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Confessing sex in online student communities 

 

Yasmine Dominguez-Whitehead* 
Wits School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand 
27 St. Andrews Road, Parktown 2193, Johannesburg, South Africa 
Email: Yasmine.Dominguez-Whitehead@wits.ac.za 
 
Kevin A. Whitehead  
School of Human & Community Development, University of the Witwatersrand 
Private Bag 3, Wits 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa 
Email: Kevin.Whitehead@wits.ac.za 

Brett Bowman 
School of Human & Community Development, University of the Witwatersrand 
Private Bag 3, Wits 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa 
Email: Brett.Bowman@wits.ac.za 

 

 

Discourse, Context & Media, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.05.002 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

																																																													
*	Corresponding author.  
	



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Abstract 

In this paper, we examine Facebook “Confessions” sites associated with two large 

universities (one North American and one South African) to investigate the ways in which 

students interactionally negotiate normativity in discussions initiated by confessions relating 

to sex. The research is grounded in a Foucauldian framework that emphasizes the centrality 

of sex and sexuality. Our findings focus on two interrelated aspects of the data. The first 

concerns the features of the initial (anonymous) confessional posts, and the second relates to 

subsequent comments on the initial post. Close examination of initial posts offers insights 

into participants’ orientations to sexual acts, situations and beliefs that are treated as either 

normative or transgressive. Subsequent comments posted by participants reveal ways in 

which the “confessability” of confessions is interactionally ratified or contested. The findings 

thus demonstrate some ways in which normative sexuality is (re)produced, ratified, and 

contested within student online communities. 

 

Keywords: sex, confessions, online communities, normativity, transgressions 

  



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1. Introduction 

University students have increasing access to computers, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other 

forms of online communities (Chen & Peng, 2008; Madge, Meek, Wellens, & Hooley, 2009), 

and it has therefore become relevant to examine the interactions that take place in such 

contexts. Given the centrality of sex and sexuality for the human experience (Hawkes, 1996; 

Rubin, 1984), it is particularly important to examine the ways in which sex is taken up as a 

topic of discussion in these online communities. The university student years are a time when 

many young adults engage in the negotiation, development, and management of orientations 

to sex and sexuality. Previous research has examined sex-related phenomena including sex as 

a characteristic of risky behavior (see, e.g., Lindgren et al., 2009; Smith et al., 2011), the 

practice of casual sex (see, e.g., Grello et al., 2006; Paul and Hayes, 2002) and sexual 

relationships between students and academic staff (see, e.g., Richards et al., 2014; Taylor, 

2011). However, less is known about how students discuss and negotiate matters of sexual 

behavior in naturally occurring interactions, particularly in online communities.  

This paper examines two online student communities in the form of Facebook 

“Confessions” sites associated with two large universities, in order to investigate some ways 

in which students engage in online discussions of sexual behavior. Facebook’s origins are 

grounded in college culture (Goggin, 2014) and the use of Facebook among university 

students continues to be pervasive, making Facebook interactions useful settings for 

examining naturally occurring interactions in which students engage with various issues of 

relevance to them (Stokoe, Benwell, & Attenborough, 2013). More specifically, university-

related “Confessions” sites provide “confessional spaces” where initial posters can 

(anonymously) submit a post revealing any aspect of their actions, lives, experiences, or 

beliefs as students at that university, and other participants can subsequently engage with the 

initial submission by posting their commentary on it and/or by responding to responses 



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produced by others. A close examination of these settings thus allows for the examination of 

how students interactionally engage with and negotiate matters pertaining to sex.  

 

2. Foucault, confession and sexuality 

The present study takes as its point of departure a Foucauldian framework that emphasizes 

the centrality of sex and sexuality in modern society. This framework also emphasizes the 

salience of sex and sexuality as objects of scientific study. Within the Foucauldian tradition, 

sexuality is both an instrument and effect of the rise of the human sciences. In this regard, 

Weeks’ (2014, p. 7) discussion of Foucault’s view on sex is key:  

The fundamental question, as posed by Foucault, is how is it that in Western society since the 

eighteenth century, sexuality has come to be seen not just as a means of biological 

reproduction nor a source of harmless pleasure, but, on the contrary, as the central part of our 

being, the privileged site in which ‘the truth of being’ is to be found.  

Given that sex occupies a prominent position in contemporary society that extends beyond 

reproduction and pleasure, it is important to examine discourses of sex, since they are 

considered centrally defining markers for human subjectivity, identity and selfhood in 

modern life.  

In contrast to the view that sex was silenced during the eighteenth century, Foucault 

argues that there was a gradual accumulation and multiplication of coded sexual discourses 

that referred specifically to both the objects and practices of sexuality. These coded 

discourses gradually acquired re-coded procedures of transmission (Foucault, 1990). 

Although making reference to sex in polite company was met with disapproval, its coding 

and recoding were required in certain spheres of life. Sex as a discursive object came to be 

incessantly produced and reproduced through its study by medicine, psychiatry, and the law. 

The church also played a role in the production and reproduction of sex as a discourse. Sex as 

a discourse was thus multiplied, refined, and elaborated.  



