When we think of desire in the Middle Ages we immediately recall the religious exhortation to love God and despise the flesh. My present subject is not the desire for God but the less sublime theme of sexual desire, however the two may have been linked. Sexual desire was a central intellectual concern for medieval thinkers despite their reputed aversion to the subject. It was not, for example, the trifunctional schema of modern celebrity — oratores, bellatores, laboratores — that was (...) the earliest and most pervasive of medieval social classifications, but the trisexual division among coniugati, continentes, and virgines. In other words, the human race was fundamentally grouped according to sexual activity. As advocates of virginity, the monks were the first to pronounce on sexuality, and they formulated the terms of discourse lasting into the early Middle Ages. By 1200, however, I can find no new monastic treatise De laude virginitatis in northern France deemed worthy of transcribing because of the author's fame or the weight of its argument. Contemporary theologians were equally indifferent. (shrink)

In this paper I make a preliminary analysis of Western (or global North) discourses on sexual violence, focusing on the important concepts of “consent” and “victim.” The concept of “consent” is widely used to determine whether sexual violence has occurred, and it is the focal point of debates over the legitimacy of statutory offenses and over the way we characterize sex work done under conditions involving economic desperation. The concept of “victim” is shunned by many feminists and nonfeminists alike (...) for its apparent eclipse of agency. Putting these concepts into a global framework sheds light on their limitations. Bringing in the debate over the concept “honor crime” reveals contrasting assumptions about the nature of sexual violence. The comparative analysis used in this paper shows how we can avoid universalizing from specific frameworks, but also how we can learn from the discourses elsewhere toward developing an account of commonalities across contexts. Ultimately I argue that in applications to sexual violence, “consent” has intrinsic limitations, “victim” has context-based dangers, and “honor crime” makes both correct as well as incorrect assumptions. (shrink)

This paper aims to deal with the change of sexual discourse through the rise of a feminist movement in Korea from a constructivist point of view. First, the paper discusses the Confucianism of the Chosun dynasty as an historical background of the issue of sexuality (since Confucianism still has a far-reaching grip and effect on many aspects of everyday life in Korea). Second, it deals with chastity ideology and the double standard of sexuality between men and women as (...) ongoing Confucian sexual discourses. Third, it focuses on three themes: (1) the change from sex for procreation to sex for pleasure, (2) the change from genitally-oriented sexuality to intimacy- or relationship-oriented sexuality, and (3) the change from a woman as a sexual object to a sexual subject as part of the changes of sexual discourses. Fourth, it tries to show clashes and/or alliances between the Confucian and feminist discourses on sexuality, which make up the process of the social construction of sexuality. This shows that sexuality is a socio-historical construction in Korea as elsewhere. (shrink)

이 논문에서 필자는 가장 오래된 남성폭력의 기술화 버전이라 할 수 있는 디지털 성폭력에 대한 철학적 담론을 개진해보고자 한다. 첫 번째로 불법도촬 카메라의 전방위적 공간성의 작동방식과 디지털 데이터 베이스로 전환된 새로운 시간성의 구조를 분석할 것이다. 나아가 디지털 성폭력과 사이버 성폭력 개념이 혼용되어 사용되고 있는 현재 담론지형에 개입해 들어가 볼 것이다.BR 두 번째로 정보통신기술의 발달과 사물 인터넷에 기반한 초연결성을 통해, 불법도촬 카메라의 설치와 촬영이라는 물리적 공간에서의 활동이 사이버 공간이라는 디지털 매트릭스로 즉각 편입이 가능해짐으로써 여성신체이미지가 디지털 재화로 기능하는 측면을 분석할 것이다.BR 세 번째로 (...) 필자는 디지털 성폭력이라는 피해경험을 재언어화하기 위해, 새로운 감정구조를 고안해보고자 한다. 즉 성적 수치심이 아닌, 성적 불쾌감, 사회적 분노감이라는 다층화된 감정구조로의 이행을 통해, 피해자다움이라는 프레임에 갇힌 약자의 전형화에서 벗어나도록 한다. 새로운 감정 양식은 저항적, 도전적 신체감응 양식의 창출을 도모함으로써 더 이상 사라져야할 자는 피해자가 아닌, 가해자들임을, 수치의 몫은 피해자가 아닌 가해자에게 부과해야하는 것임을 낱낱이 드러낼 것이다. 나아가 디지털 성폭력에 대한 대항실천은 한 개인의 문제가 아닌 공공성의 문제이자 정치적 시민권의 실행에 관한 문제로서 접근되어야한다. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on Foucault, Butler, and video-sharing on sexual social networking sites. It argues that the use and prevalence of video-sharing technologies on sexual social networking websites has a direct impact on notions of sexual identity. Though sometimes pitted against one another and at times contradictory, the ideas of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler on the nature and expression of sexuality and gender identities in fact gel rather well, and both can help us to gain a deeper and (...) more rounded picture of the impact and importance of the burgeoning phenomenon of internet dating websites in general, and sexual social networking in particular. (shrink)

