Sex and Leisure

Promiscuous Perspectives

Diana C. Parry, Corey W. Johnson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000289817
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book uses the emerging and cutting-edge area of leisure research to highlight the importance of sexuality and sexual activity and its relevance to leisure studies. It brings to the fore some complex issues associated with this topic using a range of substantive, epistemological, theoretical and methodological approaches.

Drawing on international scholarship, the book examines sexuality from multiple, and at times, competing directions, exploring the continuum of sex from work through to carnal pleasure, and across specific sexual practices including BDSM, pornography, stripping, and sex work. Drawing on critical, feminist, queer, and post theoretical perspectives, the book charts a new direction for leisure studies and sex research, including diverse understandings of leisure practice, sex positivity, fringe and deviant sex practices. Critically, the book moves beyond merely establishing sex as a leisure pursuit to focusing on the compelling and complex intersections between sexuality and leisure.

This is fascinating reading for any student or researcher with an interest in leisure, sexuality, gender, cultural studies or sociology.

1 Reflexivity and ethical considerations in investigating the links between sex and leisure

Liza Berdychevsky

What am I doing…? By now, I know that hardly anything goes as expected in qualitative interviewing and I seem to be comfortable with this. In this project [on sex as leisure and sexuality education in later life], however, I keep stumbling upon new dilemmas and responsibilities in virtually every interview. […] Today, a man pressured me for information and advice on penis pumps and injections that produce an erection. My excuses of not being qualified to share such information were met with resistance. I need to find some credible sources for him. […] The woman I have interviewed today has never discussed her sexual desires with her husband. How is that possible? Now she asks me whether and how she should communicate about sex with her husband. I am not qualified to give such advice; that’s too much responsibility. […] Apparently, I have offended an older lady today by saying “vagina” during the interview. I need to think of an alternative term for the interviewees who appear to be more inhibited. […] This man came out of the closet in later life, and his pride and happiness were tainted by his children’s judgmental reactions. I am genuinely glad for him and wish his children were more understanding, but how would I feel if my dad came to me with this reappraisal? Would I feel badly for my mom? Would I feel guilty for my dad feeling obligated to wait with this step until I grow up? […] This morning, I got a phone call from a woman whose husband I interviewed two days ago. He died last night. I can hardly process this. He was so full of life. She didn’t ask me to disclose any information, but wanted to talk to me as one of his last confidants. She wanted to relive his last days through any last shred of connection. We both burst into tears and I never felt so bonded to a stranger. […] My interviewee was offended today by a question on whether sex could be viewed as leisure. He thought it was ridiculous. Why did he find this idea so alien and counterintuitive? What am I missing? Am I blinded by my academic background in leisure sciences?

Excerpts from entries into my reflexive journal

Context and overview of sex as/in leisure research

Leisure is fundamental to comprehending various contemporary issues related to sex and the sexual (Berdychevsky, 2018). Freely chosen, pleasurable, and intrinsically motivated sexual activity fits nearly all definitions of leisure (Godbey, 2008; Meaney & Rye, 2007). In contemporary Western society, sex is construed as a recreational activity related to health, wellbeing, and identity (Attwood & Smith, 2013). Sex was conceptualized as casual and serious, for leisure and lifestyle, respectively (Stebbins, 2001; Worthington, 2005). Links between sex and leisure were investigated across gender and throughout the life course (e.g., Berdychevsky, 2016, 2017; Berdychevsky & Nimrod, 2017; Miller et al., 2014).

Although the nexus of sex and leisure as an academic area offers great potential for integrating theory and practice, the two have historically been kept apart. Ironically, in Western sex-saturated society, sex is long shrouded in guilt, ignorance, taboos, and inhibitions (Attwood & Smith, 2013; Carr, 2016). Sex is still often linked to moral corruption, even though the definitions of moral/immoral are culture-specific and arbitrary. Nevertheless, this explains why sex is often perceived as unworthy of academic discourse. Sex has rarely been a topic for an open and rational discussion in leisure and tourism literature (Berdychevsky, 2018; Carr, 2016), and sexuality researchers are often stigmatized, not taken seriously as academics, encounter challenges in advancing in their careers, and swiftly accused of ethical misconduct (Webber & Brunger, 2018).

