Freedom's Sex Problem

In Third Republican Paris, newspapers' classified sections were cast as sites of sexual demoralization peopled by prostitutes, pornographers, and abortionists. Moralizing this space was no easy task: sex was discussed in code, making it hard to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate ads—between ads for midwives and those for abortionists. Could the law read symptomatically to make the distinction? Or was it limited to surface reading? This article shows how classified texts became sites of regulatory indeterminacy, staging tensions between the regulation of “deviant” sexuality and republican ideals. It reconstructs the legal history of “immoral” advertising through decades of legislative reform and judicial equivocation, which laid the cultural and legal groundwork for the restrictive 1920 abortion law and 1939 Family Code, both of which made it possible to police the unsaid, thereby privileging the control and management of sexuality in the interest of the nation's reproductive future over democratic freedoms. Au début du vingtième siècle, l'imaginaire des petites annonces des journaux parisiens se peuplait de prostituées, de pornographes, et de faiseuses d'anges. La « quatrième page » était alors un vecteur de démoralisation. Il n'y avait pas de solution simple : les annonces étant chiffrées, il était difficile de distinguer entre l'annonce légitime et l'annonce immorale, entre l'annonce d'une sage-femme et celle d'une faiseuse d'anges. La loi, pourrait-elle trancher ? Cet article montre la manière dont les textes publicitaires sont devenus autant de lieux indéterminés qui ne sauraient être régulés, en dépit de grands efforts législatifs pour mettre les petites annonces (et les femmes et les minorités sexuelles qui y opéraient) sous contrôle. Cet article reconstitue la chronologie de cette législation, sous la rubrique des « outrages aux bonnes mœurs », de ses origines dans la loi de 1881 sur la liberté de la presse, à travers les décennies de jurisprudence ambiguë, pour arriver enfin à la loi de 1920 sur l'avortement et le Code de la Famille de 1939, qui ont pour but, tous les deux, le contrôle de la sexualité en faveur de la vigueur nationale.

A Review of G. S. ZELENINA, OGNENNYY VRAG MARRANOV: ZHIZN I SMERT POD NADZOROM INKVIZITSII [The Fiery Enemy of the Marranos: Life and Death under the Supervision of the Inquisition]. Moscow; St Petersburg: Center for Humanitarian Initiatives Press, 2018, 396 pp.

The book by the well-known historian and anthropologist Galina Zelenina deals with some problems of the historical experience of baptized Jews in the Pyrenean peninsula. The scholar explores some issues of life under the severe control of the Inquisition and social surroundings through the perspective of cultural anthropology, stressing the problems of the “silent majority” and its identity. Zelenina emphasizes that conversos were located between two worlds whilst being Others to both, relativists and multiculturalists of the period. She also stresses the ethnic and racial aspects of enmity towards Marranos in Spain and Portugal. This ethnic component of anti-Jewish attitudes were, according to the author, first signs of the racial anti-Semitism of the 19th–20th centuries. Drawing on various sources, Zelenina considers different issues of the life and experiences of crypto-Jews under circumstances of control and hatred. Among these were rites of passage, rituals which canceled baptism, the role of women in the rituals of “new Christians”, general gender aspects of the culture of conversos, food practices of Marranos, and the specific “competition” of narratives about sanctity between Christians and crypto-Jews. The scholar pays attention to the specifics of the bloody libel against “new Christians” in Spain and deviant sexuality which was often connected with Jews and Marranos. Concluding her book, Zelenina returns to the racial aspect of many accusations against Jews of the period under investigation and considers them from an anthropological perspective.

Praktik Seksualitas Menyimpang Masyarakat Muslim-Minangkabau: Kajian Neo-Historisisme terhadap Film Titian Serambut Dibelah Tujuh

<p><em>This article discusses the practices of deviant sexuality in the Muslim-Minangkabau community depicted in early Indonesian films in relation to the socio-cultural context in the film as well as the socio-cultural context when the film was produced. The film in question is </em>Titian Serambut Dibelah Tujuh<em> by Asrul Sani. In this film some of the deviant practices of sexuality depicted are homosexuality, lesbianity, and hypersexuality (through the practice of rape). Using a neo-historicalism approach, which looks at the relation of literary texts (films) to their historical space and time, the narratives in this film relate to the context of their presence in the midst of Indonesian social reality and the setting of the film itself: this film exists as a critique of moral decadence The Old Order, which celebrates sexuality in public spaces and on the other hand, also describes the background society (which is also where the writer of the scenario came from) where the practices of sexuality diverged have their own traces in the history of this society.</em><em></em></p><p>Artikel ini membahas praktik-praktik seksualitas menyimpang di tengah masyarakat Muslim-Minangkabau yang digambarkan dalam film Indonesia awal dalam relasinya dengan konteks sosial-budaya dalam film maupun konteks sosial-budaya ketika film ini diproduksi. Film yang dimaksud adalah <em>Titian Serambut Dibelah Tujuh</em> karya Asrul Sani. Dalam film ini beberapa praktik seksualitas menyimpang yang digambar adalah homoseksualitas, lesbianitas, dan hiperseksualitas (lewat praktik perkosaan). Dengan menggunakan pendekatan neo-historisisme, yang melihat relasi teks sastra (film) dengan ruang dan waktu historisnya, narasi-narasi dalam film ini terkait dengan konteks kehadirannya di tengah realitas sosial Indonesia dan latar filmnya itu sendiri: <em>f</em><em>ilm ini hadir sebagai kritik atas dekadensi moral Orde Lama yang merayakan b</em><em>i</em><em>nalitas-seksualitas di ruang publik</em><em> dan d</em><em>i sisi lain,</em><em> </em>juga menggambarkan masyarakat latar (yang juga dari mana si penulis skenarionya berasal) di mana praktik-praktik seksualitas menyimpang punya jejaknya tersendiri dalam sejarah puak ini.</p>

William Friedkin’s ‘Infernal Trilogy’: Contextualizing Cruising

In this chapter Cruising is contextualized as part of an ‘infernal trilogy’, comprised of the subsequent To Live and Die in L.A. and Jade. Each film is set in a different American city and deals with deviant sexuality and excessive violence. All three cop films paint an infernal image of American society staring into its own abyss. With this trilogy Friedkin invokes his earlier classics: The French Connection, The Exorcist, and Sorcerer, all of which have strong connections to Cruising.