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According to Foucault (1990), the places and ways in which we have come to talk 

about sex, although rooted in the Catholic confessional, with its emphasis on the absolution 

of sin contingent on the routinized declarations of contrition by the confessor, have been 

secularized. Confessional practices involving sex and sexuality in modern life take a variety 

of forms and registers in different spheres, including “justice, medicine, education, family 

relationships, and love relations [and] in the most ordinary affairs of everyday life” (Foucault, 

1990, p. 59). Moreover, new communication technologies have ushered in unprecedented 

possibilities for shifting confessional conventions. In particular, and as our analysis 

demonstrates, Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as Facebook serve as platforms for new 

anonymous communities that can act as confessional relays for talk about sex (Sauter, 2014), 

thereby enabling confessional practices that differ markedly from those described in 

Foucault’s historical reading of religious and medico-legal practices.  

Despite these changes in the potential repertoire, register and technological 

architecture of confessional practises, confessing sex still provides a set of conditions by 

which sexuality can be produced, regulated and contested. That is, confessing about sex 

provides others access to otherwise private, often secret exchanges between self and/or 

others. Each act of confession becomes part of the cumulated range of de facto possibilities 

for human sexuality. It is against or within this confessional repertoire that confessors are 

incited to confess. Every confession thus represents a new possibility against which 

normative sexuality can be redefined, re-asserted and reproduced. The net effect of this is the 

multiplication of discourses on sex and recursive incitements to speak about it (Foucault, 

1990). This incitement to detailed speech about sex gradually formed the modern mechanism 

through which acts of sex were deeply implicated in questions of the self, becoming central to 

the way that individuals understood and defined themselves and others. Thus, through the 

incitement to speak, sexual acts and subjectivity were fused to produce modern human 



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sexuality. As a result, we have inherited a set of definitions of selfhood, subjectivity and 

identity in which sexuality is privileged.  

While Foucault’s genealogical analysis provides an account of the historical 

emergence of discourses of sex and sexuality as a central feature of modern society, thereby 

providing a backdrop to the examination of contemporary confessional practices relating to 

sex, our study contrasts with his approach by examining how his thesis is useful for 

understanding the way that such practices are carried out and responded to in situated 

interactional settings, and thus how these discourses are (re)produced and contested in situ at 

particular moments in time. In addition, the online platform on which the confessions we 

examine are posted differs from the types of confessional authorities Foucault wrote about, 

since the participants are “confessing” to an audience of fellow students rather than to a 

single representative of a religious or medico-legal institution, thus allowing for an 

examination of how online technologies may provide distinctive new settings for the 

production of confessional acts. In light of this, we turn next to a brief discussion of existing 

research examining sexuality in online settings. 

 

3. Sexuality in online communities 

The development of the internet in the latter part of the 20th century led to greater 

accessibility to sexual content and sex related conversations and interactions (Sorbring, 

Hallberg, Bohlin, & Skoog, 2015). Particularly relevant for the purposes of our study are the 

ways in which online communities have provided a space for young people to engage in 

discussions about sex and explore emerging sexuality (Subrahmanyam, Greenfield, & Tynes, 

2004). They provide a platform for adult-to-adult and adult-to-child sexual interactions 

(Bergen et al., 2015), discussions pertaining to female sexual problems (Hucker & McCabe, 

2015) and interactions relating to sexual health (Mustanski, Greene, Ryan, & Whitton, 2015). 



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Young adults, and university students in particular, increasingly utilize online networking 

sites such as Facebook as platforms to engage in sex related discussions, with approximately 

a quarter of young adults including sexual references on their profiles (Moreno, Parks, 

Zimmerman, Brito, & Christakis, 2009). Facebook can also be used to engage in voyeurism 

(Martínez-Alemán & Wartman, 2009) and to produce and resist normative gender and 

sexuality (De Ridder & Bauwel, 2013).  

Research examining online settings has also suggested that users’ ability to post 

anonymously may facilitate the construction of identities and production of actions that may 

be more difficult for participants to perform in face-to-face or non-anonymous settings (see, 

e.g., Christopherson, 2007), including providing sites for the production of sexual confessions 

that may otherwise remain hidden or private (Schoenebeck, 2013). Consistent with this 

suggestion, Pitcher’s (2016) study of students’ posts to a social networking mobile 

application identifies sexual confessions as a prominent feature of the content of these posts, 

and describes a range of confessions of sexual practices and desires included in the posts, 

which together (and following a similar Foucauldian framework to our own) serve to produce 

normative discourses and subjectivities with respect to sex and sexuality. Pitcher’s (2016) 

study, however, focuses explicitly on the content of confessional posts, in contrast to our 

focus on both the content of the posts and the social practices through which such posts are 

produced and responded to. Thus, our study offers what is to our knowledge the first 

available fine-grained examination of the ways in which participants collaboratively produce, 

ratify and contest sexual confessions in online settings. 

 

4. Method and data 

Two university-related Facebook “Confessions” sites were selected for the study—one based 

in North America and the other in South Africa. According to the descriptions provided on 



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the sites, they intend to provide students of the university with which they are associated 

opportunities to anonymously post confessions, with the North American site being described 

as a space where students can “spill all [their] confessions anonymously” and the South 

African site described as a “place for the students to share in [sic] their experiences. The page 

relies heavily on students sending in their confessions.” The anonymity of the posts submitted 

to the sites is ensured by the use of a separate (non-Facebook-based) site to which 

participants can anonymously submit their confessions, which are then collected and posted 

to the Facebook site by the site’s administrator.   

