19 research outputs found
The transatlantic Thames: Anglo-American tensions on the Victorian âstream of pleasureâ
While it is widely understood that rivers took on new symbolic power as avatars of nationalism in the late nineteenth century, less examined is their use as a space for Transatlantic cultural flow, and transnational commentary and critique. This article explores the ways in which a variety of Americans abroad in this period centred the Thames â newly charged with nationalist sentiment â in their accounts of Britain. In particular, it analyses Elizabeth Robins and Joseph Pennellâs travel narrative The Stream of Pleasure, first published as the lead article in the âMidsummer Holiday Issueâ of The Century Magazine in 1889, as an exemplary text in which both artist and writer play with the image of the river in ways that chime with much wider Transatlantic debates at this moment
Male victims of sexual assault: Phenomenology, psychology, physiology
Myths, stereotypes, and unfounded beliefs about male sexuality, in particular male homosexuality, are widespread in legal and medical communities, as well as among agencies providing services to sexual assault victims. These include perceptions that men in noninstitutionalized settings are rarely sexually assaulted, that male victims are responsible for their assaults, that male sexual assault victims are less traumatized by the experience than their female counterparts, and that ejaculation is an indicator of a positive erotic experience. As a result of the prevalence of such beliefs, there is an underreporting of sexual assaults by male victims; a lack of appropriate services for male victims; and, effectively, no legal redress for male sexual assault victims. By comparison, male sexual assault victims have fewer resources and greater stigma than do female sexual assault victims. Many male victims, either because of physiological effects of anal rape or direct stimulation by their assailants, have an erection, ejaculate, or both during the assault. This is incorrectly understood by assailant, victim, the justice system, and the medical community as signifying consent by the victim. Studies of male sexual physiology suggest that involuntary erections or ejaculations can occur in the context of nonconsensual, receptive anal sex. Erections and ejaculations are only partially under voluntary control and are known to occur during times of extreme duress in the absence of sexual pleasure. Particularly within the criminal justice system, this misconception, in addition to other unfounded beliefs, has made the courts unwilling to provide legal remedy to male victims of sexual assault, especially when the victim experienced an erection or an ejaculation during the assault. Attorneys and forensic psychiatrists must be better informed about the physiology of these phenomena to formulate evidence-based opinions
Oscar Wilde and the Plaistow Matricide: Competing Critiques of Influence in the Formation of Late-Victorian Masculinities
This paper examines the ways in which the concept of âpernicious influenceâ was mobilized in late-Victorian periodical publications to reinforce a normative conception of masculinity through powerful discourses on the relationship between textual consumption and identity. Discussion of the threat posed by âpenny dreadfulsâ drew not only on widely held assumptions regarding the criminalizing influence of popular fiction, exemplified by the case of Robert Coombes, but also made connections with the supposedly corrupting effeminacy of the âdegenerateâ intellectual, with the trials of Oscar Wilde as the main focus. The paper goes on to explore Wildeâs engagement with the concept of influence across a wide range of his writings, in the course of which he developed an alternative critique of all influence as a perversion of self-realization. This relates in some respects to existing strands of critical debate relating to Wildeâs sexuality. However, the current essay seeks to frame Wildeâs contribution in terms of late-Victorian debates on the cultural significance of reading practices and in relation to Wildeâs own critique of influence, by means of which he contested many of the assumptions underpinning bourgeois conceptions of normative masculinity