The dick pic : harassment, curation, and desire

The combined rise of digital photography and social media has expanded what might be considered photo worthy. Among the pouting selfies and food stuffs of the day exists the ubiquitous dick pic. The mainstream media generally focuses on dick pics of the unsolicited kind, which, negatively positioned, are commonly associated with heterosexual harassment. Considering the ubiquity of dick pics across apps and platforms, research on the topic nevertheless remains scarce. In this article, we examine the dick pic as an online communicative form, first considering how it manifests the ability to harass and then moving beyond this dominant framing to analysis of contexts where such images are collated, expected, and sought after. Through this analysis of dick pics as figures and actors of harassment, curation, and desire, we demonstrate the simultaneous tenacity and flexibility of their meanings in connection with the dynamics of consent and non-consent, intimacy and distance, and complex circuits of desire. We further address the role of platforms, apps, and app stores, via their community standards and terms of use, in shaping the nature, and presence, of dick pics, and discuss the affective and communicative functions that these affordances serve (or fail to serve). Our analysis of three key modes of engagement with dick pics demonstrates the ambiguity and multiple valences of the phenomenon addressed

Big data, method and the ethics of location : a case study of a hookup app for men who have sex with men

With the rise of geo-social media, location is emerging as a particularly sensitive data point for big data and digital media research. To explore this area, we reflect on our ethics for a study in which we analyze data generated via an app that facilitates public sex among men who have sex with men. The ethical sensitivities around location are further heightened in the context of research into such digital sexual cultures. Public sexual cultures involving men who have sex with men operate both in spaces “meant” for public sex (e.g., gay saunas and dark rooms) and spaces “not meant” for public sex (e.g., shopping centers and public toilets). The app in question facilitates this activity. We developed a web scraper that carefully collected selected data from the app and that data were then analyzed to help identify ethical issues. We used a mixture of content analysis using Python scripts, geovisualisation software and manual qualitative coding techniques. Our findings, which are methodological rather than theoretical in nature, center on the ethics associated with generating, processing, presenting, archiving and deleting big data in a context where harassment, imprisonment, physical harm and even death occur. We find a tension in normal standards of ethical conduct where humans are involved in research. We found that location came to the fore as a key - though not the only - actor requiring attention when considering ethics in a big data context

The Sexual Use of a Social Networking Site: The Case of Pup Twitter

This article examines how Twitter has been adopted and used by a sexual subculture in distinct ways. Drawing on interviews with 26 gay and bisexual men based in the UK who identify as ‘pups’, it demonstrates how a kinky sexual subculture exists on a social networking site in new and innovative ways, adapting various elements of Twitter to form a unique subculture that I call ‘Pup Twitter’. Engaging with debates about social trends related to sexuality, as well as contemporary understandings of social networking sites, the study documents how this subcultural sexual community, while predating Twitter, has adopted online methods to enhance communication, engagement, and even visibility. The intersection of sexuality and social networking sites is an area ripe for further study, and this article develops empirical and conceptual ways to examine this issue in the future

Data cultures of mobile dating and hook-up apps : emerging issues for critical social science research

The ethical and social implications of data mining, algorithmic curation and automation in the context of social media have been of heightened concern for a range of researchers with interests in digital media in recent years, with particular concerns about privacy arising in the context of mobile and locative media. Despite their wide adoption and economic importance, mobile dating apps have received little scholarly attention from this perspective – but they are intense sites of data generation, algorithmic processing, and cross-platform data-sharing; bound up with competing cultures of pro- duction, exploitation and use. In this paper, we describe the ways various forms of data are incorporated into, and emerge from, hook-up apps’ business logics, socio-technical arrangements, and cultures of use to produce multiple and intersecting data cultures. We propose a multi-layered research agenda for critical and empirical inquiry into this field, and suggest appropriate conceptual and methodological frameworks for exploring the social and political challenges of data cultures

‘Whether you are gay or straight, I don’t like to see effeminate dancing’: effeminophobia in performance-level ballroom dance

