Bodies, Pornography, and the Circumscription of Sexuality: A New Materialist Study of Young People’s Sexual Practices

1. Bodies, pornography and the circumscription of sexuality.A new materialist study of young people’s sexual practices. Nick J Fox University of Sheffield @socnewmat

2. Introduction • Pornography and young people: two views. • A materialist approach to sexualities and sexualisation. • The research study. • Relations and affects in the sexualisation- assemblage • The micropolitics of sexualisation. • Re-sexualising the body. @socnewmat

3. Pornography and young people • Pornography has divided public, policymakers and media from sex and gender academics: • Realist analysis: pornography and sexualised media produce an inappropriate sexualisation of young people (Bailey, 2011; Papadopoulos, 2010). • Constructionist response: these concerns/panics about sexualisation reflect contemporary sexual anxieties around female sexuality, sexual corruption, and the innocence of the child. They sustain gender inequity and sexual double standards. @socnewmat

4. Critiques of these positions • Realist perspective on sexualisation and pornography: • Adds a further (constraining) discourse upon sexuality and eroticism. • Founded on unexamined and uncritical models of adulthood and childhood. • Constructionist perspective on sexualisation and pornography : • Requires long-term, improbable or even utopian shift in culture or dominant ideologies (Ringrose et al, 2013). • Leaves an individualised and genitalised understanding of sexuality in contemporary culture largely unaddressed. @socnewmat

5. A materialist approach • Beyond this realist/constructionist epistemological dualism. • Examine empirically the materialities that affect young people’s sexual behaviour. • Explore the materialitiy of sexualisation,: the interactions between bodies, physical things, social formations, feelings and desires within the ‘sexuality-assemblage’. • What are the micropolitics of sexualisation: • the affect s that aggregate bodies into common normative capacities, and • those that disaggregate them to enable novel capacities @socnewmat

6. The sexuality assemblage • A sexual event (e.g. a kiss, a date) is an assemblage comprising a multiplicity of physical, biological, cultural, social and abstract materialities. • Sexuality is the flow of affects between these material relations within a sexuality-assemblage (Fox and Alldred, 2013). • This flow produces sexual (and other) capacities in bodies, and hence manifestations of ‘the sexual’. • Human sexuality is consequently infinitely variable. • However, it is typically constrained by specifying and aggregative forces. @socnewmat

7. The research study • PhD research by Clare Bale on sexualities of young people. • Purposive sample: 11 male +11 female students aged 16-19 • Semi-structured qualitative interviews to explore respondents’ sexual behaviours and sexuality, including engagement with sexual media and pornography). • Interviews recorded and transcribed; managed via NVIVO. Fox, N. J., & Bale, C. (2018) Bodies, pornography and the circumscription of sexuality: A new materialist study of young people’s sexual practices. Sexualities, 21(3) 393–409. @socnewmat

8. A new materialist analysis • Data re-analysed in terms of relations, affect and capacities. • Trawl interviews to identify relations in the assemblage. • Close reading to reveal the affective flows between relations. • Interview data can also disclose the capacities that these affects produce in bodies. @socnewmat

9. Trawling for relations • Analysis of the interview transcripts revealed the wide range of affective relations in young people’s sexualisation-assemblages. • ‘Steve’ (17 year-old male sports science student): relations including friends, parents, girlfriend, gender and sexual norms, and sexuality education. • ‘Sheila’ (18 year old female social science student): relations including friends, her mother, magazines, celebrities, condoms and cars. @socnewmat

10. Relations in the sexualisation-assemblage Bodies – peers – friends – family – celebrities - school/college – entertainment media –cars - pornography – contraceptives - internet – alcohol – phones - social events - social norms, values and codes – sex education (Plus a wide range of singular affects specify to different young people.) @socnewmat

11. Affects in the assemblage 1 • Interactions with peers produce sexual behaviour, rhizomatically. Maria:  I thought everyone else was doing it. ... I was like, oh yes it’s this great thing that everybody like, loves doing it. ... I told my best mate, then she went and did it as well. I didn’t tell her to. I was like, ‘I did this yesterday’ and she was like, ‘Oh, was it good? What was it like?’ And I told her exactly that it’s not that bad, it hurts but. And so she went and did it.

12. Affects in the assemblage 2 • These affects can be negative too: Clare: In secondary school there’s one lad said I was ugly and that knocked my confidence. I've never been with a lad since then. People talking about all their experience with like [name] and [name] it makes me feel, I don’t know, like they’ve all got boyfriends and stuff. People fancy them and stuff, makes me feel ugly.

