Thursday 30 August 2012 – Abstracts
09:30 - 11:00: SESSION 5: CONFORMISM
Sexual Citizenship Ethics – All Fur Coat and No Knickers?
Tom Claes
CEVI
Ghent University, Belgium
In his Embattled Eros (1992) Steven Seidman signals a ‘dilemma:’ “How to arrive,” he wonders, “at a sexual ethic that preserves what Gayle Rubin calls ‘benign sexual variation,’ yet articulates norms that allow us to make the kind of moral judgments that are routinely made in everyday life.” (199) He echoes an oft-heard critique of the ‘liberal view’ of sexual ethics in which valid consent is seen as a sufficient condition for moral legitimacy of sexual acts and for the formulation of a sexual morality (Primoratz). According to Seidman, relying solely on what could be called a ‘sexual ethics of consent’ will not suffice because it does not empower us to make ethically informed choices in a range of everyday situations, practices and conflicts. Seidman suggests that the concept of ‘sexual responsibility’ has ‘strategic value’ for formulating such a sexual ethics.
Recently, the concept of ‘sexual citizenship’ has been proffered as a cornerstone for such a sexual ethics of ‘responsibilisation’ (cf. Plummer, Weeks). Even more critical and reserved advocates of sexual citizenship, like Bell & Binnie (2000), acknowledge its rich personal, social, political and ethical potential. Sexual citizenship is presented as an anchor point for the social recognition of (some) diverse sexual identities and as a grounding for sexual rights claims. On the offside, one could point at the possible normalizing and disciplining effects of the notion, problematizing ‘irresponsible,’ often ‘public’ sexualities.
I will explore the theoretical structure, the contours, opportunities and limitations of this emerging Sexual Citizenship Ethics. Is the notion of sexual citizenship a necessary and welcome complement to the notion of (valid) consent in sexual ethics, adding a much needed ethical ideal (which?) to the procedural character of a sexual ethics of consent? How well does such a sexual citizenship ethics fare as a basis for everyday sexual moral choices, and as an aide to a sexually emancipatory agenda? How much, if at all, ‘benign sexual variation’ can such a sexual citizenship ethics tolerate and/or advocate — and how much of this ‘in public’?
Sexual Politics between Conformism and Radicalisation
Tommi Paalanen
JAMK University of Applied Sciences
Chairman, Sexpo Foundation, Finland
Anarchist group called the Pink Black Block has challenged the Gay Pride movement in Finland since 2007. According to the group’s manifestos (2007 and 2008) it rejects the conventional sexual politics of the leading LGBTI rights organisation, SETA, and seeks to destroy heterosexual culture and to end gay conformism. The group’s main criticism against SETA is that the organisation has abandoned diversity when it embraced family and marriage as key issues.
The criticism suggests that there is something wrong in making conventional choices like building a family or marrying. They are perceived to be supporting hegemonic discourses, which influence social practices that are unjust or even harmful to minor alternative sexuality groups. The criticism is two-pronged: it targets unjust structures but also underlines intellectual flaws in prevailing collections of norms.
The stance of the Pink Black Block rouses some interesting philosophical questions: 1) When can making mainstream choices be described as questionable conformism? 2) Is a conformist morally responsible for any injustice the embraced discourse may influence? And finally, 3) can members of radical groups also succumb to conformism in their own ideological framework?
The ethical problems included in the questions above are difficult to deal with applying consequentialist ethics. It is no easy task to track the connection from the conformist’s choices to the evils of hegemonic discourses and to establish responsibility. Thus I have approached the questions applying two ideas from existential philosophy: Jean-Paul Sartre’s authenticity and Simone de Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity. When different choices are weighed against the criterion of authenticity it seems that both mainstream and alternative choices can be either authentic or inauthentic. Thus the important question is not whether one is radical or conventional in one’s own life, but how one treats her own and other’s freedom.
