Sexualities current issue

Not Safe for Work? Teaching and Researching the Sexually Explicit

Attwood, F., Hunter, I.Q. — 2009-09-28

Teaching Porn

McNair, B. — 2009-09-28

This article gives an account of my experiences as a student and teacher of pornography in the UK university context. From my time as a student at Glasgow University in the late 1970s, to my classes on sexual transgression at Strathclyde in the 2000s, I trace changing attitudes to the pornographic, against the background of changing political and technological environments. The article considers the pedagogy of porn against the backdrop of pro- and anti-porn feminism, the rise of gay rights, and the impact of the internet. Under these influences, and over a period of three decades, pornography was destigmatized and redefined in a variety of contexts, from the irony of lad culture to the postmodern humour of the Graham Norton Show and the pro-porn feminism of the post-Madonna era.

Pleasure and Distance: Exploring Sexual Cultures in the Classroom

Smith, C. — 2009-09-28

Teaching sexually explicit materials to undergraduate students is fraught with questions of what ought to be taught when we introduce sessions on pornography, cybersex, explicit representations of gay and lesbian sexuality and the politics of representation more generally. This article will address some of those concerns through a meditation on some of my own teaching experiences offered, not as an example of best practice, but as a further contribution to the provocative discussions elsewhere in this issue. I argue that teaching about sexually explicit representations has the potential for reaching beyond the examination of hegemonic meanings or the exposition of generic repetitions to more innovative exploration of the cultural discourses of sexuality.

Healthy Sex and Pop Porn: Pornography, Feminism and the Finnish Context

Paasonen, S. — 2009-09-28

Objections to pornography as the commercialization of the intimate, as sexist or as generally harmful are voiced internationally, yet their investments and dynamics cannot be reduced to those expressed in the US in the wake of the sex wars. Addressing Finnish traditions of porn regulation, consumption and research, as well as the Nordic discourses of ‘good sex’, this article argues for the centrality of local histories in making sense of pornography. It conceptualizes pornography in terms of a dynamic nexus of actors, discourses, media economies, technologies and consumers that can only be studied through and within its specific articulations.

Sex Scandal Science in Hong Kong

Jacobs, K. — 2009-09-28

This article gives an overview of my experience as a researcher using visual ethnography and sex studies to probe hidden strands of Chinese sex culture. More specifically, it shows how sexually explicit materials and sex studies became influential to undergraduate students at City University of Hong Kong on my course, ‘Gender Discourse’, in 2008 as a result of a celebrity sex scandal. The article considers the production and circulation of DIY pornographies made by ordinary people and attributed to celebrities by journalists, emotive and politicized reactions to pornographic media and sex scandals, and the development of teaching which encourages students to carry out creative experiments as sexually active subjects in media environments.

Hard Times and Rough Rides: The Legal and Ethical Impossibilities of Researching 'Shock' Pornographies

Jones, S., Mowlabocus, S. — 2009-09-28

This article explores the various ethical and legal limitations faced by researchers studying extreme or ‘shock’ pornographies, beginning with generic and disciplinary contexts, and focusing specifically upon the assumption that textual analysis unproblematically justifies certain pornographies, while legal contexts utilize a prohibitive gaze. Are our academic freedoms of speech endangered by legislations that restrict our access to non-mainstream images, forcing them further into taboo locales? If so, is the ideological normalization of sexuality inextricable from our research methodologies? Simultaneously, can we justify researchers being allowed access to materials that are not deemed suitable for general consumption, which may further bolster normalized hierarchies of class-privilege and cultural capital?

Social Scientists Don't Say 'Titwank'

McKee, A. — 2009-09-28

Drawing on the textual evidence of a number of referees’ reports this article maps key differences between the humanities and social sciences approaches to the study of pornography in order to facilitate better understanding and communication between the areas. 1. Social scientists avoid ‘vulgar’ language to describe sex. Humanities scholars need not do so. 2. Social scientists remain committed to the idea of ‘objectivity’ while humanities scholars reject the idea — although this may be a confusion in language, with the term in the social sciences used to mean something more like ‘falsifiability’. 3. Social science assumes that the primary effects of exposure to pornography must be negative. 4. More generally, social science resists paradigm changes, insisting that all new work agrees with research that has gone before. 5. Social science believes that casual sex and sadomasochism are negative; humanities research need not do so.

Reading Porn Reparatively

Albury, K. — 2009-09-28

Feminist thinking on pornography since the early 1980s has tended to polarize into ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ camps. Within both camps, there is a tendency to rely on moral frameworks that rely on either/or understandings of what pornography is, and what it does. This article draws on Michel Foucault’s theory of ethics to offer, in Eve Sedgwick’s terms, a reparative yet still critical model for feminist porn studies.

'My Boyfriend Loves it when I Come Home from this Class': Pedagogy, Titillation, and New Media Technologies

Waskul, D. D. — 2009-09-28

Most classroom uses of new media technologies lack a pedagogy, aesthetic, or both. Performance methods offer a pedagogy; sensual learning offers an aesthetic. Combined, the two comprise a powerful teaching strategy and one that is especially well suited to the use of explicit media in sexualities courses. This article offers some ideas about pedagogy and aesthetics, and, grounded in 35 student evaluations, explores the potential uses of new media technologies and sexually explicit media as a teaching tool.

Book Review: Laura Maria Agustin, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry. London and New York: Zed Books, 2007. 248 pp. ISBN 978--1--84277--859--3 (hbk) 978--1--84277--860--9 (pbk). {pound}60.00 (hbk) {pound}16.99 (pbk)

Allman, D. — 2009-09-28

Book Review: Rochelle L. Dalla, Exposing the Pretty Woman Myth. A Qualitative Investigation of Street-Level Prostituted Women. Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006. 233 pp. ISBN 13: 978--0--7391--1080--5. {pound}54.99 (hbk) {pound}21.98 (pbk)

Grenz, S. — 2009-09-28

Book Review: Julian B. Carter, The Heart of Whiteness. Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880--1940. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007. 219 pp. ISBN 978--0--8223--3948--9 (pbk). $21.95

Bredull, J. — 2009-09-28

Book Review: David Valentine, Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. xiv + 302 pp. Illus. ISBN 978--0--8223--3869--7. {pound}52.00 (hbk) {pound}12.99 (pbk)

Hines, S. — 2009-09-28

Book Review: Neville Hoad, African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. 177 pp. ISBN 978--0--8166--4915--0. $20.00

Fosse, N. E. — 2009-09-28

Book Review: Marc Epprecht, Heterosexual Africa: The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2008. 240pp. ISBN 978--0--8214--1798--0 (hbk) 978--0--8214--1799--7 (pbk). $39.95 (hbk) $19.95 (pbk)

Lal, P. — 2009-09-28