13. Affects in the assemblage 3 • School-based sex education affected behaviour too: Daniel: The thing about safe sex has helped everyone. ,,, When it first come in it was very vague, they didn’t really talk about much, but now it’s all they talk about. They drill it into you, safe sex use condoms, use this, use that. I think that’s one of the main things. I mean if I had known about it, I would have liked to have known about it when I was younger.

14. Affects in the assemblage 4 • Sometimes peers delayed others’ sexualisation: Suzie: I made him [boyfriend] wait seven months before I did anything with him, before I did, before I got with him anything. Cos like obviously I just think like my mum's always taught me if they like you that much, they’ll wait.

15. Affects in the assemblage 5 • Parties and alcohol were affective: Dan:  We had gone to a few bars and watched the [football] match. We got promoted, so we thought right a party. So we are all hammered and found out there was a party, so we all went there and there is this girl I knew. Yeah, ended up, we went into this bathroom and that’s where it [first intercourse] happened basically. @socnewmat

16. Affects in the assemblage 6 • Media affected sexualisation: Shona: When I’m with somebody that I love, then I have absolutely no sort of problems in expressing myself sexually... there were a lot of late night sex tip shows, and basically, the resounding message is just to be free, and to ask. ... So I think I’ve got kind of a healthy sort of sexual image from the media. ... I quite liked erm the way that the women in Sex and the City talked about sex quite openly with each other. @socnewmat

17. Affects in the assemblage 7 • Media portrayals directly produced sexual activity: Steven: We were sat together watching a film and it turned into like they were having sex in a sexual scene … I can’t remember what film it was, they were having sex in the shower and I was only joking and said, oh we ought to try that in the shower. And she just popped up and said, yeah ok then… We did it in the shower and it’s one of the best places I reckon.

18. Affects in the assemblage 8 • Internet chat rooms and social media were affective: Neal: I’ve gone onto a site called AskMen.com, it is fantastic. Everything I’ve learned during sex, how to please the woman, how to make her feel comfortable, how to be a gentlemen about having sex. @socnewmat

19. Affects in the assemblage 9 • Pornography produced various sexual capacities: Tony: When I got bored I’d go, right let’s have a wank, let’s watch porn, that would be it sorted, it just kills boredom, like for you to kill boredom. ... That’s how it works, the whole porn thing you’ll either look at something or think oh yeah I like this but it’s one of those that you’ll never ever try. It’s like people skydiving you like the look of it but you’re never going to try it. Jodie: It’s like educational isn’t it and you see it and it is like oh I’ll get a bit of that done the next time I’m with my boyfriend.

20. Affects in the assemblage 10 • Pornographic material can produce distress: James: I was on Facebook the other day, and it was like, if my brother saw this… God knows what he would think, he’s only fifteen. What sort of vagina do you like, hairy, trimmed or shaved? And it asked you and there were three pictures across Facebook, I nearly cried, I didn’t know what to do. I was like ‘noooooo’ [pulls face and waves arms] but it’s getting on Facebook now and that’s like a social site.

21. Capacities: what can a body do? • These affective flows linked the bodies of young people with a wide range of human and non-human relations. Together, they: • Produced new sexual capacities. • Prevented new sexual capacities. • Educated about sexualities. • Diversified sexual activity. • Produced sexual conduct constraints and norms. • Defined sexual conduct within a peer group. • Replicated cultural sexual repertoires. @socnewmat

22. Sexualisation micropolitics • There are multiple affects producing the sexualisation of young people. • These affective flows assemble humans, their culture and their physical surroundings . • Many of these affective flows aggregate young people into circumscribed and narrow sexual capacities. • This includes the repetitive and formulaic sexual practices portrayed in pornography and sexualised media. • Singular affects (e.g. physical, emotional, cognitive interactions; ideas; novel practices) can counter these aggregations. @socnewmat

23. Beyond porn: re-sexualisation? • The sexualisation assemblage produces capacities in all bodies, young or old. • The affects in pornography reproduce and reinforce misogyny and sexual objectification, and constrain sexual diversity. • Porn is not ‘good for some and bad for others’, it is a pernicious assemblage that aggregates bodies into circumscribed sexualities. • What is needed is not a de-sexualisation of the young but a re-sexualisation of all our capacities. @socnewmat

24. Conclusions • Sexualisation is produced by myriad affects, not simply by porn/sexualised media. • Within this affect economy, aggregating affects produce a narrow, genital, individualised sexuality. • We need to identify and resist all the social, cultural and economic forces that impoverish sexualities. • We need to re-think sexualities as a productive becoming, which can break free from their constraints, to embrace a breadth of embodied and collective intensifications. @socnewmat

25. Bodies, pornography and the circumscription of sexuality.A new materialist study of young people’s sexual practices. @socnewmat