Young on Politics of Sex, Love, & Romance

● ● Sex wars aimed at phony targets, intensely symbolic Easy victims who lack power to defend themselves, sexual dissidents rendered morally defenseless, scapegoated for larger issues ● Target population suffers most, but everyone affected ● Sites for sugar babies, sugar daddies, and cougars ● Certain kinds of women deemed desirable are portrayed Dude Sex ● Jane Ward argues that sex ads by straight (“str8”) white men on Craigslist reveal: ● A disjuncture between sexual practice and sexual identity ● How straight white men can bolster their gender, sexual, race, and class privielge when engaging in queer sex acts (framed as male bonding) while not taking on (burden of) queer identities ● How these men employ race to articulate their desire for taboo sex while framing themselves as sexually normative ● There are profound social stigmas against same gender sex acts, relations and identities, particularly for MOC on DL ● Shows white straight masculinity is also racialized ● Hazing, normal, men always claim they’re not gay but would do it for money ● If desire is there, does it really mean the men aren’t gay? ● Women are biggest consumers of gay porn ● Desire, practice, identity ● Racial differences expose hierarchies of power in sexual dynamics of desire, practice, and identity ● Interracial sex provides a space to explore social boundaries and prohibitions 4/17 No quiz next Tues Controlling Girls’ Sexualities ● Gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, sexual behavior, gender roles ● Sexual Hierarchy: Good vs Bad Sex ● Social construction of sexuality ● Disciplining Sex ● Racialized sex ● The (mis)alignment of Desire, Behavior, and Identity ● (Disrupting) the Virgin/Whore dichotomy ● U.S. imperialism and history of settler colonialism inform sexual present, as do specific histories of immigration ● Cultural nationalist articulations of gender & sexuality speak back to U.S. imperialism, nationalism, whiteness, and assimilation 4/19 “Good Girl/Bad Girl” Dichotomy ● AKA Virgin/Whore binary ● Combines meanings around gender, sexuality, and often nation & race