The two sites were purposively selected based on them having been in existence long 

enough to have a substantial number of posts, with the North American site having been 

founded in 2012 and the South African site in 2013. Furthermore, the selection of these 

particular sites enabled us to identify phenomena that occurred recurrently in online settings 

associated with universities located on two different continents, thus suggesting the 

transferability of the findings across different national contexts. The data on which our 

analysis is based consisted of a total of 49 sex-related initial posts (25 from the North 

American site and 24 from the South African site) and the comments subsequently made by 

other users. Given the focal interest of this paper, the data set on which it is based only 

included posts (and their corresponding comments) that explicitly took up the topic of sex. 

Additionally, only posts submitted between 2013 and 2015 were included, as a result of 

sample saturation being achieved once the posts from these years had been collected and 

analyzed. 

The data used for our study are freely available to any person with an internet 

connection and a Facebook account. While this does not imply that there are no ethical issues 

involved in using these interactions as research data (see, e.g., Jowett, 2015), our use of the 

interactions without seeking informed consent from all users (which would not be feasible) is 



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consistent with currently available ethical guidelines in this regard (e.g., BPS, 2013). It is 

noteworthy that any potential risk of harm to participants as a result of using the data for 

research purposes is no greater than the potential risks associated with any other use, as a 

result of being publicly available (see, e.g., Kaufman & Whitehead, 2016). In addition to the 

naturally occurring anonymity of the initial posts (as described above) ensuring that the 

identities of these posters are not revealed, we have redacted the pictures and other identifiers 

associated with the anonymous posts in order to anonymize the universities associated with 

the sites we sampled. We have also anonymized all subsequent posters by replacing their first 

names with pseudonyms and redacting their last names and profile pictures. In addition, the 

first names of any other Facebook users “tagged” in posts have been replaced with 

pseudonyms, and their last names and other potential identifying content in the posts have 

been redacted. 

Our analysis follows a discourse analytic approach based on the principles of 

conversation analysis (CA) (see, e.g., Schegloff, 2007a). Although CA was developed 

primarily to examine talk-in-interaction and other embodied conduct, a number of recent 

studies have demonstrated its utility for analyzing text-based online interactions (for a recent 

review, see Paulus et al., [2016]). A centrally important characteristic of CA for the purposes 

of our study is the privileging of participants’ orientations, and attending analytically to only 

the “membership categories” (Sacks1972a; 1972b) that the participants treat as relevant (see, 

e.g., Schegloff, 1997; 2007b). In accordance with this principle, analytic claims are grounded 

in the observable orientations of the participants, rather than being based on the agendas or 

categories analysts may deem to be most significant. In addition to drawing upon qualitative 

analyses of the fine-grained details of talk and texts, a central resource for CA is that any next 

turn in an interactional exchange displays its producer’s understanding of the meaning or 

implications of the prior turn to which it is responding (Schegloff, 2007a), thus providing a 



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built-in means of “checking” analytic claims against the endogenously produced analyses of 

the participants themselves.  

Consistent with this orientation, our analysis focuses on two interrelated aspects of the 

data, the first relating to the participants’ orientations and the stances (Jaffe, 2009; Langlotz 

& Locher, 2012) they display through the observable details of the language used in the 

initial posts, and the second relating to their uptake and further unfolding through the 

interactions, and in the stances displayed, in comments following the initial posts. 

Specifically, by submitting a post for placement on a “Confessions” site designed for a 

particular student community, the initial poster implicitly proposes from the outset that the 

content of the post is “confessable”, and invites other members of the community to evaluate 

it as such. Thus, close examination of the design of these initial sex related posts offers 

insights into participants’ orientations to the kinds of acts, situations and beliefs that are 

treated as either sexually normative or potentially transgressive. It should be noted, however, 

that producing confessions is not in all cases the primary action the language of the initial 

posts is designed to accomplish, with some posts constructed to perform bragging, 

rationalizations, or other related actions. However, in these cases material treated as 

“confessable” is nonetheless introduced in the service of these other actions, and the main 

action(s) being performed still serve to construct normative boundaries with respect to sex 

and sexuality. 

By examining the subsequent comments in the thread, we then consider some ways in 

which other participants ratify or contest the “confessable” character of the sexual content of 

the initial post, thereby revealing areas of consensus and contestation with respect to the 

normative boundaries to which the initial poster was oriented. In examining these features of 

the exchanges we demonstrate both how particular aspects of sex are (re)produced as 

normatively taken-for-granted, as well as how what is taken-for-granted can be resisted or 



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transgressed. Thus, we examine interactional practices in the data with respect to two 

recurrent ways in which the initial posts were responded to, namely by either ratifying or 

contesting their confessability, with the extracts included in the analysis that follows being 

selected to illustrate the range of recurrent features with respect to these practices that were 

observable across the data set. 

