09:30 – 11:00: Session 4: Sexuality
Post-Gender Ethics
Lucy Nicholas – Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia
This paper will sketch a broad post-gender ontological ethics. I propose that oppositional sexual difference understood as a biological given is the spectre that haunts binary gender, and should be deconstructed and replaced with a queer sociality premised on an ethic of inexhaustible reciprocity. It will consider ‘new-materialist’ directions in sociological and gender theory that have returned to the ‘sexed’ body and proposed more multiplicitous and developmental ways of understanding it, to ontologically underpin the notion that sexual dimorphism need not be the foundation for identity.
Some of the germinal contributors to queer theory have recently called for a reconstructive counterpart to its deconstructive function, a ‘queer sociality.’ Along with the ontological premise of new-materialism, then, I seek to extend the normative premises inherent to queer theory to sketch a more enabling sociality, or mode of being and of being sexual, to those premised on identity. I propose that this should take the form of a post-gender ethical impulse of a ‘universalised particularism’ best described as a non-foundationally reciprocal relationship to the other.
Finally, I consider how such an ethic would need to operate in order to remain true to the principles of queer theory but offer reconstructive norms in the face of the ‘problem of closure.’ I consider some mechanisms by which it may be possible to transcend or think beyond the impasses of same / different, universal / particular and relate to ourselves and one another in ways that respect limitless differences.
Lesbian Ethics Re-Investigated: A Socio-Political Comment
Marta Olasik – University of Warsaw, Poland
Throughout the paper I intend to (re)examine the lesbian question with regard to ethics. This would include looking closer into sexual politics, where non-heterosexual women are still a minority. What are the tools for the oppression of lesbians within the LGBT and queer communities, and how do they differ from these coming from the heteronormative outside? Is there any lesbian ethics at all? And what would that be? Deriving from lesbian feminism and queer scholarship, I wish to consider ways to productively increase lesbian visibility—both within and outside non-heterosexual and non-heteronormative communities; both socially and in the academia. This has to entail going back to the roots of the social construction of femininity and stereotypes, as well as reinvestigating practices that seek to socially liberate sexual and gender minorities.
As a queer sociologist and a lesbian scholar based in Poland, I shall draw from the experience of the Polish social reality, though much of the content is easily applicable to the general situation of non-heterosexual women anywhere. As it turns out, the task of (re)discovering the lesbian still remains on our path to truly allow for diversity.
Resistance and Ethical Self-Creation in Sex Work: A Legal Perspective
Elizabeth Smith – La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Some forms of sex work (prostitution) in Victoria, Australia, have been legal and regulated for nearly two decades. This paper draws on PhD research that explored the ways that women in this cohort thought about: talking about or maintaining silence about, their sex work to friends and loved ones; made sense of gender discourses; and accessed a variety of discourses about gender, sexuality, self, and sex work. Discourses about sex work sit within broader knowledges about sex, sexuality, and gender, along with discourses about deviance, monogamy, disease, heterosexual relations, desire, patriarchy, and lust. Dominant discursive constructions of sex workers and sex work in psychology, medicine, popular culture, and radical feminism, position sex workers as dirty and diseased, psychologically damaged by their work, victimised by their clients or men in general, and that men are only sexually attracted to restrictive notions of ‘femininity’. Beyond these dominant discourses, the women in this research accessed competing and subjugated discourses about sex, gender, and sexual pleasure as well as communicated these new discourses to other women through the Internet, mentor-type relationships, and peer-groups. The women in this research gained various experiences and sexual subject positions from their work including sex work as a legitimate sexuality, as a way to provide nurture and care, and also as a viable business venture. By drawing on these alternative knowledges/discourses the women in this research were better able to resist appropriating negative understandings of sex work as their own self-truths and construct their lives in various, ethical ways. Based on these findings, I argue that the more alternative understandings that sex workers have to current dominant discourses, the freer they are to create and understand their sex work in ways that bring professional and personal satisfaction and that legalisation of sex work may help facilitate this.