If sex and the sexual are as important as these taboos and inhibitions insist, then academics and practitioners ought to reflexively study their meanings, embodied manifestations, implications, and links to other spheres of life (e.g., leisure) rather than shy away from these topics. A reflexive approach to researching sexual matters is crucially important to confront detrimental sexual stereotypes permeating societal discourses. However, researching links between leisure and sexuality presents reflexive researchers with both pleasures and perils. As Williams, Prior, and Thomas argue in the next chapter in this book, it is a norm for sexuality scholars to distance and write themselves out of their scholarship to avoid stigmatization. In addition, reflexive research does not always come naturally to many social scientists (including leisure, tourism, and sexuality scholars), who historically have been taught to create disembodied, bleached texts, untouched by the influence of reflexive, human subjectivities (Cohen, 2013; Feighery, 2006; Sanders, 2010). Like many other reflexive scholars, I did not find this approach adequate for various reasons that I will explain in this chapter.

Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to unveil the epistemological, ethical, methodological, and textual tensions and vulnerabilities that a reflexive researcher wrestles with when working at the nexus of sex and leisure. In the subsequent sections, I will discuss reflexivity and ethics in conducting sex as/in leisure research, with a focus on sexological interviewing and its links to leisure research. I will delve into illustrating the tensions and challenges that I have been grappling with in my studies on leisure, sexual health, sexual violence, and sexual health education. I will conclude with lessons learned and suggestions for future directions in sex as/in leisure research.

Historical and disciplinary roots of reflexivity

Within traditional postpositivist training, many researchers are encouraged to take an objective stance on the investigated topic, which requires creating a research self that is artificially detached, impersonal, distanced, and free of bias (England, 1994). In this paradigm, personal experiences, emotions, and perspectives are construed as factors contaminating the purity of research. Conversely, non-postpositivist researchers (including leisure, tourism, and sexuality scholars) raised concerns about such de-humanization of the research process and argued that this non-reflexive tendency threatens the quality of research (Ateljevic, Harris, Wilson, & Collins, 2005; Dupuis, 1999; Feighery, 2006).

The practice and concept of reflexivity can be traced back to the triple crisis of representation, legitimation, and praxis in the mid-1980s associated with the critical, linguistic, rhetorical, interpretive, and feminist turns in social theory (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). The representational crisis challenged the idea that the researcher can directly capture lived experiences. Instead, the researcher reflexively constructs the social text representing this experience in a partial and situated way (Christoffersen, 2018; Cunliffe, 2003). The legitimation crisis involved rethinking the traditional criteria of reliability, validity, and generalizability for reflexively evaluating and interpreting research (Rose & Johnson, in press). Finally, the crisis of praxis questioned whether it is “possible to effect change in the world if society is only and always a text” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 20).

Reflexivity can be understood as a multilayered concept with mutually related and interconnected layers of ontology and epistemology, methodology, and validity/trustworthiness (Corlett & Mavin, 2019; Day, 2012). First, an ontological and epistemological layer involves “thinking” about knowledge: namely, ontological and epistemological reflexivity revolves around the researcher’s views of the nature of reality and knowledge/truth, respectively (Feighery, 2006). Second, a methodological layer of reflexivity deals with “designing and doing” research. Methodological reflexivity focuses on the researcher’s roles in fieldwork, their relationships with the participants and the data, and their impacts on the resulting interpretations/produced texts (Corlett & Mavin, 2019). Third, the validity/trustworthiness layer is about “evaluating” research (Corlett & Mavin, 2019; Day, 2012). Reflexive theorizing and explanation are among some of the major validity/trustworthiness criteria for judging the rigour and quality of qualitative research (Cohen, 2013; Cunliffe, 2003; Day, 2012).

While opponents of reflexivity construe it as the researcher’s narcissistic confession of failing to maintain objective neutrality (Okely, 1992), proponents define it as conscious scrutiny of the researcher’s self and research relationships through a self-critical, analytical introspection (England, 1994; Palaganas, Sanchez, Molintas, & Caricavo, 2017). In this sense, reflexivity becomes a researcher’s strategy to systematically interrogate their influence at every step of the research process (Berger, 2013; Malterud, 2001; Pillow, 2003). A reflexive approach questions the processes of knowledge construction, which is an essential tool for achieving ethical research practices (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004). Reflexivity’s advocates argue it is a crucial strategy for maintaining quality control in research through a systematic self-appraisal during the research process (Berger, 2013).

According to the reflexive approach, it would be a misconception to view a researcher as a disembodied and dematerialized entity without any subjectivity (Feighery, 2006; Johnson, 2009). Subjectivity encompasses the perspectives, positions, and experiences the scholars bring into research (Johnson & Parry, 2015). Researchers and their methodological choices and interpretations are positioned and framed by their socio-demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, race, social class) as well as the cultural and institutional baggage (e.g., training, academic position) (Corlett & Mavin, 2019; Malterud, 2001). Hence, reflexivity is an ongoing process of incorporating subjectivity in research. This process involves the researcher’s reflection on the personal, theoretical, and political autobiography and its implications for all the research aspects from the motivations, to design, to data generation, analysis, interpretation and dissemination (Johnson & Parry, 2015; Rose & Johnson, in press).

