Sexualities recent issues

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

Interrogating the Work of Thomas W. Laqueur

Cryle, P. — 2009-07-21

Sexuality and the Transformation of Culture: The Longue Duree

Laqueur, T. W. — 2009-07-21

In the USA today, the election of gay bishops threatens to bring about a schism in the Episcopalian Church. This article asks questions about the extraordinary importance attached to matters sexual, both historically and in the present. Laqueur's anthropological answer to this broad question is that it is connected with a long and divergent tradition of thinking about the origins of culture. Sex and death, he says, organize the work of making culture. The thematic occasion for the history presented here is the notion of 'orgasm', and Laqueur offers four or five dates which can be regarded as turning points in the long history of 'allegories of orgasm'.

Les Choses et les Mots: Missing Words and Blurry Things in the History of Sexuality

Cryle, P. — 2009-07-21

In Solitary Sex, Thomas Laqueur adopts a position that might be called constructivist but not discursivist. He does not speak, as historians with an allegiance to Foucault's work often do, of 'invention', but argues that masturbation was 'something that had been perfectly well understood since Antiquity, even if it was variously classified and named'. The thing was there already: the word, and any change in words, came later. This article asks some questions about what it might mean for the history of sexuality to talk about unnamed things, missing words, or absent expressions. The examples are taken from the history of frigidity, as an attempt to trace the problematic absence of a name, and the name of a problematic absence.

The Politics of Pleasure Talk in 18th-Century Europe

Cook, A. — 2009-07-21

This article provides an analysis of the role played by competing conceptions of pleasure in European cultural politics during the 18th century. Beginning with the `onanism' panic, which gripped western Europe in 1712, and with the apparent paradox that new concern about masturbation developed at a time when the pursuit of pleasure was increasingly legitimized in intellectual discourse, this article suggests that the panic can be understood as part of a wider process. This was a process in which a legitimization of pleasure was accompanied by a series of battles to define the concept in more socially useful ways. These battles can be traced across a range of literary fields from theology and aesthetics to physiology and political and moral theory.

Coining Spermatorrhoea: Medicine and Male Body Fluids, 1836--1866

Stephens, E. — 2009-07-21

When Lallemand coined the term spermatorrhée in the first volume of Des pertes séminales involontaires (1838), an earlier discourse on 'seminal weakness' was transformed into something new: a recognizable and treatable medical disorder, with its own specific aetiology and nosology. To the symptoms of seminal weakness — blushing, crying, breathlessness, melancholy, lack of confidence and extreme sensitivity — were added symptoms such as spermatozoa in the urine detectable only with the use of new, microscopic medical technologies. While the spermatorrhoea epidemic thus reflects an increased anxiety about male fluidity at this time, it also produced a profound change in the practice and organization of medicine. The flourishing of 'quack' doctors in this area forced licensed physicians to incorporate treatment of sexual disorders and diseases within general practice, while new legislation regulated the medical profession itself.

The Invention of Sadism? The Limits of Neologisms in the History of Sexuality

Moore, A. — 2009-07-21

How important is a new word for the development of newly imagined sexual pathology? In the case of the neologism 'sadism' at the fin de siècle, this invention was strangely both pivotal and incidental. Tracking sexual concepts, as Laqueur does for masturbation, requires that the neologisms invented at precise historic moments be both recontextualized in relation to earlier discourses, and problematized as stable constructs in their ongoing development. This article is a genealogical sketch of this kind in relation to 'sadism', as part of a larger inquiry into how this sexual construct became available to the Frankfurt School philosophers and as an explanation for Nazi genocidal cruelty.

Reading the 'Sexy Oldie': Gender, Age(ing) and Embodiment

Vares, T. — 2009-07-21

In recent years there has been a cultural-scientific shift in the ways in which ageing and sexuality are represented. This has been most notable in the popular media where the predominant portrayal of asexual old age is increasingly accompanied by newer images of the 'sexy oldie'. While this shift counters conventional stereotypes of the asexual and disengaged elderly, the implications for seniors of such a change have not yet been adequately researched. Do senior viewers read images of sexy oldies as a challenge to traditional framings of older people as not sexually desirable, desirous, or capable? Do such portrayals disrupt the 'unwatchability' of elderly bodies and sexuality? This article draws on material from a reception study of seniors' readings of the film The Mother (2003) and focuses on the tensions and contradictions within and between the responses of focus groups of men and women (aged 49—85). In particular, I explore the ways in which some female participants' affective responses of 'disgust' to a filmic image of a naked, sexually active woman in her 60s, work to reconstitute it as 'unwatchable'.

