Straight Talking (1995)

Feminist Review, 1996

Annual Review of Sex Research

Attentive to the collision of sex and power, we add momentum to the ongoing development of the subfield of critical sexuality studies. We argue that this body of work is defined by its critical orientation toward the study of sexuality, along with a clear allegiance to critical modalities of thought, particularly feminist thought. Critical sexuality studies takes its cues from several other critical moments in related fields, including critical psychology, critical race theory, critical public health, and critical youth studies. Across these varied critical stances is a shared investment in examining how power and privilege operate, understanding the role of historical and epistemological violence in research, and generating new models and paradigms to guide empirical and theoretical research. With this guiding framework, we propose three central characteristics of critical sexuality studies: (a) conceptual analysis, with particular attention to how we define key terms and conceptually organize our research (e.g., attraction, sexually active, consent, agency, embodiment, sexual subjectivity); (b) attention to the material qualities of abject bodies, particularly bodies that are ignored, overlooked, or pushed out of bounds (e.g., viscous bodies, fat bodies, bodies in pain); and (c) heteronormativity and heterosexual privilege, particularly how assumptions about heterosexuality and heteronormativity circulate in sexuality research. Through these three critical practices, we argue that critical sexuality studies show-cases how sex and power collide and recognizes (and tries to subvert) the various power imbalances that are deployed and replicated in sex research. Sexuality research attracts scholars from across disciplines who use diverse methods and have a wide variety of investments in the knowledge produced by, with, for, and about human sexualities. This often sets up the field to have a cacophonous quality: many voices, all speaking at once, often urgently, and in many directions. As a result, researchers and audiences of our research must discern what elements are most pressing to them by locating harmonies among discordant voices in the field. In this piece, we aim to provide one such harmony from among the many sounds in the field of sexuality research, opening up more possibilities for critical exchange about the relationship between power and sexuality. In this article, we describe what we see as a crucial set of practices central to critical sexuality studies, something we see as both a subfield and a critical lens or mode of looking. We foreground three feminist and methodological elements we see as bringing needed critical perspectives to the field of sexuality research. These include conceptual analysis, focus on sexual bodies that are often considered abject, and insistent attention to heterosexual privilege. We develop and describe each of these research practices as rooted in a wide-ranging collection of studies that, when put together in this way, highlight and articulate a set of priorities within the burgeoning field of critical sexuality studies. Rather than drawing clear boundaries around critical sexuality studies, we aim, instead, to develop three episte-mological priorities to help describe what this work already Correspondence should be addressed to Breanne Fahs, Women and Gender Studies,

Gayle S, Rubin is a feminist anthropologist who has written on a wide range of subjects, including anthropological theory, s/m sex, and modern lesbian literature. In this essay, first published in 1984, Rubin argues that in the West, the 1880s, the 1950s, and the contemporary era have been periods of sex panic, periods in which the state, the institutions of medicine, and the popular media have mobilized to attack and oppress all whose sexual tastes differ from those allowed by the currently dominative model of sexual correctness. She also suggests that during the contemporary era the worst brunt of the oppression has been borne by those who practice s/m or cross-generational sex. Rubin maintains that if we are to devise a theory to account for the outbreak and direction of sexual panics, we shall need to base the theory on more than just feminist thinking. Although feminist thinking explains gender injustices, it does not and cannot provide by itself a full explanation for the oppression of sexual minorities, Gayle S. Rubin is presently at work on a collection of her essays -including her well-known work of theory, "The Traffic in Women"~--and on a historical and ethnographic account of the gay male leather community of San Francisco.

Popular Music, 2001

McGill LJ, 2003

Feminist theory has, since the mid 1980s, been grappling with the need to complicate gender analysis with attention to other crosscutting axes of power and subordination, including race, class, and sexuality. Analyses of racism, capitalism, and heterosexuality have been brought to bear on feminism's analysis of gender to produce a more nuanced and complex picture of intersecting identities and oppressions. See e.g. the following leading works of critical race feminism:

VEDA PUBLICATIONS , 2018

Women in Love is scrutinized as a significant tool by D.H Lawrence through which he was able to explore the relationship between power and sex in the social institution. The interdependency of sex and power force us to question how power is measured in the sexual context. Is it measured by dominance or submission in the sexual relationship irrespective of gender? One can notice the tool of power used by characters in the novel to maintain their sense of superiority over their partners, animals and machines, breaking all stereotypes by discarding the fixed gender role. The exertion of power does not have only pessimistic approach to the subject matter in terms of male dominance but should be analyzed from the another perspective as well. In the patriarchal world women’s sexuality had been suppressed considering a taboo. But D.H Lawrence provides the women with ample of space in his novel unraveling their power over sexuality. He has allowed the female characters to portray themselves out of the darkness to discuss their desire of sex and will to power on the social platform. In order to sustain their individuality, women need to resist against the orthodox train of beliefs by exercising their power over sex and accepting their true passion. Foucault’s The History of Sexuality provides the vivid account of treatment of sex as oppressive element of the society through his theory of ‘repressive hypothesis’. To critique the role of sexuality this paper allow us to redefine the significant terms such as Gender, Sex, Power, Homosexuality and Heterosexuality considering the work of Monique Witting, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Foucault and so on.

Annual Review of Sociology, 2004

I Abstract We identify three trends in the recent sociology of sexuality. First, we examine how queer theory has influenced many sociologists whose empirical work observes sexuality in areas generally thought to be asexual. These sociologists also elaborate queer theory's challenge to sexual dichotomizing and trace the workings of power through sexual categories. Second, we look at how sociologists bring sexuality into conversation with the black feminist notion of "intersectionality" by examining the nature and effects of sexuality among multiple and intersecting systems of identity and oppression. A third trend in the sociology of sexuality has been to explore the relationships between sexuality and political economy in light of recent market transformations. In examining these trends, we observe the influence of globalization studies and the contributions of sociologists to understanding the role of sexuality in global processes. We conclude with the contributions sociologists of sexuality make toward understanding other social processes and with the ongoing need to study sexuality itself. * The authors are listed alphabetically and contributed equally to this paper.

1985