Are Female Paraphilias Hiding in Plain Sight? Risqué Male–Male Erotica for Women in Sinophone and Anglophone Regions

Female-oriented male–male erotica is a genre of popular culture often know as Boys’ Love (BL), yaoi, and danmei. It is one of the largest by-and-for women sexual subcultures and a global phenomenon. With the largest data sets in the field, we ask: Which risqué sexual content do Sinophone (Chinese-speaking) and Anglophone (English-speaking) participants particularly enjoy in BL and does this differ between cultures?, and Are there sub-demographics in Sinophone and in Anglophone culture who enjoy particular forms of risqué sexual content in BL and do these forms relate also to enjoyment of particular storylines and concern with legal issues? The material studied meets the DSM-5 definition of the paraphilic, and little is known about paraphilias in women or in the general population. Using Categorical Principal Component Analysis we explored one 15-response question from our Sinophone (N = 1922) and Anglophone (N = 1715) BL fandom surveys: Which risqué sexual content do you particularly enjoy in BL? We also tested for associations with seven demographic and other BL content-related questions. Notably, the component structure was nearly replicated between the two independent samples, in order of strength: BDSM Specialist, Mechanoid/Animal Sex Specialist, Underage Sex Specialist, and Minority Paraphilia Specialist. In both samples, it was the avid BL fans and/or those who liked explicitly sexual stories, a largely overlapping demographic, who most engage the risqué content, while, for the Sinophone, this included also more non-heterosexual and/or other-gendered people. We conclude that women’s paraphilias have been largely overlooked because they might be expressed more commonly through fantasy than action, that their mass expression has awaited both the means and the market force, and that current conceptualization of, and assumptions about, paraphilias is overly modeled on that of men.

Sexting and Sexual Injustices against Women in Ghana: A Case of Biblical Narratives of Dinah And Tamar

This paper evaluates the place of justice in sexual interactions between males and females in Ghana in particular and in Africa in general. It discusses the unfairness inherent in cases of rape, adultery and divorce and sexting in Ghana in light of African Biblical Hermeneutics. The study has discovered that issues of sexual injustices date back to ancient times with sexting being its latest dimension, especially in Ghana. Sexual injustices in any form have both cultural as well as religious connotations. Employing Narrative Criticism on the sexual stories of Dinah and Tamar in Genesis 34 and 2 Samuel 13 respectively, the study has established that the culture from which the Christian scripture originated was chauvinistic. Undoubtedly, one of the most integral causes is inherent in interpretation. The authors have therefore advocated for a reconstruction of those texts and worldviews by incorporating hermeneutics of inclusiveness and equality before God, using Jesus as the standard. Keywords: Sexting, Sexual injustices, Biblical Hermeneutics, Biblical Narratives, Ethical.

1. Effect of Gender Cues in Audio Narratives on Same-Gender Attracted Women’s Psychophysiological Sexual Arousal

The purpose of my honours thesis project is to gain further understanding of subjective and genital arousal patterns of women who have varying degrees of same-genderattractions. While other-gender attracted women show a category-nonspecific or generalized pattern of sexual response to their preferred and nonpreferred gender, samegenderattracted women show a category-specific pattern of responding, with significantly greater sexual response to their preferred gender, when exposed to lowintensity audiovisual stimuli (Chivers, Seto, & Blanchard, 2007). Past research has examined same-gender attracted women’s sexual responses to audiovisual stimuli (Chivers et al., 2007) and other-gender attracted women’s sexual responses to audio narratives (Chivers & Timmers, in press); however, no research to date has focused on same-gender attracted women’s sexual responses to audio narratives, which is a less intense stimulus modality (e.g., Heiman, 1980). Study procedure involved presentation of sexual and nonsexual audio narratives, which described interactions with male and female partners, to women with varying degrees of same-gender attractions. I will examine the category-specificity of same-gender attracted women’s genital and subjective sexual response. I expect that same-gender attracted women will have a category-specific pattern of sexual response, with significantly greater genital and subjective sexual arousal to sexual stories featuring a female partner. Also, I expect that genital and subjective arousal to sexual stories featuring a female partner will increase with degree of samegenderattraction.

Negotiating Intimate and (A)sexual Stories

Drawing on a research project looking at women's engagement with therapeutic/self-help literature this paper uses the concept of narrative frameworks to explore women's negotiation of currently circulating stories of healthy womanhood, intimacy and sexuality. In a (western) world increasingly informed by therapeutic discourses, adult women are told they are entitled to happiness and success and failure to do so is seen to result from past (often traumatic) experiences which might or might not be remembered. Central to this construction of womanhood is what (drawing on Rich 1980) I have called ‘compulsory sexuality’ whereby the healthy adult woman is constructed as sexually knowledgeable, active and desirous. This not only puts pressure on all women to construct a (particular) active sexual self but helps to construct those who do not as problematic and directs them to seek both cause and solution in their damaged psychologies. One such cause is said to be childhood sexual abuse and the self-help literature aimed at survivors of such abuse encourages readers to use the idea(l) of an active sexual self as a measure of health, well-being and ultimately womanhood. In this paper I argue that contemporary narrative frameworks of healthy womanhood not only allows for women who are not, or do not wish to be, sexually active to be identified as problematic, but directs them to see themselves as damaged. In critiquing the sexual abuse recovery literature I also show how this can be used to create different a/sexual selves, albeit ones currently perceived to be ‘damaged’.

Reflections on the Process of Researching Disabled People's Sexual Lives

This article offers a reflexive account of the processes, politics, problems, practicalities and pleasures of storying disabled people's sexual lives for the purposes of sociological research. Drawing upon a doctoral study which explored disabled people's lived experiences of sex, intimacy and sexuality through their own sexual stories, the author considers how her identity, subjectivity and embodiment – in this case, a white, British, young, heterosexual, disabled, cisgendered woman with congenital and (dependent upon the context) visible impairment – was interwoven within and through the research methodology; most explicitly, as an interlocutor and co-constructor of informants’ sexual stories. Given the paucity of reflexive research in this area, a number of reflexive dilemmas are identified which make important methodological contributions to qualitative sociology, disability studies scholarship and research, and current knowledges of the emotional work of qualitative researchers (Dickinson-Smith et al. 2009).

The Politics of Discourse in Sexual Abuse Narratives

Although sex is considered something private and personal, telling sexual stories is by no means a personal matter. The difficulty faced by sexual abuse victims who want to tell their stories is due to the ways in which the meanings of sexual abuse, the abuser and the victim are discursively constructed by the dominant culture. As a result, a tension between the individual desire to tell stories and the social injunction to silence is invariably found in women’s narratives of sexual abuse. This paper explores how discourses of the dominant culture discourage women from breaking their silence about sexual abuse and how the emerging voices of sex abuse victims have led to the reevaluation of discourses, power, and female subjectivity. My discussion will be divided into two parts: the first part—’Talking Back’—will focus on sexual abuse narratives written by female survivors’ and the second part —’Public Confession’ — will examine survivors discourse broadcast in television programmes.