Effeminophobia, Misogyny and Queer Friendship: The Cultural Themes of Channel 4's Playing It Straight

Richardson, N. — 2009-07-21

This article considers the theme of the Channel 4 show 'Playing It Straight' (2005), a variation on the 'dating show' genre in which a female contestant must select the man of her dreams from 10 suitors. However, the twist in the show's format is that not all of the men are heterosexually identified. The article contends that the show's narrative is not homophobic but effeminophobic. Second, the article analyses how the show positions all the male contestants, both gay and straight, within the matrix of New Lad style homosocial bonding. Finally, the article considers how the show mobilises one of the dominant cultural themes in contemporary popular culture: the 'safe eroticism' or 'queer' friendship that can develop between a straight woman and a gay identified man.

Introduction

Plummer, K. — 2009-05-20

(S)excerpts from a Life Told: Sex, Gender and Learning Disability

Rogers, C. — 2009-05-20

This is an article about Sarah's sexual teenage journey, seen through the lens of her mother, the author. It tackles learning disability, sexual experimentation, education, governance and responsibility. By using an autoethnographical method the article speaks personally to these intimate lived experiences and yet broadly and contextually these issues can give further insight into the difficult social processes that permeate surveillance and control, of sexual activity amongst a particular group of adults (young, learning disabled), by way of legal practice and sex education; family practices and the negotiation of power and control over sexual activity; and sexual citizenship and rights to a sexual identity.

Becoming a Sexual Being: Overcoming Constraints on Female Sexuality

Wagner, B. — 2009-05-20

Sexuality researchers have traced changes in intimacy across time. In this article, I outline the facets of what sexuality researchers note as 'modern' sexuality and 'postmodern' sexuality. I discuss how each type of sexuality carries a specific construction of intimacy. I present five autoethnographic stories developed from my field journals while studying the swinging 'lifestyle'. Using thematic analysis of narrative, I treat each story as data for analysis. By discussing my personal constructions of intimacy I create a relatable story that demonstrates the lasting elements of essentialist gender norms, consistent with modern sexuality, that are sometimes overlooked in postmodern sexuality research.

Sowing the Seeds of Solidarity in Public Space: Case Study of the Poznan March of Equality

Gruszczynska, A. — 2009-05-20

Drawing upon qualitative research in gay and lesbian public activism, this article explores the links between mobilization and repression on the basis of a case study of the Poznan March of Equality. In the context of the repressive right-wing political climate following the 2005 governmental and presidential elections in Poland, organizers of the Poznan march drew on the legacy of the Polish Solidarity movement in order to gain legitimacy for introducing issues of sexuality in public space. This article contributes to existing literature on new social movements in Poland and critiques the thesis that collective mobilization in present-day Poland is extremely rare and not centred on the affirmation of subjectivity.

More than Adding a T: American Lesbian and Gay Activists' Attitudes towards Transgender Inclusion

Stone, A. L. — 2009-05-20

This article is an exploration of American lesbian and gay activists' attitudes towards transgender inclusion in the LGBT movement. Lesbian and gay activists articulated different attitudes towards transgender inclusion that were inflected by their different subcultural histories and ability to make connections personally with transgender issues. Through an analysis of 32 semi-structured interviews with Midwestern lesbian and gay activists, this article examines the process by which lesbian and gay activists become transgender allies through making parallels to their own oppression or visible transgender discrimination. This research contributes to the existing literature on both collective identities and ally identities by contextualizing the formation of ally identities within the history of the LGBT movement.

