Gender and Sexuality in Colonial Brazil

The topics of gender and sexuality in Brazilian historiography, though available from colonial chroniclers to the present, were notably absent in 19th-century historiography, which was constrained by the moral taboos and racial prejudices of that age. This was true until the early 20th-century turning point represented by the works of Paulo Prado with regard to language, and of Gilberto Freyre with regard to content, in their pioneering attempts to address the issue, emphasizing how interracial procreation and sexual desires shaped Brazilian history. Historical research at universities began in the 1980s, based on unpublished sources and international scholarship on new topics. This resulted in studies on marital relations, misogynist patriarchalism, accepted models of licit sexuality, and various other transgressions such as adultery, concubinage, male and female homosexuality, sexual imagery, libidinous behavior by members of the clergy, and acts considered deviant behavior or associated with heresy. Recently, sources have come into use from the Ecclesiastical Court and the Portuguese Inquisition, which assumed jurisdiction over accusations of bigamy, sodomy, priests who took advantage of the confessional to molest their parishioners, and declarations that contradicted Catholic moral theology with regard to chastity, celibacy, and fornication or were suspected of being heretical due to their association with Protestant doctrines. Additionally, there are important works inspired by French scholarship on the history of mentalities and the historical and philosophical contributions of Michel Foucault.

Does “hot” lead to “not so hot?”

Purpose This paper aims to examine how exposure to sexual images activates the urge to yield to temptation in a subsequent unrelated context. Design/methodology/approach In Study 1, this paper uses empirical data based on an automobile expo to examine the correlational relationship between sexual imagery and indulgence. In Studies 2 and 3, this study examines the moderating effects of self-construal and gender differences on indulgent consumption, with different dependent measures. Study 4 distinguishes the sexual images into gratuitous sex and romantic love and tests the mediating role of sensation seeking. Findings For men, an independent self-construal increases indulgent consumption. In contrast, an interdependent self-construal facilitates women’s indulgent consumption. Having an interdependent self-construal has the opposite impact on indulgent consumption for the two genders: sexual images of romantic love attenuate the effect on men but boost the effect on women. Perceived sensation-seeking serves as the underlying mechanism. Research limitations/implications This paper contributes to the literature on sex, reward-processing, context effects in marketing and indulgent consumption. Practical implications Advertisers, retailers, food courts and restaurants may use sexual imagery to promote more indulgent consumption with gender and self-construal as segmentation variables. Public policymakers and other concerned parties should also raise consumers’ awareness of the priming effect found in this research. Originality/value This research advances the literature on sex by demonstrating the priming effects of sexual imagery and further considers the simultaneous impacts of gender and self-construal on consumers’ subsequent indulgent consumption.

Consuming the Mexican Body: Gender, Race, and the Nation in Macho Tips, 1985–1989

This article examines how the editorial and visual content of the Mexican gay magazine Macho Tips (1985–89) reproduced national discourses of race and gender to challenge the exclusion of gay men from the nation. Drawing on archival sources and oral history interviews, the essay demonstrates how the invocation of mestizaje, masculinity, and respectability shaped the production, reception, and content of the magazine—particularly its sexual imagery. The article argues that while Macho Tips appropriated, eroticized, and commodified national values of race and gender to make a profit, the magazine reconceptualized their meanings to debunk stereotypes that marginalized gay men. Macho Tips detached macho aesthetics from heterosexuality and successfully blurred the line between straight and gay Mexican masculinities. As a result, the magazine nationalized homosexuality and appealed to the desires of gay middle classes who sought to consume the Mexican masculine body.

Affective entanglements with the sexual imagery of paradise in the Qur’an

This paper examines affective structures and power formations that are constructed,maintained or contested when the significance of the sexual imageryof paradise in the Qur’an is divided into sensual and spiritual. I take a fictionalstory by Mohja Kahf as an example of a Qur’an commentary that centresgendered and embodied experiences in the text, and contrast it with MuhammadAbdel Haleem’s commentary, who views the sexual rewards of paradiseas allegorical. Using affect theory, I will argue that allegorical interpretationslimit the affective efficacy of the sensuality of the text to their symbolic function,associating spirituality with a disembodied, hence transcendent masculinity.Kahf’s exegesis, however, shows that affect and meaning are not pre-given, butproduced in interaction with the text. I will conclude that configuring the textas sensual or spiritual is not due to any intrinsic or predetermined content, buta product of power relations.

Ballroom Dance and Other Technologies of Sexuality and Desire

This chapter describes the world of sex and the erotic. It discusses movement and interrelationality by means of observing ballroom dance lessons, which is a required part of coming of age for many Czech youth. Following a daughter and her mother through the first steps of becoming a cultured ballroom dancer, the chapter looks at how sexuality, male dominance, and female sexual objectification are both encouraged and circumscribed on the dance floor. It considers the universality of sexual imagery and the prevalence of male violence across a range of domestic and public sites. The chapter also questions what sexuality means in terms of women's agency and whether or not, as Jan Patocka suggested, there is indeed an inherent liberatory potential to deeply intimate, erotic relations. It analyzes whether sex is a possible path to self-transcendence.

Denouncing child manipulation to produce sexualised imagery on YouTube

Over the last decade, a vast YouTube-based ‘market’ of child-produced content involving sexualised behaviour has developed. Children-performers produce videos featuring implicit sexual imagery to satisfy the demands of an adult fan base, and in exchange for a digital reward. We first report the discovery of several YouTube keywords leading to such content, outlining their remarkable interconnectedness via analysis of search trends over the last decade. Following, we investigate audience-child interactions by semantic analysis of n=1398 comments mined from n=30 videos, revealing the occurrence of collective grooming. We then demonstrate how this phenomenon is sustained and enhanced by YouTube search algorithms. Following, we detail a model framework to contextualise our findings. Finally, we propose specific amendments to the 2018 Online Harms White Paper that might tackle this phenomenon. Our results reveal a new form of child abuse, as of yet undescribed, wherein the core features of online grooming are translated to social media, the fundamental principles of which act as a powerful incentive. Because the victim’s manipulation is enacted collectively, we believe that responsibility ultimately rests with society as a whole. The principal aim here is to raise awareness of this issue, in an attempt to kick-start discussion of its causes, implications and potential solutions.

Sexual practices in childhood

This chapter discusses how childhood sexuality has been researched in historical, clinical, and academic studies outside the rapid evidence assessment (REA). It finds that, first, recognition of childhood sexuality is evident in all three fields. Second, even when confronted by contradictory evidence, Sigmund Freud's theory retains currency within which understanding of childhood (sexual) development is reported; acceptance of the latency of childhood sexuality (or asexuality) perpetuates a context for framing childhood as asexual. Actions such as imitations of adult sex, watching pornography, and concern about early puberty stray into the realms of the abnormal as a consequence. The chapter then examines some of the sexual practices engaged in by children mediated by the online environment. It considers consensual youth-involved sexual imagery online and the difficult task of distinguishing between normative sexual exploration, ‘sexting’, and online child sexual victimisation (OCSV).

Double Standards?

Examining the criticism of the Islamic idea of heaven in medieval Christianity sheds light on the development during this period of the Christian understanding of human marriage as a sacrament of God’s love. For Christians it was marriage that gave full meaning and dignity to sex, and it was precisely the bridal imagery that distinguished their use of sexual imagery from the simplistic sensual renderings of heaven found in Islamic writings. The resemblance between the sacrament of marriage and the divine exemplar was more than a mere analogy: the physical union of a man and a woman within marriage was an actual embodiment of the sacred union between Christ and the Church, Mary and Christ, God and the human soul.