Sex, Gender and the Social Self in Post Digital Societies
A special issue of Societies (ISSN 2075-4698).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 2 October 2026 | Viewed by 156
Special Issue Editors
Interests: intersectionality; gender equity; inclusion and belonging; injustice of vulnerable populations; educational justice; social justice
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
While sexuality, gender, and the self have long been mediated through technologies, especially the internet from the 1990s onwards, recent developments in global digital landscapes have generated new possibilities—and social anxieties—concerning how we make, do, find and perform ourselves individually and collectively. Concerns, some alarmist, some grounded in well-researched understandings, abound in the media about phenomena like intimate relationships with AIs [1], the impacts of the expanding “manosphere” [2], TikTok overconsumption trends [3], AI generated art [4], and digital footprints and privacy [5].
Simultaneously, digital spaces can still offer possibility, liberation and creation. The online “fatosophere”, for example, can provide a liberatory space for challenging widespread social fatphobia (Payne et al., 2025). Many LGBTQIA+ discover and create themselves online (Alix, 2020). People experiencing chronic illness and disability can find not only support and resources, but also community, solidarity and agency in online spaces (Gale & Bolzan, 2016). More generally, in post-digital societies the boundaries around identities and realms of life are ever shifting. Online and blended education alter the “traditional” roles of the student and teacher, as well as the spaces of the classroom and campus. “Home” and “work” are no longer clearly divided for those who have historically worked outside the home, as work from home (WFH) possibilities have become available - and available for debate (Gao et al., 2022). Post-digital jobs have generated new economies and concerns: being an influencer is now an aspirational and potentially—although rarely—lucrative career (Shankar et al., 2024), and significant money can be made through positioning oneself as a figurehead (or, less charitably, a grifter) within conservatism and conspiracy movements (Conason, 2024).
The purpose of this Special Issue is to support and encourage the development of cutting-edge research from varied disciplines on how sex, gender, and the self are constructed, performed, changed and challenged in post-digital societies, or societies in which technologies are ubiquitous and cannot be easily separated from “non-digital” life. Expanding and nurturing the (relatively) nascent literature concerning these kinds of complex social phenomena is important for developing insight into how politics, power, and polarisation function in contemporary societies, and for understanding how we can best navigate these shifting domains ethically, with care and solidarity for futures which are more sustainable and just. We welcome articles, conceptual papers, and reviews from all disciplines on the following non-exhaustive list of themes:
Technology-mediated sex, sexuality and gender, including but not limited to, the following:
- Regressive sex, gender and identity politics online, e.g., the manosphere, trad-wife trends.
- Sexual desire and exploitation, e.g., consent in post-digital societies, pornography and changing technologies, AI sexual partners, deep-fakes, paedophilic desires and actions.
- Fantasy vs. “real” life - what’s real and what’s fantasy?
- Post-digital sexual objectification.
- Sex education and young people’s sexual experiences in post-digital societies.
Extended, digital selves - bodies and agency in post-digital societies, including but not limited to:
- Digital footprints and privacy concerns, e.g., medical, financial, police, educational and personal data.
- Measurements and metrics of bodies, identities, and behaviours utilising developing technologies.
- Profiles and the curated self, e.g., the impacts of Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and other social media profiles and presences on self and other understanding and enactment.
- Relationships with algorithms - who’s in control?
- Physical disability and agency in post-digital societies.
Online/digital communities, including but not limited to:
- Marginalised communities online, e.g., the “fatopshere”, LGBTQIA+ communities, disability and chronic illness communities.
- “Deviant” communities, e.g., BDSM communities.
- Toxic communities, e.g., “thinspo” and “skinny-Tok”.
- Conspiricism and conspiracy communities.
- Young people’s digital spaces, e.g., Tumblr, TikTok.
- Cultural identity online.
- Activism in post-digital societies, e.g., BLM, TikTok Boycotts, performative activism, mutual-aid.
AI, including but not limited to:
- The ethics of engaging with AI, e.g., intimate relationships, sexual engagement with child AI avatars, sexual engagement with unwilling/non-consenting AI avatars.
- Romantic relationships with AI, e.g., what is a “real” relationship, AI relationships for those usually excluded from discriminatory dating markets.
- Where does the “human” end and the AI begin? Who does AI generated or assisted writing or art belong to?
- AI theft and the AI “slop” economy.
- AI and digitally mediated therapy.
Education, work and economies in post digital societies, including but not limited to:
- Online, blended and technology-mediated formal education.
- Teacher and student identities.
- Informal education/ democratising education/ activism education, e.g., YouTube video essays, podcasts.
- WFH and intersections with gender and domestic labour.
- AI and algorithms in workplace decision making.
- Influencers and grifters: selling fantasy selves and ideologies to the highest bidder.
Other: Authors are also encouraged to submit writing on topics other than those listed above, so long as their submission relates to the broad theme of sex, gender, and the self in post-digital societies.
Contributions should follow one of the three categories of papers (article, conceptual paper or review) of the journal and address the topic of the Special Issue.
Abstract Submission Deadline: 11:59 PM (AEDST) 27 February 2026.
Full Paper Submission Deadline: 11:59 (AEST) 2 October 2026.
Dr. Cate Thomas
Dr. Emma Atherton
Guest Editors
References:
Alix, F. A. (2020). LGBTQ Youth and technology: Finding their way through online communities. Intersect: The Stanford Journal of Science, Technology, and Society, 14(2).
Conason, J. (2024). The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism. St. Martin’s Press.
Gale, F., & Bolzan, N. (2016). Online ghettoes, perils or supernannies? Australian young people with chronic illness and disability challenge some moral panics about young people online. Disability & Society, 31(8), 1112–1126.
Gao, J., Kenyon, B., Choi, Y., Echavarria, I., Qiu, L., & Leichter, H. J. (2022). Blurred Boundaries: An Examination of Learning and Working in the Home during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 24(2), 31–49.
Payne, B. H., Taylor, J., Spiel, K., & Fiesler, C. (2025). Building Solidarity Amid Hostility: Experiences of Fat People in Online Communities. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 9(1), 1–27.
Shankar, S., Srinidhi, S., Gupta, D., & Madhavan, S. (2024, August). Money, Fame, or Something Embedded Within—Factors Influencing an Individual’s Choice to Identify as an Instagram Influencer. In International Conference on ICT for Sustainable Development (pp. 353–360). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.
[4] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-23/calls-to-protect-indigenous-intellectual-property-from-ai-cultur/105680182
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/jul/18/personality-privacy-digital-selves
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Keywords
- post digital
- online
- AI
- identity
- sex
- gender
- sexuality
- social media
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