11:00- 11:30: Coffee break
11:30 – 13:00: Sessions 5:
Session 5 A: BDSM Sexuality I
Can ‘Safe Words’ Undermine Autonomy
Yonatan Shemmer – The University of Sheffield, UK
On a common conception of Autonomy agents are autonomous when their actions are governed by what they really want. On that view a third party undermines your autonomy by hindering the satisfaction of what you really want. When Ulysses anticipates an encounter with the sirens he commands his sailors to tie him to the mast and to ignore his later pleas to be released. On a standard interpretation of the story Ulysses’ true desire is to stay tied whereas his weak-willed plea to be released does not represent what he really wants. Thus by ignoring his plea the sailors are respecting his autonomy. In the BDSM community the use of a safe word during play is considered of supreme importance. It is often claimed that one central role of the use of safe words is to protect the autonomy of the sub; to ensure that play is consensual. The thought is that the utterance of the safe word represents the sub’s true desire to stop and that therefore stopping respects his/her autonomy. In this paper I argue that contrary to the assumptions underlying standard practice in the BDSM community there are situations where the use of a safe word undermines the autonomy of the submissive player. These cases are analogous to Ulysses’ case. In these cases the pre-play request of the sub to have his/her pleas ignored during play, represent his/her real desires. Call these cases ‘Ulysses cases’. I distinguish between different type of ‘plays’ and isolate the class of Ulysses cases. I then go on to reject a variety of objections to the claim that in Ulysses cases safe words undermine autonomy.
Safe Words? An Inquiry into the Concept of “Safe, Sane, Consensual”
Angie Tsaros – Institute for Queer Theory, Berlin, Germany
The concept of safe, sane, and consensual (SSC) SM has been well established within the contemporary U.S. and European scene(s). While there has always been a minority within the SM community who were not happy with these guidelines, criticism has only recently surfaced and been discussed on a wider scale in the last years. Especially since the the success of Fifty Shades of Grey and its follow-up books, mainstream culture has become familiar with SSC, prompting a new discussion about its merits and problems.
This presentation argues that, while well-intended, SSC has become a quick fix for various problems within the community of SM practitioners. The discourse of “safety” is misleading, since a protocol of precautions cannot turn risky behavior into something risk-free. On a very basic level many practices, even when practiced with consent and maximum safety precautions, are not free of risk, and for many people engaging in them, that is exactly the point. Such an understanding of SM has led to a rift within the scene between the (seeming) majority who wants to gain acceptance from the mainstream, thus eschewing “unsafe” behavior, and their counterparts, the practitioners who have no interest in lobbying for understanding and who want to stay apart from mainstream society.
To illustrate my point, I will compare E.L. James’ Fifty Shades trilogy and Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series. Fifty Shades is a recent phenomenon, written for a mainstream audience, and – while wildly problematic in many areas – has a “squeaky clean” (L. Downing, 2013) bill when it comes to its SSC side. The Marketplace by queer novelist Laura Antoniou, on the other hand, approaches consent differently: While it has to be given once, the characters in this series have no right to renegotiate once their slave contracts have been signed. Thus, the Marketplace, a parallel world of service, sets itself apart from “mainstream SM”, and employs its own rules.
These two works are extreme examples of both sides of the discussion, and while they are fictional accounts, they will help answer questions such as: How is the focus on “safety” impinging upon individual sexual subjectivity? In how far is it a way for public control to enter a formerly self-controlled space? How have recent developments towards self-policing within mainstream SM led to deeper rifts within the scene, and how does this affect the ongoing activism for acceptance?
Oral Sex, Masochism, and Law
Virgil W. Brower – Northwestern University, USA
Spinning off Judith Butler’s polemic between orifices and appendages in Gender Trouble, this paper investigates two historical minority sexualities in terms of their orality in an attempt to theorize the mouth as a site of synthesis between Butler’s polemic (i.e., the tongue as an orificed appendage and the mouth as an appended orifice). It hazards to move beyond the reductionist conflation of that polemic as simply between the penetrable vaginal/anal (orifice) and penetrating phallic (appendage). It is this exceptional status of the mouth (an orifice beyond all other orifices and an appendage different from all other appendages) that will render it both a site of legal sexual repression and (perhaps, by consequence) a dissident opening against law and codified sexuality. The very instauration of law [lex]—that is the genius Ancient Rome and its gift to the world—is accompanied by an odd prohibition against oral sex. This Roman disgust of oral sex, as recounted in some Stoic philosophers and historians and outlined in Aline Rousselle’s Porneia, and Peter Brown’s Body and Society discloses it as a resistant sexual practice that anticipates modern masochism’s simulation, appropriation, and mockery of the law. As such, fellatio, cunni-, and analingus ally themselves with the (often overlooked) emphasis on orality that accompanies what Gilles Deleuze calls the “desexualization” within masochistic scenarios. For Deleuze, an important facet of masochism is its rebellion against genitality, insertion, (and even orgasm); i.e., against the very reductionist codification of the sexualized body into which the mouth refuses to fit. Oral sex discloses itself as kind of a proto-masochism. Both emerge and embody resistances to law, prohibition, and taboo. “The Economic Problem of Masochism” discussed by Freud is but an epiphenomenon and maturation of a previous and all but forgotten nomic problem of oral sexuality.
Session 5 B: Sexuality, Diversity and Education
A Case for Sexual Diversity in Business Eduction
Rosa Slegers – Babson College, Wellesley, USA
The argument presented in this paper focuses on the way sexual diversity would enrich and strengthen business students’ abilities to engage the many moral issues facing businesses today. In the wake of the financial crisis and the public outcry over morally deplorable business practices, business schools in the USA are facing a new set of challenges. While the traditional and often cynical perception persists that business students are incurably egocentric and profit maximizing, there is a growing demand among business students, employers, and in society at large for morally responsible business education. But business schools have a lot of catching up to do: the social and environmental responsibility already engrained in liberal arts education still is an awkward match for traditional business education, and schools are struggling to make moral consideration an integral and natural part of their curriculum. This paper suggests that this awkwardness is due at least in part to the fact that business schools are still largely infused with a stereotypical, straight male-centered rhetoric. This rhetoric not only pervades the case studies used in the business curriculum and the values promoted as central to business education, but also shows in the way students assess real-world opportunities, present their ideas, dress etc. The language of entrepreneurship in particular is one of “risk” and “action” and the protagonists in nearly all success stories are men who fit an outdated stereotype of the bold adventurer. This paper suggests that this caricature of the male risk taker stands in the way of a productive engagement with issues of social and environmental sustainability and responsibility. It makes the argument that for business schools to remain relevant and meet the demand of a changing society, the language and culture have to be infused with sexual diversity.
Benign Sexual Variation?
Tom Claes – CEVI, Ghent University, Belgium
tba
13:00 – 14:00: Lunch break
14:00- 15:30: Sessions 6:
Session 6 A: BDSM Sexuality II
The Absorbing Questions of BDSM
Gert Hekma – University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The paper discusses the various questions BDSM practices raise for both practitioners and the ‘general population’. Most of the questions show the degree to which BDSM is still seen as a taboo practice, also by the participants themselves. Most issues are being discussed based on the existing literature on BDSM. It is a very long list. Kinky sex is often regarded as unequal, non-consensual, a mental disorder, only a game but risky, violent und painful, private and apolitical, confirming gender and power relations or a symbolic repetition of sexual repression and at the same time as exaggerated variation and transgression. These ideas on BDSM are contradictory and often negative for in- and outsiders and raise the many questons I want to discuss. It is surprising how a sexual practice and a form of sexual identification that is as widespread as similar lesbian and gay formations receives much less attention and leads to much less sexual activism although the issues may be even more tense than the ones that concern the LGB world. In a time when homosexuality is daily in the news with marriages, popes and priests, armies, Olympic Games, anti- and pro-gay nationalisms it is remarkable that BDSM remains in the shadows although it raises so many difficult and interesting questions.
Sacher-Masoch’s Convalescence: A Masochistic Time for Nietzsche’s Revalued Health
Sarah Mann-O’Donnell – Northwestern University, USA
In his reading of Sacher-Masoch, Deleuze stresses the masochist as orchestrator of his own torture, one extended for as long as possible. In stark contrast to the victims of Sade’s libertines, Sacher-Masoch’s masochists render themselves victim through the careful choice and education of their torturers. This figure of the indirect self-torturer bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain Nietzsche, one who performs a Selbstdisziplin, rendering himself patient to his own brutal doctoring in what Daniel Ahern has called self-vivisection. This discipline manifests in Nietzsche as a self-imposed convalescence, the practice of which constitutes a new health that wraps itself around pain and illness to keep itself critical. While Sacher-Masoch’s victim indirectly orchestrates his torture over excruciatingly suspenseful time, Nietzsche performs this self-doctoring in the moment in which he thinks the eternal return, producing, for the latter, what David Farrell Krell suggests to be a “chronic indirect health.” In these striking temporalities of self-imposed suffering, Deleuze’s Sacher-Masoch and Nietzsche’s Nietzsche suggest to each other, on the one hand, a health to be discovered in, or willed as, masochism, and on the other, a highly erotic performance of doctored time. A comparative reading of the two will probe the chronic eroticization of the suspended moment and the variable idealization of eternity, with an emphasis on the role indirection plays in the impossible eventuality of both.
