Queer disconnections: Affect, break, and delay in digital connectivity

In this article, my intent is to theorise the intricate relation between technology and affect by considering questions of digital vulnerability – of disconnections, breaks, and delays – as a way of rethinking our affective attachments to digital devices. By extension, I also connect this argument with a framework of queer theory, as an opportunity to think differently about relations through questions of technological ruptures and deferrals. My bassline for this endeavour is the idea of the break as formative for how we can both sense and make sense of digital connectivity, in so far as the break has the potential to bring forth what constant connectivity means, and how it feels. Similarly, the break can potentially make tangible relational norms around continuous, coherent, and linear ways of relating and connecting, and thus provide alternative models for ways of being with digital devices, networks, and each other. If constant connectivity provides us with a relational norm of sorts, then disconnection could function as a queer orientation device with the potential of creating openings for other ways of coming together, and other ways of staying together.</div

Shameless hags and tolerance whores: Feminist resistance and the affective circuits of online hate

This article explores shamelessness as a feminist tactic of resistance to online misogyny, hate and shaming within a Nordic context. In our Swedish examples, this involves affective reclaiming of the term “hagga” (hag), which has come to embody shameless femininity and feminist solidarity, as well as the Facebook event “Skamlös utsläckning” (shameless extinction), which extends the solidarity or the hag to a collective of non-men. Our Finnish examples revolve around appropriating derisive terms used of women defending multiculturalism and countering the current rise of nationalist anti-immigration policy and activism across Web platforms, such as “kukkahattutäti” (aunt with a flower hat) and “suvakkihuora” (“overtly tolerant whore”). Drawing on Facebook posts, blogs and discussion forums, the article conceptualizes the affective dynamics and intersectional nature of online hate against women and other others. More specifically, we examine the dynamics of shaming and the possibilities of shamelessness as a feminist tactic of resistance. Since online humor often targets women, racial others and queers, the models of resistance that this article uncovers add a new stitch to its memetic logics. We propose that a networked politics of reclaiming is taking shape, one using collective imagination and wit to refuel feminist communities.</p

Locating sex: regional geographies of sexual social media

Contributing to the field of the geographies of digital sexualities, this article explores the geosocial dimensions of digital sexual cultures by analyzing three regionally operating, linguistically specific social media platforms devoted to sexual expression. Drawing on case studies of an Estonian platform used primarily for group sex, a Swedish platform for kink and BDSM, and a Finnish platform for nude self-expression, we ask how these contribute to and shape sexual geographies in digital and physical registers. First, we focus on the platforms as tools for digital wayfinding and hooking up. Second, we consider how the platforms help to reimagine and sexualize physical locations as ones of play, and how this transforms the ways of inhabiting such spaces. Third, we analyze how the platforms operate as sexual places in their own right, designed to accommodate certain forms of display, relating, and belonging. We argue, in particular, that these platforms shape how users imagine and engage with location by negotiating notions of proximity and distance, risk and safety, making space for sexual sociability. We approach geographies of sexuality both through the regional and linguistic boundaries within which these platforms operate, as well as through our participants’ sense of comfort and investment in local spaces of sexual play. As sexual content is increasingly pushed out of large, U.S.-owned social media platforms, we argue that locally operating platforms provide a critical counterpoint, allowing for a vital re-platforming of sex on a regional level.</p