Heteronormativity or Heterosexualities? Negotiating Heteronormativity in Nightlife of Young Adults in Belgium
Valerie De Craene & Maarten Loopmans
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
KU Leuven, Belgium
There seems to be a consensus in studies on sexuality about the need to deconstruct contemporary dominant norms of sexuality (heteronormativity), as these norms suppress a diversity of other desires and sexualities. Most literature on heteronormativity departs from an “outside perspective” focusing on how non-heterosexual sexualities experience and perceive these norms in their everyday life and, by doing so, create an awareness of sexual difference. However, the emphasis on “deviant heterosexualities” also reproduces this dominant heteronormativity and ignores the multiple desires and sexualities within the category “heterosexual” (Hubbard, 2008). Using a geographical perspective, this paper aims to further deconstruct ‘heteronormativity’ by exploring how also young heterosexual adults feel oppressed in rural and urban nightlife performances. Although contemporary Western societies perceive themselves as progressive when it comes to sexuality, sex is still limited to the private and therefore ‘controllable and safe’ sphere, or to dark and invisible places in the public sphere. As a consequence, children and adolescents are mostly kept away from certain places during certain moments to avoid interaction with places which have a sexual connotation (Hayes e.a. 2012). In this way, nightlife serves as the first step in young adults’ life in which they have to deal with sexuality in public spaces and attempt to negotiate and circumvent heteronormative pressures. Based upon participatory oberservation and interviews conducted by young adults themselves, our research emphasizes the performativity of hegemonic normativity and analyzes how the social construction of sexual norms intersects with notions of class, place and gender. In doing this, we aim to overcome the heterosexual-LGBT-dichotomy that often marks sexuality studies and make the plea for sexual difference no longer a story of minorities.
11:00 - 11:30: COFFEE BREAK
11:30 - 13:00: SESSION 6: BENIGN VARIATION(S)
Could Criminal Law Accommodate ‘Polymorphous Perversity’?
Alex Dymock
School of Law
University of Reading, UK
In Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, he stipulated that all sexuality was potentially inherently perverse: ‘even in the most normal sexual process we may detect rudiments which, if they had developed, would have led to the deviations described as perversions’ (Freud, 1905: 149). However, he still differentiated ‘normal’ perversion of the sexual drive from pathological perversity, rather than following his own highly original thesis of ‘polymorphous perversity’ to its own ends. Criminal law in England & Wales has tended to rely upon medico-legal constructions of sexuality to identify and isolate the ‘abnormal’ and ‘dangerous’ sexual criminal, making a strict differentiation between the ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ along remarkably similar lines to those first put forth by sexologists in the late nineteenth century.
In light of Freud’s claims, this paper examines the case of R v. Peacock (January 2012), in which a man was charged with six counts of distributing ‘extreme’ gay pornography under the Obscene Publications Act (1959). The material was put to jury test to determine whether it was likely to ‘deprave and corrupt’ its potential viewers. I make the argument that, even though Peacock was cleared on all six counts and his case was touted as a landmark victory for sexual liberties in England & Wales, his defence inadvertently supported the basis of the OPA because the principle that there is a differentiation to be made between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ sexuality along familiar medico-legal lines was still keenly adopted. If there is such a differentiation to be made, the Crown Prosecution Service’s contention in the case that ‘the line must be drawn somewhere’ would surely be correct and it would follow that the OPA should be upheld. I suggest that, if we follow Freud’s thesis of ‘polymorphous perversity’ to its ends, new discourses of sexuality in the context of the criminal court might emerge that make space for alternative (and perhaps more ethical) ways of judging and regulating sexuality.
Sexual Submission: Playing with Inequality
Angie Tsaros
Department of American Studies
University of Graz, Austria
While sexual equality has been the hot topic in academia and society for a while, the question of whether women have a right to actively choose sexual inequality has only recently become the focus of discussion (cf. Halberstam, Fowles, Levy, et.al.). Most women today would argue that re-living misogynist scenarios from history and fiction does more damage than good, and that these scenarios hold an appeal for only a small number of female readers. However, the continuing popularity of erotic fiction like Rèage’s Story of O or, more recently, the surprise success of ‘mommy porn’ (E.L. James’ 50 Shades of Grey) seems to be evidence to the contrary.
