This research study explores popular sex advice texts, such as teenage and women’s magazines, not only as resources for sexual learning and the construction of sexual identities but also as potential sites where the formulation, (re)production and contestation of the dominant discourses of femininity and female sexuality take place. My examination is set within the unique and novel cultural context of Poland; a country with a long-standing tradition of dissent and an unusual location of struggle between the discourses of global neo-liberalism juxtaposed against the ideals of former socialism and the powerful tradition of Catholicism. Poland is also a location where after the systemic change in 1989, feminist activism has enjoyed an increasing popularity. This research project is a feminist-informed examination of the discourses of female sexuality in popular culture and media that involves analyses of popular Polish sex advice materials as well as semi-structured interviews with young women in Poland, some of whom identified themselves as feminists. Apart from exploring topics relating to romantic relationships, the interviews also looked into the issues of sex education, sexualisation of culture, as well as feminist identification and consciousness. The text materials analysed included excerpts from archival Polish teenage magazines Bravo and Bravo Girl! and the popular psychology magazine for women, Charaktery. The analytical approaches deployed here utilised selected tools developed within discursive psychology (Edley 2001) and the textual analysis developed by Fairclough (2003). Discursive narratives of un-readiness threaded through the participants’ accounts around the themes of sex education, sexualisation and romantic love. Other girls, but predominantly not the participants themselves when they were younger, were constructed as too sexually uneducated, sexualised and misguided by the media in their understanding of what it takes to form intimate and fulfilling romantic and sexual relationships. The positive self-presentation as a sophisticated, discerning, free-thinkingand articulate individual was achieved through the juxtaposition with other persons that lacked these qualities. The social context in which these identities and counter identities were constructed was often perceived as in need of intervention and improvement, especially within the participants’ accounts around sex education in Poland and the role of the newly-emergent media in the promotion of gender discrimination.

This thesis considers the history of control-and prohibition of female sexuality and behaviour, and its particular expression in legal institutions and theories of knowledge. Historical epochs can be characterised by transformations in expressions of control through the dominance of one particular form of control over another. In Part One, control is located as a variable characteristic of pre-industrial and industrial societies, in which the universal and particular features are examined with relation, to socio-economic organisation. Chapter One, predicates the control over female sexuality as a significant dimension of analysis. Chapter Two, elaborates the significant shifts in forms of control throughout history and demonstrate. how some aspects of control are concealed whilst others are made visible. By contrast, Chapter Three, examines some contemporary tendencies, exposing the contradiction in sexual freedom and sexual control in the present day.

The thesis investigates a number of girls' writings as they occurred in the form of graffiti in a sixth-form College in Malta. It develops an analysis of these graffiti texts, which are mainly concerned with how their authors try to make sense of their gender identity and involvement in sexual activity and romantic encounters. The analysis examines possible reasons why a number of female students resort to writing graffiti. It highlights the ways through which the acquisition of sexual knowledge occurs informally outside the formal curriculum, through spaces created and struggled over by the informants. The study interrogates the emotional, social, cultural, personal and political worlds as described by them. This includes a discourse analysis, aimed at providing a deeper understanding of ignored emotional and social perspectives. In the absence of sexuality and relationships education in postsecondary education curricula in Malta, this study challenges silences surrounding these matters. The study documents the graffiti as subversive processes of learning, which reproduce and resist dominant discourses. It regards the graffiti as constituting a discourse in itself, understood as possibly promoting agency in some of the informants' lives. A reflexive approach was adopted to arrive at the research aims. Poststructuralist feminist and queer theory perspectives locate the study's theoretical positionings. Ethnographic observations and informal conversations with nineteen female students were employed to assist the data analysis. The findings show that some informants question the ways they relate to their gender identity when confronted by hetero, lesbian and bisexual social relationships. Heteronormative dominance and familiarity are actively reproduced, contested, disturbed and resisted. The findings suggest that the informants seek a safe school environment, where they can discuss sexualities and relationships' matters in a context of empathy, caring, understanding and support. They request detailed information about decision-making processes related to conflicting emotions about romantic feelings, relationships and interpersonal communication skills with their partner/so The study points to the need for a deeper understanding of the emotional and overall wellbeing of teenagers with respect to romantic and sexual relationships. The study aims to contribute towards academic debates and knowledge about teenage perspectives on sexualities and romantic relationships and towards the planning, discussion and design of future postsecondary sexuality education curricula in Malta.

