Finding normal : sex, love, and taboo in our hyperconnected world

Finding normal Sex, love, and taboo in our hyperconnected world

Alexa Tsoulis-Reay

Book - 2022

"Alexa Tsoulis-Reay's Finding Normal is an author's up close tour of people who are using the Internet to challenge the boundaries of what's taboo and what it means to be normal. Based on a popular series of candid interviews conducted for New York magazine's human science column-"What It's Like"-Finding Normal explores the ways that real people are using the Internet to find community, forge connections, and create identity in ways that challenge a variety of accepted sexual norms. Ranging from the atypical to the shocking, each story in Finding Normal intimately immerses the reader in the world of a person who is grappling with a unique set of circumstances relating to sexuality. Finding Normal at o...nce celebrates the power of our current media moment for helping people rewrite the script for their lives and offers a warning about the danger of that seemingly limitless freedom to find yourself. Finding Normal shows the enduring power of the search for belonging -- for humans and society. Like happiness or life purpose, finding normal is perhaps the definitive human struggle"--

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Subjects
Sex.
Sex customs.
Social norms.
Computer sex > Social aspects.
Online identities.
Online social networks.
Published
New York : St. Martin's Press 2022.
Language
English
Main Author
Alexa Tsoulis-Reay (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xxiii, 280 pages ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781250140937
  • Introduction
  • Part I. Becoming Normal
  • 1. Ken, Russ, Emily, and Kathy
  • 2. Julia and Eileen, Andrew and Jane
  • 3. Maddy
  • Part II. Transgressing Normal
  • 4. Shelly
  • 5. Paul
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Tsoulis-Reay expands on her New York magazine column "What It's Like" in her debut, a candid study of individuals who "discover themselves" and their sexualities primarily online. The work is divided into two parts: the first focuses on how the internet enables those who might be closeted about their desires to find community. Among the subjects are a polyamorous community in Pennsylvania, a U.K. couple with a three-decade age gap (and a YouTube channel about their experience), and stories of individuals accepting their asexuality (one touching account recounts a man's first online search of the term in 2000, back when Google was new). The second part includes the column's "most viral and controversial" interviews and digs into "illegal and taboo behavior" such as incest and issues of consent; readers are warned that discussions in this half may be disturbing (and include sexual assault). Tsoulis-Reay writes about reactions to her most controversial interviews, and is up-front and searching about her own reservations as she mines her moral role in sharing such stories. It adds up to a sharp take on society's relationship to the concept of "normal," and the bargaining people take part in to appear so. The result is courageous, curious, and vivid. (Jan.)

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