 

5. Ratifying confessability 

The ratification of confessability was accomplished by one or more subsequent posters taking 

stances toward the initial post that treated it as having indeed included something worthy of 

confession as a result of constituting a transgression of a social norm. Ratifying responses 

could be produced in two ways, namely by displaying appreciation of the initial post and by 

negative sanctioning. In the following sections we discuss examples of each, while also 

considering the ways in which the initial posts are constructed so as to display the 

confessable nature of their content. 

 

5.1. Displaying appreciation  

Appreciation of initial posts could be displayed in a number of ways, including by praising 

the post, pointing out the exceptionalism of the post, using celebratory language or producing 

(textual) laughter directly linked to the confessable content (cf. Langlotz & Locher, 2012). 

Extract 1 below, from the North American site, is characterized by a sustained orientation on 

the part of the initial poster to the situation described in the post, along with her1 reported 

sexual act in the situation, as transgressive, with the responsive posts including a number of 

displays of appreciation. 

 

 



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Extract 1: 

  

The first evidence of the poster’s orientation to the transgressive nature of her report can be 

seen in the capitalized “I WAS NOT”, produced in contrast to her report that her roommate 

assumed she was asleep, which forcefully treats being awake and in the same room as two 

other people who are having sex as non-normative. The laughter (“lol”) produced 

immediately following this, along with the subsequent explicit description of the situation as 



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“awkward”, serve to further reinforce this stance toward the events being described as 

transgressive. Moreover, her report of trying “to ignore it” offers an additional explicit 

formulation of the nature of being a co-present witness to a sexual act, with the suggestion 

that it would be “more awkward” were her roommate reciprocally aware of her co-presence. 

Also significant in this regard is the use of the adjective “softly” in the description, which 

constructs their sexual act in her presence as designedly surreptitious and intended not to 

wake her, rather than (for example) a deliberate act of sexual exhibitionism performed in full 

knowledge of her status as a witness. 

The poster’s reported decision “to enjoy this”, accompanied by her description of it as 

“LIVE PORN”, serve to (re)frame this decision in terms of an activity (watching 

pornography) that is thereby treated as normative, with the capitalization here adding force to 

her stance in this regard. This act of reframing, however, simultaneously treats the decision 

she reports having made as being transgressive, such that forceful reframing of this sort is 

required in order to claim it to be normative. The tag question (“right?”) following this claim 

invites her audience to align with the claim she has made, while simultaneously downgrading 

the strength of the claim (Heritage & Raymond, 2005). In doing so, she orients to the 

possibility that this claim could be disputed, thereby potentially associating her actions with 

membership in a pathologizing category such as “sexual deviant” or “pervert”. The laughter 

that follows (“hahahah”) providing further evidence for this orientation by virtue of taking a 

non-serious stance toward the claim, and thus implicitly proposing that the stance she has 

taken should be interpreted as humorous rather than genuinely implicating her membership in 

such a category.  

The poster then reports her performance of a reciprocal sexual act of masturbating. 

This act is treated as the culmination of the confessional account, as well as being marked 

through the use of the word “so” at the beginning of the line as the outcome of her reported 



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decision “to enjoy it” (see, Raymond's [2004] analysis of the use of “so” to mark what 

follows as an upshot of what has just been said) – which, as described above, had itself been 

treated as a transgressive decision. Moreover, the final line of the post retrospectively 

reinforces the non-normative nature of the act, with the claim that “it was as if nothing had 

happened” implicitly claiming that in fact something extraordinary had happened. 

A display of appreciation of the post can be seen in Jack’s laughter in the first 

responsive post, with his repetition of the word “awkward” from the original post also 

serving to align with the stance produced by the initial poster. In the following responsive 

post, Kendall offers a further display of appreciation, treating the account as something 

enjoyable enough to be published in a dedicated collection of such stories. It is also 

noteworthy that her description of the story as “saucy” (a word with a meaning along the 

lines of “playfully rude” when applied to sexual matters) also contributes to her alignment 

with the confessable nature of the events described in the initial post. Following several 

intervening posts in which no clear displays of appreciation are produced, Lucia displays 

appreciation for the post by producing laughter (“Lol”) and tagging another user, thereby 

treating the post as humorous and worthy of bringing to the attention of another Facebook 

user. In the final post shown in this extract, Jaime displays extreme appreciation for the initial 

post, treating it as an outstanding confession by awarding it an accolade and positively 

assessing it as “Epic.”  

A similar process of the construction of a confessable act followed by ratification 

through appreciative responses can be seen in Extract 2 below, from the South African site. 

 

 

 

 



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Extract 2: 

  

The initial poster in this case brags to a specifically addressed individual, who he suggests 

“bang[s] a different girl every week”, before claiming that while this individual was 

“chasing” another “victim” he (the poster) “had a session with that girl you left me behind 

with last week at res thinking that just because I am a Christian I won’t bonk her.” The 

contrast here between the addressed individual’s proposed, religiously based, expectations of 

the poster’s behavior and the actual sexual behavior he reports serve to treat the behavior as 

transgressive and therefore confessable, at least for someone of his religious persuasion. The 

laughter following this report further reinforces this stance, while also treating the actions as 

constituting a humorous come-uppance for someone whose own sexual behavior he has 

treated as transgressive earlier in the post by describing the frequency of his sexual 

encounters and using the category “victim” to refer to the woman involved. He then accounts 

for his actions while simultaneously highlighting their transgressive nature by claiming that 

“Even Christian guys have needs”, thereby emphasizing the contrast between the behavior he 

has claimed would be expected of someone of his self-identified religious category and his 



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actual behavior. In ending the post with a claim that he is “off to a prayer meeting” and that 

his God will forgive him, he further reinforces the confessable nature of his actions by 

claiming continued membership in this religious category, despite having treated the category 

as ill-fitted to the behaviour he has claimed to have performed (cf. Sacks’ 1972a; 1972b 

discussion of category-bound actions).  

