Drawgasms: Playing with expectations and experiences of pleasure through multimodal accounts

Drawing on a study consisting of 29 multimodal accounts of orgasms, we make visible processes, emotions, and notions of playfulness that highlight the critical role of orgasms in transcending the fleeting distinction between reality and play. As sexual pleasure does not necessarily result from experiencing an orgasm, our data also reveals how playful strategies are enacted in order to mitigate ambiguity and societal norms. Instead of seeing the orgasm as a physiological or psychological change in an individual or as an epitome of “good” sex, the multimodal accounts employed in the study reveal attitudes, assumptions, and expectations related to playful pleasure.

Familial and Socio-Cultural Factors Contributing to the Rising Trend of Drug Addiction in Youth in Pakistan

Aim: To know about the major familial and socio-cultural factors contributing to the rising trend of drugs and substance use in youth in twin cities i.e. Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Methods: The study was conducted in July-September 2021 in Twin Cities i.e. Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Data was collected from 150 young drug addicts (between the age group of 15 to 40 years). Snow ball and purposive sampling techniques were used to collect the data. A pre devised interview schedule having close and open ended questions was used. Frequency analysis method was used to represent the basic demographic data whereas a 4-points Likert Scale was used to know the extent of factors contributing to the rising trend of drug addiction in youth. Results: Results showed that slightly more than one third of the respondents (34%) were quite young (21-25 years). Peer group/ bad company was found responsible factor to great extent (71%), To increase sexual pleasure was also found responsible (45.8%), Lack of knowledge about harms of drugs was found responsible to great extent (49.3%). Another factor i.e. curiosity to use / taste drugs was also found responsible to great extent (77.3%). Conclusion: Problem of drug addiction in youth in Pakistan is rising at a worrying trend. Numerous familial as well socio-cultural factors in the etiology of drug abuse and addiction have been found responsible. Keywords: Drug, Substance, Addiction, youth, familial, social-cultural, factors, Pakistan,

The Power of Pleasure: Contributions from Embodied Sociolinguistics

<p>In this thesis I argue that foregrounding young women’s intersectional voices through an embodied sociolinguistic approach can afford a contribution to empowering sexual scripts. In doing so I demonstrate the political value in harnessing the linguistic negotiation of pleasure. To enact this goal, my research questions are: 1. How do women make sense of experiences of sexual pleasure in talk? 2. How do women construct their identities when talking about sexual pleasure? 3. How do women describe their bodies when recounting sexual pleasure? An embodied sociolinguistics offers insight into the discursive construction of sexual embodiment, and together with a critical feminist approach, centers the voices and experiences of women. Sexual experiential embodiment entails reflexively constructed understandings of sexual pleasure and desire through attention to discursive bodies, particularly for those that are historically misrepresented. The analysis makes use of conversations in intimate female friendships that serve as identity construction sites and reflect both agency and interdependent self-authorship. This data offers insights into the challenges of navigating various discourses in the pursuit of self-definition and is comprised of 6 hour-long conversations between 6 pairs of young female friends, as well as 4 hours of recorded focus group discussion. My findings demonstrate that ideologies of femininity play a large role in the initial construction of the intimate conversational site which creates space for dynamic negotiations of desire, subjectivity and the multifaceted nature of sexual experiences. The continuing interaction affords constructions of complex feminist identities within neoliberal constraints. I develop this into a critique of how uncritical discourses of sexual agency can transform sexual pleasure into a neoliberal project. Embodied sociolinguistics allows access into how sexual pleasure dynamically unfolds in the discursive formulation of the body. Ultimately this culminates into a mapping of historical pleasure landscapes that illustrate the significance of foregrounding language and conversation on sexual pleasure. Sociolinguistic investigations that seek to transform harmful hegemonic discourses are essential in the ongoing combat against entrenched rape culture. My study advocates for a culture that values discussion of female sexual pleasure. This focus is potentially more destabilizing and contestive than focusing on sexual violation because it directly challenges hetero-patriarchal culture’s hostility toward women’s agency. The framework employed in this thesis offers significant implications for the field of language, gender and sexuality, including the further advancement of the theory of embodied sociolinguistics and a methodology of intimate insider research. Employing intersectionality allows for the queering of normative sexual practices and disrupts normative gender discourses by centering agentive feminist voices. From a critical perspective, the research contributes to building a model of pleasure activism that prioritises joy. A body-focused linguistic approach demonstrates that true transformation of our sexuality culture must begin with destabilizing the neoliberal project and moving toward collective liberation. There is no inevitability to the sexual danger script when we channel the political power of pleasure. </p>

