Comments on: Adultfriendfinder.com NSFW in Florida

By: jss

jss — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:46:48 +0000

Swingers, for the most part, don’t want their families, friends, employers or neighbors to know about their sexual proclivities. They are afraid of being ostracized, fired, branded as perverts, even arrested. You’ll find poly groups and organizations in major cities … but not so much for swinging, where the main “spokespeople” tend to be people who have some commercial interest … clubs, tours, parties, websites, etc.

In my experience, swingers are happy to talk about what they do and proud of the choices they make and the way they lead their lives.But they don’t want anyone to know what their names are.

Remind you of GLBTs in … the ’70s? Me, too.

By: Lisa Williams

Lisa Williams — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:14:02 +0000

You know, J, you make an excellent point, and I thank the stars that homophobia appears to be on the losing side of history. Maybe this points to the importance of political movements in changing the legal playing field and public opinion? I think in an earlier post you made an argument that swinging was now more controversial than homosexuality. I have a hard time envisioning nonmonogamous couples marching (although there was the Poly Pride event in NYC not too long ago, but it seems to me that swinging and poly are still relatively distinct cultures).

By: jss

jss — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 06:22:22 +0000

I’m glad to hear the Berkman Center is still provoking and gathering thought. I recall a conference I went to there … must have been ten years ago. Jonathan Zittrain looked like a teen-ager to me.

I think as a whole society has become less censorious about sex in our lifetime. But it has happened gradually and episodes of censoriousness tend to be noisy and publicized so the perception is … that there is no forward motion. But there is and the evidence is all around us. The Internet, social-sexual networking, increased acceptance of GLBT lifestyles … are results of both legal victories and, more importantly, changing mores. I’d argue that we’re headed in the right direction.

I love the Weiberger quote, thanks for that.

By: Lisa Williams

Lisa Williams — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:22:40 +0000

I was at a bloggers’ meeting at the Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, and we were reflecting on the fact that pretty soon there will be no one left to hire or elect who A) hadn’t done something regrettable and B) have evidence of those things on Facebook or MySpace.

David Weinberger, who’s written a couple of good books on the Web, said something that stuck with me: “A world of transparency must be a world of forgiveness.”

I’m not sure our society is going to become less censorious about sex in my lifetime, but in my kids’? Probably. Transparency isn’t going away, and eventually we’ll become jaded about what we see.