In the first responding post, Lu-Love produces extreme laughter, “lmao” (“laughing 

my ass off”), thereby showing appreciation for the original post as humorous, before aligning 

with the proposed morally transgressive character (specifically on a religious basis) of the 

actions the original poster has reported by writing “Nkosi thethelela”, an isiZulu expression 

that translates as “God forgive.” The second response, by Themba, more explicitly 

appreciates the initial post, positively evaluating it as “cracking” before delivering a religious 

blessing (“God bless you”) that may be read as either praise for the original poster or as a 

suggestion that he is in need of God’s blessing as a result of his actions. Following a third 

response by Dennis (who does not display appreciation but does continue the religion-themed 

orientations to the relevance of forgiveness seen in the preceding posts), Bangizwe’s response 

treats the initial poster’s confession as extraordinary enough to make one faint, before 

offering a display of praise that further aligns with the religious tone of the thread.  

 Extracts 1 and 2 thus demonstrate how posters design and treat their confessed actions 

as transgressive, and how confessions may be ratified by responding participants expressing 

appreciation for them. In contrast to the positive orientation to the original post seen in 

displays of appreciation such as these, the confessability of the content of the original post 

could also be ratified through responses in which a negative or disaligning stance to the 

original poster was displayed, as illustrated in the following section.  

 

 



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5.2 Negative sanctioning 

This type of response involved displays of disapproval of sexual acts reported by the initial 

poster. The following exchange from the North American site provides an example of this 

type of negative sanctioning in response to the initial poster’s report of performing a “sexual 

favour” in order to get a grade “bumped up.”  

Extract 3: 

 

In this extract, the initial poster expresses indignation at reported negative reactions s/he has 

received on the basis of his/her reported “sexual favor.” In formulating this expression of 

indignation, the poster invokes a norm of having the sole right to decide what to do with 

his/her body, and offers a claim that “It’s not even like I was failing” as a mitigating factor 

with respect to his/her reported actions. The poster thus (unlike those in Extracts 1 and 2) 



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claims his/her reported actions to be within acceptable normative boundaries, while 

simultaneously positioning him/herself in opposition to those who s/he reports have been 

“angry and jealous” when s/he told them about this sexual act. In addition, s/he implies that 

negative reactions such as these may have been (more) justified had s/he been failing the 

class in question. In doing so, s/he orients to the confessability not only of his/her reported 

sexual actions, but also to the stance s/he is taking in the post in defending these actions, 

while at the same time inviting others to align with his/her position in this regard.  

In response, Jeremy expresses disapproval of the reported actions on moral grounds, 

claiming that the original poster’s reported actions constitute “academic dishonesty.” Jeremy 

thus aligns with the sanctioning responses the initial poster has attributed to his/her friends, 

but does so by invoking a general principle of academic (dis)honesty that he claims applies to 

a range of other potential objects that could similarly be exchanged for a better grade. He thus 

treats the initial poster’s reported action as transgressive, but on the basis of what s/he was 

receiving (a better grade) rather than specifically because s/he was using sex to receive it. The 

second response, by Ahmed, acknowledges that the initial poster has autonomy over his/her 

body, but negatively sanctions the sexual actions s/he has reported by noting that s/he has, 

“simply cheated the system”, thereby invoking a similar principle of honesty to that on which 

Jeremy’s sanctioning was based.  

In the following response, Dylan makes use of a meme to suggest that the exchange 

has “escalated quickly”, thereby orienting to the sanctioning that has taken place in the first 

two responses, and the polarized stances that have been taken by those who produced them, 

in contrast to that taken by the initial poster. Following this post, Hootan questions whether 

the act reported in the initial post actually happened, referring to the post as “Fake”, while 

also claiming that “this post is making our school look BAD”, thereby suggesting that sexual 

acts of the sort reported in the original post are morally wrong, such that reporting them 



19 
	

would tarnish an institution’s reputation. The most extreme negative sanctioning in the 

exchange is produced by Samantha, as she contrasts “sexual liberalism and prostitution.” In 

doing so, she implies that, rather than the stance of “sexual liberalism” the original poster has 

ostensibly taken, the poster has actually engaged in “prostitution”, which Samantha treats 

through this contrast as a morally questionable act.  