This article discusses recent responses to performances of same-sex male ballroom dancing in order to consider the subtle difference which can exist between homophobia and effeminophobia. Given that the world of performance-level ballroom dancing is a gay-friendly environment, in which many participants are openly gay identified, this article will argue that a discourse of effeminophobia, rather than homophobia, underpins the world of performance-level ballroom dance. Performance-level ballroom dance is often read as camp not only because it represents exaggerated gender roles but because its official technique requires that the male dancer synthesise codes of masculinity and femininity in his dancing. What protects the gender-dissident male ballroom dancer from being read as effeminate is that he is paired with a female body performing excessive femininity. Without the foil of the hyper-feminine female partner, the same-sex couple draws attention to the fact that the male ballroom dancer is not dancing as a man but in accordance with ballroom’s queer construction of masculinity. Given that performance-level dance has struggled for so many years to be viewed as masculine sport, practitioners may, quite understandably, be anxious about any representation which suggests that ballroom dance may be an effeminate activity

Risk, reassurance and routine: a qualitative study of narrative understandings of the potential for HIV self-testing among men who have sex with men in England

BACKGROUND: HIV testing has seen a rapid evolution over the last decade with multiple modalities now in use globally. In recent years HIV self-testing (HIVST) has been legalised in the UK paving the way for further expansion of testing. Interventions are delivered in particular social contexts which shape uptake. It is therefore important to understand how novel interventions are likely to be received by their intended users. This study aims to understand how HIVST compliments existing testing strategies considered or adopted by men who have sex with men (MSM). We do this by analysing normative discourses surrounding HIV testing and their perceptions of HIVST's potential future roles. METHODS: Six focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted with 47 MSM in London, Manchester and Plymouth. One focus group included only MSM who reported higher risk behaviours and one with those who had never tested for HIV. Data were analysed through a thematic framework analysis. RESULTS: Three main narratives for testing for HIV were identified: (i) testing in response to a specific risk event; (ii) as reassurance when there was a small amount of doubt or anxiety related to HIV; and (iii) in response to social norms perpetuated through peers, HIV community groups and the medical establishment to test regularly for HIV. HIVST had limited utility for men when testing in response to specific risk events except in the case of significant structural barriers to other testing opportunities. HIVST was considered to have utility when seeking reassurance, and was thought to be very useful when testing to satisfy the needs and expectations of others around regular testing. There was some ambivalence about the incursion of a clinical intervention into the home. CONCLUSIONS: HIVST following risk events will likely be limited to those for whom existing service provision is insufficient to meet immediate needs based on structural or personal barriers to testing. Obligations of biological citizenship are central to MSM's understanding of the utility of HIVST. In the context of discourses of biocitizenship, men perceive HIVST to have dual roles: firstly as a tool to manage (mild) anxiety around one's HIV status based on an acknowledgment of HIV vulnerability arising from being homosexually active. Secondly, HIVST is useful in complying with social norms and meeting the perceived demands of biomedicine

Performing Amateurism: A Study of Camgirls’ Work

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Authenticity, validation and sexualisation on Grindr: an analysis of trans women’s accounts

The socio-historic sexualisation of transgender identities is reported to have disaffirming consequences for the broad trans community, and for trans women in particular. Given trans people’s increasing use of socio-sexual ‘hook-up’ apps, this paper looks at trans women’s talk of self/other identifications in relation to their regular use of Grindr. Eight semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with London-based women who identified as trans* in some way. A Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis highlights intersecting frames of trans authenticity, validation and sexualisation. Within these frames, trans women can be variously positioned in gendered and sexualised ways. Specifically, a discourse of trans authenticity is seen to involve the marking out of an identificatory truth that is situated in culturally acceptable and hence de-sexualised womanhood, while a competing discourse of trans validation involves an ambiguity and eroticism that can serve to reimagine this truth. Trans subjectivities can thus consist of a desire for authentic (gendered and non-sexualised) selfhood, on the one hand, and self-affirming ambiguity and sexualisation on the other. That trans women can construct ambivalent relationships with trans-sexualisation discourse highlights the limitation of anti-sexualisation advocacy and implications for supporting trans sexualities are considered