There is an increasing recognition internationally of the critical impact of communication within healthcare. The link between ineffective communication, patient dissatisfaction and critical incidents is well established. Family Planning New South Wales has sought to address patient-centred care and communication in its policy platform. This article reports on research conducted within FPNSW, which analysed the discourse features that constituted effective doctor–patient1 communication in sexual and reproductive health consultations. The principal aim of the research was to understand how effectively messages were (...) conveyed and received and to what degree patients were active participants in their own sexual healthcare. Analysed consultations were characterised by extremely high levels of communicative competence on the part of the doctors who integrated medical expertise with the development of interpersonal relationships with patients, thus positioning patients as active contributors to the consultations and to decisions about their ongoing treatment. The detailed linguistic analysis identified characteristic features of patient-centred communication that are essential to patient-centred care. These interactions demonstrate that communicating care is just as important as delivering care and involves a drawing together of the medical and the interpersonal in consultations. The article details strategies for interweaving medical knowledge and establishing rapport that can inform practitioner communication practices across different healthcare contexts. (shrink)

This paper aims to deal with the change of sexual discourse through the rise of a feminist movement in Korea from a constructivist point of view. First, the paper discusses the Confucianism of the Chosun dynasty as an historical background of the issue of sexuality (since Confucianism still has a far-reaching grip and effect on many aspects of everyday life in Korea). Second, it deals with chastity ideology and the double standard of sexuality between men and women as (...) ongoing Confucian sexual discourses. Third, it focuses on three themes: (1) the change from sex for procreation to sex for pleasure, (2) the change from genitally-oriented sexuality to intimacy- or relationship-oriented sexuality, and (3) the change from a woman as a sexual object to a sexual subject as part of the changes of sexual discourses. Fourth, it tries to show clashes and/or alliances between the Confucian and feminist discourses on sexuality, which make up the process of the social construction of sexuality. This shows that sexuality is a socio-historical construction in Korea as elsewhere. (shrink)

Even when they address the same issues, different situations do not elicit the same kind of language use. Just as theological summas are not like sermons, and commentaries on the Books of Sentences are not like summas for confessors, medieval texts about marriage vary greatly according to the situations for which they were written. The function of each text and the purpose of its speaker or writer affect the perspective taken on marriage as a social, religious, and sexual phenomenon. This (...) essay will focus on marriage sermons: because of their use in pastoral settings and their lay audience, these sermons address the theme of marriage in a pragmatic way, which at times contrasts with the perspective found in dogmatic, academic texts. (shrink)

In this extended review essay we discuss the lectures on sexuality which Foucault delivered in the 1960s, published in a single volume in 2018. The first part of the volume comprises five lectures given at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in 1964 to psychology students. The second part is Foucault’s course ‘The Discourse of Sexuality’, given at the experimental University of Vincennes in 1969 in the philosophy department. We explore both the themes of the lectures, and the important editorial (...) materials provided by Claude-Olivier Doron which situate these themes in relation to recent developments in the history and philosophy of biology, gender and sexuality. These lectures provide some important and surprising additions to Foucault’s more familiar interest in sexuality, with discussion of plant and animal biology, sex differentiation, the question of sexual behaviour, perversion and infantile sexuality. (shrink)