Girl Power: Risky Sexual Behaviour and Gender Identity amongst Young Spanish Recreational Drug Users

Romo, N., Marcos, J., Rodriguez, A., Cabrera, A., Hernan, M. — 2009-05-20

Against a background of significant social change experienced by Spanish women from the 1960s onwards, new gender identities and conflicts have emerged. These factors have barely been taken into account in the research work done in Spain. This article looks into the conversations of young people concerning their relationship with risky sexual behaviour, recreational drug use and sexual identity. Drawing from a qualitative study of discussion groups and semi-structured interviews with young recreational drug users, the article suggests that there are at least two models of femininity among the recreational drug consumers that have taken part in this study. First there is a traditional romantic model whereby young women associated risky sexual behaviour with being in love or trusting in the partner. Here the young woman does not link her sexual behaviour to the effects of using recreational drugs but, rather, to the characteristics of her emotional relationship. Second, there is a model of new values and gender roles that are closer to those traditionally associated to males, where the young women use recreational drugs as a form of empowerment to take on new situations concerning their sexuality. The article analyses the perceptions of risk among the different identity groups, along with the negotiations to begin sexual relations and the use of the condom in these groups of recreational drug users. Issues for policy and practice are also briefly considered.

State of the Field Review: Stories So Far: An Overview of the Research on Lesbian Teachers

Ferfolja, T. — 2009-05-20

This article examines the academic literature that addresses the experiences of lesbian teachers working in western schooling systems. It illustrates that although all individuals have a right to work in a safe and secure context, lesbian teachers face an on-going trend of silencing, marginalization and discrimination in the workplace. Issues of harassment and the need to negotiate one's sexuality continue to prevail. Although lesbian and gay research has been a burgeoning field of enquiry over the last two decades, no comprehensive review has been published that specifically targets the professional lives of lesbian teachers. This is despite the potential use of such knowledge in the development of educational, recruitment, and social policy and/or anti-discrimination legislation. This compilation seeks to address this lacuna and to simultaneously raise both researcher and practitioner awareness of the ongoing limitations, obstacles and injustices faced by lesbian teachers in the workplace. It also importantly illustrates the theoretical developments in understanding such experience while highlighting that these women are not simply oppressed victims but possess power and agency.

Book Review: Laura Ellsworth, Choosing to Heal: Using Reality Therapy in the Treatment of Sexually Abused Children. London: Routledge, 2007. xvi + 169 pp., illus. ISBN: 0415956145 (pbk) ISBN: 9780415956147 (pbk)

Warner, S. — 2009-05-20

Book Review: Chris Brickell, Mates & Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand. Auckland: Godwit/Random House, 2008. 430 pp. illus. ISBN 978 1 86962 134 6. $NZ49.99

Aldrich, R. — 2009-05-20

Book Review: Kimberly B. Dugan, The Struggle Over Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Rights. Facing Off in Cincinnati. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. 150 pp. ISBN 0--415--97233--7. {pound}50.00

Santos, A. C. — 2009-05-20

Book Review: Fedwa Malti-Douglas (ed.), Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender (Four Volumes). Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference (Thomson Gale), 2007. 1682 pp. ISBN: 978--0-02--865960--2 (set hard cover); eISBN: 978--02--866115--5

Klesse, C. — 2009-05-20

Book Review: Michael Gard, Men Who Dance: Aesthetics, Athletics and the Art of Masculinity. New York, Washington, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Brussels, Vienna and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006. ix + 236 pp. illus. ISBN 0--820--7266--2 (pbk)

Pettinger, L. — 2009-05-20

Book Review: Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC and London, Duke University Press, 2006. 223 pp. ISBN 10: 0--8223--3194--5

McDowell, L. — 2009-05-20

Book Review: Brinda Bose and Subhabrata Bhattacharyya, The Phobic and The Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary India. London: Seagull Books, 2007. xxxii + 496 pp. illus. ISBN 190542213X (hbk), ISBN 1905422148 (pbk), ISBN 9781905422135 (hbk), ISBN 9781905422142 (pbk)

Shah, S. P. — 2009-05-20

Introduction

Porfido, G., Ryan-Flood, R. — 2009-03-24

Beyond the `Sexualization of Culture' Thesis: An Intersectional Analysis of `Sixpacks',`Midriffs' and `Hot Lesbians' in Advertising

