OCTOBER 2011

'Working it: Sexual Labour Online',
Panel: Affective Networks - Norms and Investments

with Ben Light and Sharif Mowlabocus
Association of Internet Researchers 12.0, Seattle, October 2011.

In recent years sex work has become a potent site for the discussion of labor more generally, and it has been claimed that the "female sex worker is now one of popular culture's most regular archetypes of paid labour" (Negra, 2009: 100). This paper focuses on the emergence of forms of online labor in which sex is linked to youth and cosmopolitanism, and which are also characterized by a highly sophisticated approach to self-branding and self-promotion.

The paper examines how we might begin to conceptualize emerging types of sexual labor online and what questions they might raise about contemporary labor, affect and technologies of the self. Three important bodies of work suggest starting points for this. The first has focused on offline sex work and prioritized questions about forms of body work and emotional labor. The second has examined forms of creative production as labor, especially those that are based in the cultural industries. The third has concerned itself with online work and with the conceptualization of immaterial labor, the development of the entrepreneurial self, micro-celebrity and self-branding. The paper examines how we can draw on these bodies of work in order to illuminate debates about capital and agency online, especially those that focus on questions about the commodification of identity and constructions of affect and labor where notions of 'selling the self' have become paramount. In particular, it asks how they can be redeployed for an understanding of pornographic labour: a form of work to which incredibly little attention has been paid.

 

SEPTEMBER 2011

Sex and the Media

My chapter 'Sex and the Media' was published in Karen Ross (ed.) The Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media Wiley-Blackwell. 2011.

 

AUGUST 2011

'Special Issue (with Clarissa Smith) Investigating Young People's Cultures. Sex Education.

Investigating young people's sexual cultures: an introduction
Feona Attwood, Sheffield Hallam University, UK and Clarissa Smith, University of Sunderland, UK
 
Thinking outside specious boxes: Constructionist and poststructuralist readings of 'child sexual abuse'
Anne-Marie Grondin, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada
 
Sex and relationships education, sexual health, and lesbian, gay and bisexual sexual cultures: Views from young people
Eleanor Formby, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK
 
'Can't talk about sex': Producers of children's television around the world speak out
Dafna Lemish, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA
 
Too much, too soon? Children, 'sexualization' and consumer culture
Sara Bragg, Open University, UK, David Buckingham, Institute of Education, University of London, UK, Rachel Russell, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK and Rebekah Willett, Institute of Education, University of London, UK
 
Playing with porn: Greek children's explorations in pornography
Liza Tsaliki, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
 
Raunch or romance?: Framing and interpreting the relationship between sexualized culture and young people's sexual health
Clare Bale, University of Sheffield, UK
 
Sexual beginners. Accounting for first sexual intercourse in Italian young people's heterosexual biographies
Raffaella Ferrero Camoletto, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
 
Lamenting sexualization: Research, rhetoric and the story of young people's 'sexualization' in the UK Home Office review
Clarissa Smith , University of Sunderland, UK and Feona Attwood, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
 
Playing by the rules: Researching, teaching and learning sexual ethics with young men in the Australian National Rugby League
Kath Albury, University of New South Wales, Australia, Moira Carmody, University of Western Sydney, Australia, Clifton Evers, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China, and Catharine Lumby, University of New South Wales, Australia
 

Our article, 'Lamenting sexualization: Research, rhetoric and the story of young people's "sexualization" in the UK Home Office review', discusses 'The Sexualisation of Young People' review, authored by Dr Linda Papadopoulos in 2010 for the UK Home Office. The article examines the review as an academic piece of work, considers it in the context of debates about young people, violence and sexualization, and discusses the characteristics and significance of rhetorical accounts that operate as 'laments' about sexualization.

 

jULY 2011

'Porn Sex: Lamenting and Challenging Views of Sex and Health',
Panel: Alternative approaches to the sexualization debates

This panel was organized with Danielle Egan, Gail Hawkes, Amina Yaqin and Liesbet van Zoonen
Futures of Feminism, Brunel, July 2011.
http://futuresoffeminism.wordpress.com/

My contribution to the panel focused on the way that the conservative view of 'healthy sexuality' drawn on to support concerns about sexualization has been challenged by women who are engaged in various forms of erotic labour. It examined how theories of body work, emotional labour, creative production and micro-celebrity, situated historically, provide a more helpful place from which to make sense of 'sexualization'.