The constructions of genders and sexualities in different global spaces continue to be influenced by Christian and imperial ideologies. In Africa, genders and sexualities were (mis)construed by colonial and missionary enterprises, and they continue to be defined according to Eurocentric terms and perceptions. This has produced ‘modern sexual repression’. The use of Biblical discourses to construct African genders and sexualities is one way that this repression is mirrored in South Africa. Because of this, African genders and sexualities are marginalised, (...) treated as taboo and depicted as backward and uncivilised, thus, promoting hegemonic heteronormative and monogamous marriages. This article examined how Biblical discourses contributed to this narrative. It further advanced a call for transforming this dominant narrative by engaging theology, gender and sexuality studies and socio-political sciences from the premise of a multidisciplinary epoch. The decolonial motif, with a focus on delinking African genders and sexualities from the Western agenda of sexual repression, serves as the theoretical framework for this research. On the other hand, race, gender and sexuality serve as lenses used to better understand the phenomenon and to explore the use of biblical discourses in this context. Thus, the article makes use of a secondary research approach to carry out this task.Contribution: This article seeks to add to the body of knowledge that endeavours to change the way that biblical discourses are used in South Africa today to construct a narrative that represses non-normative genders and sexualities. (shrink)

In United Nations (UN) human rights reporting and analysis, ‘honour’ has been systematically conflated with ‘honour-related violence’ (HRV). However, honour and HRV are not the same thing. In this article I examine contemporary UN human rights discourses around honour. I argue that these discourses are underpinned by racialised and orientalist-colonial imaginaries which falsely categorise people and places as either having or not having honour. This conflation presents honour as a cultural problem attributed to racialised communities mostly associated with (...) the Muslim World. Adopting a critical post- and de-colonial perspective, I undertake a discourse analysis of UN human rights documents to expose orientalist tropes that reproduce epistemic and material violence against honour. There are three strategies employed to commit this violence: first, through the reduction of honour to physical and emotional HRV—a violence predicated upon the logic of coloniality and the orientalist division of the world into modern and pre-modern states; second, by associating honour as violence with Muslims and migrant communities, the discourse furthers structural Islamophobia; third, by reproducing colonial saviour narratives that designate honour as control over women’s sexuality. The human rights discourse on honour forecloses upon alternative ways of understanding what honour is and means for those who live with it. As such, the international human rights discourse on honour extends the coloniality of power and the geopolitics of knowledge. (shrink)

This essay focuses on an issue arising from within an anti-essentialist perspective on sexual identity: how is it possible to explain the political impetus inhering in a category such as 'woman' without having recourse to a set of positive properties that would somehow fix her identity in advance? I examine how a particular theoretical outlook, social postmodernism, attempts to address this issue, and argue that, ultimately, social postmodernism generates its own impasse which I call social foundationalism - an impasse which (...) is structurally similar to biological foundationalism. I invoke discourse -theoretic concepts to introduce the psychoanalytic categories of master signifier and symbolic identification. This is done in order to suggest how Lacanian psychoanalysis permits us to theorize sexual difference in a way that avoids both biological foundationalism and social foundationalism. Key Words: discourse theory • identification • identity • Lacan • poststructuralism • psychoanalysis • sexual difference • social postmodernism. (shrink)

20 years since the negotiation of the Palermo Protocol on Trafficking in 2000, the anti-trafficking field has gone from an early, almost exclusive preoccupation with sex work to addressing extreme exploitation in a range of labour sectors. While this might suggest a reduced focus on the nature of the work performed and a greater focus on the conditions under which it is performed, in reality, anti-trafficking discourse remains in the grip of polarised positions on sex work even as the carceral (...) effects of anti-trafficking law become evident and the Swedish model of criminalising the purchase of sexual services spreads. In this article, I demonstrate how despite the recent discursive shifts to ‘modern slavery’ and ‘forced labour’, the anti-trafficking transnational legal order itself reinforces, rather than diffuses cultures of sex work exceptionalism. The growing international sex workers’ movement has offered resistance, yet a closer look at the movement and the widespread support that it has garnered for decriminalisation from international organisations, while valuable, helps reveal the greatest cost yet of anti-trafficking discourse, namely, the inability of the sex workers’ movement to produce a sophisticated theory of regulation to reduce levels of exploitation within sex work, one which is commensurate with the informality and heterogeneity of sex markets the world over. Finally, to the extent that neoabolitionist projects derive legitimacy from interventions abroad, especially in the global South, I chronicle the edifice on which it rests in one such context, namely India, to demonstrate how countries in the global South are not merely conduits for the global North’s preoccupation with moral gentrification through neo-abolitionism, but rather, that the circuits of global governmentality while influential, are highly contingent, thus producing opportunities for creative forms of mobilisation by sex workers. (shrink)

Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry pour ses filles et Le Ménagier de Paris, textes didactiques écrits au quatorzième siècle, enseignent aux jeunes filles et aux épouses les normes du comportement sexuel qu’elles doivent adopter en puisant dans les écrits courtois et religieux. Cependant, les formes socialement acceptables du désir divergent pour les hommes et les femmes. Tandis que le désir masculin est associé à la vie et la continuité, le désir féminin demeure placé sous les auspices de (...) la mort et de la perte. Cette partition est révélatrice des présupposés idéologiques de ces auteurs masculins, dont le lectorat n’était pas limité au seul public féminin. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe bio-political discourses of nationhood and homo/sexuality burgeon geo-culturally and historically, and this article presents a case-study of Poland post-2004 EU enlargement. Focused on...

Women in North America have many childbirth options. However, they must make these choices within a complex culture of birthing discourse characterized by competing knowledges and claims regarding the “ideal birth” as medicalized, natural, or woman centered. We interviewed 21 childless women and 22 new mothers to explore their perceptions of choice and birthing. The women’s interviews indicated that their birthing choices are reflective of tensions embedded in normative femininity; conflicting ideas relating to purity, dignity, and the messiness of birth; (...) and contradictions about women’s bodies as heteronormative sites of pleasure and sexuality on one hand and of asexual, selfless sources of maternal nurturance on the other. Finally, the women’s views reflected understandings of moral and normative constructs about selflessness as a core attribute of femininity and motherhood, particularly in terms of enduring pain as the “proper” means of accomplishing the rite of passage to motherhood. Although all the women described tensions between femininity and motherhood, childless women were more likely than mothers to be worried about achieving ideal, heteronormative sexuality and femininity. Likewise, women who have not yet had children and women who have experienced unplanned C-sections were more likely than those who experienced vaginal births to express that C-section births fail to fully accomplish women’s rite of passage to motherhood. (shrink)

Regnant public accounts of Jewish sexual ethics—both external and internal—fall short of what they could accomplish. Using a Twitter thread on sexual ethics which falls into some key errors as a case study, I argue that Jewish ethicists are poised to address the thread's errors by offering sources for alternative moral frameworks. I examine how thinking with this Twitter thread can help us clarify what we mean by public scholarship more generally, what is wrong with some common public deployments of (...) specifically Jewish sources, and some implications of this for both Jewish and non‐Jewish publics. I conclude with some reflections about the role of traditional academic venues, such as the Journal of Religious Ethics, within this. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis essay examines Freud's construction of a mythical moment during early childhood, in which differences between male and female sexual identities are said to originate. It focuses on the way in which Freud divides fear and envy between the sexes, allocating the emotion of fear to men, and that of envy to women. On the one hand, the problems of this construction are pointed out, but on the other hand, it is shown that even a much-maligned myth may still (...) provide food for thought.Then, four critiques of Freud which have been articulated by prominent feminist psychoanalysts – Karen Horney, Nancy Chodorow, Luce Irigaray, and Jessica Benjamin – are presented, as well as the alternative visions of sexual identities which these thinkers have developed. The basic metaphors or economies guiding these visions of sexual difference are appraised in terms of their breadth and depth, with particular reference to their ability to acknowledge and integrate the presence of fear and envy as passions which are evoked but also repressed in the face of sexual difference.From this angle, the contributions of Nancy Chodorow and Luce Irigaray are found to be more limited than those of Karen Horney and Jessica Benjamin, since the former two theorists allocate fear primarily or exclusively to men, as Freud has done, while they remain completely silent on envy. Differences in the scope or reach of the four feminist approaches are explained as a result of the theorists' differing perceptions of the social, political, and cultural position of women in patriarchal society. (shrink)

Since the late 1990s, a constellation of professional associations, journals and health promotion materials has emerged that has constructed the ‘aging male’ as a medical problem. Central to this construction has been a revival of a hormonal model of the male body in which anti-aging is linked to the restoration of masculinity. In this paper I revisit the association of aging and demasculinization that animated the rejuvenation movement of the early 20th century, and contrast this with the initial mainstream medical (...) interest in testosterone therapy in the mid-20th century. Then I will demonstrate how the association between anti-aging and re-masculinization has been given new life in the remedicalized ‘andropause’, and as a contemporary focus on maintaining life-long virility has emerged as an important indicator of ‘health aging’. (shrink)

