Bawdy Bytes: The Growing World of Cybersex

by Joel Garreau

Monday, November 29, 1993

Dial up CompuServe on a computer, and under the "lifestyles" menu you can find a conference called Human Sexuality. Punch in the keyword "fetish," and there's a detailed discussion of the pleasures of rubber body stockings.

And that's the least of it. What Vice President Gore touts as "the information superhighway" -- the vast web of computer connections originally designed with the loftiest intentions of advancing scientific knowledge -- teems with erotic roadhouses.

Steamy talk flourishes on all the large commercial online information services. In addition, dozens of "adult" conference boards are available locally that specialize in everything from breathtakingly raunchy photographs to sympathetic views on bestiality, according to Michael Focke, who compiles a directory of the approximately 700 Washington-area "bulletin boards." Such boards -- smaller start-up computer networks -- have bloomed as people link their computers via telephone lines and communicate with one another in an area called cyberspace.

They join thousands of similar boards around the nation and the world that focus specifically on bawdy themes. (The growth of person-to-person computer communications has been so rapid that no one knows the exact number.) In France, sex talk on the government-sponsored computer network Minitel has become far and away its major use.

The sexual issues in cyberspace can be decidedly out of the mainstream. "A married woman discovered in the course of communicating online that she is a transsexual," said Gloria Brame, who wrote about the case in the just published book "Different Loving." "She formed a relationship with a gay man online."

Brame's coauthor, Jon Jacobs, said he located as many as half of his case studies in dominance, submission and related fetishes in cyberspace -- especially on CompuServe, the Ohio-based information service with about 1.5 million subscribers.

"In the privacy of their own home, people will try things and do things that they would never be caught dead going to an adult bookstore for," said Howard Rheingold, author of "Virtual Community."

This world has grown exponentially because of the increasing ease with which people have learned to hook their computers up to ordinary telephone lines, using devices called modems that allow them to communicate with anybody, anywhere in the world. "Never in history have so many people on the fringe had such direct access to a mass medium," said Mike Godwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The bulletin board networks into which they dial often are housed on a home computer next to the operator's bed. Not surprisingly, their variety is matched only by the imagination of what people are interested in exploring.

The atmosphere on these specialized bulletin boards is always accepting, often encouraging. In Montgomery County, for example, Taesar's (pronounced teaser's) Palace is a gateway to something called the Throbnet. A local call for any Washington computer with a modem, this adult board is co-operated by Monique Arnow, 27, of Gaithersburg.

"I'm a big selling point for the board," acknowledged this single mother who converses online -- sometimes suggestively -- with members. "It's because I'm a female." Some boards charge members by the month and the hour. But like many operators of small bulletin boards, Arnow spends hours on it daily for the fun of it.

Arnow will go out of her way to find whatever kinds of pictures Taesar's Palace members desire. "There are two guys on the board," she explained. "One is a 'submissive.' I don't make judgments on people, as long as you don't ask me to do it. I got the photos. Another guy is into feet. So I found him some feet." She loads the pictures on the board for members to copy onto their home computers.

Anything that can be reduced to digital zeroes and ones can be traded on computer bulletin boards. In the case of photos, the color and clarity are frequently excellent. One level is Playboy-style cheesecake. Another is couples, coupling. A third includes everything the mind can conjure, from bestiality to torture. A fast-growing segment of this traffic is created by amateurs. "They're bypassing the plastic Southern California formulaic notion of erotica," said Lisa Palac, editor of FutureSex, a 48,000-circulation magazine devoted to cybersex. "These are real pictures."

In addition to networks based in individual machines, there are national sexually oriented networks, of which the Throbnet, based in Massachusetts, is a prime example. There, people post messages on locally run bulletin boards. But in the low-cost middle of the night, the contents of as many as 50 local boards are automatically swapped in high-speed, long-distance bursts. The effect is that conference postings on say, transvestism, are shared daily among perhaps 50 other boards around the country and the world -- connecting vastly more people in more locations than would be likely on any single board's conferences.

