Heteronormative bias is deeply embedded in the internet, hidden in algorithms, keywords, content moderation, and more. In fact, the internet has become largely straight by suppressing everything that is not, forcing LGBTQIA+ content into increasingly narrow channels—rendering it invisible through strategies of digital overreach. The Digital Closet author Alexander Monea joins the Bureau to present a short talk about growing LGBTQIA+ censorship online. Following this presentation, he will be joined by Shaka McGlotten to discuss additional points, including how LGBTQIA+ content online blurs lines between SFW and NSFW, why LGBTQIA+ porn is important, and more. The conversationalists will close by opening the floor to audience discussion and Q&A.

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Purchase Alexander Monea‘s The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight (MIT Press, 2022, hardcover, $29.95) from the Bureau’s online store by clicking on the title.

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Alexander Monea is Assistant Professor serving jointly in the English Department and Cultural Studies Program at George Mason University whose research focuses on the historical and cultural impact of computation and fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics. He is the author of The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight (MIT Press) and co-author of a forthcoming book The Prisonhouse of the Circuit: A New Politics of Control (University of Minnesota Press).

Shaka McGlotten is Professor of Media Studies and Anthropology at Purchase College-SUNY, where they also serve as Chair of the Gender Studies and Global Black Studies programs. An anthropologist and artist, their work stages encounters between black study, queer theory, media, and art. They have written and lectured widely on networked intimacies and messy computational entanglements as they interface with qtpoc lifeworlds.