This research examines the complex interplay of religiosity, sexuality, and infidelity. We adopted a case study approach in this research, and discourse was made central to the analysis. There were two participants; both identified as homosexuals. One participant, Fahrin, is married while the other, Muzz, is divorced at the time of the interview. The participants were subjected to an in-depth, semi-structured interview to gauge their experiences, perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and thoughts on their sexuality, Islamic faith as well as (...) relationship with their spouses. The data were then transcribed and analyzed using the Discursive Action Model and Discursive Psychology frameworks. From the analysis, two overarching themes were identified. They are the allocation of blame and accountability and the participants’ attachment to their Islamic identity. The discussion then revolves around the societal role that pressures gay men to marry women and contextualizes the position of Islam on Homosexuality. (shrink)

This paper analyses the discourse surrounding a high-profile sexual assault case in South Korea. While most research on language and sexual violence has focused on the media portrayal or online resistance movement, not much has focused on the language and the law. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and rhetoric, this present paper seeks to show the importance of value of paying closer attention to legal decision-making process, showing how this can make a significant contribution to the literature. The analysis reveals two (...) distinctive discourses at work. One is that victims must embody and display certain characteristics as a ‘pure and destroyed’ individual in order to avoid being dismissed or appearing untrustworthy. The second is that the perpetrators represent themselves as victims seeking to makes it the goal of the court to protect the perpetrators’ rights, rather than those of the victims. (shrink)

An anonymous vigilante attack by six women on an Auckland University lecturer in 1984 took place in the context of ongoing feminist reframing of rape and sexual abuse. Most feminists’ responses to this incident assumed the man's guilt and uncritically accepted the allegations made against him. This was not surprising in view of the prescriptive radical feminist hegemony that prevailed in New Zealand throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. Recent feminist writings on sexual harassment have been more ready to grapple (...) with the complexities and ambiguities of issues of sexuality and pedagogy – a shift that enables women to have a wider range of responses to unwanted sexual attention. Some of the earlier and problematic radical feminist notions about rape and sexual abuse have been absorbed into the treatment discourse, with some distressing consequences. In 1988 an over-zealous Christchurch doctor believed she had detected signs of sexual abuse in fifty-six children at a health camp. Her intervention resulted in some girls being removed from their families, even though they denied they had ever been abused. One New Zealand doctor, a pioneer in sexual abuse work in this country, has published a book documenting developments in this area, and expressing grave misgivings about over-intervention and false allegations of abuse. There are persistent attempts to discredit her concerns. However, there is a groundswell of public disquiet over some aspects of sexual abuse work, which cannot be dismissed as backlash. (shrink)

While popular debate grapples with the legality of gay marriage, networks of medical, political, and juridical discourses produce and situate sexuality in a field of knowledge that is constantly under examination and administration. The rationalization of sexuality, and its dispersion into multiple fields of knowledge, has become part of a system of power relations that produces identities and manages them. Within this context, this paper places Horkheimer and Adorno's excursus on Sade's Juliette in conversation with Foucault's first (...) volume of the History of Sexuality. It explores how instrumental reason and power/knowledge relationships produce discourses of sexuality, which have come to dominate Western society. It also explores possible sites of resistance, through the notion of performativity, that exist within these modes of rationalization and power. I argue that this interlocution of Horkheimer and Adorno with Foucault helps us see sexuality as a site of both domination and resistance. It also shows how sexuality is produced in a field of contestation where possibilities of practices of freedom are always circumscribed by modes of rationalization and networks of power. (shrink)

While popular debate grapples with the legality of gay marriage, networks of medical, political, and juridical discourses produce and situate sexuality in a field of knowledge that is constantly under examination and administration. The rationalization of sexuality, and its dispersion into multiple fields of knowledge, has become part of a system of power relations that produces identities and manages them. Within this context, this paper places Horkheimer and Adorno's excursus on Sade's Juliette in conversation with Foucault's first (...) volume of the History of Sexuality. It explores how instrumental reason and power/knowledge relationships produce discourses of sexuality, which have come to dominate Western society. It also explores possible sites of resistance, through the notion of performativity, that exist within these modes of rationalization and power. I argue that this interlocution of Horkheimer and Adorno with Foucault helps us see sexuality as a site of both domination and resistance. It also shows how sexuality is produced in a field of contestation where possibilities of practices of freedom are always circumscribed by modes of rationalization and networks of power. (shrink)

