May also provide sex-info sites with a way to circumvent government censorship

New Sessions is a retro-text-based underground zine designed to be an online haven for today’s tragically at-risk queer community. 

It was launched by Cara Esten Hurtle and Lo Ferris, and  inspired by Hurtle’s deep dive into her collection of vintage computer hardware during the years of the COVID pandemic.

As early as 2023, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) declared a national state of emergency in the United States: “More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record.” The present administration’s alarmingly successful attempts to make life increasingly more dangerous for LGBTQ2+ individuals while also erasing queer history.

Though far from an ideal solution, as use depends on some knowledge of predominantly antiquated Internet technology, New Sessions could inspire the growth of similarly innovative approaches to many at-risk communities—including frequently targeted groups such as sexual health experts and educators, as well erotic artists and writers lacking a platform.

“We have all been forced to adapt.”

Differing from most other digital platforms, New Sessions is Telnet-based, an admittedly outdated, if not nearly obscure technology. However, a special client program provides access, or if you’re an aficionado of vintage systems like its creators, Hurtle and Ferris, via a computer’s software command line.

In either case, New Sessions’ fascinating adaptability is also unique; its text, whether a story, poem or whatever else, comprises its current issues, changing according to an array of factors.  

RECOMMENDED READ: Tariffs and Sextech Costs—Oh My!

404Media, for instance, notes, “Natasja Kisstemaker’s ‘Sanctuary’ changes with every viewing, based on the current weather. ‘Signature,’ by Kaia Peacock, updates every time you press a key, slowly revealing more of the piece when you type a letter contained in the text—like a word puzzle on Wheel of Fortune.”

Politically, New Sessions is out and proud, as its Adaptations issue boldly pronounced: “In the face of right-wing politics, climate change, a forever pandemic, and the ever-present hunger of imperialist capitalism, we have all been forced to adapt.”

“We can take and claim for our own”

Speaking to 404Media, Hurtle, who’s also an artist and software engineer, explained the origins of New Sessions as a place “Where you don’t necessarily feel like you have to spend a ton of time with it. I want people to come back to it because they’re interested in the stories in the same way you’d come back to a book—not to get your streak on Duolingo.”

For someone who clearly enjoys dabbling in decades-old technology, Hurtle doesn’t want to look back at the so-called good old days with rose-colored … not so much spectacles as blinders, saying, “You have to avoid the temptation to nostalgize, because that’s really dangerous and it just turns you into a conservative boomer.”

Rather, New Sessions should be an alternative resource for the queer community, “Imagine what aspects of this we can take and claim for our own. We can use it as a window to understand what’s broken about the current state of the Internet. You just can’t retreat to it.”

Far, Far, below the radar

The New Sessions approach could be useful to creators and consumers of adult materials, another group too often in the crosshairs of social conservatives..

Case in point, Newsweek reported this social media post from Republican Utah Senator Mike Lee—one of adult entertainment’s most vehement adversaries—regarding the new Federal anti-pornography law he’s attempting to ram through, “Obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. But hazy, unenforceable definitions have allowed pornography companies to infect our society, peddle smut to children, and do business across state lines unimpeded.”

Putting aside the obvious won’t somebody think of the children? appealing to emotional logical fallacy, many mental health professionals agree with Psychology Today that:

Over recent years, numerous studies have begun to suggest that there is more to the story than just porn. Instead, we’ve had growing hints that the conflicts and struggles over porn use have more to do with morality and religion, rather than pornography itself.

Not that science has ever stopped conservative hysteria. Still, thanks to out-of-the-box thinkers like Hurtle and Ferris, crucial sexual and reproductive health information, not to mention people who merely like to create or enjoy erotic media, may find safety where others can’t imagine where to look: in the nearly-lost, waiting to be rediscovered, depths of the Internet.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

The post Never Surrender, Dorthy: LGBTQ2+ Zine Uses Old Tech to Bypass New Intolerances appeared first on Future of Sex.

Promoting LGBTQIA+ empowerment by addressing bias, breaking stereotypes in machine learning systems

AI drag queen bots who chat with patients about sexual health are simply not enough for LGBTQIA+ people and communities, though they’re a wonderful and witty step toward providing more effective, individualized services. 

While Glitter Byte, reigning bot queen of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, made media waves with her debut, less flamboyant projects advocate for and steadily advance the queering of artificial intelligence.

Some of the goals are to diminish algorithmic biases, promote inclusion, foster acceptance, and directly serve the needs of people who are marginalized for their sexual orientations and gender identities. Let’s look at a few of these initiatives.

Algorithmic fairness and unobserved characteristics

Recognition and representation are crucial to any AI product or service that aims to serve those who are marginalized. But often AI are developed, trained, and programmed without much attentiveness to the complex needs of LGBTQIA+ people.

Researchers from DeepMind are concerned, writing, “given the historical oppression and contemporary challenges faced by queer communities, there is a substantial risk that artificial intelligence (AI) systems will be designed and deployed unfairly for queer individuals.”

And though developers make efforts to minimize discrimination, they usually focus on characteristics that can be easily observed, such as gender and race. Gender identity and sexual orientation are often less obvious and so these characteristics are often missing or may not be considered measurable

The researchers add, “there is a substantial risk that artificial intelligence (AI) systems will be designed and deployed unfairly for queer individuals. Compounding this risk, sensitive information for queer people is usually not available to those developing AI systems, rendering the resulting unfairness unmeasurable from the perspective of standard group fairness metrics.” 

In other words, these fundamental flaws in algorithmic fairness efforts must be addressed in order to be any good at all. 

Simulations stimulate support

Other researchers and developers have simply forged ahead and created projects and studies that may have immediate practical uses, such as this MIT simulation study. 

