SexualitiesPub Date : 2024-06-14DOI: 10.1177/13634607241261829
Fanni Antalóczy
{"title":"Space, affect and contagious bodies: Representing HIV in 1990s Czech cinema","authors":"Fanni Antalóczy","doi":"10.1177/13634607241261829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607241261829","url":null,"abstract":"Wiktor Grodecki’s trilogy – Not Angels But Angels (1994), Body Without Soul (1996) and Mandragora (1996) – depict the Czech queer sex industry of the 1990s. This article examines the films’ representational attitudes to queerness and contagion at the intersection of cultural geography, body studies and affect theory. The films equate queer with contagion. Queer practices question the definition of sexual orientations; spaces used for sex lose the dichotomy of public and private, and sexuality is reduced to bodily functions. Queer bodies are represented as endangered and dangerous at the same time: the virus they might be carrying and transmitting is present as a constant, invisible threat. The possible contagion of the bodies disrupts the borders of normativity and inscribes them with stigma, resulting in shame and fear as the dominant affects inscribed on spaces and experienced in/on bodies.","PeriodicalId":509515,"journal":{"name":"Sexualities","volume":"21 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141343839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SexualitiesPub Date : 2024-06-13DOI: 10.1177/13634607241259537
Lucas R Platero, Sveta Solntseva
{"title":"Analysing intersex rights narratives in Spain","authors":"Lucas R Platero, Sveta Solntseva","doi":"10.1177/13634607241259537","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607241259537","url":null,"abstract":"The last decade has seen significant legislative changes enacted for intersex people worldwide. In Spain, regional and national LGBTI+ laws that include the rights of intersex individuals have also been passed. Drawing on theories of how public problems are represented, this article analyses the representations of intersex rights in Spain, problematizing some of the assumptions currently embedded in political debates. An examination of the main discourses of the stakeholders involved in intersex debates between 2018 and 2023 found two primary discourse representations: (1) sex is binary by nature; and (2) intersex is an example of body diversity, tied to debates on gender self-determination and the new national LGBTI+ law. These representations have embodied consequences for intersex individuals, who are often subjected to non-consensual, irreversible and potentially harmful medical interventions. Despite the persistence of the pathologization of variations of sex characteristics, changes in legislation and key medical documents (such as identity cards and birth certificates), the emergence of intersex activism and intersex-inclusive policies indicate an important shift in intersex rights in Spain.","PeriodicalId":509515,"journal":{"name":"Sexualities","volume":"51 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141348131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SexualitiesPub Date : 2024-06-12DOI: 10.1177/13634607241259539
Tunay Altay
{"title":"Queer mountains: Migrant drag performers reimagining sexual citizenship in Germany","authors":"Tunay Altay","doi":"10.1177/13634607241259539","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607241259539","url":null,"abstract":"This article seeks to understand how staging, performing and re-narrating experiences of queer migration can be utilized to radically reimagine queer migrants’ subjectivities and politics in today’s Germany. Informed by ethnographic research conducted between 2020 and 2023, including 22 qualitative interviews with drag performers, I focus on the emerging scene of ‘migrant drag’ in Germany, informed by transnational histories of queer performance and border-crossing. Through acts of migrant drag, ‘building queer mountains’ appears as a queer migrant practice of finding alternative pathways to overcome obstacles that limit queer migrant subjectivities and to claim locality and stages for queer migrant politics beyond the normative scripts of sexual citizenship. Ultimately, ‘building queer mountains’ shows that sexual citizenship, sustained by (homo)normative sexualizations and hierarchical racialization, could be ‘crossed’ and reimagined through the collective and creative work of a community in search of alternative worlds.","PeriodicalId":509515,"journal":{"name":"Sexualities","volume":"22 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141354535","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SexualitiesPub Date : 2024-06-11DOI: 10.1177/13634607241260205
Y. Kirey-Sitnikova
