1st Global Conference
Tuesday 20th March - Thursday 22nd March 2007 |
Session 6a: Alienation, Love and Sex
Chair: Sabine Flick
Lonelier Than Ever?: Sexualities, Hooking Up and Post-Millennial
Alienation
Rebecca
F. Plante
Department of
Sociology,
Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, USA
It’s funny because even though
I thought I liked him before we hooked up, afterward I realized I
just really regretted it. It changed our friendship and I realize
now that I shouldn’t have
done it (woman, 21).
Q: How do people…hook up?
A: I mean, it’s a word to
describe the sexual acts. It would be awkward to say, “Hey
I fingered her last night.” You
would just say, “Yeah we just hooked up last night.” It’s
a whole other realm of the word “hooking up” which would
be regular sexual behavior with the theoretical “no strings
attached.” Supposedly you could hook up with someone else;
not monogamous (man, 20).
The
differences in heterosexually active men’s and women’s
views of ‘hooking up’ are striking, exemplified and
hinted at in the interview extracts above. Heterosexually active
men tend to see the benefits of hooking up, namely “regular
sexual behavior” with “no strings attached.” Heterosexually
active women tend to see the emotional costs of hooking up – feeling
regretful and “used.” But is it as simple as this interpretation?
How do queer folks interpret and understand hooking up? Using over
25 semi-structured interviews with heterosexual, gay, lesbian, and
bisexual 18-22-year olds and about 4200 online surveys (gathered
at several United States colleges and universities), I explore common
hook up practices and how respondents interpret and make meaning
of these practices. How do respondents evaluate current intimate/relational
forms (such as dating, "hanging out," and/or hooking up)?
Does “hooking up” suggest that current sociosexuality
has been democratized – pleasure for all, in a way that no
longer stigmatizes women’s sexual experience more than men’s?
Are women stigmatized more than men if they hook up too much? How
do men and women enjoy hook ups? What role do feelings play? Are
hook ups antagonistic, competitive, and ultimately, alienating
I had a Guilty Conscience because I wasn't Going to Marry Her: Ethical
Dilemmas for Mexican Men in their Sexual Relationships with Women
Ana
Amuchástegui
Depto. de Educación y Comunicación,
UAM-Xochimilco,
Del. Coyoacán, México
In Mexico’s predominantly Catholic culture, the enjoyment of sexual rights faces many challenges, both at the political and the personal level. Although often connected, the meanings of sexuality and reproduction are fundamentally different, and so correspondingly are possibilities for the exercise of reproductive rights versus sexual rights. Such views are ‘gendered’ by the idea that women’s desire and sexual activity should be controlled and men’s masculinity should be affirmed through sexual performance. Drawing on in-depth research conducted among young Mexican men in rural communities, this paper examines the ‘ethics’ implicit in the views expressed by a group of Mexican rural men as they talked about their sexual desires, pleasures and practices. It focuses in particular on how and in what circumstances men construct themselves and their female partners as subjects of desire. Such sexual subjectivity -- whereby persons acknowledge the right of everyone to make decisions for themselves about their bodies, their sexuality and reproduction, and to claim the social, economic, and institutional conditions for the exercise of the said rights -- is an important precondition for an ethics of democratic sexual relationships, and for the appropriation of sexual rights. Findings point to the need for a stronger ethics of sexual citizenship in Mexico as part of enabling conditions for the exercise of both men’s and women’s sexual rights.
Love is Stronger than Death: The Triadic Love of Franz Rosenzweig,
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Gritli Huessy
Wayne
Cristaudo
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
No abstract is presently available