Writing Queer Digital Youth
Bryant, Kendra Nicole
7 April 2008
U21172145
Writing Queer Digital Youth: A Case of Identity and Community on the Web
Jonathan Alexander
In Jonathan Alexander’s “Writing Queer Digital Youth,” Alexander explores various websites such as gay.com, PlanetOut, GayScape, CyberSocket, and OutProud, to showcase the impact “e-savvy queer youth and their writing on the Web (are) having on how such youth configure and construct themselves as queer and sexual” (231). He begins his research by providing some history on previous queer studies, and examining articles by analysts such as Nina Wakeford, Steve Silberman, Randall Woodland, Joanna Addison, and Michelle Comstock who have claimed that youth media have impact, and that people should “view queer youth sites as ‘important sites for resistance reproduction and pleasure’” (236). According to these researchers, “The Internet and the web provide a wealth of opportunities for explaining how a variety of queers construct, represent and articulate their own understanding of sexuality, sexual orientation and sexual politics” (230). In addition, they believe that “the web offers a nearly unparalleled opportunity to explore what young queer people think about sexuality, both its personal and its political dimensions” (231).
Although Alexander strongly concurs with the aforementioned researchers’ claims, and agrees that the Internet has revolutionized the experiences of growing up gay, Alexander claims that these researchers have limited their studies to exploring how the Web provides safe (or safer) spaces for queers, and researchers like Addison and Comstock have even limited their research to gay-les-bi, and have failed to include transgender in their studies (237-238). Therefore, says Alexander, his studies “extend the understanding of how queer digital youth use the Web to communicate information about their lives, interests, and sociocultural investments” (238). According to Alexander, “recent web authoring by young queers demonstrates that their interests and concerns…encompass a wider variety of issues many of which reveal a complex and sophisticated grapping with issues of sexuality, sexual identity, and the constitution of the gay community” (237-238). Thus, Alexander uses Google and Yahoo to find sites for analysis, choosing 20 from which he focuses his studies.
In addition to analyzing the 20 queer oriented sites that Alexander discovers via Google and Yahoo, he also focuses on sites authored by queer youth, such as Mogenic and XYmag.com, in order to discover “what kinds of representations, images and depictions queer digital youth foster of themselves when they control the content of the Web spaces designed for them” (252). According to Alexander, “queer youth seem invested in discussing political issues surrounding queerness, exploring the diversity of identity and sexual expression in the queer community, and in having discussions about sexual practices and safe sex education” (252).
To further expand his discussion on queer digital youth, Alexander provides a lengthy interview with lesbian digital writer Emily J, a nineteen year old student at UC whose contact with other gays and lesbian was via media resources. According to Emily, the Internet was her only connection to the outside world, and it was vital in her coming out. Stories like Emily’s, says Alexander, are common for many other queer youth who find safety and assurance in Internet use; however, Alexander claims that the Internet is not always a safe place for queers, and often, they, like Bishop Gene Robinson who was condemned for his association with a gay Internet site that housed links to pornographic sites, have to be careful how much of their personal lives they expose on the web, for fear that certain Internet relationships come back to hunt them during their strives for professional accomplishments.
Finally, Alexander concludes his essay by discussing how digital youth write their lives, thus producing sexual literacy. He claims that the digital sites he examined in his article showcases “the web as a space for hashing out fairly complex understandings…of sexuality and sexual orientation identity (273).
