Sex Media

Feona Attwood

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781509516919
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Media are central to our experiences and understandings of sex, whether in the form of familiar 'mainstream' genres, pornographies and other sex genres, or the new zones, interactions and technosexualities made possible by the internet and mobile devices. In this engaging new book, Feona Attwood argues that to understand the significance of sex media, we need to examine them in terms of their distinctive characteristics, relationships to art and culture, and changing place in society. Observing the role that media play in relation to sex, gender, and sexuality, this book considers the regulation of sex and sexual representation, issues around the 'sexualization of culture', and demonstrates how a critical focus on sex media can inform debates on sex education and sexual health, as well as illuminate the relation of sex to labour, leisure, intimacy, and bodies. Sex Media is an essential resource for students and scholars of media, culture, gender and sexuality.

1
Sex, Gender and Sexuality

This chapter covers:

• Changes and continuities in the way sex, gender and sexuality have been understood in Western cultures.
• How definitions and cultural representations depict ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sex and how norms of gender and sexuality are produced in definitions and representations.
• The development of sexual politics since the 1960s, the ‘sexual revolution’ and the role of countercultures and political activists.
• The development of traditions for studying sex and gender and the importance of critical sexuality and gender studies.
• The growing role of media and a range of technologies in our experiences and understandings of sex and the increasing centrality of both sex and media in culture.

What is Sex?

Sexuality refers to ‘all erotically significant aspects of social life and social being – desires, practices, relationships and identities’ as well as sexual ‘interests, acts, expressions, and/ or experiences’.

What is sex? The term is used in a range of different ways and has a wide set of associations. It is used to refer to men and women and the way they are classified as male or female on the basis of their chromosomes, hormones, genitalia and reproductive organs. Here, sex has ‘the meaning of … biological differentiations’.¹ Sex also refers to particular acts – summed up in the idea that we can ‘have sex’. A broader range of things are seen as ‘sexy’: a particular quality or look, ‘the ability to excite desire and stimulate attraction’.²

Sexuality is a related word used for categories such as heterosexual and homosexual, bisexual, asexual and so on. It may refer to orientation or preference (the way someone experiences attraction and desire³), or to identity (how they define themselves sexually). Sexuality is also used more broadly for ‘all erotically significant aspects of social life and social being – desires, practices, relationships and identities’⁴ as well as sexual ‘interests, acts, expressions, and/or experiences’.⁵ It is ‘a drive, an impulse or form of propulsion’, ‘a series of practices and behaviors involving bodies, organs, and pleasures’, a matter of identities and ‘a set of orientations, positions, and desires, which implies that there are particular ways in which the desires, differences, and bodies of subjects can seek their pleasure’.⁶ Sexual identity has often been seen as related to gender – most commonly in the idea that sexuality depends on the gender of the person you are attracted to. But gender may not be a factor in the way a person experiences their sexual desire or identity at all; this may depend instead on how a person has sex or the kinds of sexual practices they are attracted to, along with a range of other things.⁷

Gender refers to the ‘social production and reproduction of male and female identities and behaviors’.⁸ It can be understood in terms of ‘gender identity’ (the gender a person identifies with), ‘lived sex’ (a person’s experiences of being of a particular sex/gender), and ‘gender expression’ (a person’s presentation of appearance, interests and mannerisms that are usually considered to be feminine or masculine).⁹

Although masculinity and femininity are often presented as though they are related to biology, they actually describe practices and characteristics that can belong to both men and women, regardless of their biological sex.¹⁰ ‘Female masculinity’ includes identities such as ‘tomboy’, ‘butch’ and ‘drag king’. ‘Butch’ (masculine) and ‘femme’ (feminine) are terms usually associated with lesbians.¹¹ ‘Effeminate’ is a term used to describe feminine men, along with other labels like ‘sissy’ or ‘queen’. As sexism and effeminophobia – a means of pressurizing boys and men not to act in feminine ways¹² – show, femininity has a lower status in society than masculinity.

As we can see, ‘sex’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘gender’ can be confusing terms because they refer to such a wide range of things: acts and practices; categories of person; identities; orientations and preferences; urges and instincts; feelings and desires; appeal, appearance and the power to attract; ways of engaging with and relating to others; communities and cultures.

All of these aspects have varied across time and place and they are often the subject of debate and disagreement. They are also used in different contexts: sometimes as part of an essentialist argument to suggest that sex, gender and sexuality are ‘essences’ determined by biology; as identity labels to explain to others how a person believes they ‘fit … into the world’;¹³ or as um...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Sex, Gender and Sexuality
• 2 Regulating Sex Media
• 3 Sexualization
• 4 Forms of Sex Media
• 5 Sex Media, Culture and Society
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement