Sexualities

This article considers the role that clothing and fashion have played, or continue to play, in ‘sexualisation’. It is pointed out that fashion, as in clothing, has often played a very small part in much wider discussions about ‘sexualisation’ much of which fails to problematise the meaning of the clothing concerned. The article thus considers what might constitute ‘sexualised’ clothing or fashion – whether this is simply baring of flesh, too ‘adult’, or somehow ‘pornographic’ in its derivations or connotations. In addition, fashion and dress have a long history of forming heated concern for feminists who have often found themselves caught between seeing it as oppressive and male defined or expressive and somehow empowering. What is often at stake here is the very significance of fashion or dress itself when seen as a wider communicator of status or just personality. Drawing on established feminist and fashion theory, this article unpacks this connection. In addition, the ‘function’ of fashion as display has an equally long history of often unacknowledged gender difference that precedes later feminist resistance yet still informs it. The article also considers the extent to which understandings of fashion may inform or disrupt more contemporary feminist politics on dress, and recent attempts to reclaim ‘sexualised’ clothing and dressing as empowering for young women are questioned. In sum, it is argued that an analysis of fashion and dress per se is needed to develop a more informed understanding of the processes of ‘sexualisation’ and resistance to them.

Since the release of Kubrick's film in 1962 visual representations of Lolita have proliferated. Yet, such visualisations tend to re-signify ‘Lolita’, departing significantly from the way she is constructed in Nabokov's novel. This article considers why the figure of ‘Lolita’ fits so seamlessly into the logic of the fashion media in the West. It points to the fashion industry's fixation with the ‘woman-child’ and infantilisation, as well as the centrality of clothing and consumption in Nabokov's novel. Particular attention is paid to Marc Jacobs’ advertisement for Oh, Lola!, banned in the UK by the Advertising Standards Agency in 2011. Methodologically, the article presents visual analysis alongside findings from audience studies conducted with female participants.

One of the reasons why it is ‘hard to explain’ the lack of attention to boys in discourses in sexualisation is that approached head-on, it appears that the focus on girls has no logic and is merely accidental. One might point to the research that is beginning to emerge on the increased visibility of the male body in visual cultures (e.g. Gill, 2009) and to boys’ fashion and embodiment (e.g. Vandenbosch and Eggermont, 2013). However, we propose that the tendency towards a problematisation of girls’ fashion and deportment and the invisibility of boys within policy and media discourses on ‘sexualisation’ is a systemic effect of constructions of gender and sexual subjectivity. In our society, we argue, signifiers of feminine purity operate as a form of symbolic capital, a construction that is not attributed to boys and which is integral scaffolding for the depiction of a subject as threatened by sexualisation. To illustrate our theorising regarding the ‘sexualisation of boys’, we shall examine an apparent exception to the rule: the Papadopoulos Review (2010), which explicitly attends to the sexualisation of boys and ends up re-emphasising rather than analysing the gendered and classed discourses of sexualisation. The Papadopolous Review indicates a moment at which a problematisation of the sexualisation of boys could have been triggered – since attention to both boys and girls was specifically part of the remit of the review – but was not, for specific sociological reasons to do with which subjects are assessed against the criterion of innocence.

This article considers the male experience of conducting fieldwork in massage parlours; off-street environments in which women exchange sexual services in predominantly heterosexual monetary transactions. It critically examines debates surrounding the desirability of gender incongruence between researchers and their informants. By acknowledging the complex interplay of gender and relations in the field, experiences of power are presented as variable rather than fixed. Honest and detailed accounts of interactions with sex workers illustrate the complexities of embodying masculinity in clandestine and feminized spaces. The perceived benefits and limitations of gender incongruence are presented. The need to consciously manage and comprehensively reflect upon the impacts of gender, in addition to the complex array of power dynamics in the field is discussed.

Young Muslims in the UK are making space to gain greater control over their personal lives through the diction of ‘halal’ and ‘haram’ when reflecting on and negotiating personal relationships. This article explores the significance of ‘halal dating’ within the lived experiences and sexual relationships of young British Muslims. It draws upon 56 in-depth interviews conducted with young (16–30 years) British Muslims of Pakistani heritage. This research shows that, contrary to popular stereotype and widespread expectations, many young British Muslims do date, or have dated. By entertaining the idea that certain forms of dating may be halal, these young Muslims are finding and claiming agency to make relationship choices of their own.