본 논문은 사랑을 성애로 환원하는 최근의 성적 환원주의와 사랑이 가능한 한 사적으로 유지돼야 한다는 자유주의적 이상에 맞서 고대 그리스의 정치-사랑 개념 쌍을 살펴보고자 한다. 이를 통해 현대 학문 영역에서 상대적으로 간과되고 있는 고대 그리스의 정치 이론에 나타난 공적 에로스론인‘폴리스-에로스론’을 고찰하려는 데에 그 목적이 있다.BR 성적 욕망은 에로스의 제한된 유형일 뿐이라는 논점을 위해, 2절에서는 헤시오도스의 『신통기』에 나타난 에로스 신의 기원에 관한 두 가지 설명이 차례로 분석될 것이다. 헤시오도스의 신화적이고 시적인 설명에 따르면, 고전기의 정치적 에로스에 대한 최초의 기원이 아프로디테 이전의 최초의 오래된 (...) 에로스라는 것이 드러날 것이다. 이 원초적인 에로스가 비성적이거나 성적인 것 외부에 있는 비육체적인 대상들에 적용됐던 정치적 에로스의 모태임이 밝혀질 것이다. 다음으로 3절은 시칠리아 원정, 페리클레스의 장례식 연설 그리고 뮈틸레네 논쟁을 통해 투퀴디데스의 정치적 에로스 담론의 지형도가 그려진다. 투퀴디데스의 정치적 에로스 담론은 더 많이 가지려는 욕망(pleonexia), 구혼자들처럼 도시를 사랑하는 자들(erastai)이 되라는 페리클레스의 촉구, 그리고 개인적 에로스와 공동체적 에로스의 공속 관계를 통해 잘 드러나고 있다. 그리고 4절에서는『향연』의 파이드로스의 연인군대, 파우사니아스의 참주정과 소년애, 아리스토파네스의 남성-남성 욕망의 합법화 그리고 소크라테스-디오티마 연설의 불사적 명예에 대한 사랑을 통해, 정치적 에로스에 관한 담론이 논급된다. 연인군대, 참주정과 소년애, 남성-남성 욕망의 합법화 그리고 불사하는 명예에 대한 사랑(philotimia) 각각은 정치와 에로스의 공속 관계를 다시 한 번 확인시켜 줄 것이다.BR 이상의 정치적 에로스 담론에 관한 헤시오도스의 신화적이고 시적인 전통과 투퀴디데스의 실증주의적 역사, 그리고 플라톤의『향연』을 통해, 우리는 에로스가 성애를 초과하여 좀 더 넓은 의미로 사용됐고, 특히 국가적 차원에서 에로스의 정치적 함의를 확인할 수 있었다. 그러나 에로스가 정치적 저항 운동의 에너지원이고, 완전히 다른 삶의 형식, 완전히 다른 사회를 향한 혁명적 욕망의 원천이라는 진단에는 에로스의 정치적 잠재성과 동시에 그것의 위험들에 대한 경고도 함께 들어 있다. (shrink)

Conceiving sexuality as a sociohistorical construction, in this paper I reflect upon possible reconfigurations that neoliberalism allows, bearing in mind that it is a specific governmentality displaying a particular mode of subjectivization. The hypothesis I develop stresses that neoliberal governmentality provides new forms of living and experiencing sexuality, resignifying sexual practices to be either accepted or dismissed. Consequently, there are pleasures and sexual acts that become more tolerated, and that originate new rules. Departing from the premise that (...) class='Hi'>sexuality is determined by pleasure and danger logics within which neoliberalism foregrounds new discourses, I aim to show the impact such new rules have on women. In these terms, the antivictim conception that some feminist sectors demand regarding sexuality, can orbit around the neoliberal discourse and hide the vindications of women who cannot choose the rejection of their victim position. Even if feminism is widely claiming for women’s reappropriation of their sexual pleasure, these demands are resignified by discourses that urge women to be responsible of themselves, leaving them defenseless in the face of the numerous hardships crossing sexuality as a whole. (shrink)

In this essay, I read Freud and Merleau-Ponty as voices for a more perceptive and nuanced discourse on the child. Their works, I suggest, contain two complementary approaches in this direction. The first approach concerns the structural asymmetry of child and adult. In his early writings, Freud assumes a radical break between the child’s and the adult’s sexualities. Taking seriously this assumption of asymmetry cautions us against the hasty application of adult standards to the child. The second approach concerns what (...) I would call a “thick description” of the child’s lived experience. Merleau-Ponty exemplifies this approach in his lectures on child psychology and the notion of institution, where he develops a concrete, phenomenologically informed account of childhood and puberty. (shrink)