Sexual deviances

Mental disorder is a significant behavioural or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and is associated with distress, impairment in functioning, or increased risk of suffering, death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom. It is a manifestation of a behavioural, psychological, or biological dysfunction in the individual. Socio-environmental factors can lead to an intellectually deficient individual to a deviant sexuality. Individuals with intellectual disabilities have problematic behaviour including, aggressive behaviour towards others and destructive acts. Some problematic behaviour includes a sexual component. Keywords: sexual deviances, mental disorder.

The vulgarity of democracy. Political, pornography, masculinity and politics in Ecuador

The Vulgarity of Democracy explores key aesthetics and affective aspects of democracy via a visual ethnographic exploration of political pornography and the public uses of machismo to construct agendas for popular redemption in Guayaquil, Ecuador, during the 1980s. This period was the beginning of a highly conflictive social process as a result of the imposition of neoliberal policies. Its focus is on the life and work of Pancho Jaime (1946-1989), the most controversial and widely known rock promoter and independent journalist. Between 1984 and his assassination in 1989, Jaime’s underground publications used in-depth investigation as well as gossip, pornographic cartoons, and obscene language to comment on democracy and the corruption of political elites. Jaime’s strategy was to denounce the conduct of powerful figures in public office, and caricaturize their deformed bodies as indexes of their supposedly “deviant” sexuality. Following contemporary and comparative discussions on the political economy of images, and the materiality of image-objects, X. Andrade analyzes the production, circulation, and consumption of Pancho Jaime’s political magazines, audience responses to grotesque visual and aggressive textual discourses, and the effects of revealing public secrets about popular understandings of politics.

Gender and Gang Involvement

Sex and gender are often conflated, but there are important distinctions between the two. This is true also with terms related to gender identity, including masculinities and femininities or the performance of gender. In addition, the terms gang and gang member are contested, so it is important to establish a basis for understanding these terms in order to discuss the relationships between gender and gang involvement. Historically, gang-involved young women and men were described in terms of gender extremes, with scholarship and journalistic accounts focusing on the perceived aggressive masculinity of lower class males—and the deviant sexuality of females, who were rarely seen as legitimate full-fledged members of those groups. By the 1980s and 1990s, young women were recognized in scholarship as “real” gang members, and qualitative researchers sought to provide voice to them and examine issues of gender and gender dynamics in gangs, while quantitative researchers sought to explore similarities and differences between girls and boys in gangs, often through large scale studies using self-report surveys of adolescents. Feminist criminology and burgeoning queer criminology have pushed and blurred the boundaries of gender and gang involvement, asserting the importance of taking into account multiple, intersecting identities that differentially structure the experiences of young people, and of the troubling heteronormative, heterosexist, and cisgendered assumptions that have permeated criminology. Moving away from these assumptions means accounting, for example, not only for gender but also for the multiplicative effects of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, ability, etc.; it means considering what the presence of young women in stereotypically hypermasculine environments signifies for gender performance, moving away from assumptions of opposite sex attraction that cast females in supportive and dependent roles with males, and accounting for the experiences of gang members who identify outside gender and sexual orientation binaries. These issues provide fruitful avenues for sensitive and productive future scholarship on gender and gang involvement.

‘I am Lenni’: Boys, sexualisation, and the dangerous colour pink

On 31 May 2015, a self-identified mother, Mari Niinikoski published an open post on Facebook. It was about her son, Lenni, and how adults constantly ridiculed him in various social situations for cross-dressing and for his interest in girly stuff and the colour pink. This article asks why it is a problem that a little boy likes pink and wants to wear a dress? Why is liking ‘girly stuff’ considered detrimental for boys? What is at stake – especially when the history of men and fashion indicates that skirts, dresses and pink were long part of a masculine wardrobe? When did skirts, dresses and pink become feminised and signs of deviant sexuality? To answer these questions, the article will address the question of fashion and sexuality, the history of skirts and dresses, the changing meanings of the colour pink, the problem of heteronormative childhood, and, lastly, the problem of hegemonic masculinity.

Can Rihanna Have Her Cake and Eat It Too?

Sifting through the layered ways in which the winin’ Afro-Caribbean woman, exemplified here by the pop-diva Rihanna, weaves in and out of vulgarity, this chapter discusses the colonizing gaze, which propagates a culture of continual colonization by entrapping the black dancing body within the negative spaces of primitivism and deviant sexuality. In turn, the very public performance of Rihanna slapping her cake on the Saturday Night Live (SNL) show underscores the various ways in which the Caribbean gyrating “cake” has been captured, consumed, and reinterpreted throughout history by Western science, medicine, law, religion, heteropatriarchy, and slavery. The tension between the need to promote a decolonized discourse on the black dancing female body and the historical shame naturalized onto it triggers a state of schizophrenia, especially for the Afro-Caribbean female spectator who resides in the global North and must partake in multiple cultural codes of blackness.