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Hot Connections: Why Sexual Platforms Matter

Hot Connections: Why Sexual Platforms Matter

Paperback

General SociologySexuality

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0262052067
ISBN13: 9780262052061
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: Mar 24 2026
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.57
Height: 0.72 Width: 5.99 Depth: 8.99
Language: English
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.

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General Sociology