Digital Media and Visibility Regimes: New Connections Between Homosexualities, Politics and Technology

The dissemination of commercial internet that started in the mid 1990's has created a impact on personal and intimate lives, particularly for those that found on digital media a safe way to express desire for same sex people creating secret love and sexual relations without risking the exposure on heterosexist/homophobic public spaces. Digital media increased conditions for people to find love partners, socialize, exchange experiences and organize themselves politically. At the same time, these new communication technologies induced subjects to perform their desire in socially more acceptable ways introducing them to a new visibility regime in which social representations spread by the market promote, among other aspects, gender conformism. Based on ethnographic research conducted in São Paulo, Brazil, and in San Francisco, U.S., this paper analyzes the relation between the use of digital media and the creation of a new sexuality regime concerning sexuality and gender. Special attention is dedicated to the emergence of a new political grammar of recognition and claim for rights that brings to the present the feminist statement that the personal is political.