demonstrates how the young women interviewed had to develop strategies to avoid surveillance of their activities by their social network and to manage the real risks and dangers that they can face online, including that of harassment, manipulation of photographs, and violations of their right to privacy....Education and literacy in developing clear online communication rules and terms of engagement are raised as effective strategies to respond to these threats, and to create secure and respectful online spaces."

Click here for the 201-page report in PDF format.
Click here to download the 24-page Executive summary in English [PDF].
Click here to download the 13-page Executive Summary in Spanish [PDF].
Click here to download the 24-page Executive summary in French [PDF].

Click here to access the EROTICS website with additional research findings and resources.