The use of the internet alters the ways public and private spheres are experienced. Few areas of as common and necessary to human existence have been as strictly relegated to the private sphere as sexuality. Despite this sequestration, or because of it, sexual content and conversation flourishes online. In this presentation I explore the ways in which chatroom participants exploit the unique environment of the internet, and this particular chat forum, in their sexual conversations. Participants manipulate the privacy settings in accordance to the types of conversation, thereby creating new norms and social expectations while maintaining others. This argument holds that through their online conversations and accessing of content, internet users challenge offline social norms and mores that contribute to the theoretical distinctions often made in respect to public and private spaces thereby affecting both their individual lives and society.

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