Sexualization: A state of injury

Abstract

I shall contend that avowedly feminist media and policy discussions of "sexualization" in the UK have risked inadvertently problematizing not sexism but propriety. As a result, these discourses on sexualization have contributed to what Wendy Brown has called a "state of injury": a situation in which representations of wound or threat are mobilized within identity politics on behalf of a dominated group in society, and this strategy backfires by supporting social and state institutions in regulating and normalizing precisely this very group. Rather than challenging the sexist division of unmarried women into pure and impure, innocent children and whores, I shall show, using the Papadopoulos Review, that feminist discourses on "sexualization" have risked tacitly affirming this division, situating the sexuality and desires of young women as deviations from their true essence. Moreover, a further unintended consequence has been to provide support to a neoliberal political agenda in the UK, which contrasts the innocence that should be the property of unsexualized girls with the self-reliance that should characterize adult citizens and can only be hindered by welfare state protections.

‘Lad culture’ in higher education: Agency in the sexualization debates

“…We should make a note here about privilege: most of our sample identified as middle class and the majority were from Russell Group universities (as are the ‘bold, hilarious feminists’ of Pearce’s 2014 article). It has been suggested by Duschinsky (2013) and others that objections to sexualized cultures can be a form of prejudice against perceived working-class vulgarity influencing middle-class sexualities. However, in our study we believe this would be a rather reductionist interpretation which would risk minimizing experiences of sexual harassment and violence.…”

What about the Boys?: Sexualization, Media and Masculinities

“…Textual analysis of these kinds can be seen as a 'performative act' or 'active intervention in meaning-making' that does not 'discover' pre-existing meanings in texts, but enacts creative interpretations with the potential to bring new meanings, identities and possibilities into beingand indeed to close down others. In relation to sexualization, Duschinsky observes the inconsistency with which images of women are described as 'hypersexualized', but equivalent images of men merely 'hypermasculinized', reinforcing the gender-specific effects ascribed to girls versus boys (Duschinsky, 2013). In general the complacent assumption that men adopt only the 'masterful' position as viewers enacts masculine subjectivity in specific and limited ways, as I note below.…”

Discipline and Commoditize: How U-Visas Exploit the Pain of Gender-Based Violence

“…States govern immigrant populations through knowing immigrant sex, portraying foreign women as hapless victims in the process (Davidson, 2006; Duschinsky, 2013; Shdaimah & Leon, 2015). Across European countries, including Denmark (Plambech, 2014), France (Ticktin, 2011), and the United Kingdom (Canning, 2017; Gedalof, 2007), states frame gender-based violence against immigrants as a racially unique phenomenon.…”