Sexualities recent issues

'That's Not Really My Scene': Working-Class Lesbians In (and Out of) Place

Taylor, Y. — 2008-09-10

In this article I consider working-class lesbians' views and experiences of commercialized scene space as these venues change in light of social, economic and political developments. Working-class lesbians both participated in and felt excluded from scene spaces, often criticizing them as 'pretentious' and 'unreal' for their cosmopolitan gloss. In this upgrading a politicized perspective was believed to have been sacrificed or in jeopardy, threatened by gendered and classed consumer-based expectations and inhabitations. The reproduction of such space via regeneration and sophistication mediates the construction of lesbian styles, appearances and identities, demarcating boundaries of inclusion across time and place. Interviewees spoke of scene developments and changes with a sense of loss, even nostalgia; their descriptions frequently conjured up binaries of now/then, political/apolitical, marginal/mainstream, metropolitan/provincial — producing an uneasy situation in and out of place. Such positionings illustrate material, embodied and felt exclusions, and tenuous inclusions, as this space is negotiated, contested and rejected.

Making Space for an Agentic Sexuality? The Examination of a Lesbian/Queer Bathhouse

Hammers, C. J. — 2008-09-10

Although an extensive body of work exists exploring the relationships between space and gender, gender performance and identity, little attention has been given to examining the space-agency nexus of lesbian/queer subjects in sexed spaces — this is particularly the case when it comes to exploring lesbian/queer sexualities. Drawing on face-to-face interviews and observations, I examine participants' experiences at Pussy Palace, a lesbian/queer bathhouse in Toronto, Canada, focusing in particular on the ways in which the space enabled and constrained spatial praxis and agency. I conclude that the embodied desire found at Pussy Palace undermines the hegemonic discourse that treats women as passive and subjugating subjects. At the same time, the bathhouse erects its own marginalizing forces, while fostering a particular training of the body that narrows the range of emergent sexualities and alternative sexual scripts.

'They Think You Shouldn't be Having Sex Anyway': Young People's Suggestions for Improving Sexuality Education Content

Allen, L. — 2008-09-10

It has been recognized that to be effective, sexuality education must meet the needs and interests of young people (Aggleton and Campbell, 2000). However, this acknowledgement has often manifested in adults ultimately determining what young people's needs and interests are. This article focuses on what senior school students determine as important and relevant programme content from focus group and survey data. Participants' suggestions provide a critique of current sexuality education provision that is clinical, de-eroticized and didactic. Young people's calls for content about emotions in relationships, teenage parenthood, abortion and how to make sexual activity pleasurable offer insights into how they understand themselves as sexual subjects. Student responses position them as having the right to make their own decisions about sexual activity and to access knowledge that will enable their engagement in relationships that are physically and emotionally pleasurable. This positioning sits in conflict with the preferred non-sexual identity young people are offered by the official culture of many schools (Allen, 2007). It is proposed that this tension has implications for how programmes constitute student sexuality and their effectiveness in empowering young people to view their sexuality positively and make positive sexual decisions.

'No More Tea, Vicar'. An Exploration of the Discourses which Inform the Current Debates about Sexualities within the Church of England

Nixon, D. — 2008-09-10

This article seeks to discover, problematize and deconstruct the powerful discourses that have informed the recent debates within the Church of England (and other churches) in the area of human sexuality, and of homosexuality in particular. Poststructuralist methodology reveals that the sexualities' discourse of the Church of England is structured around themes of purity/pollution and text/authority, which operate powerfully to police the theorization and practice of both individuals and the social body of the church. The instantiation of this discourse in the lives of individuals is illustrated by an analysis of two 'stories': the first, a biographical account of a particular incident in the life of one priest; the second draws on the published record of the difficulties raised by the appointment of Canon Jeffrey John as a bishop. In response to these findings, the author draws on theological traditions developed out of Queer Theory to suggest alternative ways of viewing sexualities, which are both more inclusive for LGBT people, and which may allow the churches to break through their current impasse.