Drawing on Michel Foucault's writings as well as the writings of feminist scholars bell hooks and Jane Gallop, this paper examines faculty–student sexual relations and the discourses and policies that surround them. It argues that the dominant discourses on professor–student sex and the policies that follow from them misunderstand the form of power that is at work within pedagogical institutions, and it examines some of the consequences that result from this misunderstanding. In Foucault's terms, we tend to theorize (...) faculty–student relations using a model of sovereign power in which people have or lack power and in which power operates in a static, stable, and exclusively top-down manner. We should, however, recognize the ways in which individuals in pedagogical institutions are situated within disciplinary and thus dynamic, reciprocal, and complex networks of power, as well as the ways in which the pedagogical relation may be a technique of the self and not only of domination. If we reconsider these relations in terms of Foucault's accounts of discipline and technologies of the self, we can recognize that prohibitions on faculty—student sexual relations within institutions such as the university are productive rather than repressive of desire, and that such relations can be opportunities for development and not only for abuse. Moreover, this paper suggests that the dominant discourses on professor—student relations today contribute to a construction of professors as dangerous and students as vulnerable, which denies the agency of (mostly female) students and obscures the multiplicity of forms of sexual abuse that occur within the university context. (shrink)

Analysis of the Slovak Discourses of Sex Education Inspired by Michel Foucault The aims, rules and topics of sex education exist on paper, but have yet to be implemented in Slovakia. Although the curriculum creates the illusion of openness in this field, the silence on sex education in schools provides space for the alternative, "more valuable" quiet discourses of religious education. Under these conditions, it is silence that is proving to be an advantageous strategy for the majority of (...) those who should be voicing their opinions. Instead, they listen and control. By contrast, those who do speak out, children and young people, do not in fact, speak to them, but mainly among themselves. Those who are silent and listen are not prepared for the younger generations confessions on sexuality, which are mostly taken from the liberal area of media, especially the internet. The silent frequently lack, at the very least, the basic ability to react and debate in this changed situation. Those who are involved in the discussion on sexuality in Slovakia are those who should listen and supervise. (shrink)

Violence in sexual-affective relationships among teens and young people is recognized as a social, educational, and health problem that has increased worldwide in recent years. Educational institutions, as central developmental contexts in adolescence, are key in preventing and responding to gender violence through implementing successful actions. In order to scientifically support that task, the research reported in this article presents and discusses a psycho-educational intervention focused on autobiographical memory reconstruction that proved to be successful in raising young women’s critical consciousness (...) about the force of the coercive dominant discourse upon sexual-affective experiences and memories. We examined among a sample of young women (n = 32, age range 17-30) whether reading a scientific text about love, the Radical Love book, modified autobiographical memories of violent sexual-affective relationships in line with preventing future victimization. This group was compared with a control group (n = 31, age range 17-30). Memory reports were collected before and after the reading and coded to analyze their content, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Memory quality features were assessed with the Memory Quality Questionnaire. A focus group was also conducted to examine the personal impact of the intervention on participants. Compared with controls, the experimental group had stronger critical memories (of episodes involving violence), an average decrease in positive emotions induced by recall, and an average increase in negative emotions. The results show the effectiveness of the reading intervention designed in relation to gender violence prevention, as they indicate the ability of the psycho-educational action to debilitate the force of the coercive dominant discourse in young women’s memories. The findings both advance knowledge on the reconstructive nature of autobiographical memories of violent sexual-affective relationships in female youth and indicate the potential of memory-based interventions as an instrument to prevent and reduce gender violence in school contexts. Teachers and teaching staff, and educational psychologists, among others, can benefit from these results by expanding the tools they have to address gender violence among female adolescents and youth. (shrink)

This article examines the media representation of Swedish elite sport from the end of the 1960s until the present day in terms of objectification, sexualization and pornification. During this period, Sweden became one of the world’s most gender-equal countries. Applying a critical qualitative textual analysis, the article shows that the media discourse on gender and sport is, however, not equal. Even if the discourse over time has become less condescending and less explicitly sexist, there are still more or less subtle (...) allusions to women as a sex. From the latter half of the 1990s onwards, it is possible to talk of a pornification of sport which is strongly linked to market adjustment and commercialization. Since pornification affects women to a greater extent, the media image of Swedish elite sport becomes a bastion for the reproduction of inequality. (shrink)

