Selfies, relfies and phallic tagging: posthuman part-icipations in teen digital sexuality assemblages

Abstract

Inspired by posthuman feminist theory (Braidotti, 2006; 2013) this paper explores young people's entanglement with the biotechnological landscape of image creation and exchange in young networked peer cultures. We suggest that we are seeing new formations of sexual objectification when the more-than-human is foregrounded and the blurry ontological divide between human (flesh) and machine (digital) are enlivened through queer and feminist materialism analyses. Drawing upon multi-modal qualitative data generated with teen boys and girls living in urban inner London and semi-rural Wales (UK) we map how the digital affordances of Facebook 'tagging' can operate as a form of coercive 'phallic touch' in ways that shore up and transgress normative territories of dis/embodied gender, sexuality and age. We conclude by arguing that we need creative approaches that can open up spaces for a posthuman accounting of the material intra-actions through which phallic power relations participate in predictable and unpredictable ways. Introduction: girls, over-embodiment and the cyber relationship cultures of young sexualities "The body is transformed, on the one hand, into an assemblage of detachable parts, on the other, a threshold of transcendence of the subject. This paradoxical Gender and Education, 25 (6): 665-670 Van Doorn, N. (2011) Digital spaces, material traces: How matter comes to matter in online performances of gender, sexuality and embodiment, Media,

‘She has like 4000 followers!’: the celebrification of self within school social networks.

“…A growing number of researchers recognise the importance of investigating people's engagements with digital technology and online social spaces (Lupton, 2017;Renold and Ringrose, 2016;Rich and Miah, 2017). Work in this area evidences how networked technologies can impact health and wellbeing, self-perception and social interaction.…”

Play-Doh Vulvas and Felt Tip Dick Pics: Disrupting phallocentric matter(s) in Sex Education

“…These drawings and talk synergize into a powerful set of research understandings about young people's experiences of online platforms, but what is most relevant for this paper, which is concerned with teaching about relationships and sexuality, is that they show us what needs to be brought to light and made visible in educational practices so that we can "prepare" young people, perhaps counterbalancing the shock and dismay experienced by some. Perhaps we can reposition girls' relationships to the digital dick pic in a way that troubles these phallic digital force relations, what Renold and Ringrose (2016) discussed as forms of phallic tagging and touch and connection generated through social media networks. We can move from "digital flashing" and coercive affects to something understandable, "reworking the dick pick" to something expected and manageable as part of an endemic sexualised and pornified media terrain (Ringrose and Lawrence, 2018).…”

‘Feel what I feel’: making da(r)ta with teen girls for creative activisms on how sexual violence matters

“…Much of this work is generating new methodologies to capture affects and percepts that enable us to see, think and feel differently about the past-present-future gendering of young lives, bodies and imaginings, including research on young sexual violence. 10 Attending to the more-than-human dynamics of gendered and sexual force relations in young people's lives has been pivotal in shifting to a post-individual and less anthropocentric understanding of 'sexual violence' (see Holford, Renold & Huuki, 2013;Huuki & Renold, 2016;Ivinson & Renold, 2013a;Renold & Ivinson, 2015;Renold & Ringrose, 2016a, 2016b. This posthumanizing of sexual violence connects to and captures the emerging configurations of human and more-than-human power relations -what we might call, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari (1987), 'sexual violence assemblages' (see Fox & Alldred, 2013Huuki & Renold, 2016;Renold and Ringrose 2016b).…”

“…10 Attending to the more-than-human dynamics of gendered and sexual force relations in young people's lives has been pivotal in shifting to a post-individual and less anthropocentric understanding of 'sexual violence' (see Holford, Renold & Huuki, 2013;Huuki & Renold, 2016;Ivinson & Renold, 2013a;Renold & Ivinson, 2015;Renold & Ringrose, 2016a, 2016b. This posthumanizing of sexual violence connects to and captures the emerging configurations of human and more-than-human power relations -what we might call, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari (1987), 'sexual violence assemblages' (see Fox & Alldred, 2013Huuki & Renold, 2016;Renold and Ringrose 2016b). Attending to the more-than-human, and working with rhizomatic and diffractive methodological practices (see Hughes & Lury, 2013;Taylor & Hughes, 2016) makes it possible not only to provide new onto-epistemological cartographies of the sexual discriminations and violences that infuse young people's lives, but also the potentiality for inventiveness through which they survive and sometimes transcend.…”