Thinking sex
Plan
1. centrality of sex: pornographication; onscenity; sex scandals
2. self-definition
3. academic study
4. dangerous topic
5. interdisciplinary: role of sociology
6. a construct: many histories
7. invention of sexuality: fisting; fake orgasm; sex addiction; asexuality; viral sex; hooking-up
8. meanings: history of the condom
9. shifting sexualities: masturbation
Monica and Bill
Bill jokes
Pornographication of society
Linda Williams has described the current situation as
on/scenity. Obscenity – where sexual images and scenarios
that were previously obscene, that is, literally off-stage –
has been replaced by on/scenity, where they are now onstage in the public domain.
Pornographication of society
‘Smoking is to be a slave to tobacco’: a 2012 French anti-smoking advertisement targeted at youth, which
compares adult encouragement of smoking to coerced oral sex.
Pornographication of society
Kim Phillips put me onto this advert for a vibrator with a camera, able to be hooked up to FaceTime.
Perhaps FaceTime will have to modify its name! It is called the Svakom Gaga USB Rechargeable Camera
Intimate View Endoscope Vibrator. It costs £119.99.
Hugh Grant
Max Mosley
Richard Quest
Writing about sex can be dangerous!!
Laud Humphrey’s late 1960s research into sex in public toilets has been used as a case study of
breaching research ethics: how not to conduct research. However, it is a fascinating and important
study of male sexual attitudes and practices in the 1960s. It is a pioneering study in the history of
sex.
Thinking historically about sex
Sex varies socially, culturally, and across time. It does
not stand outside history; it is part of history, indeed
constituted by history. This was one of the great
insights of Michel Foucault, the famous French
philosopher of sex: That sexuality is not some kind of
given, some kind of constant, something lurking there
to be discovered or suppressed. Rather it is a
construct. As Weeks puts it, ‘Once you begin to see
sexuality as a construct, ‘as a series of
representations, ... with a history of its own, many of
the older certainties dissolve’.
Condoms
Condoms: female condom, condom
machines, flavored condoms
Thomas Laqueur’s Solitary Sex
There’s Something About Mary (1998)
Google it
Note the 19 million hits for
‘masturbation’. That was
several years ago; the
number in 2011 was 169
million. In 2015 it was 89
million.
There is something everyday. This is a
job advert from the UK for a job vacancy
for a general hand that was expressed
badly – ‘hand job vacancy’ – and went
viral on the internet.
A prank from the Cult of Mac news
website that may prove to be no joke;
who knows!
http://www.cultofmac.com/314287/wankb
and-aims-apple-watch-masturbation/
The end
The meanings, languages, and practices of
sex change. Remember that it is meanings
that are so important. As a famous historian
once expressed it, the most important organ in
humans is not between the legs but between
the ears: that is, the brain.