Visualising the ‘real’ and the ‘fake’: emotion work and the representation of orgasm in pornography and everyday sexual interactions

Visual representations of orgasm – whether in the flesh or mediated through a screen –are produced in a context of intense uncertainty about whether what is being seen represents an authentically experienced bodily event. Despite detailed scientific scrutiny and close attention to bodily signs, the authenticity of women’s orgasm remains a site of cultural anxiety and contested gender politics. This uncertainty is exacerbated by the construction of female orgasm as inherently invisible or un-seeable,and ‘faking’ orgasm as a prevalent social practice. Drawing on existing literature from psychology, sociology and porn studies, this theoretical paper explores the problem of visually representing orgasm in the context of these uncertainties, and examines how the distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘fake’ is structured by discourses of authenticity. Pornography and everyday sexual interactions provide ideal contexts for exploring the practices of producing and consuming visual representations of embodied experience because both necessitate a see-able orgasm which consumers/lovers can read as ‘real’. This paper demonstrates that considerable interpretative work is necessary to read the female body as authentically orgasmic in the context of cultural uncertainty, and that distinctions between the ‘real’ and the ‘fake’ are continuallyre worked. Drawing on the contrast between ‘surface’ and ‘deep’ acting (Hochschild,1983), I argue that the distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘fake’ cannot be established by recourse to unmediated bodily experience, and instead, researchers should consider how and when this distinction has traction in the world and the implications of this for gendered power relations, subjectivities and practices

Young women refusing sex: the epistemological adventures of a feminist

Women's sexual refusals are central to both conservative and/or religious campaigns to curb and control sexuality, and to feminist campaigns for sexual freedom. While public health messages implore young women to 'Just Say No' to premarital/teenage sex, the feminist 'No Means No' campaign tries to ensure that women's refusals are not ignored or disregarded. Drawing on data from 15 focus groups with 58 female, heterosexual, school (age range 16-18) and university student (age range 18-50; modal age 20:8) volunteers, I discuss women's talk about saying 'no' in relation to three existing social scientific theories: miscommunication theoiy, emotion work theory and sexual script theory. Each of these theories suggests a different explanation for women's (lack of) sexual refusals: women do not say 'no' clearly enough; women are reluctant to say 'no' because they are protecting their male partner from feelings of rejection; or cultural expectations dictate that women should refuse sex while men should continue to initiate sex. I provide two competing approaches to analysing these three theories. The first (essentialist) approach treats women's talk as transparent evidence of real world events or of psychological phenomenon (i.e. women miscommunicate or women do perform emotion work). The second (constructed) approach treats women's talk as produced in a particular interactional setting in order to serve particular interactional functions. This thesis expands feminist debates about the relative value of essentialism and social constructionism for understanding women's lives and for advancing theory. The majority of feminists, including those who identify their work as social constructionist, adopt an essentialist approach to data analysis. This thesis contributes to the development of feminist psychology both by investigating women's accounts of refusing sex, and by critically evaluating these two different epistemological approaches to analysing qualitative data

Faking, finishing and forgetting

An open peer commentary on an article by Thomas, Seltzx and LaFrance (2017) which reported women's accounts of feigning orgasm to end unwanted sex

Media and class-making: what lessons are learnt when a celebrity chav dies?

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The state of the Martian climate

60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes

The experience of agency in human-computer interactions: a review.

The sense of agency is the experience of controlling both one's body and the external environment. Although the sense of agency has been studied extensively, there is a paucity of studies in applied "real-life" situations. One applied domain that seems highly relevant is human-computer-interaction (HCI), as an increasing number of our everyday agentive interactions involve technology. Indeed, HCI has long recognized the feeling of control as a key factor in how people experience interactions with technology. The aim of this review is to summarize and examine the possible links between sense of agency and understanding control in HCI. We explore the overlap between HCI and sense of agency for computer input modalities and system feedback, computer assistance, and joint actions between humans and computers. An overarching consideration is how agency research can inform HCI and vice versa. Finally, we discuss the potential ethical implications of personal responsibility in an ever-increasing society of technology users and intelligent machine interfaces

Business Ethics: The Promise of Neuroscience

Recent advances in cognitive neuroscience research portend well for furthering understanding of many of the fundamental questions in the field of business ethics, both normative and empirical. This article provides an overview of neuroscience methodology and brain structures, and explores the areas in which neuroscience research has contributed findings of value to business ethics, as well as suggesting areas for future research. Neuroscience research is especially capable of providing insight into individual reactions to ethical issues, while also raising challenging normative questions about the nature of moral responsibility, autonomy, intent, and free will. This article also provides a brief summary of the papers included in this special issue, attesting to the richness of scholarly inquiry linking neuroscience and business ethics. We conclude that neuroscience offers considerable promise to the field of business ethics, but we caution against overpromise

Indication of Cancer Status Women's Experiences of an Altered Appearance during Chemotherapy: An Women's Experiences of an Altered Appearance during Chemotherapy An Indication of Cancer Status

Abstract This study explores breast cancer patients' experiences of chemotherapy treatment, with a focus on the impact of an altered appearance during this time. We present two key themes from the thematic analysis of interviews with 19 women: anxiety that chemotherapy will render them identifiable as a 'person-with-cancer'; and problematic interactions with others. We discuss how changes in appearance can reveal disease status to others, demonstrate the personal impact of temporary changes to appearance, relate these findings to literature on psychosocial aspects of disfigurement and consider the provision of psychosocial care for women experiencing an altered appearance during chemotherapy