Platformed Publics and Fugitive Sexualities: Queer Exhibitionism's Liminal Architectures of Privacy

• In Event: Platformed Belonging: Identity, Visibility, and Exclusion in Digital Spaces

Abstract

In 2022, Emmy-nominated New York City meteorologist Erick Adame was fired after an anonymous individual sent his nude images to his employer and family. For over a decade, Adame participated in online exhibitionist communities, sharing sexual content not for profit but for connection and pleasure. Like many queer men who seek sexual community online, he relied on digital platforms that promise visibility, intimacy, and belonging. Yet his story illustrates a central tension of platformed life: digital spaces are not neutral channels for expression but governed environments whose design, moderation systems, and economic incentives shape the boundaries of privacy and visibility. Drawing on 28 interviews with queer men participating in online communities of the exposure fetish, this paper examines how platform governance structures the possibilities of sexual community. These men share sexual content often alongside personally identifiable information, such as their full names, contact information, or even state-issued identification documents for pleasure. Content moderation policies, payment processor restrictions, and terms-of-service enforcement routinely displace these sexual communities, forcing them to migrate across platforms in search of new temporary refuge. In response, participants construct liminal forms of privacy within platform infrastructures: they establish community rules, practice collective self-policing, strategically manage visibility, and segment audiences. When platform governance fails to protect them from harassment or nonconsensual exposure, many turn to an unlikely legal resource—the DMCA notice-and-takedown regime—to reclaim control over intimate images. The resulting portrait is one of online sexual community marked by precarity. Queer exhibitionists do not simply express themselves online; they navigate and negotiate privately governed digital architectures that simultaneously enable and constrain intimacy. By foregrounding the interaction between sexual community and platform governance, this paper challenges celebratory narratives of the internet’s democratizing potential and exposes the limited remedies available for everyday privacy violations in corporate-controlled public spheres.

Author

• Evan Jiancheng Zhao, Northwestern University