{"title":"Transgender HIV activism in Eastern Europe and Central Asia","authors":"Y. Kirey-Sitnikova","doi":"10.1177/13634607241260205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607241260205","url":null,"abstract":"Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) is a region with the fastest growing HIV epidemic in the world. Trans people are designated by UNAIDS as one of the key population groups susceptible to HIV. However, in 8 out of 12 EECA countries, they are not recognized as a key group by the state. This article explores HIV-related trans activism in EECA based on interviews with 13 activists. The participants’ goal was the construction of “trans” as a legible category with specific needs and its recognition by the state as a key population group susceptible to HIV distinct from other key groups, especially men having sex with men (MSM). Such recognition was thought to improve accessibility and acceptability of HIV services for trans people, especially trans women. In addition, HIV issues were strategically used to promote gender-affirming healthcare and legal gender recognition. Quantitative research (population size and HIV prevalence estimations) was extensively used to underpin advocacy. While the activists recognized the limitations of these quantification projects, they did not question “trans” as a discoverable and quantifiable category.","PeriodicalId":509515,"journal":{"name":"Sexualities","volume":"20 15","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141356586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SexualitiesPub Date : 2024-06-11DOI: 10.1177/13634607241256518
Tamar Westphal
{"title":"“Sexy but frightening”: Femme worldbuilding and feminist revenge","authors":"Tamar Westphal","doi":"10.1177/13634607241256518","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607241256518","url":null,"abstract":"Women-led revenge films are often lauded for feminist narratives and cathartic reversals of heteropatriarchal hegemony. However, many texts reify femmephobic systems of gender and power by construing violence and revenge as masculine, thus requiring heroines to adopt masculine tactics and weapons. Promising Young Woman (2020) breaks with genre conventions by constructing a world and protagonist that exemplify femme norms, values, and covert ways of operating. Drawing on queer and femme theoretical frameworks, I situate Promising Young Woman in a femme enclave of psychological thriller, positing it as an example of femme worldbuilding that explores how femme subjects assert power over their narratives.","PeriodicalId":509515,"journal":{"name":"Sexualities","volume":"41 19","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141355410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SexualitiesPub Date : 2024-06-11DOI: 10.1177/13634607241261820
Ian Rafael Ramirez
{"title":"Forming brown commons through queer joy in butiki/baboy: A pride conversation series","authors":"Ian Rafael Ramirez","doi":"10.1177/13634607241261820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607241261820","url":null,"abstract":"In June 2023, Bangkô collective and Tambay Times Kids mobilized Filipino cis-heterosexual women and LGBTQ+ individuals to converse in a gathering which they called Butiki/Baboy: A Pride Conversation Series. Butiki/Baboy (literally Lizard/Pig) references a Filipino nursery song that goes “girl, boy, bakla, tomboy, butiki, baboy,” where butiki and baboy pertain to the made-inhuman others—those who are gender nonconforming and do not fit “Westernised” beauty standards. Conceived to discuss mundane queer topics that are the excess of relevant subjects highlighted during Pride Month, the 2023 iterations of Butiki/Baboy held at multiple sites around Los Baños, Laguna in the Philippines included sessions that revolved around narratives of queer intimacies of community development workers, queerbaiting on social media, radical joys in the mundanity of unfinished projects, and messy ecologies formed in the wilderness. This essay is interested in unpacking and understanding how queer joy emanates from this gathering of cisheterosexual women and LGBTQ+ individuals who are primarily cultural and creative workers, artists, and community development workers. It asks how queer joy, through Butiki/Baboy, affords moments of commoning. Taking the cue from José Esteban Muñoz who explains that the multifarious yet shared experience of suffering and hriving forms brown commons, I argue that Butiki/Baboy facilitated a space for engendering queer joy—that thing that is being banished from queer communities by an interlocking web of powers that tags queer bodies as unworthy and inhuman.","PeriodicalId":509515,"journal":{"name":"Sexualities","volume":"74 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141359645","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SexualitiesPub Date : 2024-06-11DOI: 10.1177/13634607241259540
R. Hoskin, Karen Blair
{"title":"The femme factor: Transforming pop culture analyses through femme theory","authors":"R. Hoskin, Karen Blair","doi":"10.1177/13634607241259540","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607241259540","url":null,"abstract":"Scanning the indices of popular culture textbooks reveals an asymmetry: numerous entries on masculinities but not a single femininities entry. What does this asymmetry say about gender theory and, more specifically, femininity? While feminist theorists have produced important scholarship illuminating femininity as a patriarchal tool wielded through popular culture, these analyses often overlook how various axes of identity intersect with femininity, leaving a sizeable gap in both the conceptualization of femininity and the analysis of popular culture. This article examines how femme theory can help to both highlight and remedy gender theory’s tendency to privilege masculinity and overlook femininity. After providing an overview of femme theory and its core theoretical concepts, this article highlights femme theory’s utility in enriching our interpretations of representation.","PeriodicalId":509515,"journal":{"name":"Sexualities","volume":"20 23","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141357414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SexualitiesPub Date : 2024-04-22DOI: 10.1177/13634607241248893