In BDSM (bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism) subculture, (re)negotiating power to enhance erotic experience is the starting point to fulfilling sexual fantasies, and choosing passivity for a certain amount of time, or even as a way of life, is quite common. This can be puzzling and hard to explain to people outside this group who generally locate BDSM play in a more traditional gender system, one which apparently recreates power structures that are generally thought long overcome: A master who takes sexual advantage of the women in his life, women who live to serve their partner’s every wish – anywhere, anytime.
This paper seeks to explore the way sexual submission within erotic power play can be used to confront contemporary expectations of sexual freedom, especially in relation to female submission. How can the practice of living sexual inequality be connected to contemporary feminist thought, issues of consent and contribute to the dialogue between different schools of thought within academia? Does ‘playing inequality’ mean reinforcing existing conservative paradigms, or is it a valid path to sexual independence and equal partnership?
Fifty Shades of Pale: Misconceiving ‘Kink’
Paul Reynolds
Department of Social Studies
Edge Hill University, UK
tba
13:00 - 14:00: LUNCH BREAK
14:00 - 15:30: SESSION 7: GLOBAL CULTURES I
Equality Contradiction and Women Movement in Global South
Ga Wu
YASS Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences
Kunming Yunnan, China
Feminists N. Fraser and G. Spivak recently proposed different vision for the new 21st century’s gender and development direction and roads. Fraser criticized the free market practice then proposed alternative vision of Karl Polanyi market feminist thought, since market practices has linked the global world, regulated marketing practices is better than free ones, in China, li xiaojiang also argues for market approaches and feminist rural development projects, (Tani Ballow 2004 ) Spivak since 1993 skeptically commented on both market and capital development logic especially skeptical to the micro credit program practiced in many global south countries, for many global south women scholars, it is more useful to learn concepts and ideas proposed by two M Molyneux and Moser — such as both the practical and strategic gender needs. Scholars of Feminist Movement in Global South held different views on following five major issues: 1) love and house labor commercialization (Rich 1976 Elizabeth Anderson 1990) ; 2) entrance to wage labour by global south women (positive negative and dialectic results) ; 3) surrogate contracts /contract pregnancy, vitro fertilization, commercial surrogacy and egg and gamete markets (Margaret Jane Radin Satz 1992); 4) transnational adoption; and 5) practices of prostitution; (Carole Pateman 1988). All these issues have greatly divided global south feminists from the north, i.e. issues understood by global north feminists as an ethic care of noble issue might be interpreted as a basic or an important surviving issue in south, the dilemmas of how to classify these practices into commercialization; public good; and ethic care – these three classification approaches now requires our new and detailed discussion.
This paper will review previous scholarship and current efforts and major legal progress and understanding have achieved so far on these practices; in general, vitro fertilization, commercial surrogacy and egg and gamete markets are largely unregulated, when comparing with highly regulated transnational international -adoption market, we should re-discuss issues: a) sellers /buyers and different class dimensions of such markets , b) the for profit agencies involvement in these market and why it is not regulated.
Further raised questions in this paper are: 1) is there alternative way out, between marketing principle and public good; private and public; 2) beyond current existing practices, value judgment, exchange arrangements, my paper will engage audience to participate our discussion on: 1) major arguments and current transformation of these debates, 2) is there any solution to this great global north/south divide, 3) or commodification is the only choice, 4) why the global south feminism position differs greatly from global north, 5) why all these sensitive topics forever in the past and will divide women scholars of south/north, 6) so called global sisterhood position has should or has should not been supported 7) existing major so called as justice global principle and international convention documents, should or should not be reformed, 8 ) both justice and ethnic care arguments is needed in order to help building a better world? 9) some of these contemporary feminist theory debates are interested in developing “intersectional” or “integrative feminist” analyses of particular issues which try to give equal weight to gender, race, class and sexuality in a global scale; 10) why the global sisterhood argument (Christine Delphy Monique Wittig 1980 Luce Irigaray 1975 ) is now facing more criticism from the south?