Coming to an Asexual Identity: Negotiating Identity, Negotiating Desire

Scherrer, K. S. — 2008-09-10

Sexuality is generally considered an important aspect of selfhood. Therefore, individuals who do not experience sexual attraction, and who embrace an asexual identity, are in a unique position to inform the social construction of sexuality. This study explores the experiences of asexual individuals utilizing open ended internet survey data from 102 self-identified asexual people. In this article I describe several distinct aspects of asexual identities: the meanings of sexual, and therefore, asexual behaviors, essentialist characterizations of asexuality, and lastly, interest in romance as a distinct dimension of sexuality. These findings have implications not only for asexual identities, but also for the connections of asexuality with other marginalized sexualities.

Book Review: C. J. Pascoe, Dude, You're a Fag. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007. xii + 227 pp. ISBN 978-0-520-24862-5 {pound}11.95 (pbk). ISBN 978-0-520-25230-1 {pound}29.95 (hbk)

Taulke-Johnson, R. — 2008-09-10

Book Review: Niels Teunis and Gilbert Herdt (eds), Sexual Inequalities and Social Justice. Berkeley: University of California Press ,2007. ISBN 978-0-520-24614-0 {pound}32.95 (hbk).ISBN 978-0-520-24615-7 {pound}12.95 (pbk)

Williams, C. H. — 2008-09-10

Book Review: Sally Hines, Transforming Gender: Transgender Practices of Identity, Intimacy and Care. Bristol: The Policy Press,2007.227 pp.ISBN 978-1-86134-9170 {pound}24.99 (pbk).ISBN 978-1-86134-9163 {pound}60.00 (hbk)

Elliot, P. — 2008-09-10

Book Review: Paul Rutherford, A World Made Sexy: Freud to Madonna. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. 371 pp. ISBN 978-0-8020-9466-7 (pbk). {pound} 17.95

Amy-Chinn, D. — 2008-09-10

Book Review: Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. 356 pp. ISBN 13: 978--0--691--12835--1 {pound}11.95 (pbk).ISBN 13:978--0--691--12820--7 {pound}38.95 (hbk)

Hindmarch-Watson, K. — 2008-09-10

Book Review: Suzanna Danuta Walters, All the Rage. The Story of Gay Visibility in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,2001. 338 pp.ISBN 0-226-87231-9. $19.00

Porfido, G. — 2008-09-10

Introduction to Retheorizing Homophobias

Editors, G., Bryant, K., Vidal-Ortiz, S. — 2008-07-31

Profiles, Compulsory Disclosure and Ethical Sexual Citizenship in the Contemporary USA

Decena, C. U. — 2008-07-31

Almost thirty years after AIDS was first recognized in the USA, behaviorally bisexual men of color who do not identify as gay are portrayed as deviant but redeemable through the disclosure of their sexual behaviors. The rhetoric of coming out, and the perceptions of internalized homophobia linked to those who do not, are mobilized to produce an ethical sexual citizen, not a gay man. The author analyzes results reported in a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that coincided with media attention given to men `on the down low'. He demonstrates that the data the researchers present tell a much more complex story than the analysis and commentary that the researchers provide. The author suggests that this MMWR is symptomatic of a regime of compulsory disclosure in the USA where identities, practices, and desires are emerging as alternatives to normative heterosexuality and homosexuality.

Dude-Sex: White Masculinities and `Authentic' Heterosexuality Among Dudes Who Have Sex With Dudes

Ward, J. — 2008-07-31

Based on examination of an online community in which white `str8'-identified men assert that sex with other white men bolsters their heterosexual masculinity, this article examines the heterosexual and racialized meanings that white str8 dudes attach to their same-sex behaviors. The study points to the role of whiteness in the process of establishing heterosexual `realness', or believable straight culture. Findings indicate that for the white str8 dude, Black male bodies disrupt the staging of normal `male bonding', and occupy a distinctly queerer space `down low'. I argue that in a culture constituted by both a racial and sexual binary, whiteness and heterosexuality are `natural' bedfellows that simultaneously signify the `really, really normal' subject.