The majority of research on bisexuality does not take into account the importance of bisexual visual identities. Appearance has often been trivialised, despite it being an integral part of forming and expressing our identities. A small body of literature on lesbians and gay men’s visual identities has found that appearance norms can serve a number of positive functions, including identity formation and maintenance, ‘coming out’ (signalling sexuality to others), recognition, attracting a partner, resisting heteronormativity, forming communities, and safe-guarding such spaces from voyeuristic or homophobic others. However, very little is understood about bisexual people’s visual identities. The feminist research reported in this thesis provides a mixed methods exploration (using semi-structured face-to-face interviews and photomethodology with 20 self-identified bisexual women, a quantitative questionnaire completed by a total of 494 bisexual, lesbian and heterosexual women, and a qualitative survey completed by 176 predominantly heterosexual university students) of bisexual women’s visual identities. The findings highlight that binary constructions of sexuality remain dominant within psychology and the wider culture. These dichotomous understandings are problematic for bisexual people because they continually position heterosexuality and homosexuality as the only viable identity options. This has resulted in the dismissal and marginalisation of bisexual women and their identity. This research fills a gap in knowledge around bisexual women’s appearance practices and (lack of) visual identities. A key finding was that bisexual women experience their identity in ways which are distinct from either lesbians or heterosexual women. Bisexual and heterosexual participants were able to describe visual images associated with lesbian, gay, and heterosexual identities, but in stark contrast they were unable to recognise any equivalent bisexual appearance norms or a bisexual visual identity. This raises a number of issues around the implications of bisexual women’s lack of validation and visibility, and highlights the necessity for psychologists to recognise the existence of bisexuality in order to address the continued overlooking and marginalisation of bisexual women and their identities.

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own discourses as well as those of seven women who attend SLAA meetings in London. It intends to contribute to the understanding of the employment of a Twelve Steps programme for the regulation of emotions and women’s current difficulties in relationships. The thesis provides a historical account of what has been considered ‘excessive’ in women’s intimate relationships and thus deemed to require regulation. It demonstrates how, despite historical changes in social perceptions of excess in sex and love, continuous preoccupation with the irrationality of love nonetheless still exists, which has been more directly linked to femininity. SLAA’s origins are examined, including their adoption of the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) Twelve Steps programme. This programme aims at the avoidance of alcohol consumption, and it has been adapted to the field of regulating relationships. The constitutive problems this causes will be examined. This thesis demonstrates how the infiltration of therapeutic discourse in SLAA has transformed the programme from a spiritual to a hybrid one: spiritual and therapeutic. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the thesis discusses themes of love and phantasy and looks at the different positions women can occupy in relationships. I argue that the loss of faith in the narrative of patriarchal power has led to a crisis, in which the bearer of the phallus is no longer self-evident. I explore how this crisis has been associated with the decline of the paternal metaphor in Lacanian psychoanalysis, which as a consequence has altered the organisation of desire and has contributed to uncertainties in relationships, which I argue that SLAA is a symptom of. My methodological approach is influenced by different theoretical frameworks, including the use of thematic analysis to organise data and narrative analysis to inform the interview approach. The analysis of themes is informed by Lacanian psychoanalytic and sociological theories. The findings are organised in themes that clearly reflect the participants’ absorption of SLAA’s discourse and show how they have negotiated SLAA’s operations and strategies. A strong commonality was found in the participants’ accounts of their difficulties, indicating how problems in relationships are conceptualised in SLAA. There was also some evident ambivalence characterising the ways in which participants reported traditional feminine positions. The discourse of sex and love addiction signals the difficulties in women’s ability to relate whilst keeping a sense of autonomy; it frames the inherent difficulties of love as addictions and promotes a discourse of self-sufficiency and independence, echoing the discourse of narcissism. Overall, there are clear shortcomings in the programme related to the legacy of the twelve-step framework (which promotes avoidance) and of its therapeutic discourse that encourages autonomy, in ways that are incompatible with the experience of love. This discourse does not offer any original solutions for the new challenges of relationships; however, it does provide an excellent temporary space for containment and reflection for women who are undergoing emotional crises.

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