Other questions will be raised including: 1) to which extent that women do organise themselves as a political group cutting across south/north lines; 2) under what conditions are they to a progressive force for social change; 3) If poor and global south women’s issues are different than north women’s issues, how can global women’s movements be trusted to address them?; 4) Women’s movements challenging male domination can assume a common set of women’s interests across political economic divided? (Race, ethnicity, and class); 5) on what can a viable women’s movement be based, and how can it evade promoting primarily the interests of wealthy global north women?
Sexual and Reproductive Health of Migrants in the EU: Does Anybody Care?
Aurore Guieu, Ines Keygnaert, Marleen Temmerman & Kristien Roelens
ICRH – International Centre for Reproductive Health
Ghent University, Belgium
Although the European Union (EU) has identified the protection of migrants’ health an essential concern, the needs of migrants in terms of Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) are still pressing. Migrants are notably at a higher risk of STI/HIV infection, poor pregnancy outcomes and sexual and gender-based violence. According to international standards, access to health care is a fundamental right, available to any human being irrespective of his/her legal status or financial situation. The EU endorses this to be a right of everyone living on its territory, and recognizes migrants’ specific SRH vulnerability. However, literature shows that migrants’ right to health and sexual well-being is not ensured throughout the Union. Therefore, we reviewed comprehensive literature on migrants’ SRH applying the Critical Interpretive Synthesis method. We assessed international and regional legal frameworks, as well as practices at EU and national levels. Recommendations were compared and policy and literature gaps were highlighted.
Hence, this paper discusses the discrepancy between a proclaimed rights-based approach and actual obstacles to migrants’ access to SRH care we found in the grey and academic literature we reviewed. Our findings indicate that migrants’ sexual and reproductive health is not thoroughly protected in the EU. Legal provisions are often unclear regarding entitlements and create administrative and financial obstacles. SRH care, as well as prevention of and response to violence policies, fail to consider specific cultural contexts. The rare strategies that do integrate migrants fail to address sexual health issues and are generally limited to perinatal care and HIV/AIDS screening. Given the gap between a rights-based approach and the current situation in the EU, future European public health policy-making should not only acknowledge migrants’ specific SRH needs, but also promote their SRH effectively. Further research should focus on practical mechanisms to build on comprehensive and culturally competent sexual health programmes.
The Legacies of ‘Racial Treason:’ Fear, Aversion and Attraction under Societal Taboos on ‘Mixed Heritage’
Christien van den Anker
Department of History, Philosophy and Politics
University of the West of England, UK
In this paper I explore the concept of ‘racial treason’, which formed part of the legal framework in Nazi-Germany. It was based on racial purity theories that were a widespread and dominant discourse of eugenics in the 1920s and 30s. Having a sexual relationship with a Jew or a black person was forbidden for White gentile Germans. In case of such a relationship, the Jew or person targeted by racism could be forcibly sterilised or interned in a camp and subjected to forced labour or killed in the gas chambers. In case of a pregnancy in such a ‘verboten’ relationship, forced abortion took place, despite abortion being generally outlawed at the time. The core question raised here is what the ongoing legacies are of the dehumanising attitude underlying the legal killing practices justified by ‘racial treason’ laws.
For example what part do they play in ongoing aversion to ‘mixed marriage’, mixed heritage children and sexual attraction between White Christians and their ‘others’, including Jews, people targeted by racism and Muslims.
In order to trace these attitudes I use research reporting the lived experience of ‘whites’ (Frankenberg) and of ‘others’ (Khosravi; McNeill) as well as analyses of orientalism (Said), racism (Fanon) and anti-Jewish oppression (Sartre).
I sketch the intersectionality with other axes of inequality such as gender. (Lutz et al). Although ‘racial treason’ laws applied universally, traditionally white christian men can have sexual relations with Jewish or women targeted by racism, whereas White Christian women can’t do the equivalent. This mimics that Slaveholders could have sex with enslaved women while their wives can’t do the same with enslaved men. Similarly, in early colonising of indigenous people, White European male settlers often had indigenous women as temporary or Long term reproductive partners. Related to these practices are the traditions on ethnic belonging: indigenous women marrying an outsider are not seen as belonging to their tribe anymore, whereas indigenous men can bring their outsider wives into the tribe.
