Red Light Districts on Blue Screens: A Typology for Understanding the Evolution of Deviant Communities on the Internet

Abstract

Sexual deviance was traditionally divided into normal, pathological, and sociological behaviors by Gagnon and Simon (1967). Quinn and Forsyth (2005) modified that typology by adding cross-cutting continuums describing the normative status and social organization of behaviors in order to keep pace with changing sexual mores and technology while bolstering its empirical rigor. This article extends that model based on the original typology's use in research while making heuristic suggestions about the nature of communities based on sexually deviant desires and the issues they pose for research. The revised typology matches “popular,” “tolerated, ” and “pathological” deviance with levels of communities (isolated, virtual, and direct contact) in a pair of scales that can be expanded or truncated to facilitate different research goals.