The Power of Pleasure: Contributions from Embodied Sociolinguistics

<p>In this thesis I argue that foregrounding young women’s intersectional voices through an embodied sociolinguistic approach can afford a contribution to empowering sexual scripts. In doing so I demonstrate the political value in harnessing the linguistic negotiation of pleasure. To enact this goal, my research questions are: 1. How do women make sense of experiences of sexual pleasure in talk? 2. How do women construct their identities when talking about sexual pleasure? 3. How do women describe their bodies when recounting sexual pleasure? An embodied sociolinguistics offers insight into the discursive construction of sexual embodiment, and together with a critical feminist approach, centers the voices and experiences of women. Sexual experiential embodiment entails reflexively constructed understandings of sexual pleasure and desire through attention to discursive bodies, particularly for those that are historically misrepresented. The analysis makes use of conversations in intimate female friendships that serve as identity construction sites and reflect both agency and interdependent self-authorship. This data offers insights into the challenges of navigating various discourses in the pursuit of self-definition and is comprised of 6 hour-long conversations between 6 pairs of young female friends, as well as 4 hours of recorded focus group discussion. My findings demonstrate that ideologies of femininity play a large role in the initial construction of the intimate conversational site which creates space for dynamic negotiations of desire, subjectivity and the multifaceted nature of sexual experiences. The continuing interaction affords constructions of complex feminist identities within neoliberal constraints. I develop this into a critique of how uncritical discourses of sexual agency can transform sexual pleasure into a neoliberal project. Embodied sociolinguistics allows access into how sexual pleasure dynamically unfolds in the discursive formulation of the body. Ultimately this culminates into a mapping of historical pleasure landscapes that illustrate the significance of foregrounding language and conversation on sexual pleasure. Sociolinguistic investigations that seek to transform harmful hegemonic discourses are essential in the ongoing combat against entrenched rape culture. My study advocates for a culture that values discussion of female sexual pleasure. This focus is potentially more destabilizing and contestive than focusing on sexual violation because it directly challenges hetero-patriarchal culture’s hostility toward women’s agency. The framework employed in this thesis offers significant implications for the field of language, gender and sexuality, including the further advancement of the theory of embodied sociolinguistics and a methodology of intimate insider research. Employing intersectionality allows for the queering of normative sexual practices and disrupts normative gender discourses by centering agentive feminist voices. From a critical perspective, the research contributes to building a model of pleasure activism that prioritises joy. A body-focused linguistic approach demonstrates that true transformation of our sexuality culture must begin with destabilizing the neoliberal project and moving toward collective liberation. There is no inevitability to the sexual danger script when we channel the political power of pleasure. </p>

The Role of Gendered Entitlement in Understanding Inequality in the Bedroom

Five studies (using U.S. samples) examined whether men’s higher entitlement contributes to a sexual pleasure gap that disadvantages women. Participants indicated that men receive more sexual pleasure from their partners, whereas women provide more pleasure (Study 1a). Participants believed that men have more of a right to experience orgasm in both hook-up and relationship encounters and attributed higher negative affect to the male target than to the female target when the target did not experience an orgasm in a sexual scenario (Study 1b). In concert with the idea that pleasure is a privilege that men are perceived as being more entitled to, participants preferred men’s orgasm when forced to choose between the male and the female partner in an orgasm allocation task (Study 1c) and in an experiment (Study 2). Study 3 examined why people believe that men are more entitled to pleasure than women. Men’s higher sense of entitlement as an obstacle to gender equality in sexuality is discussed.

Medical Humanism or Scientia Sexualis? Building a Sexological Concept in Fécondité

This article argues that Zola's late novel Fécondité, while on the surface a transparently didactic roman à thèse articulating populationist concerns, is in fact at the same time a roman de mœurs implicated genealogically in a broader range of issues than pro-natalist ethics and various behavioural and therapeutic bêtes noires, containing identifiable traces of other contemporary pathological concerns, contingently marshalled for pro-natalist ends. Exploiting the terminological flexibility of what Peter Cryle and Alison Moore have referred to as a long-established ‘constellation of themes’ constituted by ‘impotence, frigidity and sterility’, Fécondité participates in the fin-de-siècle production of a key sexological concept. It does so through relentless deployment of the malleable motif of female sexual coldness – a signifier of pathological conditions named in contemporary medical and pseudo-medical literature as ‘frigidité’, ‘froideur’, and so on – and its polyvalent application to distinct pathologies manifesting in a variety of its female characters, in particular inabilities to desire, to conceive, and, significantly, to climax. Zola's novel appears at a moment where women's sexual pleasure was becoming normalised, to the extent that its absence now counted as a pathological disorder; Fécondité deploys tropes of coldness – consequential upon anti-reproductive practices – to suggest that it is attempted disruption of the natural reproductive order that ensures such disordered absence. Ultimately, while Fécondité is readable as didactic expression of a ‘humanitarian’ natalist ethics and representation of doctor-patient encounters, treatment, experience of illness and other ‘medical humanities’ concerns, it is however important not to overlook this representation's discursive contingencies, particularly the coalescence of sexological and populationist concerns at a moment when both were of considerable significance. Fécondité in this sense straddles two major fin-de-siècle discursive economies, offering an ideal object for a critical medical humanities valuing the pathological as well as the pathographical.