BDSM Fantasies Become Practice
Charlotta Carlström – Malmö University, Sweden
This study is part of my dissertation and is intended to contribute to the understanding of Bondage and Dominance/Sadism and Masochism (BDSM) fantasies. The paper will be presented at the conference and has been accepted as a contribution to an upcoming international anthology about sexual fantasies. It is based on interviews with people who define themselves as BDSM practitioners. The practitioners highlight the impact of fantasies in their encounters. They also talk about fantasies that eroticise dominance and submission as a reason for why they became involved in BDSM. The BDSM practice has given them an opportunity to live out their fantasies.
The BDSM scene is built on fantasies, daydreams, thoughts and feelings; the practice stresses taboos, boundaries, prohibitions and social norms. The scene can function as an alibi, allowing practitioners to play with power, gender and race in a way that would be impossible outside the scene. I will discuss the following questions: does BDSM provide a subversive freedom to go beyond race, gender and trauma? Can playing with taboos be understood as the “allure of the forbidden” and as a tangible and concrete approach to the exchange of power in BDSM play, or should the phenomenon rather be seen as expressions of pure racism, sexism and oppression? I will argue that living out fantasies and playing with taboos implies a complicated and complex chain of symbolism that affects overall perspective on gender, ethnicity, oppression and power.
Session 6 B: Sexuality and Discrimination
Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by UNRWA Staff: Issues of Honor and Trust
Luca Putteman – Ethics Office of UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees in the Near East, Amman, Jordan
In Jordan, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees in the Near East- is the second largest employer nationwide, following the Jordanian government. As a UN agency, UNRWA has an exceptional large number of local Palestinian staff. As a UN Agency, it is also UNRWA’s duty to meet the United Nations’ standards of ethical behavior, including values on sexual equality and dignity. In accordance with the UN Secretary-General’s position on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by our own staff UNRWA’s stance should therefore be one of ‘zero-tolerance’.
Middle Eastern cultural complexities and traditional pitfalls make the task of preventing and dealing with sexual exploitation and abuse extremely delicate and ethically blurred. Where men can legally satisfy their lusts on young girls through child marriage the implementation of a sound policy on child sexual abuse is a complicated undertaking. And when tradition says that a brother can kill his sister in order to clean the family’s honor after she became the victim of rape, encouraging this girl to file a complaint against the perpetrator is a delicate issue. Making staff conduct meet with international values and human rights is a constant struggle where culture and tradition are often used as weapons and as excuses. The question remains if it is UNRWA’s responsibility to change the value system of a whole community (of 5 million Palestinians) or to fight SEA for its own sake (and reputation).
Key concepts
Honor and trust –Near East – child sexual abuse – sexual exploitation – honor killings – duty to report – duty to protect – universal values – United Nations – refugees
Method
During a 20 minutes presentation I wish to confront the participants with a very practical example from a situation where two different sexual cultures or value systems are in conflict. As I do not dispose of the extensive academical background other invited speakers have, I prefer to stick to a real-life case study and use the time for debate in order to challenge to public to find real-life solutions to the issue at stake. I hope this approach may blow an alternative wind through to conference and contribute to the diversity of speeches and topics.
Some question to guide the debate:
- Is it ethically defendable to encourage a victim of sexual abuse to report her/his case if speaking up imposes a risk of retaliation, even murder?
- How can a UN Agency fight child sexual abuse in a refugee camp where more than half of the girls are married off before they reach the age of 18?
- Is it the moral responsibility of a UN Agency to report cases of sexual abuse among its staff to the local authorities (taken in consideration legal immunities vis a vis local courts)? Should a UN Agency follow the decisions and recommendations of national courts regarding SEA cases?
Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation, Homophobia, and Human Rights in Africa
Aimar Rubio Llona – Universidad del Pais Vasco, Spain
Background Research
Over the last decade, the hopes of fighting oppression and discrimination against gay people in Africa by means of introducing and strengthening laws which defend equal rights and cultural and personal diversity has become increasingly difficult. This applies in many ways also to South Africa, in spite of the exemplary words on the subject in the South African constitution
More than 50% of African governments have taken action and steps to formally criminalize same-sex unions. There is an increased awareness of homophobia in the continent with many African media adding to the furore. Nonetheless, anti-gay laws in Uganda are now weakened due to human rights opposition and Malawi witnessed the presidential pardon of a gay couple. In March 2011, at the second recall at the United Nations Assembly in Geneva on the Joint declaration to decriminalize homosexuality, the number of African countries who signed rose from six to eleven including Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe, Mauritius, Central Africa Republic, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Angola, South Africa, Seychelles, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, thirteen countries abstained and twenty-eight opposed Joint Statement on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI).
The popularity of gay rights and advocacy for the social status of same-sex relationships have provoked politicians and governments in Africa to react. Recent cases of criminalization of same-sex relationships have worsened a situation already characterized by harassment, humiliation, extortion, arbitrary arrests, judicial violence, imprisonment, torture, hate crimes and honour killings on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity all over Africa. These abuses are happening whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not. Every year, there are numerous cases of hate crimes towards sexual minorities and gay and lesbian advocates working to deliver more justice. The abuse is escalating. (International Gay & Lesbian Organization [ILGA, 2012]: State-sponsored Homophobia report, p. 22)
State Sponsored Homophobia in Africa
Historically, Africa has always been the friendliest and most tolerant continent, homosexuality and same-gender behaviours dating back to time before colonialism and the intervention of religion. The arrival of colonialism contributed to the mass hatred and also the influence of religious fundamentalism has contributed to the debased argument for homophobia. Christianity teaches a faith that encourages “Love thy neighbour as thyself”; sadly, this concept has been abandoned for the sake of “hate missions” propelled by the religious leaders, such examples can be found in many places in Africa: Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi, where the Churches, Mosques and other popular religious communities are aiding and abetting their governments to pass laws that would criminalise homosexuality and some as far as the death penalty. (ILGA [2012])
So on, African Churches and religious leaders play an important role against sexual minorities. They fuel African homophobia, denouncing sexual minorities and demonizing them. The influence of the religious actors fall on the public opinion, mass media and the States.
The laws and regulation against sexual minorities in Africa are a legacy from colonial times. In contrast, African political and religious leaders reiterate that the homosexuality is an orientation alien to African traditions and culture. The prevailing view is that homosexuality comes from the West and is a sexual disease of white men and women.
The human rights of sexual minorities are violated continuously. They suffer blackmail and extortion, bullying at school, violence, public humiliation, discrimination and social exclusion. In many countries the sexual activities between same sex adults are prosecuted and prohibited, hundred of gay and lesbians are arrested every year. Moreover, the fight against AIDS has been attacked due to the growing political, public and moral criminalization of the homosexuality in Africa.
Research Hypothesis
At a time when in some parts of the (western) world gay and lesbian rights are being strengthened, in Africa there seems to be an opposite tendency. What are the causes of this: ideological (especially religious), socio-economic disadvantages, or political conflict? Can the African trend be reversed and coincide more with the pattern of the west; or is it even possible that homophobia will renew itself in other parts of the world?
Cure Them of What? Expertise and Advocacy for Drug and HIV Interventions among MSM in France and Belgium
Laurent Gaissad – Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium & Université de Paris Ouest-Nanterre, Paris, France
Based on a research on The Construction of Gay Men’s Sexual Compulsivity (Sidaction), this paper examines the statistic evidence of epidemiological surveys and the anecdotic accounts outlining psychosocial and medical discourses on contemporary gay health and sex in France and Belgium. More precisely, it tries to analyze the fabric of an “anxiolytic” sexuality, and its correlation to the continuously high HIV prevalence among MSM. Considering the gap between Gay Party Circuit subcultures and the framing of epidemiological surveillance of high risk populations in Europe, it will focus on the wide range of drug uses reported and how they have come to be labeled addictive, including sexuality as a compulsive -or depressive -syndrome.