`Not Gay, but Not Homophobic': Male Sexuality and Homophobia in the `Lifestyle'

Frank, K. — 2008-07-31

This article explores the relative lack of male same-sex activity in heterosexual `swinging', or `the lifestyle', especially compared to the ubiquity of female same-sex activity and eroticism. `Lifestyle sexuality' is conceptualized as a system of erotic relations and a cultural experience as a way of theorizing beyond identity and the binary oppositions of homo/hetero or straight/queer that often underlie discussions of sexual desire, practice, and homophobia (Ward, 2007). Desires, aesthetics, sexual styles, ethical premises, and beliefs about gender and sexuality are variously configured in different heterosexual communities. Exploring their specificities strengthens our ability to analyze distributions of power, privilege and stigma, and allows us to explore more precisely how changing meanings of love, sex, and commitment, along with developments in the organization and experience of late capitalism, are affecting sexual practices and identities. The analysis here thus examines how lifestyle sexuality is integrated into other political, economic, social, cultural, and erotic spheres and what this means for theorizations of homophobia and heteronormativity.

In Defense of Gay Children? `Progay' Homophobia and the Production of Homonormativity

Bryant, K. — 2008-07-31

This article analyzes putatively homophobic rhetoric and practices and their antihomophobic responses to understand how homophobia and antihomophobia may work together to produce `homonormative' gay subjects. It does so by investigating current debates over the pathologization of homosexuality and gender nonconformity, specifically examining charges that the psychiatric diagnosis Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood (GIDC) is homophobic. The author argues that emerging forms of homophobia, or `progay homophobias', are key to our understandings of anti-queer sentiments in an era of increased tolerance for homosexuality.

`The Puerto Rican Way is More Tolerant': Constructions and Uses of `Homophobia' among Santeria Practitioners Across Ethno-Racial and National Identification

Vidal-Ortiz, S. — 2008-07-31

Existing academic analyses of Santería portray it either as homophobic because of its hierarchical restrictions, or as the ultimate liberatory space for `sexual minorities'. Meanwhile, complicated uses of homophobia circulate in Santería in ways often overlooked because of these aforementioned portrayals. This article examines constructions of homophobia as rooted in Whiteness/gayness, and how communities of color reproduce homophobia narratives. It then analyzes the charges of homophobia in relation to the everyday experiences and views among a group of US Santeros — many of whom are US ethno-racial minorities. I posit that national identity and ethno-racial background are key elements used by Santería practitioners in charging each other with homophobia. This argument has implications for the study of Santería spaces of worship, ethnic and racial studies, and sexualities more broadly.

Afterword: Complicating Homophobia

O'Brien, J. — 2008-07-31

Book Review: Thomas Waugh, The Romance of Transgression in Canada. Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas. Montreal and Kingston, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006. 624 pp. IBSN 13: 978--0-7735--3146--8. {pound} 18.99

Porfido, G. — 2008-07-31

Book Review: Emma Renold, Girls, Boys and Junior Sexualities: Exploring Children's Gender and Sexual Relations in the Primary School. London and New York: Routledge Falmer, 2005. xiii + 201 pp. ISBN 0--415--31497--6 (pbk)

Ali, S. — 2008-07-31

Book Review: Deborah Cameron and Don Kulick (eds), The Language and Sexuality Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. 323 pp. ISBN: 0--415--36307--1

Brickell, C. — 2008-07-31

Book Review: N. Rumens and A. Cervantes-Carson (eds), Sexual Politics of Desire and Belonging. New York: Rodopi, 2007. 274 pp. ISBN: 978--90--420--2239--3

Taylor, Y. — 2008-07-31

`Gagged Grief and Beleaguered Bereavements?' An Analysis of Multidisciplinary Theory and Research Relating to Same Sex Partnership Bereavement

