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Virtual Hand with Ambiguous Movement between the Self and Other Origin: Sense of Ownership and 'Other-Produced' Agency
Published on: October 28, 2020
The Erotic Wound: Sexual Racism and Queer Resistance in Digital Spaces
Carlo Handy Charles1, Manjot Gill1
1Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Summary
Queer people of colour (QPOC) experience sexual racism online, creating an "erotic wound." However, they resist this harm and build new communities in digital spaces, transforming negative experiences into positive social change.
Area of Science:
- Sociology
- Digital Humanities
- Queer Studies
Background:
- Sexual racism persists in digital intimacy spaces, disproportionately affecting queer people of colour (QPOC).
- Existing digital platforms often perpetuate racialized exclusion and fetishization through their architecture.
- The concept of the 'erotic wound' is introduced to understand the psychological and social impact of these experiences.
Purpose of the Study:
- To sociologically examine how QPOC experience sexual racism in digital intimacy.
- To analyze how QPOC contest and transform the effects of sexual racism through digital counterpublics.
- To theorize the 'erotic wound' as both a source of harm and a catalyst for social world-building.
Main Methods:
- Qualitative content analysis of 37 online narratives from diverse digital sources (blogs, Reddit, TikTok, YouTube).
- Application of feminist, queer, and sociological theories, including byproductive affective labor and noise mediation.
- Identification of key dynamics: racial filtering, fetishization, hypervisibility/erasure, and digital resistance.
Main Results:
- The 'erotic wound' manifests as anxiety, exhaustion, and diminished self-worth, rooted in systemic inequality and platform design.
- QPOC actively engage in digital counterpublics to resist sexual racism and its harmful effects.
- These counterpublics serve as sites for critique, alternative imaginaries of desire, and the creation of new, equitable intimate architectures.
Conclusions:
- The 'erotic wound' is a dual concept, signifying both harm and generative potential for social change.
- Digital counterpublics are crucial spaces where QPOC collectively challenge racial hierarchies in desire and intimacy.
- This study advances sociological understanding of desire as a site for both the reproduction and contestation of sexual racism.
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