“AI has always been queer. Computing has always been queer,” Daniel Pillis, MFA, asserted during an interview for MIT News. Pillis works with MIT’s Tangible Media group and is the co-creator of an online system that combines virtual characters with dialog created by a large language model (LLM) “to create complex social interaction simulations.” The system is called “AI Comes Out of the Closet.” 

The system was a collaboration with Pat Pataranutaporn, Ph.D., co-director of MIT’s Advancing Human-AI Interaction Initiative (AHA!). Both researchers were graduate students when they developed the system as an online study “to assess the simulator’s impact on fostering empathy, understanding, and advocacy skills toward LGBTQIA+ issues.”

MIT News reports, “these simulations allow users to experiment with and refine their approach to LGBTQIA+ advocacy in a safe and controlled environment.” It’s hoped that such a simulation could provide inclusion training in workplaces and classrooms. The simulation might also boost advocacy efforts.

And such a system could also empower mental health workers in providing more effective support for LGBTQIA+ clients. 

Sexual and mental health bots

In a TechXplore article, a team of researchers from Harvard, U.C. Irvine, Emory University and Vanderbilt University found large language models (LLM) can indeed offer fast mental health support—on demand—but they are not well versed in the specific challenges LGBTQIA+ people face.

According to their study of eighteen LGBTQ people and thirteen non-LGBTQ people, the bots provided immediate attention and a safe space for exploration and expression but their boilerplate responses were inadequate for the complexities of difficulties faced by queer users. 

The researchers concluded, “Although fine-tuning LLMs to address LGBTQ+ needs can be a step in the right direction, it isn’t the panacea. The deeper issue is entrenched in societal discrimination.” They suggest looking “beyond mere technical refinements” in AI design and deployment.

In other words, mental and sexual health providers should not rely strictly on bots to deliver assistance, though they can be useful complements or features of other services.

Generative AI often perpetuates stereotypes

Many generative AI programs tend to produce images of purple-haired, white youth. Earlier this year, Reece Rogers, a writer for Wired, used Midjourney and got, “Lesbian women are shown with nose rings and stern expressions. Gay men are all fashionable dressers with killer abs. Basic images of trans women are hypersexualized, with lingerie outfits and cleavage-focused camera angles.”

I tried some prompts with Ideogram and had somewhat better results, though most of the people were still white. The stereotypes persisted somewhat, but were…quieter. Pastel colored hair was evident, but minimal. 

I prompted “two gay men in a city street, looking happy” (the results gave me two men who obviously shopped for clothing together). 

As the image above shows, I tried prompts for “two nonbinary people” (one photo showed two people of color, finally), “two transgender people” (happily the results were not sexualized), and “two transgender people with two lesbians” (all of them happy in a city street).

As Rogers points out in Wired, “there is a divergence between the queer people interested in artificial intelligence and how the same group of people is represented by the tools their industry is building.” In other words, there is more work to be done.

Activism and community building

Queer in AI is affiliated with the nonprofit group, oStem (Out in STEM), which is dedicated to pushing back against AI harm and promoting community discussions, research, and more. The organization’s resource page also contains links to affinity groups.

In the Queer in AI blog, Arjun Subramonian writes, “if AI is not designed with queer harms in mind, it only stands to reproduce them, posing risks to queer communities.” The blog post contains a well organized account of the negative impact of AI on queer people and communities and examines solutions. 

We all want a vibrant future, free of discrimination

Though LGBTQIA+ people and communities are not the only ones to experience harmful biases and erasures from AI products, services, and algorithms, there are distinct and complex needs that must be addressed by this technology as it advances. 

There are so many potentially valuable and useful aspects to artificial intelligence that could be used to advantage by marginalized people and groups. I have a hope that the steady, quiet work of progressive researchers, designers, and developers will move us steadily toward an inclusive and collaborative AI-Human future, even as the next few years threaten to overwhelm advances in human rights in many countries of the world. 

Images by A.R. Marsh using Ideogram.ai.

The post Somewhere Over the AI Rainbow: The Promise of Queer-Inclusive Sexual Health Tech appeared first on Future of Sex.

Hoping for the best—while still considering the worst

Presenting the newest in our long-running Future of Sex Expert Series; for this installment, we invited a world-renowned author and a highly respected activist to give their opinions on the question: “What might the queer community look like in 2035?”

Felice Picano—Whose Classic Memoir, Ambidextrous, Is Back In Print

What I see is Millennials and other young people who will be older people in 2035 interacting about 90% of their time with the phone screens. They don’t see other people, except as annoyances to their screen images. 

They don’t see their surroundings as anything even as real as landscape, merely a bunch of steps to walk through while on their screens. I’m not sure how they even perceive other people close up—if at all. 

Therefore there won’t be dating, won’t be romance, won’t be sex, won’t be marriage, won’t be families with children—they all interfere with screen time.

That being so, my prediction is that Sex in 2035 will be pretty much as it has always been with those above a certain age. And with those below that line it will be entirely electronic—screen to screen.

That being the case, the recently predicted population peak will be reached around 2090 and little by little human beings will disappear from the earth.

JD Terrapin—Mentor, Peer, Parent, And Hope Sharer

I look at my body, a shell, an encasement of soul. The year 2035 and my age is half a century. The war on gender and expression has peaked and made advancements such as the first trans woman having a live birth just a few years before seem like wistful dreams. 

The men were enraged when a person assumed female at birth won the Olympics as a gentleman wrestler. Where in all these miracles did we forget to advance the social realms? 

A man is a man but only if he can prove it? A woman is a woman only if she gives up her autonomy by virtue of birthing anatomy?  

It’s 2035 and there is still no room for them like me.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

The post Experts Ponder What LGBTQ2+ Life Might Be Like Ten Years Hence appeared first on Future of Sex.