This article charts changes in the representation and encoding of superhero closeting metaphors from US television programs Smallville (2001–2011) to The Flash (2014–). Many theorists have noted that superheroes’ hidden secret identities resemble closeting. However, because of legal and social changes in LGBTQ acceptance, as well as intensification of the data-driven security state, closeting on The Flash connects to a fundamentally different set of algorithmic neoliberal social processes. As a result, The Flash portrays a form of post-shame closeting wherein secrecy is a practice of necessary self-defense against mechanized necropolitical violence and social erasure based on unpredictable data markers of risk.

In the 21st century, asexuality has become synonymous with sexual orientation, being described as a ‘lack’ of sexual attraction. This definition is problematic, as it assumes that everybody is sexual and that sexuality is immutable. With the rise of a postfeminist culture, the lived experiences of asexual-identified women are in danger of being lost within static narratives of frigidity and singledom. In response, this article proposes an emergent concept for reconfiguring female (a)sexualities through collective ecstatic motion – Zorbitality – drawing on the global Latin dance fitness phenomenon, Zumba® Fitness, as a central example. I firstly conceptualise Zorbitality, via Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of ‘flow’ and Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘rhizome’. Secondly, I examine the emergence of Zumba® Fitness as a contemporary Dionysian rite, mediated by digital culture, capitalism and globalisation, through my insights from the ZIN™ Academy and Believe party (London, July 2015) and work as a Zumba® Fitness instructor. Finally, I conceptualise Zumba® as (i) an asexual space, (ii) a celebration of the autoerotic body and (iii) an invocation of West African collective movement rites. Zorbitality emerges as a resistant imaginary, where differences in sexuality cease to matter and where personal movement styles are celebrated within a set of shared rhythms.

This article examines women’s tantric retreats in Northwest Europe aimed at developing female sexual subjectivity. Based on ethnographic study and in-depth interviews, it argues that the retreats induced among participants critical distancing from socially dominant representations of (self-)objectified femininity and pornified female sexuality. It highlights how, through foregrounding a view of the female sex as sacred, the workshops fostered experiences of embodying the divine as grounds for female worthiness. It further illustrates how intimate touch among women and self-touch were encouraged as ways to establish an erotic connection with a vital flow beyond a narrow focus on sexual activity.

This study examines how people learn about vibrators, their attitudes toward them, fears or hesitations about acquiring and/or using one, and the significance of vibrators to participants’ sexualities. Based on 78–147 responses to an online open-ended survey, participants report: primarily learning about vibrators from media and peers; their interpretations of media representations of vibrators are juxtaposed as both a tool for great pleasure and a shameful taboo; that vibrators are often perceived as a “dick substitute” for women who are unsuccessful at satisfying partnered heterosex; their initial purchase of a vibrator was inhibited by cost, fears that others would discover that they owned one, and ignorance about the technology, how their body would respond, and what they knew about their body; the majority of participants use vibrators both alone and in partnered sex; and the vast majority of participants who do not own a vibrator report that they would like to and anticipate purchasing one in the future. These findings illustrate the increasing normativity of vibrators that is justified by post-feminist ideals, while also repeatedly illustrating the continued feelings of shame and embarrassment, and fears of stigmatization.

In this study, we investigate how pornography addiction is constructed by members of the New Zealand public by analysing six 2016 newspaper articles focusing on pornography addiction, and the 1430 Facebook comments posted in response to them. Utilizing a critical discursive approach, we identified five interpretative repertoires employed to construct both the viewing of pornography and pornography itself in multiple ways. Our analysis suggests that although pornography remained poorly defined, it was at turns framed as both unnatural and natural to view. The naturalness of viewing pornography however was complicated by an explicit acceptance of pornography addiction, which was variously proposed as being similar to substance abuse, a threat to intimate relationships, and as a convenient excuse. Moreover, the pornography addict was reliably described as male, and implicitly placed within a monogamous heterosexual relationship, with pornography depicted as most threatening when impinging upon such relationships. As such, we argue that the construction of pornography addiction not only reifies morally conservative historical concerns, but also side-lines the ethical and political ramifications of normalized pornography viewership. The possible replacement of discussions about the content of pornography with debates about user effects indicates a rapid historical shift from concerns for community standards to concerns for personal responsibility.

