Session 6: Sexuality and Desires

6th Global Conference

Tuesday 10th November – Thursday 12th November 2009
Salzburg, Austria

A Long Friendship Endangered: Pornographic Representation and Censorship
Raluca Bibiri
Center of Excellence in the Study of Image, University of Bucharest, Romania

The 1970’s and 1980’s was a time of growing censorship in Romania. The regime was increasingly unfavorable to any type of sexual imagery, and there was no available medium for sexual representation. On TV, women were supposed to show their stakhanovist look and portrayed as reliable communist workers. In print, no sexually specific references were allowed. By all means, the people were taking advantage of their sexual freedom as much as in any free country. As religious ideology was officially prohibited by communism, there were few moral restrictions imposed by authority on sexual behaviour – in urban areas in particular there were even fewer self-restrictions due to custom. The only persisting legislative barrier regarding sex remained the illegality of contraception (abortion being severely punished by jail). Nevertheless there was a widespread generalized censorship of any representation of sexuality. The only available pornography was brought illegally from the West and therefore became both a representation of freedom and a surrogate for political liberty, as well as the least dangerous form of rebellion against a regime that had no tolerance for individual self-expression.

Through interviews and archival research, this paper investigates the visual discourse of pornography as it used to be – a sample of ‘freedom represented’ and resistance to censorship here in Romania – and its transformation in today’s society, where only a few insignificant barriers of prejudice obstruct its increase, as its social implications have completely shifted in both ‘means and ends’. On the social stage, sexual representation has a variety of functions, depending upon political parameters. I explore how such imagery has shifted in meaning as it has become less of a product of restriction, and I investigate the current grounds of its appeal once deprived of its primal motor: censorship.

Embodying Female Sexual Pleasure: The Body as Instrument and Object
Fiona McQueen
University of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

This paper will consider how models of embodiment can contribute to an understanding of the experience of sexual pleasure. Data was collected from thirteen women aged 21to 53 years based in the UK, interviewed in a semi structured style about their experiences of sexual pleasure. This research questions models of embodiment which categorise the body as made up of three bodies: the objectified body, the experiencing body and the experienced body. Instead this paper proposes a model of only two female bodies: the body as object and the body as instrument, which emphasise the difficulties of experiencing female sexual desire and pleasure within a culture of sexual propriety and objectification. Specifically highlighted was the importance of the situational and relational context in which sexual pleasure can be achieved for women was paramount in understanding what factors were conductive to attaining a positive sexual self-image.

This research highlights important points of connection between the body as: object of desire; site of experience of emotion and sensation; as well as the vehicle through which the sexual is defined. These three competing roles of the sexual body reflect the multiple ways in which bodies are required to re-invent themselves daily through their role as both source of contact with the material world, and site of interpreting and constructing the social world. By connecting these two worlds, sexual pleasure is conceptualised as being reflexive; influenced through social interaction and experiences, leading to female bodies being reconstructed in multiple ways in the pursuit of sexual pleasure. With those women who have achieved their own state of sexual pleasure, they have experienced this as a point at which the self-conscious body as object is dispelled so that the sexual body can be fully enjoyed.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

Sexual Literacy beyond Religion: Understanding Lust in Christianity
Alicja Gescinska
Belgium

No abstract is presently available