In this sense, reflexivity turns the research processes and the researcher themselves into a focus of enquiry (Berger, 2013; Feighery, 2006; Malterud, 2001). Reflexivity requires researchers to open themselves to scrutiny and become more comfortable with self-vulnerability because it encourages them to ask some troubling questions, admit the involvement of the personal socio-cultural and institutional influences in interpreting the data, and to cease hiding behind the professional armour of “scientific objectivity” (Corlett & Mavin, 2019; Johnson, 2009). Thus, reflexivity highlights the importance of the agency of the researchers, participants, and audiences and can be leveraged for the goals of social change and social justice (Ateljevic et al., 2005; Johnson, 2009).

Tensions and challenges in reflexive sex as/in leisure research

The researchers’ reflexive positions and perspectives shape both quantitative and qualitative methodologies applied in sex-related research. Major critiques of quantitative sex research revolve around the issues of social desirability, self-presentation, self-disclosure, deception, emotional distress, recall, and comprehension, and the psychological, socio-cultural, and demographic differences between the participants and nonparticipants in sex research (Catania, 1999; Meston, Heiman, Trapnell, & Paulhus, 1998; Wiederman, 2006). Nevertheless, positionality and reflexivity are especially inherent and germane in qualitative research, where the researcher serves as a human research instrument (Drake, 2010). Thus, I would like to delve in-depth into considerations related to reflexivity and research ethics that arose in some of my qualitative sex as/in leisure studies.

Multiple interviewees in my projects on sex and risk in tourism (Berdychevsky, 2016, 2017; Berdychevsky, Poria, & Uriely, 2013) and sexual wellbeing and education in later life (Berdychevsky, Nimrod, Rogers, & Fratila, 2019) have shared with me that they found the interview therapeutic and/or cathartic because it enabled them to reminisce, reflect, and reappraise their meaningful sex and life experiences. These participant outcomes were linked to qualitative sexological interviewing (Rosoff, 2018; Webber & Brunger, 2018; Wiederman, 2006). Nevertheless, doing qualitative fieldwork on sensitive topics, like sex, poses higher emotional risks and chances of being intrusive and even exploitative (Okely, 1992; Sanders, 2010), which I will illustrate in the examples presented below.

Not all my interviews on sensitive sex-related topics were successful. Occasionally, there were intrusive sex-related questions that fell flat, awkward silences, conversations where inappropriate assumptions about sex crept into the interview, unwanted and potentially dangerous sexual advances on behalf of the interviewees, and stressful situations where all the attempts to establish rapport have failed. However, when approached with humility and a reflexive sense of enquiry, these experiences offer some analytical insights. Hence, I would like to share and analyze some of those things here.

Reflexive mutual disclosure in sex as/in leisure research

Reflexive researchers often find themselves struggling with the questions of the appropriate degree and nature of disclosure (Ateljevic et al., 2005; Berger, 2013; Valentine, 2007). Figuring out the “right” degree of disclosure and reciprocity becomes even more complex when studying sensitive sex-related topics because sex is haunted by taboos and inhibitions (Catania, 1999; Sanders, 2010). My interviewees often wanted to know more about my background and the factors that prompted me to study sex and/or violence-related topics. They wanted my disclosure and viewed it as reasonable reciprocity for their own. The degree of my self-disclosure presented a dilemma.

My initial postpositivist training required maintaining an empathic distance (as disclosure and involvement were framed as threats to validity) and defaulted me into a more “professional” distanced approach in my interviews, which failed me more than once when interviewing about sex because it was likely construed by the interviewees as a lack ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Let’s talk about sex: Promiscuous perspectives on sex and leisure
• 1 Reflexivity and ethical considerations in investigating the links between sex and leisure
• 2 Playing with danger: Encouraging research on BDSM as a form of leisure via reflection and confession
• 3 Some memoirs of a male stripper: An autoethnography of hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity
• 4 Sex, power, and controlling bodies: Incels and pickup artists
• 5 “Making myself more desirable”: Digital self-(re)presentation on geo-social networking apps for men seeking men
• 6 A porn of one’s own: Feminist complexities with women’s consumption of online sexually explicit materials
• 7 Kinky people need kinky events: Kinkster events and kink/BDSM products in hospitality and tourism
• 8 Somewhere under the rainbow: Drag at the Showbar
• 9 Sex-on-wheels: The leisure sexscape of scooter-ladies
• In bed with a stranger: Doing research toward a risky, reflexive, and promiscuous leisure studies
• Index