“You Feel Like Normal Sex is not Enough Anymore”: Women's Experiences of Coercive and Unwanted Anal Sex with Men

In this article, we explore the gendered dynamics of coercion described by 18 women we interviewed about their experiences of unwanted and nonconsensual heterosexual anal sex. Several women referred to what they believed to be the normative status of heterosexual anal sex. In many cases, the socially coercive effects of perceived norms intertwined with threads of interpersonal coercion, leaving women feeling pressured to agree to, or little room to refuse, anal sex they did not want. We discuss the ways that new sexual norms can translate into new pressures for women within the gendered framework of heterosexual relationships.

Gendered Acquiescence and Resistance(s) to Coercive Sexual Practices Among Female Students at a Zimbabwean University

High rates of sexual coercion among female students in institutions of higher education are a global concern. Although this phenomenon is universal, female university students’ experiences and reactions to coercive sexual practices vary greatly due to differences in geo-socio-cultural milieus in universities. This study investigated the extent to which female students acquiesced or resisted gendered codes of sexual conduct during experiences of sexual coercion. Using mixed methodology, the study drew on the narratives of 341 female students and three key informants from a Zimbabwean university. The study’s findings revealed that female students showed significant levels of acquiescence to gendered sexual norms and coercive sexual practices. This suggests that normative sexual practices embedded in university cultures subordinate women’s sexuality, resulting in their vulnerability and acquiescence to coercive sexual practices. However, despite being positioned in a restrictive context which worked to instill and reproduce gendered norms of sexuality and acquiescence to coercive sexual practices, some female students demonstrated significant levels of “constrained” sexual agency, power and subjectivity. These students enacted embodied resistances and (re)negotiated gendered norms of sexuality in the form of negotiations, antagonistic reactions and (re)construction of dominant sexual practices and norms. Therefore, the study concludes that, while female university students conform to dominant sexual practices and norms, they also have the capacity to challenge them and actively resist and manage their experiences of sexual coercion

“Secrecy or Silence with Her Finger on Her Mouth”: Jeremy Bentham’s Other Model of Visibility and Power

To challenge the Foucauldian legacy of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prison, scholars often highlight Bentham’s later writings on the democratic power of public opinion. In doing so, they reaffirm Bentham’s reputation as a unreserved proponent of transparency. To recover the limits of Bentham’s embrace of publicity, I examine the model of visibility exemplified by his designs for the Sotimion, a residence for unmarried, pregnant women. The Sotimion draws our attention to Bentham’s appreciation for concealment as a method of preventing individual and social harms caused by publicity and his criticisms of ascetic sexual norms. By being able to see visitors without being seen by them, the residents of the Sotimion would have avoided social censure while continuing to meet with friends, family, and even lovers. The Sotimion designs eschewed the panoptic principle, the use of asymmetric surveillance to reform moral behavior, and offered what I call the “soteric principle,” the use of asymmetric surveillance to protect the observer from punishment. By comparing the Sotimion to the Magdalen Hospital for Penitent Prostitutes and Bentham’s discussions of panoptic institutions for women, I examine the Sotimion’s distinctiveness while acknowledging its normalizing effects for residents from lower socioeconomic classes. Just as the panopticon captured Bentham’s commitment to publicity, applying the soteric model to Bentham’s theory of public opinion highlights his commitment to secrecy for protecting critics of government abuses from retribution.

How Not to Watch Feminist Pornography

This paper has three goals. The first is to defend Tristan Taormino and Erika Lust (or some of their films) from criticisms that Rebecca Whisnant and Hans Maes make of them. Toward that end, I will be arguing against the narrow conceptions that Whisnant and Maes seem to have of what “feminist” pornography must be like. More generally, I hope to show by example why it is important to take pornographic films seriously as films if we're to understand their potential to shape, or misshape, socio-sexual norms.

How perceived Australian sexual norms shape sexual practices of East Asian and sub-Saharan African international students in Sydney

Introduction Sexual norms, real or perceived, shape young people’s sexual behaviour and may constitute one of the greatest challenges in HIV/STIs prevention among this population. This study used sexual script theory to explore how international students in Sydney, Australia – from traditional cultures of East Asian and sub-Saharan African countries – construct home backgrounds and Australian sexual norms and how this may shape their sexual practices during their studies in Australia. Methods The study involved face-to-face and telephone semi-structured in-depth interviews. Data were provided by 20 international students who are enrolled in various universities in Sydney. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, coded into NVivo and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results Identified patterns in the data showed three themes through which participants perceive sexual norms in Australia as distinctly different from their home country norms. First, participants stated that unlike their home country norms, sexual norms in Australia are permissive. Second, participants hold the view that compared to their home country norms, sex in Australia is largely casual as it is not always attached to love. Some participants revealed that this could shape their own sexual practices during their studies in Australia. Finally, participants noted that compared to their home countries’ norm of sex talk taboo, Australia has an open sexual communication norm; which they believe, enables young people in western societies to easily acquire sexual health information. Conclusions Findings provide evidence to support a need for contextualized and effective sexual health services for international students that take account of perceptions around sexual norms and how they can be modified to ensure that sexual practices which these students may engage in, will be managed in a safe and responsible manner.

Redemption Song

This article explores how Steve McQueen’s acclaimed 2020 pentalogy Small Axe (BBC) appears paradoxically to swerve away from Black British history in the very act of retrieving it. By examining key moments in Mangrove, Red, White and Blue, and Alex Wheatley, it argues that the constant tension between a push toward history and the pull of the aesthetic is the result of McQueen’s reformulation of “racial uplift” aesthetics that privileges exceptional acts over collective experience. Yet in striking contrast to his poetic license with history, McQueen presents Black masculinity and male self-expression within standard social and sexual norms. There are, however, more experimental, stylized moments in Small Axe where the historical and the aesthetic come together, notably in the highly physical dancing sequences of Lovers Rock. While not without limitations, such scenes reveal fresh, liberatory forms of Black space and time, and forge transformative and redemptive moments of Black reality.

‘Any performer you pick!’ Playful manifestations of porn spectatorship

This article presents a qualitative study of 18 porn spectators' selfreflective sexual narratives. It asks how porn spectatorship shapes one’s sexual self and how it connects to transformations in sexual desires, fantasies, and pleasures. Applying theorizations of play into thinking through the relationship between sexual norms and the uses of porn, the article further conceptualizes online porn as a toy – an object to play with and to use for pleasure. Also, it offers to frame porn spectatorship as a finite province of meaning, namely a sub reality and a particular realm of experience, and thus it sets out to develop a more nuanced understanding of the ecology of play at hand.