 

'Mainstreaming Sex: what next?',
Sexualization: A Cause for Concern, BSA Postgraduate Seminar

This postgraduate seminar, funded by the BSA, was held at the University of Sheffield, July 2011.

Here's my abstract

Sexualization has become a hot topic for public and political debate in the UK, US and Australia. Alongside academic accounts which have used the term to open up debate about a shift in the way sex is depicted and understood in many Western societies, a host of 'concerned' and increasingly conservative accounts have emerged with worrying and serious implications for the way sexuality and gender are policed. In this climate we need to reconsider the usefulness of the term 'sexualization' itself, to think carefully about what academics can realistically contribute to public debate, and to find ways of developing research in this area. In particular, what has good academic work on sexualization contributed to our understanding of agency, self-presentation and social manners and how might we draw on this to think more concretely about issues of sexual health and sexual ethics?

 

JUNE 2011

'Interrogating Sex and Normality: Can History Help?',
Symposium: Revisiting views of normality and sexual health

This was a symposium organized with Clare Bale, Meg Barker and Christina Richards
World Association of Sexual Health, Glasgow, June 2011.
http://www2.kenes.com/was2011/Pages/Home.aspx

Here's the abstract for my paper

As a lecturer whose teaching frequently focuses on issues of sexuality, I often find that students' understandings of sex are underpinned by very strong, though usually unarticulated feelings about what is normal; 'normal' being most commonly related to an idea of 'sexual health' which in turn depends on a view of 'sickness' as deviance. These understandings draw less on an evidence-based approach to sexuality and health and much more on a commonsense acceptance of customs and taboos, usually supported by very strong and visceral feelings of disgust or desire. In this presentation I consider a range of accounts of sexual normality and their social implications (Rubin, 1984; Warner, 1993; Ozimek, 2010). I discuss how a historical view of sexual practices and discourses illuminates these accounts and how it can contribute to the interrogation of normality. Finally, I ask what more we can do to lay bare the mechanics by which a normality of sexual health is constructed, and how we can deal with the evidence that its interrogation is so troublesome.

 

MAY 2011

Sex, Health, Media, May 6, Friends House, London

This event aimed at sexual health professionals examined the following questions:

How important are the media for young people's sexual health?
What role does pornography play in developing sexual knowledge?
How are media used by young people for information about sex?
How can debates about sexualization lead to new ways of working?
How can we use media to develop sexual knowledge and improve sexual health?

Speakers included Petra Boynton, Heather Corinna, Alan McKee and Charles Moser.

 

Porn Audiences Workshop, May 5, ULU, London

This workshop examined the study of pornography's audiences and is organized by the AHRC funded Onscenity Research Network.

Our speakers were Alan McKee, Chief Investigator of the 'Understanding Pornography in Australia' project 2002-2004, and author of The Porn Report (2008); Murray Perkins of the British Board of Film Classification; and Clarissa Smith, author of One for the Girls!: The Pleasures and Practices of Reading Women's Porn (2007) and lead on a new project on the everyday uses of porn, recently launched at http://pornresearch.org.

 

I spoke at the Manchester Feminist Theory Network Workshop on the resurgence of anti-pornography feminism, http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/ricc/projects/MFTN/index.html

'Arresting Images': The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism

The study of pornography has been developed slowly but steadily since the late 1980s, most frequently by academics who are keenly concerned with sex and gender politics. Despite this, a popular view has persisted that the 'feminist' view is based on a crude 'anti-pornography' stance, a view recently strengthened by the resurgence of the feminist anti-pornography movement in the UK and US. The publication of the anti-pornography text, Everyday Pornography in 2010, edited by Karen Boyle and presented as part of Routledge's Media and Cultural Studies offering for students in humanities and social science disciplines, suggests a further retreat from theoretical work on pornography, even in some academic quarters. In this workshop we focus on the collection's roundtable discussion between Gail Dines, Linda Thompson, Rebecca Whisnant and Karen Boyle and ask what it suggests about the ways in which debates about porn continue to be framed in relation to both 'feminism' and 'theory' and how they depend on an incitement of disgusted response to both sex and media.

 

I gave a talk at the University of Derby on 'extreme' images.