Gill, R. — 2009-03-24

This article argues that the notion of the `sexualization of culture' is too general to be a useful conceptual tool. The article has two main objectives. First, it seeks to interrogate the notion of `sexualization' as a way of understanding the proliferation of sexually explicit imagery within contemporary advertising. Rather than taking up a position `for' or `against' `sexualization' (in the familiar way), it seeks to open up the notion in order to explore the diverse practices that are commonly grouped together under this heading. Using advertising as an example, it argues that `sexualization' is far from being a singular or homogenous process, that different people are `sexualized' in different ways and with different meanings — and indeed that many remain excluded from what has been called the `democratization of desire' operating in visual culture. Secondly, the article develops a feminist intersectional analysis to critically read some of the different ways in which advertising might be said to be sexualized. It looks at three different and contrasting, but easily recognizable `figures' within contemporary advertising: the good-looking male `sixpack', the sexually agentic heterosexual `midriff' and the `hot lesbian', usually intertwined with her beautiful double or Other. The aim is to highlight the point that sexualization does not operate outside of processes of gendering, radicalization and classing, and works within a visual economy that remains profoundly ageist and heteronormative. The article argues that an attention to differences is crucial to understanding the phenomena, practices and scopic regimes that are often lumped together under the heading `equalization of culture'.

Queering the Small Screen: Homosexuality and Televisual Citizenship in Spectacular Societies

Porfido, G. — 2009-03-24

This article examines the question of queer televisual citizenship in the context of late-capitalist or spectacular societies. It investigates the heteronormativity of the current visual regime and it analyses the importance of images in the articulation of queer subjectivities and in the social experience of queer identity. Looking at the historical changes in the way queer people have been portrayed on British TV, the article analyses the problem of queer televisual absence/presences in the neo-liberal representational arena and discusses the implications of queer visual inclusion for debates on sexual citizenship and democracy in multivisual Britain.

Perverting Visual Pleasure: Representing Sadomasochism

Wilkinson, E. — 2009-03-24

In this article I examine representations of sadomasochism in visual culture. Increasingly sadomasochistic imagery is becoming prominent and widespread in popular culture. I will ask which forms of sadomasochism are permitted and which are excluded or marginalized. The changing media regimes of visual representation will be addressed, arguing that cyberspace may provide a public forum for sadomasochists to challenge dominant stereotypical representations. Finally I will examine the impact of the current UK legislation to prosecute the viewers of `extreme' pornographic material. This legislation reveals that certain intimate images are still denied the right to exist in visual culture.

`Hot Lesbians': Young People's Talk About Representations of Lesbianism

Jackson, S., Gilbertson, T. — 2009-03-24

Media representation of heterosexual alternatives is particularly salient for young people negotiating sexuality, more so for those with limited access to other cultural resources to inform their homosexual understandings. With the centrality of media as resource in mind, we present in this article findings from our focus group research with 25 high school students aged 16—18 in which we invited them to discuss representations of homosexuality in the media. Our analyses, which focus here on lesbian sexuality, used a thematic discursive approach. We found constructions of lesbianism as `heteroflexible', `hot' and experimental to be common patterns in participants' talk, whereas notions of lesbian desire were largely silenced. While most of the talk drew on heteronormativity, we found small pockets of its deconstruction in mobilization of alternative discourses and rejection of sexual categories.

Performing Translatinidad: Miriam the Mexican Transsexual Reality Show Star and the Tropicalization of Difference in Anglo-Australian Media

Lewis, V. — 2009-03-24

In 2004, a new celebrity hit the Australian television circuit. Billed as a mysterious, seductive Latina with a secret, she graced our shores in a TV reality show called `There's Something About Miriam': a dating game with a twist. Set in Ibiza, Miriam vies for the attention of six eligible British bachelors without letting them in on her transsexual status. In her ambiguity, Miriam is the embodiment of all things seen as other and exotic; in the context of Anglo-Australian understandings, she is the marker of all things Hispanic. Wildly popular in Australia, Miriam stepped out of one reality show into another: the Australian version of Big Brother. The TV network promised to deliver more on this boy turned girl, whose body provided the right kind of slippage to become the site of inscription for a range of repeated tropical fictions.

Queer Appearances: Gilbert & George's Visual Strategies: The use of studios: Television, art practice and the visual strategies of Gilbert & George

Dibosa, D. — 2009-03-24

The use that visual artists have made of popular media, such as television, has provided a point of critical interest over recent decades. Contemporary artists, Gilbert & George, followed the pace set by media-savvy artists, through their recent television appearance on the popular talk-show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Their appearance on prime-time TV raised a series of questions concerning gay visibility, mainstream media and the visual subterfuge deployed in contemporary art. This article seeks to examine such issues against the background of political struggles over public and private space.