Discussion on data collection, treatment and publicity will question the link between such emerging categories of gay mental and behavioral disorder and the determination of core symptoms for gay exposure to HIV and to multiple co-infections (STIs, VHC). In the context of the biomedical prevention new deal (PeP, TasP, PreP), it will show how recent scientific expertise and NGO advocacy for drug and HIV interventions among MSM contribute to reschedule gay health and sex governance. Alternatively, the paper will highlight how local and in particular pharmaceutical -knowledge breeds collective forms of attention, self-support and care amongst gay party goers and organizers from which traditional public action and research remain disconnected.
15:30 – 16:00: Coffee break
16:00 – 17:30: Sessions 7:
Session 7 A: BDSM Sexuality III
‘Playing’ with Consent: Consent in BDSM
Paul Reynolds – Edge Hill University, UK
tba
BDSM Among Consent and Sexual Citizenship Claims
Laura Zambelli – University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
The concept of sexual citizenship emerged during the Sixties, after the Sexual Revolution, and strengthened during the Eighties (Weeks 1998). The core idea is that every human being is a bearer of differences related to her/his sexuality (orientation, diversities, presence of STDs, etc.) that must be acquainted, respected and valued. BDSM is a liminal concept that challenges the idea of sexual citizenship (Green 2008).
The main point I want to develop is that when a particular sexual practice becomes attached to, or part of, identity, there is space for the discussion about sexual citizenship. BDSM as a sexual practice is valued by practitioners or sympathizers since it constitutes a part of the personal/social identity, thus worthy of discussion and/or struggle. Other sexual differences followed a similar path (e.g. homosexuality). Nowadays in most Western countries a public debate about BDSM is born in recent years.
The main point of the debate regards the nature of BDSM: is it a different sexual practice or a perversion? The construction of perversions developed, following Foucault, around the discourses made by different authorities and institutions. Nowadays, the main source for classifying mental illnesses is DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), which underlines the concepts of consent and social distress as turning points for a SM diagnosis. The importance of the consent is deeply felt among practitioners, as I noted in my empirical research in Italy. They perceive also the social distress deriving from the stigma attached to them with different intensity. Part of them defines as perverts, others don’t; some practitioners believe that BDSM should not be widely accepted, others claim that it is already accepted.
Among Western countries, the debate about the acceptability of BDSM and the claim for social recognition is open and growing.
Under Lock and Key?: The Politics of Heterosexual Sadomasochism in the Socio-Legal Imaginary
Alex Dymock – University of Reading, UK
The relationship between queer and feminism as identity knowledges and the question of divergence or convergence has long preoccupied scholars in the humanities, particularly Janet Halley and Robyn Wiegman. In this paper, I address the case of R v Lock, a recent Crown Court case in which Steven Lock was cleared of assault after a court heard he whipped a woman as part of a “master-slave” sex session inspired by the popular erotic fiction trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey. While a ‘safe-word’ was granted and not used, and a contract signed prior to the act, the woman nevertheless reported the injury and Lock was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm. I suggest that the case offers a fascinating locus for the application of both a queer and feminist theoretic, and to recollect their points of divergence. Through feminism, we may read the verdict as a refusal to permit the woman’s experience of trauma as evidence of her unspoken withdrawal of consent, giving the act all the trappings of rape. A queer theoretic, on the other hand, might (re)construct the grammar of the sex acts in question as that proliferated by gay male sexual styles and their idealisation, and read the verdict as a victory for sexual liberation movements. It may even hold feminism responsible not only for the woman’s decision to prosecute, but also for her experience of suffering that justified her decision. While a queer theoretic has often been employed to critique the criminalisation of same-sex consensual sadomasochistic sex, I ask whether this same theoretic was rightly employed in this case to make sense of heterosexual sadomasochism. Does R v Lock outreach the queer taxonomy and suggest a grave injustice has been done? If so, in what ways might feminism be re-employed without simultaneously stymying the perverse feminine sexual imaginary?
Session 7 B: Representations of Sexuality
Queering of SPORT – De-Normalization Beyond Diversifing of ‘Sexing’ in Sport
željko Blaće
Contemporary sport (competitive, commercialized, institutionalized, politicized…) is often taken for granted in its capacity to normalize societies and cultures on a global scale (mega events like Olympics often serve this purpose). Sport normalizes individuals through their sense of identity (fixing roles within fan communities or institutional sport structures), as well as ‘sexing’ their body image and performance into exclusively male or female order set in expectations (re-producing gender stereotypes). It is equally The source of countless traumatic, stressful and frustrating experiences for queer youth, trans individuals and others who do not fit its norms.
