Graduate Journal of Social Science

Articles

• Establishing Asexual Identity: The Essential, the Imaginary, and the Collective

  Agata Pacho

  • Abstract

    Sexuality is seen as a crucial aspect of one’s identification and sexual desire is perceived as the core of one’s identity. Therefore, the emergence of an asexual identity constitutes a radical disruption of approaches to identity and epistemology in social science. This study explores a virtual community of asexual individuals who engage in discussions about contradictory processes of identification, the instability of sexual identities, gender relations and possible representations of asexuality. This work locates the process of sustaining an asexual identity and its representation within a broader critique of essentialist positions. Furthermore, it investigates the distinctive features of on-line communities and the implications of the Internet in their establishment. These findings may lead to a better understanding of asexuality as well as an enhanced insight into the social and cultural negotiations over the sexual.

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  • pp. 13–35

• Pansexual Identification in Online Communities: Employing a Collaborative Queer Method to Study Pansexuality

  Ayisigi Hale Gonel

  • Abstract

    The research investigates different aspects of pansexual self-identification within contemporary online communities. To explore this, it is asked whether pansexual identification constitutes an anti-identity position against conservative conceptualisations of identity, as well as the new-homonormativities that mainstream LGBTQ movements of the West engage in to invest in normalcy. It must be noted that, while the research has the deconstructionist focus of queer theory, the anti-identity position of pansexuality investigated does not refer to a performative failure of the subject. As stated, the anti-identity position proposed is pansexual identification’s possible opposition to ‘traditional’ and fixed readings of identity, and the ‘respectable’ features of new-homonormativities. The study explores the way in which pansexuality is understood as a multiple and flexible identity that exists in stark opposition to binaries of sex and gender in the eyes of the research respondents. As the research investigates pansexual identifications online by gathering data through an online survey, it follows a collaborative queer method that represents a conjunction of queer theory, sociology and cyberstudies.

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  • pp. 36–60

• From the 'Polymorphous Perverse' to Intersexualization: Intersections in Cross-Cultural Ethnographies

  Lena Eckert

  • Abstract

    In this article I analyze the anthropological quest for what can be deemed male, female or intersex*. I show that this pursuit is based upon theories which have been developed at the turn of the nineteenth century. The same theories are still present in current ethnographical research into sex, gender and sexuality. I specifically trace the origins of the psychoanalytical concept of the ‘polymorphous perverse’ in discourses of sexology and evolutionary theory and interrogate the application of the same concept in twentieth century anthropological research in Papua New Guinea. The use of this concept in ethnographic research is part of the process of what I call cross-cultural intersexualization. By lining out historical accounts of sexualization and racialization, I show how the use of the ‘polymorphous perverse’ refers to narratives of development that are intrinsically bound up with heteronormative and colonialist discourses originating in the 19th century. I analyze how a sexualized and racialized ‘Other’ has been created that is still present in current anthropological research. Cross-cultural intersexualization, as I argue, is based upon this two-fold othering process.

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  • pp. 60–84

• R v Peacock: Landmark Trial Redefines Obscenity Law

  Alex Antoniou

  • Abstract

    The acquittal of Michael Peacock, who was charged with distributing DVDs featuring male fisting, urination and sado-masochism, has cast doubt on the English obscenity law. The ‘deprave and corrupt’ test under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 has been controversial since its inception in England and Wales. One of the strengths of the 1959 Act is its ability for juries to recognise changing moral standards in accordance with modern social values. While such content has been found in the past to be capable of debasing and destroying the moral purity of its likely audience, the question put before the jury in R v Peacock was if this is the case nowadays. For some, the not guilty verdict represents a victory for freedom of expression and the end of an era; for others, moral degeneration. This article provides a more perceptive view of the implications of the Peacock outcome. It argues that we have not seen the demise of obscenity yet. On the contrary, more insidious obscenity provisions have replaced the ‘archaic’ 1959 Act and more censorship laws with real teeth are likely to be just over the horizon.

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  • pp. 85–103

• Are We Nearly There Yet? Struggling to Understand Young People as Sexual Subjects

  Freya Johnson Ross

  • Abstract

    This paper seeks to explore how the academic concept of ‘sexual subjectivity’ appears in government Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) publications (researched between 2000 and 2010), and the understandings of key stakeholders. This follows work by Louisa Allen (and others), suggesting that there is a knowledge/practice gap within school-based SRE, which could be addressed by acknowledging young people as legitimate sexual subjects. Although much important work has been written on the concept of sexual subjectivity in wider popular and subcultural contexts, exploring the concept through an analysis of SRE curricula and stakeholders has much to contribute to the narrowing of the knowledge/practice gap. This could contribute to the training and self-reflection of practitioners, as well as assisting them in making the case for more balanced SRE guidelines. I conclude that a more confident and nuanced recognition of young people's sexual subjectivity is also important in the context of contemporary panics over the sexualisation of young people.

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  • pp. 104–123

• The Experimental Neuro-Framing of Sexuality

  Isabelle Dussauge

  • Abstract

    Brain scans of homosexuality, sexual desire and images of male and female brain function are becoming a common element of popular scientific news. How is sexuality re-described and re-produced when studied in brain scanners? This article explores the cultural production of sexuality in the growing field of neuroimaging research. In focus is the neural framing of sexuality, i.e. the process by which sexuality is understood as a matter of brain activity and visualizable with medical imaging technologies. The neuroframing of sexuality enables a reproduction of socio-cultural notions of difference, but also of neuroscience’s own notions of agency. The neural framing of sexuality remediates an idealized sexuality: ageless, neatly oriented, bodiless although haunted by the de-animated body, unfolding neatly as a sequential response of a psychological inside to an inanimate outside, and essentialized as independent from its feelers and objects.

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  • pp. 123–151

Book Reviews

• Technologies of Sexuality, Identity and Sexual Health edited by Lenore Manderson

  Michelle Hutchinson Grondin

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  • pp. 152–155

• Il Gioco Delle Parti: Travestimenti e Paure Sociali Tra Otto e Novecento by Laura Schettini

  Ellen Zitani

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  • pp. 156–160