Green, L., Grant, V. — 2008-05-13

This article evaluates and synthesizes research and literature from the social sciences, in order to theorize a much neglected area, same sex partnership bereavement. Traditional psychological theories of bereavement are analysed and critiqued, alongside sociological insights not only related to death, dying and grief, but to stigma, emotion work and invoked notions of contamination and pollution. Mainstream psychological theories of bereavement are exposed as being inherently flawed unless modified in relation to `disenfranchised grief'. This concept bridges sociological and psychological understandings, and can also accommodate the potential impact of historical and contemporary oppression on people of diverse sexualities. Traditional identity and postmodern `queer' perspectives, related to sexuality, are also incorporated in order to avoid homogenizing the experiences of people bereaved within same sex relationships and to make explicit both diversity and similarity. Overall, the article demonstrates how and why bereaved gay people may be particularly at risk of stigmatized and disenfranchised grief, whilst simultaneously highlighting the need for more empirical and theoretical attention to be paid to this important issue.

Couple Culture and the Production of Singleness

Budgeon, S. — 2008-05-13

Historically singleness has operated as a marginalized status while heterosexual couples have occupied a privileged position that confers upon its inhabitants a range of social, economic and symbolic rewards. However, demographics now indicate that single-person households are the fastest growing household formation in the UK, signalling the beginning of what some have termed `the singles' century'. This article will examine how the stigmatized status of singleness is defined and negotiated within a culture that privileges couple relationships. Consideration will be given to whether it is possible for singleness to resist and transcend its `outsider' status within a context where individuals are purportedly able to exercise a greater degree of choice in how they organize their sexual lives. Narratives that single people (across different sexual identities) construct about couple relationships and their own cultures of intimacy, constituted to a significant extent through friendships, are analysed. These narratives indicate that positive single identities are possible despite heteronormative regulations which privilege couple relationships.

Multiple Virginity and Other Contested Realities in Taipei's Foreign Club Culture

Moskowitz, M. L. — 2008-05-13

In this article I explore the constructed realms of thought in the club Laowai and other western-style nightclubs in Taipei, Taiwan. These contested realities revolve around notions of foreign and local, masculine and feminine. In examining Taiwanese women's portrayal of selves as chaste in the setting of a pick-up bar we can explore the complicated web of contradictory messages in which purity is constructed and the foreign is simultaneously exalted and despised. In exploring these issues I address Taiwanese women's sexuality in relation to the representational appeal of, and ambivalence towards, western men. This, in turn, ties in with contested fantasies within one social space. The resulting analysis suggests that to reduce club cultures to the singular, even in one club, is a conceptual error, for there are several overlapping realities in any given locale.

Compensated Sex and Sexual Risk: Sexual, Social and Economic Interactions between Homosexually- and Heterosexually-Identified Men of Low Income in Two Cities of Peru

2008-05-13

This study describes the complex dynamics of the sexual, economic and social interactions between a group of feminized homosexual men and men who have sex with men and self-identify as heterosexual (`mostaceros'), in lower-income peripheral urban areas of Lima and Trujillo, Peru. The study examined sexual risk between these two groups of men, and the significance of the economic exchanges involved in their sexual interactions. Using a Grounded Theory approach, 23 individual interviews and 7 focus groups were analyzed. The results reveal that cultural, economic and gender factors mold sexual and social relations among a group of men who have sex with men in Peru. Compensated sex is part of the behaviors of these men, reflecting a complicated construction of sexuality based on traditional conceptions of gender roles, sexual identity and masculinity. Several factors (e.g. difficulty in negotiating condom use, low self-esteem, low risk perception, alcohol and drug consumption), in the context of compensated sex, play a role in risk-taking for HIV infection.

Book Review: Daniel K. Cortese, Are We Thinking Straight? The Politics of Straightness in a Lesbian and Gay Social Movement Organization. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. 213 pp. ISBN 0--415--97701--0. {pound}45.00

Santos, A. C. — 2008-05-13

Book Review: Thomas Piontek, Queering Gay and Lesbian Studies. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. 132 pp. ISBN 0--252--07280--4

Porfido, G. — 2008-05-13

Book Review: H. G. Cocks, Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the Nineteenth Century. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003. xii + 258 pp. ISBN 1--86064--890--8. {pound}39.50. Matt Cook, London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885--1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xiv + 223 pp. ISBN 0--521--82207--6. {pound}45.00