Computer sex has obvious similarities to 900-number phone sex, not to mention magazine sex. But this new medium is also quite different. After all, these are real people finding each other in cyberspace, not a paying customer calling a professional.

One woman wrote The Washington Post complaining that her husband, who had been in therapy for his sexual problems, found affirmation, acceptance and ultimately physical companionship in the bondage and discipline conference on CompuServe, one of several large switching systems on which subscribers can order merchandise, make airline reservations, check the weather and talk dirty. The pair is now divorcing.

"You're talking about behaviors that have been so taboo for so long," observed author Brame, who once moderated the "Variations II" conference on CompuServe. "What are the odds of bringing this up to your closest friends? You'd be ostracized, ridiculed. But in a computer network, you're anonymous."

The bulletin boards function as support groups, she said. "Not only is it considered okay to talk about these things, but you gain praise and complete acceptance," she said. "People become attracted to you for that thing you are least able to talk about."

Some, however, may be attracted under false pretenses. Among the kinks to be found in cyberspace is the phenomenon of "gender benders" -- men portraying themselves as women.

It started originally because there were relatively few women who were interested in computers, although that barrier is eroding. More and more women, like Arnow, are even systems operators. But online, a shy man can be ignored all night. Male wallflowers have learned, however, that if they sign on as women they are instantly flocked to.

"You're more popular if you're a woman," said Focke. "Men statistically want to talk to women. Whether you physically are a woman or not, if you adopt the persona, who can tell?"

Communications law has very little to say about all this lascivious activity, according to Godwin, the civil liberties attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It is carried on telephone lines -- as opposed to radio or television airwaves. Common-carrier principles apply; neither the telephone company nor anybody else can tell you what you should or should not do with this electronic instrument. Thus, legal issues are addressed through pornography law, with its murky area of community standards.

Community standards definitely exist in cyberspace. As in the rest of society, however, they vary. Prodigy, an online service with more than a million subscribers that is sponsored by Sears and has the ambience of one of their old catalogues, employs software that prevents the posting of several score dirty words. Users can also signal managers to tell them of inappropriate behavior.

Two other large information utilities -- CompuServe and America OnLine -- have employees who roam the system electronically, instructing people who are too racy in public areas to tone it down or move to a more appropriate location. Warning labels are posted on sexual material. Some "adult" boards insist that would-be members fax in a driver's license to show proof of age. The support groups for "non-mainstream" sexual practices in CompuServe require would-be users to sign an agreement. And everywhere, systems operators have the power to banish malefactors forever from their portion of cyberspace.

The venerable WELL -- short for Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link -- is one of the oldest networks in cyberspace, with 8,000 loquacious and sometimes lewd subscribers. Yet it has no paid hosts and few rules. It deals with content simply by prohibiting anonymity. "We have no interest in hiring somebody to decide what standards should be," said Gail Williams, conference manager. "If people take responsibility for their own work and the pain they can inflict, over time the community becomes self-regulating."

Because of the large number of children playing with computers, precautions have been taken to ward off kiddy-porn exploiters and preying pederasts. America OnLine, for example, regularly posts warnings to children not to give out their real names or their addresses to strangers they meet online.

In March, federal agents served 31 search warrants in 15 states as part of "Operation Long Arm," a crackdown on Americans who were dialing a computer in Aalborg, Denmark, to acquire child pornography. In October, a 50-year-old Menlo Park, Calif., father pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted child molestation for allegedly using a computer bulletin board as a way to ask a 13-year-old boy to meet him for sex. In 1991, when America OnLine found that someone was using its circuits to transmit kiddy porn, it called in the FBI.

Because sex that includes children cannot, by definition, involve informed consent, it seems to be the one universal taboo in cyberspace. Aside from that, everything goes.

"What's most powerful about cybersex is that it is largely a function of the imagination," said Brame, who found her husband on a bulletin board. "It's a highly intellectual and psychological process. The people we interviewed repeatedly said, 'The most sexual organ is the brain.' "

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