The Digital Closet

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An exploration of how heteronormative bias is deeply embedded in the internet, hidden in algorithms, keywords, content moderation, and more. A Next Big Idea Club nominee. In this provocative work, Alexander Monea argues that the internet has become predominantly straight by suppressing non-heteronormative content, forcing LGBTQIA+ material into narrow channels and rendering it invisible through opaque algorithms and content moderation. He discusses how the U.S. thirty-year “war on porn” has led to the over-regulation of sexual content, resulting in the censorship of non-pornographic material, including sex education and LGBTQ+ activism. Monea examines the cultural, technological, and political factors that confine LGBTQ+ content, highlighting the unlikely alliances among anti-porn activists from the alt-right, Christian conservatives, and anti-porn feminists. He investigates the roles of coders and moderators who reinforce heteronormativity and the collateral damage from the war on porn, which includes the censorship of vital LGBTQIA+ resources and educational materials. He also critiques the internet architectures that normalize heteronormativity in pornography, revealing that mainstream porn is limited to repetitive heteronormative tropes. This bias is mirrored in the algorithms that filter content, increasingly excluding LGBTQIA+ material. Monea suggests that everyone suffers from this enforced heteronormativity, advo