In the final part of the paper I discuss some of the fears, aversions and attractions bequeathed in the hard to capture emotional realm of sexual attraction. Which Purity myths underlie the ongoing fears of contamination and threat to cultural or literal survival? Which stereotypes feminise or hypersexualise ‘others’? I conclude that it remains complex to build close relationships, let alone sexual or family relationships across ethnic or religious boundaries. By delving into experience and emotions I try to sense Where do taboos stem from? Was ist verboten? And I end with a call for making ourselves and others aware of the long history of oppression and dehumanisation underlying current exclusions and separations. The optimism expressed about younger generations mixing automatically is not realised unless these legacies are recognised and addressed.
15:30 - 16:00: COFFEE BREAK
16:00 - 17:00: SESSION 8: SEX WORK
Innovative and Ethical: A Methodological Framework for Researching the Well-being and Sexual Health of Student Sex Workers in Wales
Debbie Jones & Tracey Sagar
Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology
Swansea University, UK
Sex work research methodologies have traditionally adopted qualitative lines of enquiry that have produced findings based on research carried out ‘on’ participants. In recent years, however, there have been calls for those conducting research into sex work to do so in a way that does not add to the exploitation of an already marginalised and largely socially excluded group. This paper outlines the aims and objectives of ‘The Student Sex Work’ project which seeks not only to understand the motivations and needs (including sexual health and general well-being) of student sex workers undertaking Higher Education in Wales, but also in collaboration with cross sector partners to provide the first Higher Education institutional led and evidence based sexual health service for student sex workers. In particular, the paper reports on the innovative project’s Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodological framework. It enters into a discussion regarding the benefits, limitations and complexity of utilising PAR methodologies to investigate sex work. Overall the paper highlights the importance of peers in both research and project delivery and suggests that PAR is an appropriate ethical methodological approach for studying sex work.
Enjoy the Feeling of ‘Falling in love’: Practices of Intimacies of Taiwanese Sex Tourists in Dongguan
Mei-Hua Chen
Department of Sociology
National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan
The article looks at the closeness between Taiwanese sexual consumers and Chinese sex workers in Dongguan. According to Jamieson (1998), intimacy refers to reveal inner self and close relations between individuals. The relationship between friends, couples, colleagues, and relatives are main targets for theorizing intimacy in modern world. Although commercial sex is frequently represented as the exchange of sex for money, many studies on commercial sex shows that men do seek emotional comfort from sex workers when buying sex (Chen, 2003; Sanders, 2008). Moreover, sex workers, in order to please and keep regular clients, frequently engage in performing embodied emotional labour. Chen’s (2006, 2010) research even found that some clients and sex workers even turn their sexual encounters into long-term relationships such as lovers or get married.
Based on empirical data collected from in-depth interviews with 30 Taiwanese sex tourists and observations on a group of 5 Taiwanese sex tourists, the article examines the ways in which Taiwanese clients draw on varied narratives to justify their sex tourism, and deal with the issue of sexual disloyalty to their wives and/or girlfriends. According to these men, monogamous marriage is considered as boring and failed to provide successful sexual and intimate relations between themselves and their wives. On the contrary, their sexual encounters with Chinese sex workers are considered as sexually exciting and having the feeling of ‘falling in love’.
Seeing sex encounters in sex tourism as ‘falling in love’ with sex workers, these men had to perform the labor of love; such as chatting up with sex workers, showing caring and acting as lovers. Therefore, I will argue that sex tourism might be a site to theorize the performativity of intimacies in the global era. Although Sanders (2008) argued that the relations between regular clients and their sex workers might be ‘pure relation’, I argue that the relations between Taiwanese clients and their sex workers in many cases are not equal or reciprocity at all. Although many men still contacted their sex workers by QQ (a popular social network on the Internet in China) after they returned to Taiwan, they frequently cut off the contact when money or other social and emotional burdens got involved.
17:00 - 18:00: INSEP BUSINESS MEETING
20:00 - …: CONFERENCE DINNER – location: tba
