Sexuality is an essential element of
intimate human relationships in adults
(Department of Health 2001). However,
sexuality has been and is still suppressed,
ignored, and shamed as well as exaggerated
and exploited in most human societies. This
is especially true for sexuality on the
internet as it allows for anonymity and with
it freedom from preconceptions, but also
freedom from or lack of responsibility and
personal engagement (Cooper 2002). The
sex-and-relationships.com project is
designed to utilize the strengths of the
internet, which are to offer global,
instantaneous and anonymous access to online
information to provide advice and
counseling on psychosexual issues and
relationships online.
The project sex-and-relationships.com has
been running for 1 year. It is modeled on
an older example of a men's sexual health
web site, which has been running very
successfully for more than 6 years. The
sex-and-relationships.com project is
designed as a partnership between a male and
a female co-author and business partners.
We bring a diverse set of skills into this
partnership: My male partner, Luke, has a
lot of experience in the field of men's
psychosexual and medical issues through
running a men's sexual health web site, as
well as knowing about web design and
optimizing search engines. As the female
partner, I bring my skills as a cross
cultural psychotherapist and as a woman
along, as well as knowledge about
psychosexual difficulties and in-depth
psychotherapy. We are not in an intimate
relationship together, but I am aware of the
parallels of working in this way with a male
partner to a sexual relationship and I hope
that the development and issues in our
relationship will be part of the development
of the project and my research.
Our aim is to write high quality
information, which we will present along
side each other in two columns to compare
and contrast a male and a female point of
view when appropriate.
The project is also designed to be
self-financing. In my experience it is
possible to attract funding for new and
innovative services, but all to often
funding dries up after some time as funding
bodies get interested in new projects rather
than continuing to support very good
established services. Because of this,
projects tend to spend an enormous amount of
time applying for funding rather than
concentrating on their main tasks. To
avoid these issues our project is designed
to create enough revenue to be independent
of outside funding. Revenue is created by
putting adverts for related products on the
web site. Although this strategy will
hopefully make the project financially
independent it will open up other, mostly
ethical issues, such as what products to
advertise or how 'aggressively' one
advertises.
My desire for the PhD is to
optimize the
service we provide via the web site and to
investigate and document its development.
Additionally, I hope to open a space for
systematic critical reflection on
psychosexual issues, the needs of clients in
this field and service provision online in
general with an opportunity for other
opinions and voices to join me.
Provide high quality and easily
accessible information on sexuality,
sexual difficulties and relationship
issues for adults on the internet in form
of a comprehensive web site.
Take into consideration the different
perspectives of men, women and transgender
as well as different relationship
constellations such as hetero or
homosexual and promote respect and
equality.
Be commercially viable. Earn the
necessary revenue in an ethical way.
Support vitality and acceptance of
human sexuality in the way the web site
positions itself between a medical
approach to sexuality and an exploitative
pornographic approach.
Be culturally sensitive and accessible
to people globally.
Offer an integrated online
psychosexual counseling facility, which
looks at psychosexual difficulties in an
integrated way.
Promote an ethical approach to
sexuality on the internet.
