Sex Wars and the Contemporary French Moral Panic: The Productivity and Pitfalls of Feminist Conflicts

Meridians ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia Möser
Keyword(s):  
Moral Panic ◽  
Sex Wars

scholarly journals Sex wars and (trans) gender panics: Identity and body politics in contemporary UK feminism

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 699-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Hines
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Body Politics ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sex Wars

This article considers how sex and gender – as conceptual categories and as a lived experience – are subject to contestation and renegotiation in the contemporary UK. Exploring gendered shifts through the lenses of identity and embodiment, the article captures key moments where certainties have been undone within feminist and transgender thought and activism. Yet such fissures resound with calls for a return to traditional understandings of the sexed body. The article pays particular attention to debates within feminism around transgender issues, and sketches out a climate of transgender moral panic whereby conservative thinkers and some feminist activists are joining forces with the aim of resurrecting gender binaries.

Moving to paradise for the children’s sake

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Korpela
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Lifestyle Choice ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
Children’S Views

Increasing numbers of “Western” families spend several months a year in Goa, India, and the rest of the time in the parents’ passport countries or elsewhere. These “lifestyle migrants” are motivated by a search for “a better quality of life”, and the parents often claim that an important reason for their lifestyle choice is that it is better for the children to be in Goa, where they have enriching experiences and enjoy playing freely outdoors, in a natural environment. This article discusses parents’ and children’s views of this lifestyle. It argues that although the lifestyle sometimes causes moral panic among outsider adults who see regular transnational mobility as a sign of instability, a closer look reveals that there are various aspects of stability in the children’s lives. Paying careful attention to the parents’ and children’s own accounts, and the empirical realities of their lives, enables us to reach beyond normative judgements.

Co może wyguglować zatroskany rodzic? Notatki o cyberpanice moralnej

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Jerzy Stachowicz
Keyword(s):  
Search Algorithm ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Digital Network ◽  
Technology Addiction ◽  
Google Search

Parents googling for information about what their children do in the digital network find a number of alarming reports. First of all, they relate to the harmfulness of technology addiction. Why? Is the google search algorithm an amplifier of the moral panic related to online practices of teenagers? This paper attempts to analyse internet discourse including the role played by technology. To describe the phenomena I discuss, I propose the term cyber panic.

Powerful Inscriptions: On the Semiotic Phenomenology of BDSM

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Joseph Martin
Keyword(s):  
Future Research ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Sociology Of Deviance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Semiotic Phenomenology ◽  
Sex Wars

BDSM encompasses a range of practices—bondage and discipline (BD), dominance and submission (DS), sadism and masochism (SM)—involving the consensual exchange of power in erotic contexts. This chapter provides an overview of scholarship on BDSM, drawing on the history of academic studies of the phenomenon, ranging from the psychology of perversion, the sociology of deviance, and the feminist “sex wars” to more recent ethnographic and phenomenological turns. The chapter focuses on the importance of discourse and affect for making sense of BDSM, both for those who seek to analyze the phenomenon and for practitioners themselves. Drawing on ethnographic research and other data, the chapter shows how language and discourse are key to answering interconnected questions about the semiotics and phenomenology of BDSM (what these practices mean and how practitioners experience these practices affectively). Thus, a potential “linguistic turn” in BDSM studies is essential for future research on this erotic minority.

Populism, Religion and Catholic Civil Society in Poland: The Case of Primary Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Dorota Szelewa
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Primary Education ◽  
Sexuality Education ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
School Entry ◽  
School Age ◽  
Religious Symbolism ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government

This article analyses two cases of populist mobilisation – namely, one against a primary school entry-age reform and another against WHO sexuality education and the concept of gender – that took place in Poland between 2008 and 2019. Both campaigns had a populist character and were oriented towards restoring social justice taken away from ‘the people’ by a morally corrupted ‘elite’. There are differences between the cases that can be analytically delineated by assessing whether a religious mobilisation has an overt or a covert character. While the series of protests against the school-age reform represents a case of mobilisation with covert religious symbolism, the campaigns against sexuality education and the use of the concept of gender are characterised by overt religious populism. To characterise the dynamics of the two campaigns, the study uses the concept of a moral panic, emphasising the importance of moral entrepreneurs waging ideological war against the government and/or liberal experts conceived of as ‘folk devils’.

scholarly journals The end of ‘Welcome Culture’? How the Cologne assaults reframed Germany’s immigration discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312110121
Author(s):  
Iris Wigger ◽  
Alexander Yendell ◽  
David Herbert
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Multidimensional Scaling ◽  
News Media ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Media Framing ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Word Associations ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Year’S Eve

Controversy over immigration and integration intensified in German news media following Chancellor Merkel’s response to the refugee crisis of 2015. Using multidimensional scaling of word associations in reporting across four national news publications in conjunction with key event, moral panic and framing theories, we argue that reporting of events at Cologne station on New Year’s Eve 2015–2016 reframed debate away from terror-related concerns and towards anxieties about the sexual predation of dark-skinned males, thus racializing immigration coverage and resonating with a long history of Orientalist stereotyping. We further identify an increased clustering of ‘race’, gender, religion, crowd-threat and national belonging terms in reporting on sexual harassment incidents following Cologne, suggesting an increased criminalization of immigration discourse. The article provides new empirically based insights into the dynamics of news media reporting on migrants in Germany and contributes to scholarly debates on media framing of migrants, sexuality and crime.

Tip of the Iceberg or Moral Panic?

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (9) ◽  
pp. 1171-1193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Tiffen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Panic

Social Response to Age-Gap Sex Involving Minors

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-125
Author(s):  
Bruce Rind
Keyword(s):  
Moral Panic ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Social Response ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Age Gap ◽  
The Us ◽  
Trauma Response

Social response to age‐gap sex involving minors has become increasingly severe. In the US, non‐coercive acts that might have been punished with probation 30 years ago often lead to decades in prison today. Punishment also increasingly includes civil commitment up to life, as well as scarlet‐letter‐like public registries and onerous residence restrictions for released offenders. Advocates and the general public approve, believing that age‐gap sex with minors is uniquely injurious, pathological, and criminal. Critics argue that public opinion and policy have been shaped by moral panic, consisting of unfounded assumptions and invalid science being uncritically promoted by ideology, media sensationalism, and political pandering. This talk critically examines the basic assumptions and does so using a multi‐perspective approach (empirical, historical, cross‐cultural, cross‐species) to overcome the biases inherent in traditional clinical‐forensic reports. Non‐clinical empirical reviews of age‐gap sex involving minors show claims of intense, pervasive injuriousness to be highly exaggerated. Historical and cross‐cultural reviews show that adult‐adolescent sexual relations have been common and frequently socially integrated in other times and places, indicating that present‐day Western conceptualizations are socially constructed to reflect current social and economic arrangements rather than expressions of a priori truths. Analogous relations in primates are commonplace, non‐pathological, and not infrequently functional, contradicting implicit assumptions of a biologically‐based “trauma response” in humans. It is concluded that, though age‐gap sex involving minors is a significant mismatch for contemporary culture—and this talk therefore does not endorse it—attitudes and social policy concerning it have been driven by an upward‐spiraling moral panic, which itself is immoral in its excessive adverse consequences for individuals and society.

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