Although there is contestation over whether the sexual act reported in the original post 

actually occurred, the responses are aligned in their negative sanctioning of the act (or acts of 

this nature more generally), with their collective sanctioning serving to build a consensus 

with respect to the morally transgressive nature of such acts. As Extract 4 demonstrates, 

however, in some cases negative sanctioning of this sort was responded to by other 

participants defending the initial poster against the sanctioning. In this extract from the South 

African site, the initial poster reports having sexual intercourse with his/her cousin, and the 

responses include both negative sanctioning and a defense of the poster. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Extract 4: 

 

The initial post in this case treats the sexual act as transgressive in a number of ways, 

including by rationalizing through an account invoking academic pressures, expressing guilt, 

and asking for advice on how to end the relationship. The poster treats his/her transgression 

as hinging specifically on his/her kinship relationship with the woman s/he reports having a 



21 
	

sexual relationship with (as displayed in the repeated mentions of the kinship category 

“cousin”), thus orienting to the well-known normative injunction against incest.  

A number of sanctioning responses serve to ratify the claimed transgression of the 

reported sexual act, seizing upon the kinship category “cousin” in highlighting the status of 

the act as incest. For example, Sizanani asks, “How the fuck could u smash ur own cousin 

dawg”, while Alanna follows shortly thereafter by asking, “Your cousin? The fuck is wrong 

with you??” Other sanctioning responses treat the reported actions as violating religious 

doctrines, with Dino and Thebe producing similar suggestions that the protagonists “need 

Jesus”, and Thebe invoking a racialized basis for treating the actions as transgressive (cf. 

Whitehead, 2012). Still others treat the actions as transgressive without stating an explicit 

basis for this treatment, as seen in Regina’s “Yall r sick” and Mthunzi’s “Sies sani” (an 

expression that translates as “gross sonny”). 

However, moral-religious discourses were also used in this exchange to defend the 

initial poster, as seen in the final response shown in the extract. By beginning this post with 

the word “Wincest” (an apparent concatenation of “win” and “incest”), Cameron treats the 

act reported in the initial post as one of incest, while reframing the term in a positive way, in 

contrast to the condemnation produced by previous posters. He then invokes a principle of 

liberalism to explicitly defend the initial poster’s actions, before using a Biblical quote to 

admonish those who he suggests have acted unjustifiably judgmentally. Thus, although this 

post serves to defend the initial poster, it nonetheless recognizes the normative bases on 

which the behavior reported in the initial post has been condemned. 

 

6. Contesting confessability 

In contrast to the practices discussed in the previous sections through which the contents of 

initial post could be ratified as transgressive and thus confessable, on some occasions 



22 
	

confessability was challenged or contested. In the following sections, we consider two ways 

in which confessions were contested, namely by questioning the initial post and by producing 

comments that are peripheral to the sexual confession. 

 

6.1 Questioning the initial post 

These responses involved explicit challenges to the initial poster’s implicit claim of the 

confessable act or stance represented in the post. An example of this is shown in Extract 5 

from the South African site.  

Extract 5:  

 

In this extract, the initial poster treats both his/her regular use of marijuana and his/her 

membership in the category “virgin” as confessable, but in response a number of participants 

challenge their status as such by questioning why the anonymous poster has posted this 

content in the first place. In response, Xolani asks, “And you are telling us this, 

because???????? Don't waste our time with shit wena. Nxa” (“wena” means “you” in isiZulu, 

and “nxa”, when used in this way, is an expression of irritation). Karly’s response exhibits a 



23 
	

tone reminiscent of a teacher addressing a student who has stood up and delivered an 

irrelevant contribution, as she produces (apparently sarcastic) thanks before instructing the 

poster to “sit down.” Similarly dismissive responses are produced by Thembi, who asks, 

“Your point is?”; Charity, who produces laughter (“Lol”) before asking a question that is 

difficult to make sense of, but which seems to be asking what the initial poster is expecting 

should happen now; and Amelia, who posts, “So?” These participants thus treat the content of 

the initial post as unremarkable and an unworthy contribution to the site, thereby treating 

being a virgin (along with the reported drug use) as something that does not transgress 

normative boundaries and therefore as something that is not worthy of confessing. It is 

noteworthy that responses from Wendy and Pete include explicit insults directed at the initial 

poster. While these participants do not specify the basis for their animosity, their comments 

are consistent with other participants’ treatment of the initial post as an inadequate, non-

confessable contribution to the site. 

Another example of an initial anonymous post being questioned is shown in Extract 6 

below, from the North American site.  

Extract 6: 

 

The initial poster’s reference to a “crush” in this extract implies that the person referred to 

does not know that s/he is an object of the poster’s desire, with the poster’s expression of 

his/her desire to have “good sex” with this person being a possible basis for the confessability 



24 
	

of the content of the post. However, by concluding the post with the question, “Is that really 

too much to ask for?”, the  poster treats what s/he desires as modest or unremarkable, and 

thereby implicitly complains about not being in a position to receive it, which may be a subtle 

way of proposing that the desire for something normative is, somewhat paradoxically, 

transgressive or confessable.  

The first response to the post, by Tamara, is a terse “No way” that appears to be 

sarcastically orienting to the unremarkable character of what the initial poster has confessed. 

Her use of a period at the end of this comment may be a way of textually conveying a flat 

tone, in contrast to the way in which an exclamation point would intensify the comment and 

thereby treat the initial post as significant or praiseworthy (cf. Langlotz & Locher, 2012). 