Feminist philosophical writing on sexuality is both concentrated in specific areas and dispersed throughout feminist philosophy. This is because feminist philosophers usually incorporate in their writing some notion of what sexuality is and its relevance to women's social oppression and liberatory projects. Feminist thinking on sexuality can also be found in many writings on sexual violence, reproductive and erotic rights, sexual ethics, sexual politics, sexual law, sexual harassment, sexual deviance, sexual practices, sexual commerce, sexual identity, and sexual (...) pleasure. Additionally, feminist thinking on sexuality appears in the critical rethinking of biological and social sciences and in a variety of new discourses seeking their interdisciplinary homes in women's studies, gender studies, queer theory, and cultural studies. To carve out from all of this a domain of feminist philosophical work on sexuality seems difficult if not perilous. (shrink)

In the last decade, discourse on sexuality has proliferated more than ever in the political realm in Turkey. The discursive utilization of women’s bodies and sexualities has appeared as the main tool to consolidate a conservative gender regime and the heterosexual family with children is promoted as the basic unit to reinforce hegemonic moral values and norms. This article aims to disentangle the intricate patchwork in the Justice and Development Party’s gender politics, which is geared towards ensuring pervasive control (...) of women’s bodies and sexualities. Within this framework, this article investigates the proliferation of the discourse on women’s bodies and sexualities in Turkish politics by delving into the constitutive factors of the JDP’s hegemonic gender politics and examining the narrative lines in recent public debates on women’s sexualities. (shrink)

Expressivism, broadly construed, is the view that the function of utterances in a given area of discourse is to give expression to our sentiments or other (non-cognitive) mental states or attitudes, rather than report or describe some range of facts. This view naturally seems an attractive option wherever it is suspected that there may not be a domain of facts for the given discourse to be describing. Familiarly, to avoid commitment to ethical facts, the ethical expressivist suggests that ethical utterances (...) (e.g., “Gratuitous torture is wrong”, “What John did was morally good”) do not serve to ascribe ethical properties to objects, actions, persons, or states of affairs. Instead, they simply function to give voice to certain of our sentiments (or ‘pro/con’ attitudes). Along similar lines, philosophers have entertained versions of expressivism about the aesthetic, the modal, the mental, what is funny, even about theoretical science and knowledge ascriptions. (shrink)

In the three published volumes of his History of Sexuality Foucault reflects on themes of anxiety situated in the Christian doctrine of the flesh that led to a pastoral ministry establishing the rules of a general social economy—rules that enabled, over time, a discourse on the flesh that took thrift, prudence, modesty, and suspicion as essential ethical premises in the emerging “art of the self.” Rather than sensing flesh as a charged, motile potentiality of attachment and intimacy, it came (...) to be seen as skin—as the limit of a sovereign body, embedding guilt and shame into the texture of its expression. This essay pursues the psychological and communication problematic of intimacy as a critical and developmental experience of the flesh. Foucault's concept of self-care and parrhesia, Merleau-Ponty's concept of flesh and embodiment, and Bataille's concept of glory and eroticism contribute to a phenomenology of human development that seeks to articulate an idea of a self diffierentiated from the unspoken binds of familial anxiety and emotionality. (shrink)

This essay focuses on an issue arising from within an anti-essentialist perspective on sexual identity: how is it possible to explain the political impetus inhering in a category such as ‘woman’ without having recourse to a set of positive properties that would somehow fix her identity in advance? I examine how a particular theoretical outlook, social post-modernism, attempts to address this issue, and argue that, ultimately, social postmodernism generates its own impasse which I call social foundationalism – an impasse which (...) is structurally similar to biological foundationalism. I invoke discourse-theoretic concepts to introduce the psychoanalytic categories of master signifier and symbolic identification. This is done in order to suggest how Lacanian psychoanalysis permits us to theorize sexual difference in a way that avoids both biological foundationalism and social foundationalism. (shrink)

This book addresses “containment” as it relates to interlocking discourses around the “War on Terror” as a global effort and its link to race and sexuality within the United States. The project emerged from the recognition that the events of 11 September 2001, prompted new efforts at containment with both domestic and international implications.