'CONGRATS!! You had an orgasm': constructing orgasm on an internet discussion board

Drawing on insights from conversation analysis, this article explores a discussion about orgasm on an internet forum. Critical of sex education for failing to address young women as sexual subjects with embodied desires, some feminists believe the internet offers alternative spaces for young women to discuss pleasure. I argue that the micro-political work done by offering ‘congratulations’ on one such site serves to mark young women’s orgasms as both ‘newsworthy’ and ‘good news’ in ways which simultaneously disrupt the idea that sexuality is inappropriate for young women while paradoxically reaffirming conventional ideas about the centrality of orgasm to sexuality.