Today, we talk about services like AOL or CompuServe or Prodigy as “the internet,” but these were basically souped-up BBSs. You were dialing into a proprietary system that was fully controlled by the company, which meant the company had an incentive to maintain control over its content. AOL was trying to figure out how to win the beating heart of the American market that is the family, which at the time was hearing everywhere about this new thing—“the web,” “the internet,” “the information superhighway”—that you needed for success. AOL was designed for people who didn’t understand any of that. Its slogan was, “So easy to use, no wonder it’s number one.”
As this is happening, you also see trans folks connecting. The AOL approach to dealing with the threat these users posed was to ban the terms transsexual and transvestite on the grounds that the very words represented an adult concept. (Transgender wasn’t on their radar yet.) This led to a long back and forth between trans folks and AOL. Every step of the way, users were kind of asking the system, “Can you give us this?” Online community was contingent on the largesse of corporations.
The success of AOL began to shift the demographic makeup of the internet, bringing more kids and more non-technical users online. How did this impact the trans community?
Prior to the mid-1990s, the people in trans community spaces, online and off, were generally in their thirties and forties. It was difficult for youth to get in contact, and the adult trans community was very hesitant to talk to youth. They were afraid of being accused of child endangerment. In the mid-1990s, as the computer shifted from a technical object to a home appliance, it became “the family computer,” and you start to see queer and trans youth reaching out to each other. Suddenly, a trans kid can make their own homepage and use that homepage to find and start emailing with another trans kid.
Email is not like a physical letter that comes in the mailbox that someone else can open. You can have a secret second email account that your parents don’t know about, that you log in to at night when they’re asleep. It gives people a new kind of privacy, and this is sort of the great innovation of the internet, for all trans people, but especially for trans youth, who have even less control over their communication.