Sex and Freedom in the Chatroom: The Hong Kong Golden Forum as Method

In Hong Kong, the discussion of youth internet chatting is largely framed as part and parcel of the broader emergence of internet “idling culture.” Surprisingly, there has been little news reports and columns that focus on the discussion of internet chatting in Hong Kong. When it does appear, most of them focus on internet crime, slander and sexual harassment; in other words, local news rarely provide any in-depth insights into the activities conducted in chat culture. In this chapter, I aim to provide a discussion of the problematisation of sexual discourse in a fairly vast (albeit somewhat underground) segment of Hong Kong society, and related questions of gender, misogyny, and sexual freedom. I want to use internet sex-chat culture as a springboard for theorizing the conception of contemporary sexual values through an ethnographic analysis of sex chatting. Internet-based “sex chat” refers to the casual exchange of vernacular views about sexual beliefs, rumours and behavior, conducted either synchronously or asynchronously within a monitored or unmonitored environment. The chatting can arise from any initiation made by the chatters themselves, or it can be driven by social controversies and moral panics about sex. The chatting often involves written text and visual icons that are generated by the users, often forming its own universe of linguistic and visual slangs, metaphors, tones and registers. Little is known about the sexual values that mediate “sex chat,” nor the particularities of the chat space, the nature of the modes of masculinity constructed through the chatting practice, and the broader social milieu out of which the sex chat discourse emerges. A theorization of the conception of sexual values through