33 research outputs found
Comradeship of Cock? Gay porn and the entrepreneurial voyeur
Thirty years of academic and critical scholarship on the subject of gay porn have born witness to significant changes not only in the kinds of porn produced for, and watched by, gay men, but in the modes of production and distribution of that porn, and the legal, economic and social contexts in which it has been made, sold/shared, and watched. Those thirty years have also seen a huge shift in the cultural and political position of gay men, especially in the US and UK, and other apparently âadvancedâ democracies. Those thirty years of scholarship on the topic of gay porn have produced one striking consensus, which is that gay cultures are especially âpornifiedâ: porn has arguably offered gay men not only homoerotic visibility, but a heritage culture and a radical aesthetic. However, neoliberal cultures have transformed the operation and meaning of sexuality, installing new standards of performativity and display, and new responsibilities attached to a âdemocratisationâ that offers women and men apparently expanded terms for articulating both their gender and their sexuality.
Does gay porn still have the same urgency in this context? At the level of politics and cultural dissent, whatâs âgayâ about gay porn now? This essay questions the extent to which processes of legal and social liberalization, and the emergence of networked and digital cultures, have foreclosed or expanded the apparently liberationary opportunities of gay porn. The essay attempts to map some of the political implications of the âpornificationâ of gay culture on to ongoing debates about materiality, labour and the entrepreneurial subject by analyzing gay porn blogs
Making Different Differences: Representation and Rights in Sexuality Activism
This paper argues that current iterations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights are limited by an overreliance on particular representations of sexuality, in which homosexuality is defined negatively through a binary of homosexual/heterosexual. The limits of these representations are explored in order to unpick the possibility of engaging in a form of sexuality politics that is grounded in difference rather than in sameness or opposition. The paper seeks to respond to Braidottiâs call for an âaffirmative politicsâ that is open to forms of creative, future-oriented action and that might serve to answer some of the more common criticisms of current LGBTI rights activism