Blog Post # 4 Due Sunday 10/27 @ 11:59PM; comment 10/28 @ 11:59PM. 'Sex Sells'--Well, Duh. Let's explore how sex is SOLD

OK, all aspects of the sex/gender/sexuality nexus are shot through with culture.  Even if we allow that a good part of biological sex is 'phenomenal' (part of our biological natures)—and we do—we've come to see that how we 'see' it (how we represent it with 'inscription devices') changes radically over time and from place to place.

'Every image is an argument' — and sex / gender / sexuality doesn't get off free.

Every ad that uses sexuality to sell.  Every sermon.  Every sex ed class.  Every twerky vid.  Every scientific study of gendered limbic nucleus. Every drippy love scene on the bow of the Titanic.  ALL are active in constructing our collective and individual conceptions of sex / gender / sexuality.

Word.

• Find a great example of a 'culturally active' text or practice.

• Paste it in, or give us the relevant link to it (or both).

• Read and theorize it.  That is, explain what it's up to and how it does it.  

• As always: use our work.  And don't bore your friends.

 

Example: Laci does Oxytocin

Robin is totally in love with Laci Green, a YouTube / Twitter / Tumblr 'Sex+' (sex-positive) blogger and educator with a large following.  We'll hear from Laci on Hunger games later.  Check out Laci HERE.

Laci's full blog is worth a look, and you can access it HERE.

Background: (Endocrinology science)  During moments of various sorts of close bonding and sexual arousal (and childbirth and nursing, and patting your dog—really), the brain releases the hormone oxytocin which is variously active in pleasure, bonding, and a sense of well-being.  (Political science) Various 'abstinence' and sexual policy advocates from the US political right seized on these data and generated a body of materials claiming that the oxytocin data constituted 'phenomenal' evidence for monogamy and purity before marriage.  It got lots of traction.  IMHO, it's very bad science.  Good politics, but bad science.

Here Laci offers her readers a different view.

 
Good find, Robin.  But the analysis will be hard; it's a complex case (I made some of the 'science' part above, but I'm a nerd who knows this; you go with what you know).  Then I'd want to talk about her pictures (of herself, and her cartoon images, the manga).  The words, of course.  The way she sets a relationship with her readers.  And, really critically: the political stakes involved with how we're told to manage our romantic / relationships / sexual lives.

Go for it.  This could be a lot of fun.