Ireland is a majority-Catholic country that has, in recent times, been held up as a model of sexual progress internationally. We employ the term Marriage Equality Time (MET) to signify the tensions related to temporality, sexuality and children that emerged as Marriage Equality (ME) was introduced in Ireland. Drawing on a study with six primary schools during the ME referendum, this article captures MET in its emergent state, exploring how parents, teachers and principals were processing what ME might mean for children and schools. This analysis of MET illustrates how it mediates imaginaries of childhood innocence, sexuality and the nation-state.

In this article, I introduce the concept of BDSM as trauma play, which is the practice of intentionally engaging in BDSM activities in order to “play” with one’s past trauma or abuse. I begin by offering a fuller definition of trauma play, and I then summarize some of the key scholarly discussions related to the topic, especially the themes of healing, therapy, play, and embodiment. Following this, I take an autoethnographic approach, and I investigate my own trauma play experiences, which I subsequently analyze and use to highlight the need for more systematic research into this understudied topic area that significantly impacts the lives of some BDSM practitioners.

Drawing on interviews with 10 gay streamers and 30 viewers, this article analyzes a new feature of live streaming on Blued, a Chinese gay male dating app. Live streaming invites users to either perform themselves or watch others perform. Unlike western gay dating apps that monetize users’ hooking-up encounters, the business model behind Blued instead capitalizes on affective encounters among gay streamers and viewers. Through paid virtual gifts, which circulate as affective signs, live streaming fosters and intensifies viewers’ intimate attachment to gay streamers. The virtual intimacy produced by gay live streaming entails a significant economic dimension, and is therefore stigmatized. In consequence, gay streamers do not see streaming as sex-related work, and paying viewers do not portray gifts as consumption. In understating the economic and sexual underpinnings of affective encounters mediated by live streaming, gay streamers and viewers not only reinforce heteronormativity, but also produce homonormativity.

In 2010, a professor in India was forcibly outed as gay and catapulted into a nationwide debate about LGBTQ rights in India. A textual analysis of prominent Indian English-language newspapers revealed the framing devices journalists used to report the case, unpacking how coverage essentialized gay identity, signified civil rights and citizenship, problematized notions of consent, complicated public/private demarcations of sexuality, and negotiated competing claims of morality. Journalistic discourse inevitably privileged dominant western neoliberal conceptions of sexuality, reducing sexual citizenship to a particular classed and gendered subject at the expense of a more expansive range of alternative sexualities in India.

In this article we explore the affectivity of the sexualized epithet ‘whore’ when employed by 150 young social media users in Sweden. By adopting a Deleuze-Guattarian inspired approach to affect we illustrate how ‘whore’ works to restrict and inhibit girls’ affective capacities within the online sexuality assemblage. We further explore targets’ and peers’ resistance to being called whore. We found that targets and peers alike employ aggressive and sexualized language to rebuke and resist the term whore. We argue that these acts of resistance may serve to further support the postfeminist logic and values that underpin the continued monitoring of girls.

Recently, much has been written in the mass media about the novel and film Fifty Shades of Grey. It was widely portrayed as an example of BDSM (a common abbreviation for the terms bondage, discipline, dominance, submissivity, sadism and masochism) subculture and used as a symbol of sadomasochistic identity. But is this public view based on the self image of BDSM subcultural members or is it a figment of the imagination of writers and journalists? This article presents the voice of BDSM activists, who are silenced and excluded from the public debate. Using a virtual ethnographic method, we analyse the BDSM blogosphere as a platform for subcultural expressions of opinion. We combine this with a documentary analysis. In doing so, we examine how BDSM subculture members perceive themselves in contrast to the mainstream view of them pictured in the book Fifty Shades of Grey. This article investigates to what extent the subcultural conception of BDSM corresponds to the book's depiction and where it differs fundamentally.

This article explores the persistent problem of bisexual invisibility in contemporary film and television and asks why, in the rare moments bisexuality is visible, it is likely to collapse back into dominant stereotypes of bisexuals as unstable, immature and incapable of monogamy. Through a reading of You Me Her, a television series about a polyamorous triadic relationship, this article argues that bisexuality is both made evident and obscured by the dominant temporalities of monogamy. Drawing on work from scholars in critical monogamy studies and queer temporality, it therefore offers ‘mono-temporality’ as a new theoretical resource for explaining bisexual in/visibility on screen.