Mills, R. — 2008-05-13

Book Review: Holly Wardlow, Wayward Women: Sexuality and Agency in a New Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. 284 pp. ISBN 0--520--24560--1

Kulick, D. — 2008-05-13

Book Review: Matthew Waites, The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality and Citizenship. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. viii + 285 pp. ISBN: 1--403--92173--3. {pound}55.00 (hbk)

Murphy, J. — 2008-05-13

Studying Sexualities for a Better World? Ten Years of Sexualities

Plummer, K. — 2008-03-07

This article introduces a special edition of the journal Sexualities to celebrate its tenth anniversary. It reviews the development of the journal and inspects its contents over this time. It looks at topics covered, concepts developed and political implications. A final section considers some possible future areas for analysis and research.

Visions of Sexualities: Abstract and Introduction

Plummer, K. — 2008-03-07

Visions of Sexual Politics

Altman, D. — 2008-03-07

Traps We Set Ourselves

Weeks, J. — 2008-03-07

Ordinary Sex

Jackson, S. — 2008-03-07

Sexualities Future, Present, Past . . . Towards Transsectionalities

Hearn, J. — 2008-03-07

The Drive for Sexual Equality

Hekma, G. — 2008-03-07

People of Darkness

Sinfield, A. — 2008-03-07

Prognosis: More Pharmasex

Tiefer, L. — 2008-03-07

The Pornography of Reality

Hardy, S. — 2008-03-07

Analysing Sexualities in the Shadow of War: Islam in Iran, the West and the Work of Reimagining Human Rights

Waites, M. — 2008-03-07

Personal Observations on Changes in Sexology by a Formerly Hesitant and Fearful Researcher who is now Awed by the Emergence of a Vast and Rapidly Changing Field

Bullough, V. L. — 2008-03-07

Abstract and Introduction

Ryan-Flood, R. — 2008-03-07

Cool Heads and Hot Hearts

Kulick, D. — 2008-03-07

Arguments, Citations, Traces: Rich and Foucault and the Problem of Heterosexuality

Schneider, B. — 2008-03-07

Compulsory Sexuality and the Desiring Woman

Radner, H. — 2008-03-07

Locating Economics within Sexuality Studies

Binnie, J. — 2008-03-07

Rethinking Nationalism in Relation to Foucault's History of Sexuality and Adrienne Rich's `Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence'

Lewis, D. — 2008-03-07

Truths and (Mis)representations: Adrienne Rich, Michel Foucault and Sexual Subjectivities in India

Boyce, P. — 2008-03-07

`Taking it Like a Man': Masculinity and Barebacking Online

Dowsett, G. W., Williams, H., Ventuneac, A., Carballo-Dieguez, A. — 2008-03-07

Gay men's use of the internet for social and sexual purposes is now so common that some predict an end to gay bars. In New York City, where this study took place, the use of the internet by men to meet other men seeking sex without condoms, called bareback sex, has created concerns among public health and gay community HIV/AIDS workers. This study of six popular bareback internet sites seeks to understand the nature of this new online sexual culture, initially by investigating the sites themselves through the methodology of cyber-cartography. That investigation suggested that masculinity as an analytic in gender studies might offer some value in understanding what was happening on these sites. Issues of race and ethnicity also emerged to challenge any singular notion of masculinity. This paper suggests that masculinity itself might need some recalibration, and that we may also need to rethink these sites as evolving ethical sexual cultures.

The Soldier and the Terrorist: Sexy Nationalism, Queer Violence

Kuntsman, A. — 2008-03-07

An Israeli soldier, praised for killing terrorists in their homes, and adored as a gay prince charming; a Palestinian gay man called either a lying terrorist or a cute Arab boy with an almond ass; an Abu-Ghraib prisoner, whose naked body, pornographically mediated and distributed by the media generates a homosexual rape fantasy of all Arabs in-the-name-of-Israeli-security. These images were collected during my ethnography of a Russian-Israeli GLBT community, in the community's website. My analysis of the website's publications and discussions focuses on the ways violence, sexuality and nationhood intertwine in immigrants' sense of belonging to the country that is officially defined by the state policy — and indeed perceived by many immigrants themselves — as their home. I examine how masculinities become synecdoches of nation, and how homosexual fantasies work to create attachment to one's national home and hatred towards those defined as its enemies.