While this response only indirectly questions the confessability of the initial post, the second 

response by Cisco explicitly questions why it has been posted on the site. Cisco thus treats 

the initial post as unnecessary because there are no normative barriers to achieving the desires 

described therein, with the use of quotation marks around the word “confession” serving to 

problematize the word, thereby displaying a skeptical stance as to the legitimate 

confessability of the initial post.  

 

6.2 Producing peripheral comments 

Participants also challenged what counts as a confession by producing comments not relating 

to the confessed sexual act or situation itself, but instead relating to peripheral aspects of the 

initial post. In other words, responding participants in these cases implicitly resist or dismiss 

the confession by focusing on parts of the post not produced as integral features of its 

confessable sex-related character. An example of this is shown in Extract 7, from the North 

American site. 

 



25 
	

Extract 7: 

 

In this extract, the initial poster treats sleeping with “the same girl” that three other known-in-

common people have slept with as a transgressive and confessable act. This stance is explicit 

in the poster’s formulations of successive additional details of the events as “The worst 

thing…” and “Even worst then that…” He thus treats the sharing of a sexual partner as a 

negative or transgressive act, with this being worsened by his position in the order of sexual 

encounters, his failure to use a condom, and the sexual partner’s relationship status.  

While a number of responding participants (including Karen, Dennis, Julius, Abigail 

and Dakota) comment on various aspects of this sexual confession (cf. the analyses of 

Extracts 1-4 above), others pursue elements of the initial post that have not been treated as 

integral parts of the confession. This can be seen in Alberto’s response, which simply 



26 
	

reproduces the name of the video game mentioned by the initial poster. Alberto’s 

capitalization of the acronym “FIFA”, may be designed as a correction of the initial poster’s 

lack of capitalization, or his response may simply be a way of commenting on the 

significance of this being the game the initial poster was reportedly playing. In either case, 

the comment resists the confessability in the initial post by treating the name of the video 

game as its only noteworthy element. Similarly, Holly dis-attends to the sexual content of the 

initial post and instead comments on the grammatical incorrectness of the poster’s successive 

“The worst thing…” and “Even worst…” formulations, thereby treating the post’s solecism 

as more noteworthy than its proposed sexual transgression. Leonardo also comments on the 

video game, as his apparent response to Alberto’s comment (using the Anglicized contraction 

of his name, “Albert”) provides further evidence that Alberto’s comment was designed to 

identify the video game as the noteworthy feature of the initial post. Similarly, Fred’s 

comment also focuses on the video game by suggesting that the initial poster should have 

played a different game.  

Significantly, two of the posts that do mention the sexual content of the post use 

categories that refer to males who have had a sexual relationship with the same partner, 

namely “Weiner cousins” (in Julius’ post) and “Eskimo bros” (in Dakota’s post). These posts 

(particularly in light of the availability of two such categories that can be used to refer to the 

same thing) may further demonstrate that, rather than constituting sexual transgressions, the 

actions described in the initial post can be viewed as a commonplace and established feature 

of contemporary sex culture.  

 A final extract, from the South African site, provides a further illustration of the way 

confessions can be contested by commenting on peripheral aspects of the post, as a number of 

responding participants take up the initial poster’s apparent mis-spelling of “couch”’ rather 

than commenting on the sexual act reported in the post. 



27 
	

Extract 8: 

 

In this case, the initial poster treats as confessable having sex with one person while another 

person, whom he is romantically interested, watches (cf. the treatment in Extract 1 of having 

sex in the presence of others). He orients to having transgressed a norm of romantic and/or 

sexual relationships (“i think i fuckd up”) and requests advice (“what the fuck do i do”). 

Gwede’s response takes up this request for advice, but the advice offered takes up the initial 

poster’s use of the word “cough” rather than the sex-related problem identified, as he 

suggests the poster could “get some Cough cyrup”, with Ali in turn responding to Gwede’s 

comment by correcting his mis-spelling of “syrup.” In a separate response to the original 

post, Ali also questions the word “cough”, and Thobeka responds to Ali with laughter 



28 
	

followed by a repetition of the same formulation produced by the initial poster. Sipho adds a 

further response to Ali, emphasizing (through repetition and capitalization) the word 

“cough”, in contrast to Ali’s treatment of it as nonsensical or a possible error, and Thuto 

produces appreciative laughter following Sipho’s post. In another response, Megan produces 

a modified version of the initial post’s “watchin from the cough”, replacing cough with 

“umkhuhlane”, which is isiZulu for “influenza”, or perhaps in this context translatable as 

“cough.” Participants thus collaboratively focus on the initial poster’s use of the word 

“cough” and dis-attend to the confessable sexual features of the post, thereby tacitly 

dismissing the salience of the sexual content.  