'A little porn, a little torture: responses to "extreme" media texts'

 

APRIL 2011

'Open Source Sex Work: New Erotic Labourers Online'
International Labour Process Conference, Leeds, April 2011.

I gave a paper in the Body/Sex/Work stream of the International Labour Process Conference, http://www.ilpc.org.uk/ILPC2012/Programme/6thApril.aspx

 

As a number of commentators have indicated, sex work is increasingly focused on a 'diversified and specialized products and services', carried out in a broadening set of sites and through a wider variety of occupations (Bernstein, 2007; Agustin, 2007). Sex work is also more visible in cultural representation and it has been claimed that the 'female sex worker is becoming one of popular culture's most regular archetypes of paid labour' (Negra, 2009: 100), with portrayals of glamorous and sophisticated workers - especially of (and by) escorts such as Belle de Jour in the television programme and novel developed from her award-winning blog - attracting particular attention.

This paper focuses on a particular group of erotic labourers exemplified by the young, 'porn intellectuals, directors, performers and bloggers' described by Violet Blue in her interview with altporn director, Eon McKai (2007). The emergence of this group of practitioners coincides both with the pornification of mainstream culture in which more aspects of cultural production have become more openly sexual, albeit in a 'chic' way (see Paasonen et al. 2007, McNair, 2002), and with pro-am and participatory forms of cultural production; both developments working to challenge stereotypes of sex production and performance.

Blue, who is a prolific sex columnist, author and blogger herself, and the Finnish porn performer, Rakkel Liekki, typify this group in terms of their media flexibility; Liekki was associated with activities from 'painting to hard-core videos, Web presence, mobile phone services, newspaper and magazine articles, and television shows' (Nikunen & Paasonen, 2007). This group is also characterized by the links they make between sex production and youth, cosmopolitanism and feminism, by their combination of critical, artistic and activist approaches, and by a highly sophisticated approach to self-branding and promotion. The paper considers the emergence of this new type of sex professionalism and explores its significance in relation to a number of cultural trends: sex and gentrification, creative labour, pro-amateur production, participatory culture, and branding - and asks what this suggests about how we might re-conceptualize sex work and emerging types of erotic labour.

 

I attended the Porn Studies Section of International Film Studies Spring School, Gorizia, Italy, organized by Enrico Biasin, Giovanna Maina, Federico Zecca, http://filmforum.uniud.it/IX_Magis_Spring_School.html

(with Susanna Paasonen & Clarissa Smith) 'On/scenity: Uses and Misuses'
IX MAGIS - International Film Studies Spring School, Gorizia, Italy,
April 2011.

The term on/scenity was famously used by Linda Williams to describe the 'gesture by which a culture brings onto the public scene the very organs, acts, "bodies and pleasures" that have heretofore been designated ob--off--scene, that is, as needing to be kept out of view' (1999: 282). Since this statement the processes of on/scenity appear to have further gathered pace and many more scholars have begun to investigate the 'pornographication of the mainstream' (McNair, 1996: 23), the apparently widespread 'fascination with sex and the sexually explicit in broadcast media' (Attwood, 2006: 82), and 'the intertwining processes of technological development, shifts in modes of representation’ and ‘cultural visibility of cultures of sexuality' (Paasonen, 2007: 2). Much more visible though, have been the public expressions of concern with these shifts in which terms like sexualization and pornification are deployed in ways that are ‘so saturated in the languages...of concern and regulation that they restrict the range of possible explanations that can be admitted (Smith, 2010: 104).

In this session we consider the various uses and misuses of notions of the on/scene in academic work and public discourse. We ask what new work on sexual media means for earlier scholarship in the tradition of Porn Studies, and examine how the notion of on/scenity might work to help us categorize and conceptualize pornographies and other sexually explicit texts.

(with Susanna Paasonen & Clarissa Smith) 'Analyzing Pornography'
IX MAGIS - International Film Studies Spring School, Gorizia, Italy,
April 2011.

In this session we talk about the ways in which we have gone about our own research into the forms and narratives of various kinds of pornography. The session includes a significant practical element and is intended to be interactive and inclusive.

 

MARCH 2011

I received JiSC funding for the CoDeX project. This project is focused on the co-creation of sexual health resources and involves the Onscenity Research Network, Clare Bale Consultancy, Sheffield Centre for Sexual Health and West Nottinghamshire College.