'Elvis Died and I was Born': Black African Men Negotiating Same-Sex Desire in London

Doyal, L., Paparini, S., Anderson, J. — 2008-03-07

This article reports on the first study of gay/bisexual men in the African diaspora. It is based on a focus group and in-depth individual interviews with eight men living in London. The main focus of the study was on the development of the men's sexual identity in their African countries of origin and the ways in which these identities and practices were reshaped and renegotiated by the move to London. The central themes to emerge were the tensions for these individuals between being African and being gay and between their same-sex preferences and mainstream religious beliefs and practices. The article demonstrates the need for further research on similar groups in different parts of the world as well as highlighting the need for reflexive methodologies that can accurately represent the complex realities of these men's lives.

Legalizing Love in a Cold Climate: The History, Consequences and Recent Developments of Registered Partnership in Scandinavia

Rydstrom, J. — 2008-03-07

Why was Scandinavia the first place in the world to introduce national laws allowing registered partnership between same-sex couples? This article is a survey and historical documentation of the registered partnership laws throughout Scandinavia, documenting their origin in Denmark in 1989 and their subsequent adoption by every Nordic country. The origins of the laws are traced to the 1970s criticism of the nuclear family, the AIDS epidemic, a general cultural emphasis of consensus, and the structure of the welfare state. The article investigates what the new homosexual family unit is permitted to be, and asks whether the new laws have proven to be liberatory, or a means of subtle repression and control.

Gay Asian Sexual Health in Australia: Governing HIV/AIDS, Racializing Biopolitics and Performing Conformity

Yue, A. — 2008-03-07

This article critically examines how the public health governance of HIV/AIDS has constructed the racialized biopolitics of the gay Asian Australian community. The old biopolitics of health that excluded the Asian at the turn of the 19th century is now eclipsed by a new biopolitics that foregrounds the racialized body as a site of inclusion. The new biopolitics has emerged from within policy innovations in Australia's multicultural sexual health programs. Since the mid-1990s, the diversity of Asian communities was recognized in various AIDS councils through the employment of ethno-specific social workers, carers and peer-to-peer educators. This article problematizes how diasporic gay Asian sexuality has emerged in queer, mainstream and modern Australia through such a viral politic of containment. These policies, I argue, have paradoxically contributed to the production of a new queer Asian Australian body aesthetics that has enabled the conditions of possibilities for new sexual subjects.

Negotiating Social Stigma Among Gay Asian Men

Poon, M. K.-L., Ho, P. T.-T. — 2008-03-07

It has long been argued that stereotypes have led many gay Asian men to have negative feelings about themselves and other gay Asians, to the idealization of white men as potential partners, hostility towards other gay Asians, internalization of the stereotypes as passive and submissive, and being sexually objectified by some white men. To counter the effects of the stereotypes, critics and theorists of the gay Asian experience suggest increasing the visibility of Asian role models in the gay community, developing a strong sense of self-identity by choosing Asian men as potential partners, and encouraging involvement with the mainstream gay community. In contrast, we explore resistance to the stereotypes at a personal level, using narratives obtained through a series of interviews to analyze the ways in which gay Asian men negotiate and (re)frame the social stigma associated with their bodies and desire for white men. We argue that gay Asian men do not simply accept the negative stereotypes imposed by the dominant culture; rather, they actively resist and continuously reconstruct meanings about their bodies and desires.

Book Review: Jeffrey Weeks, The World We Have Won: The Remaking of Erotic and Intimate Life. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. 269pp. ISBN 978--0--415--42201--7 (pbk). {pound}21.99

Ryan-Flood, R. — 2008-03-07

Vern Leroy Bullough (1928--2006)

Docter, R. F. — 2008-03-07