Sex and sexualities are ubiquitous presences in contemporary media cultures and public discourse, from health panics surrounding the effects of easily-accessible online pornography, to ongoing (and age-old) moral panics about "good" sex and "bad" sex, fears of "sexualisation", or the growing market for all kinds of sex technologies: porn, sex toys, sexual performance drugs (Viagra, Cialis, etc.), recreational drugs (GHB, crystal methamphetamine, cathinones, etc.), online sex work (OnlyFans, JustForFans), dating and hook-up apps (Grindr, Tinder, Recon, Hinge, Scruff, etc.).
In my research, I approach sex cultures as pillars of modern and contemporary forms of subjectivation, centring the role and affordances of different media in producing, disseminating, and sustaining different sex cultures and sexual subjects. Importantly, here, "media" does not only include artefacts more commonly associated with modern and contemporary mediascapes (e.g. film, print media, television, internet, etc.) but it also extends to the material body itself as an enfleshed interface of sensations and affects, desires, and identities. That is, the body as the medium that embodies, mediates and modulates relationships between the self and the world, that bleeds the self into the world and the world into the self. Similarly, by "media" I also mean the various technological prosthesis that have played and continue to play important roles in cultures of sex and processes of sexual subjectivation: prescription and recreational drugs, sex toys, visual media, and so on.
My work therefore navigates the complex political and ethical nature of our sex cultures: Sex cultures can and often do reproduce wider systems of knowledge, whether hegemonic or minoritised. Yet, they also can function as laboratories for experiments with new ways of relating to oneself and others, to interrogate the boundaries between the one and the many, and to embody ourselves differently, sometimes in more capacious ways with the potential to shape wider aspects of our lives and our being-in-the-world.
In my research, I approach sex cultures as pillars of modern and contemporary forms of subjectivation, centring the role and affordances of different media in producing, disseminating, and sustaining different sex cultures and sexual subjects. Importantly, here, "media" does not only include artefacts more commonly associated with modern and contemporary mediascapes (e.g. film, print media, television, internet, etc.) but it also extends to the material body itself as an enfleshed interface of sensations and affects, desires, and identities. That is, the body as the medium that embodies, mediates and modulates relationships between the self and the world, that bleeds the self into the world and the world into the self. Similarly, by "media" I also mean the various technological prosthesis that have played and continue to play important roles in cultures of sex and processes of sexual subjectivation: prescription and recreational drugs, sex toys, visual media, and so on.
My work therefore navigates the complex political and ethical nature of our sex cultures: Sex cultures can and often do reproduce wider systems of knowledge, whether hegemonic or minoritised. Yet, they also can function as laboratories for experiments with new ways of relating to oneself and others, to interrogate the boundaries between the one and the many, and to embody ourselves differently, sometimes in more capacious ways with the potential to shape wider aspects of our lives and our being-in-the-world.
