Where the Gang Goes to Bang 

Last year, a 44-year-old woman who is known on Tribe as Harriet (she declined to disclose her real name), discovered that a lot of women she knows harbor unspoken fantasies about being involved in gangbangs. But because the topic is taboo, they rarely talked about it.

So Harriet turned to social networking site Tribe.net, and started a group, or "tribe," called Gangbang Girls to promote frank, uninhibited discussion of this secret fantasy.

"I was mulling over gangbangs and the potential for discussing gangbangs," Harriet said. "I decided to ... make the tribe Gangbang Girls to try to demonstrate that even the most stigmatized stuff can be discussed publicly, if done right."

Gangbang Girls is just one of dozens of sexually themed tribes on Tribe. Other examples include Nymphomaniacs, whose 190 members explore having, or wanting, sex addictions; I Got Tested, which has 274 members talking about safer sex issues; and the Smart Girls' Porn Club, a club for women who like porn, which boasts 386 members.

Naturally, Tribe also has hundreds of groups geared towards less racy pursuits, such as politics, law, technology and even eating pie.

And of course, there are countless other adult online communities, from early bulletin board systems to Yahoo Groups. In addition, other social networking services, like Friendster, enable all manner of sex talk.

But, perhaps because of its San Francisco roots, Tribe has always attracted an artistic membership, one that seems more comfortable delving into alternative lifestyles than some of its more mainstream competitors.

"I think there are more open minds on Tribe," said Harriet.

To many of its 300,000-plus members, Tribe is the forum of choice because it has some unique features, making it conducive to mature and straightforward examination of adult issues.

One thing that sets the service apart is the way it encourages users to provide a lot of personal information, especially galleries of photographs.

Because information about members tends to be more substantial than what you find on some of its competitors' sites, members get some assurance that they have an understanding of who they're interacting with. To many, this creates a unique atmosphere of trust; one that fosters frank conversation about sensitive issues.

"On Tribe it's more meaningful (because) you have more information about the people you're interacting with," said Allison Lange, a longtime member.

But despite the high level of trust within the Tribe, many members, particularly women, report that they sometimes have to contend with unwanted advances. That's especially true for women who participate in sexually oriented tribes that have open or moderated membership.

But some have figured out ways to self-police. Dixie de la Tour said some women have banded together to create a tribe whose sole purpose is to keep each other informed about the "predators" on the service and offer each other support for how to deal with such situations.

Harriet, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, said she has little interest in using Tribe to set up actual gangbangs. Rather, she works to keep the discussion straightforward and more about ideas than actual sexual circumstances. Whenever the talk veers too bawdy, Harriet reins it in.

"That detracts from the rationality and analytical-ness of the discourse," she said. "So when the talk goes in a direction that I feel is a bit lewd, I have been prickly."

More stories written by Daniel Terdiman