Isso é um absurdo! Sobre o humor feminista nas redes sociais

Feminist humor in social media regularly draws its appeal from the dynamics of binary gender that it pokes fun at, reverses, and comments on. By focusing on the tumblr “Congrats, you have an all male panel,” the Twitter and Facebook accounts of “Man Who Has It All” and the Twitter account “Men Write Women,” this article asks how these projects re-perform the power asymmetry of binary gender through repetition and reversal, drawing their appeal from the very logic that they critique for disruptive effect. It further asks how the different platform dynamics of social media help to assemble networked laughter sociability and critique, and addresses the importance of affective lifts and the affective diversity opened up when laughing at the absurdity of things. We argue that, in refusing and eschewing the logic most offer, and by turning things preposterous, ludicrous, and inappropriate, absurd humor generates productive zones of ambiguity and unruly laughter where tensions and differences refuse to be resolved. Keywords: Absurd. Feminist humor. Social media.Nas redes sociais, o humor feminista geralmente chama a atenção pela dinâmica com que aborda o gênero binário, do qual zomba, subverte e comenta. Com foco no Tumblr “Congrats, you have an all male panel”, no perfil “Man Who Has It All” no Twitter e do Facebook e no perfil do Twitter “Men Write Women”, este artigo observa como esses projetos reexecutam o poder assimétrico de gênero binário por meio da repetição e subversão, extraindo seu apelo da própria lógica que eles mesmos criticam para ter um efeito disruptivo. Além disso, o texto questiona como as diferentes dinâmicas de plataforma de mídias sociais ajudam a agrupar certa sociabilidade e como a crítica do riso em rede aborda a importância da diversidade afetiva ao fazer piada de coisas absurdas. Nosso argumento é de que, ao recusar e evitar a lógica que a maioria oferece, e ao focar em situações absurdas, ridículas e inadequadas, este tipo de humor gera zonas produtivas de ambiguidade e risos incontroláveis onde tensões e diferenças se recusam a ser resolvidas. Palavras-chave: Absurdo. Humor feminista. Redes sociais

Inappropriate Laughter: Affective Homophily and the Unlikely Comedy of #MeToo

This article investigates the affective and ambiguous dynamics of feminist humor as an unexpected strategy of resistance in connection with #MeToo, asking what laughter may do to the sharpness of negative affect of shame and anger driving the movement. Our inquiry comes in three vignettes. First, we deploy Nanette—Hannah Gadsby’s 2018 Netflix success heralded as the comedy of the #MeToo era—arguing that the uniform viral warmth surrounding the show drives the emergence of networked feminisms through “affective homophily,” or a love of feeling the same. With Nanette, the contagious qualities of laughter are tamed by a networked logic of homophily, allowing for intensity while resisting dissent. Our second vignette zooms in on a less known feminist comedian, Lauren Maul, and her online #MeToo musical comedy riffing off on apologies made by male celebrities accused of sexual harassment, rendering the apologies and the men performing them objects of ridicule. Our third example opens up the door to the ambivalence of irony. In considering the unexpected pockets of humor within the #MeToo scandal that ripped apart the prestigious institution of the Swedish Academy, we explore the emergence of carnivalesque comedy and feminist uses of irony in the appropriation of the pussy-bow blouse as an ambiguous feminist symbol. Our examples allow us to argue for the political importance of affective ambiguity, difference, and dissent in contemporary social media feminisms, and to highlight the risk when a movement like #MeToo closes ranks around homogeneous feelings of not only shame and rage, but also love.</p

“We have tiny purses in our vaginas!!! #thanksforthat”: absurdity as a feminist method of intervention

PurposeAccording to thesaurus definitions, the absurd translates as “ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous”; “extremely silly; not logical and sensible”. As further indicated in the Latin root absurdus, “out of tune, uncouth, inappropriate, ridiculous,” humor in absurd registers plays with that which is out of harmony with both reason and decency. In this article, the authors make an argument for the absurd as a feminist method for tackling heterosexism.Design/methodology/approachBy focusing on the Twitter account “Men Write Women” (est. 2019), the rationale of which is to share literary excerpts from male authors describing women's experiences, thoughts and appearances, and which regularly broadens into social theater in the user reactions, the study explores the critical value of absurdity in feminist social media tactics.FindingsThe study proposes the absurd as a means of not merely turning things around, or inside out, but disrupting and eschewing the hegemonic logic on offer. While both absurd humor and feminist activism may begin from a site of reactivity and negative evaluation, it need not remain confined to it. Rather, by turning things preposterous, ludicrous and inappropriate, absurd laughter ends up somewhere different. The feminist value of absurd humor has to do with both its critical edge and with the affective lifts and spaces of ambiguity that it allows for.Originality/valueResearch on digital feminist activism has largely focused on the affective dynamics of anger. As there are multiple affective responses to sexism, our article foregrounds laughter and ambivalence as a means of claiming space differently in online cultures rife with hate, sexism and misogyny.</div