In the first comment in which the sexual content of the initial post is taken up, it is 

explicitly treated as transgressive, as Colleen negatively sanctions people (presumably 

including the initial poster) who think they are “normal intellectuals’, claiming that they 

should instead (based on “these confessions”) be categorized as “weirdos n retarded.” She 

then offers an even more specific basis for this assessment by questioning how the original 

poster could “have sex while pple r watching!” before negatively evaluating this as 

“disgusting!” thereby explicitly treating these particular actions as category-bound to the 

negative categories she has introduced. This response demonstrates that the sexual material in 

the initial post could be treated as transgressive, and thus that the preceding posts could be 

read as specifically dis-attending to the potentially confessable content of the post in order to 

make light of the poster’s mis-spelling of “couch.” In response to the stance taken by 

Colleen, however, James produces laughter and suggests that “its actually normal”, thereby 

contesting Colleen’s claims regarding the transgressive nature of having sex while others 

watch, after which Colleen further contests this claim and again negatively evaluates these 

actions as “just plain barbaric!” This exchange more explicitly demonstrates the 



29 
	

contestability of the confession in the initial post that was implicitly produced through 

participants’ previous responses to it.  

 

7. Discussion and conclusions 

Our analysis has focused on two interrelated features of the exchanges in the Facebook 

“Confessions” sites examined, namely the ways in which initial posts on the sites display 

stances with respect what is confessable (and thus transgressive of normative boundaries of 

sexuality), and the ways in which subsequent comments on the initial post ratified or 

challenged its proposed confessable content. Our findings advance contemporary 

understandings of the use of confessional practices in two interrelated ways. The first 

involves the degree to which our results surface both the content and the form of confessional 

acts. While Foucault (1990) and several subsequent Foucauldian scholars (see, e.g., Grenz, 

2005; Pitcher, 2016; Tell, 2010) clearly describe the content of sex talk that characterizes the 

act of confession in modern contexts, our analysis draws attention to precisely how such 

content and actions are produced in naturalistic interactional settings. This analysis brings 

sharply into focus the contingencies involved in negotiating the form of the confessions 

which often represent the taken-for-granted starting points of many Foucault inflected studies 

(Elden, 2005; Jackson, 2005). It demonstrates sex as a self-referential category or act – sex in 

and of itself – is not necessarily immediately accepted as, by definition, confessable. Rather, 

it is the configuration of the act of sex within situated and context-bound normative 

frameworks which marks the act as exceptional and/or transgressive, and therefore 

confessable. Our analysis identifies a set of such configurations for participants in the online 

settings we examined. Secondly, the use of CA on online sites demonstrates the types of 

analytic power enabled by new technologies of confessional practice through web-based 

architecture. We have shown how the application of CA to anonymous online interactions 



30 
	

enables fine-grained analysis of the very interactional constituents of confessions relating to 

sex, demonstrating precisely how confessional modes of communication are achieved. This 

approach promises to strengthen and supplement a range of existing descriptions of the forms 

and functions that such confessional techniques have taken under various historical 

conditions (Foucault, 1990) and in pre-internet settings (Sauter, 2014). 

Our findings, strengthened by the intersection of both our analytic method and 

selection of naturalistic settings, thus demonstrate how participants construct the actions they 

report as transgressing normative expectations regarding the categories of people with whom 

one can(not) appropriately engage in sex with (e.g., oneself, someone responsible for 

assigning a grade, a family member, a “crush”, a person who has had sex with several other 

known people, a person who is in a relationship, a person with whom one is not romantically 

involved, or nobody at all), for what reasons (e.g., because it is enjoyable, to fulfill one’s 

“needs”, to improve a grade or to relieve stress) and under what other conditions such 

engagement can(not) appropriately occur (e.g., while someone is in the same room, 

concurrently with being a practitioner of a particular religion, with the knowledge and 

implied complicity of relevant others, after getting pizza and watching a movie, as the last of 

a number of people to do so, or while someone watches). Additionally, our analyses 

demonstrate some of the interactional mechanisms through which norms around sexuality can 

be reproduced, ratified or contested. Responses to confessions that ratify what has been 

confessed (such as displays of appreciation and negative sanctioning) serve to reproduce the 

relevance of these normative boundaries as bases for interpreting whether a given reported 

behavior was (in)appropriate (cf. Heritage, 1984). Conversely, the comments of participants 

who defended those who have been subjected to negative sanctioning serve to challenge the 

construction of the normative boundaries invoked through the sanctioning, but still treat such 

boundaries as potentially relevant, through the very process of contesting them. Finally, 



31 
	

treating initial posts as non-confessable (including by directly questioning the confession or 

by commenting on peripheral features), serves to challenge the claim that a transgression has 

taken place, thereby constructing what was reported in the posts as falling within established 

or accepted normative boundaries rather than transgressing sexual norms. 

The Facebook “Confessions” sites we examined thus offer unique insights into the 

situated and naturally occurring negotiation and contestation of normativity with respect to 

sex in a particular type of education-related setting. Close examination of interactions on sites 

such as these allow for empirically grounded descriptions, based on participants’ own actions 

and orientations, of some of the contours and potential fault lines of normative sexuality in 

contemporary society.  

 

Acknowledgements 

We would like to thank Nkululeko Nkomo for his assistance in translating data written in indigenous African 

languages. 

 

Notes 
	
1 We have assumed that the poster identified as female based on her identification of her roommate as female 

combined with the standard practice in this university of assigning dorm roommates on a same-sex basis. We 

make similar assumptions in other cases in which the gender of the initial poster is clearly oriented to by the 

participants, but in cases where there is no clear evidence to this effect we use gender-neutral language in 

referring to them. 

 

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