Ryan Thorneycroft
{"title":"‘Straight sex in porn is anything but just straight’: Exploring queer heteroporn","authors":"Ryan Thorneycroft","doi":"10.1177/13634607241248893","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607241248893","url":null,"abstract":"Several ideas across pornography studies and queer theory have gestured towards the potential queerness of heteroporn, and this article synthesises this body of scholarship by considering its logics, merits, and implications. It explores the ways in which heteroporn may not be as ‘straight’ as often thought, and identifies queer practices, glimmers, flourishes, residues, creations, and forms of spectatorship that infiltrate the genre. The findings suggest that most ‘queer heteroporn’ occupies a ‘kinda hegemonic, kinda subversive’ space, wherein while this type of pornography contain queer elements, it nevertheless reifies central attributes of heteronormativity via its privileging of sexism and the penetrative economy of sex. Against this backdrop, the article considers the opportunities that these queer interventions might make, and speculates whether these queer traces are inefficacious, or alternatively, worth lingering upon to imagine and build a queer/er future. The overall findings suggest that ‘queer heteroporn’ should be viewed cautiously as a site with which to build further resistance; it may be that certain types of queer heteroporn offer a route through which straight subjects can challenge heteronormativity and embrace a queer/er world. Anchored throughout this contribution is a discussion about the meanings, possibilities, and ethics of queer.","PeriodicalId":509515,"journal":{"name":"Sexualities","volume":"16 25","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140672300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SexualitiesPub Date : 2024-04-22DOI: 10.1177/13634607241248898
Daniel Conway
{"title":"Conceptualising queer activist critiques of Pride in the Two-Thirds World: Queer activism and alternative Pride organising in South Africa, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Shanghai","authors":"Daniel Conway","doi":"10.1177/13634607241248898","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607241248898","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores queer critiques of LGBT Pride in the ‘Two-Thirds World’, drawing from ethnographic data, focussing on under-researched contexts and analysing common and divergent themes in queer critiques of Pride globally. Criticisms of corporate involvement and capitalist appropriation of Pride are replicated in the case studies; there is also a complex politics of necessity, precarity, and pragmatism. ‘Mainstream’ Prides reflect and can exacerbate racial and class divisions and be a well-rewarded career path for its organisers. The article analyses the radical politics of ‘alternative’ queer Prides and argues for the importance of continually tracing the ideological impacts of Pride, engaging with the dynamics of global capitalism, and highlighting the struggles of queer grassroots activists.","PeriodicalId":509515,"journal":{"name":"Sexualities","volume":"30 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140674681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
SexualitiesPub Date : 2024-02-19DOI: 10.1177/13634607241233563
Fan Yang, Misha Kavka
{"title":"Podcasting women’s pleasure: Feminism and sexuality in the sonic space of China","authors":"Fan Yang, Misha Kavka","doi":"10.1177/13634607241233563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607241233563","url":null,"abstract":"This article sheds light on the landscape of sex-positive podcasts for women in mainland China, with particular emphasis on the podcast Bitch Up (2015–2022). Drawing on the sexualization of popular culture in China since the 1990s, we trace the origins of sex-positive podcasting back to late-night radio to show how the celebration of women’s sexual pleasure in podcast form builds an erotic sonic space that engages with feminist discourses of liberation through pleasure. Through historical and discourse analysis, we argue that Bitch Up sought to establish a new sexual norm that moulds the orgasmic body as female and reconfigures pleasure as an act of women’s self-determination. Refusing to conflate sexual celebration with sex education, Bitch Up discovered and nurtured an appetite for sexual pleasure and expressivity amongst Chinese women that contributes to understanding the complexities of feminism, erotics and politics in contemporary China.","PeriodicalId":509515,"journal":{"name":"Sexualities","volume":"3 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139958702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}