Playing Games with Tito:Designing Hybrid Museum Experiences for Critical Play

This article brings together two distinct, but related perspectives on playful museum experiences: Critical play and hybrid design. The article explores the challenges involved in combining these two perspectives, through the design of two hybrid museum experiences that aimed to facilitate critical play with/in the collections of the Museum of Yugoslavia and the highly contested heritage they represent. Based on reflections from the design process as well as feedback from test users, we describe a series of challenges: Challenging the norms of visitor behaviour, challenging the role of the artefact, and challenging the curatorial authority. In conclusion, we outline some possible design strategies to address these challenges

Genetic Control of the Variable Innate Immune Response to Asymptomatic Bacteriuria

The severity of urinary tract infection (UTI) reflects the quality and magnitude of the host response. While strong local and systemic innate immune activation occurs in patients with acute pyelonephritis, the response to asymptomatic bacteriuria (ABU) is low. The immune response repertoire in ABU has not been characterized, due to the inherent problem to distinguish bacterial differences from host-determined variation. In this study, we investigated the host response to ABU and genetic variants affecting innate immune signaling and UTI susceptibility. Patients were subjected to therapeutic urinary tract inoculation with E. coli 83972 to ensure that they were exposed to the same E. coli strain. The innate immune response repertoire was characterized in urine samples, collected from each patient before and after inoculation with bacteria or PBS, if during the placebo arm of the study. Long-term E. coli 83972 ABU was established in 23 participants, who were followed for up to twelve months and the innate immune response was quantified in 233 urine samples. Neutrophil numbers increased in all but two patients and in an extended urine cytokine/chemokine analysis (31 proteins), the chemoattractants IL-8 and GRO-α, RANTES, Eotaxin-1 and MCP-1, the T cell chemoattractant and antibacterial peptide IP-10, inflammatory regulators IL-1-α and sIL-1RA and the T lymphocyte/dendritic cell product sIL-2Rα were detected and variably increased, compared to sterile samples. IL-6, which is associated with symptomatic UTI, remained low and numerous specific immune mediators were not detected. The patients were also genotyped for UTI-associated IRF3 and TLR4 promoter polymorphisms. Patients with ABU associated TLR4 polymorphisms had low neutrophil numbers, IL-6, IP-10, MCP-1 and sIL-2Rα concentrations. Patients with the ABU-associated IRF3 genotype had lower neutrophils, IL-6 and MCP-1 responses than the remaining group. The results suggest that the host-specific, low immune response to ABU mainly includes innate immune mediators and that host genetics directly influence the magnitude of this response

Steampunk Practices: Time, Tactility, and a Racial Politics of Touch

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DIGITAL KINK OPACITY: SEXUAL SOCIAL MEDIA BEYOND VISIBILITY AND COMPREHENSION

Building on and expanding discussions of the value of anonymity and pseudonymity in digital cultures in general, and in queer digital cultures in particular, this paper explores notions of opacity as modes of resistance to dominating regimes of visibility on and beyond social media platforms. Across queer, postcolonial and digital media theorizing, opacity provides a way of thinking through the tension between the visible and the invisible, challenging the idea of public visibility and identification as that which drives data cultures and legitimizes deviant sexual practices and expressions. Suggestive of discussions on tactical, queer uses of social media in terms of disconnection and reluctance, opacity affords yet another way of thinking resistance to platform power and user control. Based on an ethnographic study of the Swedish digital BDSM, fetish and kink platform Darkside, this paper theorizes opacity in two ways: first, as a way of discussing tactical uses of Darkside between modes of revealing and concealing, and second, as a way of conceptualizing the platform as a borderland between intelligibility and unintelligibility. Opacity implies a lack of clarity; something opaque may be both difficult to see clearly as well as to understand. Drawing on Édouard Glissant (1997) and his idea of “the right to opacity” as a form of resistance to surveillance and imperial domination, a digital sexual politics of opacity could help provide recognition without a demand to fully understand sexual otherness, opening up for new modes of obscure and pleasurable sexual expressions and transgressions on social media platforms