If sport (as art) can be considered as a laboratory, then it is potentially one of largest fields for social, cultural and political innovation in contemporary society. However it is most often seen as the last bastion of sexism and homo/trans-phobia, conservative and defunct – in need of contemporary ethical and aesthetic articulation. QueerSport as artistic research examines and instigates tensions between SPORT in its norms and regulations, and the notion of QUEER as a discourse, practice and performative act.
In this process of articulation QueerSport is used as a flexible term that accommodates different meanings and opens up a spectrum of possible interpretations that emerge from interaction with contexts of: academia, artistic/cultural field, professional/amateur sport, corporate/community media, political/social activism…
QueerSport is both a critique to normalization of once progressive gay sport movement, and proactive development of contexts for emergence of experimental and engaged community work towards a particular social sculpture or social landscape.
While simultaneously working as artist, activist and academic researcher I seek answers for:
- When/How/Where are tensions catalysts for innovation and radical change?
- How can artists challenge norms and contribute to the critique and development of sport?
- What are capacities for creative innovation in the niche (LGBTQ) sport movement?
- What are contexts (occasions, venues and resources) for emergence of QueerSport?
My research outputs are texts, workshops, media, presentations and performances that create contexts for envisioning development of queer qualities in sport through interaction with individuals, groups, organizations from both LGBTQ sport and larger society.
The Representations of Black Masculinities in Mainstream South African Gay Media
Katlego Disemelo – University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South-Africa
The aim of this study is to interrogate the representations of black masculinities in mainstream South African gay media. It seeks to analyze the discursive negation of black gay consumer identities within the “pink economy” by mainstream gay consumer media. This study will rests on the assumption that black gay masculinities are under-represented in mainstream gay consumer media, and this, in turn, implies the neglect of their consumer agency. It shall be the task of this study to problematize homonormative constructions of gay male consumer “identities” and the “pink economy” from a Queer theoretic perspective. A discourse analysis of non-commercial gay media may reveal contradictions to and contestations of the totalizing narratives of homonormative media representations. It may also reveal discourses of subversion and empowerment in relation to black gay male consumer identities and practices. Thus it is within these “alternative” media wherein inclusive representations of black masculinities, bodies and consumer identities will be closely examined. It shall be argued that the marginalization and erasure of black gay consumer identities reveals certain prejudiced and racist (homonormative) ideologies within the post-apartheid South African mainstream gay mediascape. The implications of such exclusion and discursive erasure may have dire consequences with regards to post-apartheid gay and lesbian identity politics.
Art in the Frame: Spiritual America and Indecent Images
Mihail Evans – Institute for Advanced Studies, Bucharest, Romania
The recent removal of the Richard Prince’s artwork ‘Spiritual America’ from the Tate Modern’s ‘Pop Life: Art in a Material World’ exhibition is only the most recent and high profile case of a work of art being withdrawn from a gallery in the UK on the grounds that it has allegedly breached legislation concerning indecent images of children. It is somewhat surprising then to find that the issue has hardly been touched on by academics from law departments and is almost entirely ignored by philosophers specializing in aesthetics and ethics. My intention in this paper is to bring some of the resources of continental ethics and aesthetics to bear on the issue and at the same time to engage with the only major consideration of the question of indecent images of children by a philosopher, Peter J. King’s ‘No Plaything’. One of the aims of this paper will be to show that a continental perspective can open up a positions that King’s ‘objectivist utilitarianism’ is oblivious of. I will in particular draw on Kant’s Third Critique as read by Derrida via his quasi-conception of ‘the frame’ in The Truth in Painting, as well as his elaboration of droit de regard in Rights of Inspection. In distinction to the later philosopher, central to my approach is an engagement with the actually existing reality of currently enacted law and it’s intervention in particular cases such as that of Spiritual America. I will begin with art ‘in the frame’ as the colloquial expression has it, art wrongfully and unjustly accused by the police. I will proceed via an examination of the question of the frame in Kant and Derrida, to demonstrate a need to reclaim the ethical status of works of art. The core procedure of my paper will be a ‘rediscovery’ of Spiritual America as the Kantian example that allows us to find the law. My argument will be that no work of art or image can of itself be decent or indecent.
17:30: Close
20:00 – …: Conference dinner – location: tba