'Creating Content for Communities: The CoDeX project

This project helps link front line youth workers with evidence based academic expertise in the area of sexual health, focusing on the role of media and technology. The support is offered through a platform and service that supports the co-creation of content by both communities. Through co-creation organizations and institutions working in: research, education, health, research, social care and media studies will develop evidence-based materials for use in youth education and counselling, and develop closer working relationships and common understandings. The project will generate a dynamic and flexible resource that can be developed and updated in line with current academic research. The resource will be able to respond to the immediate needs of front-line staff, re-casting academic evidence in a language and format suitable for use with young people.

porn.research.org

This month also saw the launch of porn.research.org, a major new project led by Clarissa Smith about the everyday uses of pornography, and how the people who use it feel it fits into their lives. The questionnaire and further information about the project is at http://pornresearch.org/

 

FEBRUARY 2011

I had a chapter in a new collection by Christina Scharff & Rosalind Gill, http://us.macmillan.com/newfemininities

'Through the Looking Glass? Sexual Agency and Subjectification in Cyberspace',
in Christina Scharff & Rosalind Gill (eds.)
New Femininities? Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Identity.
Palgrave. 2011. pp. 203-214.

This chapter examines the arguments that have been made about women’s sexual oppression and agency, with particular reference to their objectification and subjectification in popular cultural forms.

It considers how useful these approaches are in the contemporary Western cultural context where media and communication technologies are developing very rapidly, offering women unprecedented access to new forms of cultural production. It situates these in the broader cultural context of sexualization and shifts in the way visibility and celebrity, sexual display and agency are conceived. It asks how these developments impact on the representation of women’s sexuality and what opportunities they provide for women to become involved in constituting and presenting their sexual selves.

The chapter looks at a range of cultural examples of women’s sexual self-presentation, focusing particularly on online alternative pornography. It asks what kinds of sexual sensibilities and subjectivities are produced here and what implications they have for the way we might develop feminist theory in this area.

 

JANUARY 2011

This article is a review of porn research for the journal Sociology Compass, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2010.00356.x/abstract

'After the Paradigm Shift: Contemporary Pornography Research',
Sociology Compass. Vol. 5(1). 2011. pp. 13-22.

In this paper I focus on what has been called a paradigm shift in pornography research, driven by the development of particular theoretical and political concerns and by changing material conditions, and on the academic work that has emerged from this. I describe the current situation where studies in the area are more diverse than ever before, while public debate continues to draw on a relatively limited approach based on a concern with what media ‘does’ to behaviour. I outline two areas in particular which currently dominate public and political discussions; namely the sexualization of mainstream media and ‘extreme’ imagery on the fringes of culture, and suggest ways in which these present new challenges and opportunities for developing pornography research.

'Alternative and Critical Ethnographies: The Case of Online Sex'
MeCCSA, Salford, January 2011.

'Sexy Mothers: Constructing the MILF and Yummy Mummy'
MeCCSA, Salford, January 2011.

Challenging the association of sexiness with youthfulness, images of ‘sexy oldies’ have been creeping into the media since the 1990s (Vares, 2009: 505). These accompany a growing view of sexual desire, performance and attractiveness as part of successful ageing and of extending middle age (Barbara L. Marshall, 2010), a view which also promotes and requires the use of a range of sexualizing technologies and procedures including Viagra, cosmetic surgery and treatments and clothing and beauty makeovers.

This paper examines the emergence and characteristics of new figures of femininity associated with this shift; both in mainstream media and also in pornography and erotica where ‘mature’ and ‘incest’ themes are increasingly common. These include the cougar, yummy mummy and MILF (mother I’d like to fuck). While all these share the characterization used on CougarDating site of women who are ‘the ultimate catch’; independent, sexy and in their prime, many representations draw distinctions between ‘sex goddess’ characteristics, most commonly associated with yummy mummies and ‘slut’ characteristics most commonly associated with MILFs. Drawing on ideas about cyborg and porn bodies, the paper examines the characteristics of yummy mummy and MILF; figures who embody shifting ideas about sex, motherhood, generation and ageing, and more particularly about class in relation to sexuality and contemporary discussions of ‘sexualization’ where the relation between mothers and daughters is increasingly seen to play a central role.