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As much of the scholarly literature shows, gender has served as a central organizing force for knowing and theorizing about sexuality. The governmentality of sexuality in Western societies over the last 200 years has led to sex being discursively implicated with reproduction, and this has had a profound effect on the ways sexuality has been theorized and understood in terms of gendered desire. The aim of this dissertation is to theorize an alternative approach to sexuality that decenters gender and gives attention to the materiality of sex and the body. Using existentialism and phenomenology, this dissertation offers a particular challenge to heteronormative conceptions of “sexual orientation” and “sexual identity” for their ostensibly timeless and enduring quality, or being. The research presented herein theorizes sexuality through an ontology of becoming that takes into account the diverse, multi-faceted nature of sexuality as a series of temporal experiences, attractions, desires, sensations, practices, and identities – that is, as a phenomenon. A genealogical methodology is used to trace the discursive history of sexuality and demonstrate how modernist discourses of sexuality have influenced how sexuality is known and experienced. This research emphasizes the discursive constraints on knowledge about sexuality. In considering an alternative framework, the principles of existentialism and phenomenology are critically examined through the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Attention is then turned toward a non-classical paradigm of science to elaborate on an ontology of becoming and its significance for understanding the development of sex and sexuality. In conjunction, contemporary biological research is introduced to expand upon de Beauvoir’s (1996) analysis of “the data of biology” on sexual difference and to help situate the sexed body as dynamic and developmental. An existential phenomenological approach theorizes sexuality as a self-project and the dialectical becoming between the sexed body and the sexual self. Because both the body and the self are contingent becomings that are open to instability and change, so too is sexuality. This alternative approach offers particular attention to the body in sexuality and considers the materialities of sexual desire. / Thesis (Ph.D, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2013-02-04 00:33:41.993

As new technology develops, society develops with it; we find new ways to interact with our business associates, our friends, and our family. This study looks specifically at the ways individuals in our contemporary community express sexuality and how dating and forming new relationships is being affected. We begin with a brief history on the study of sex and sexuality, and continue with a section exploring theories and more contemporary research on the subject. Focusing on current social phenomenon such as gender objectification and the anonymity pertaining to online interactions, we investigate social media and phone/computer applications focused on dating. We look for answers to questions regarding how the evolution of sexuality influences power structures within a community, through empirical interviews and hidden online observations, and from a feminist perspective. The intricacies of text communication and the interpretation of such interactions is a cornerstone of modern dating, which this thesis analyses closely by looking at how the participants initiate contact with potential partners.

In recent years, there has been a growing acceptance of sexual behavior as a legitimate area of research. An impetus for research utilizing erotic visual stimuli was supplied by the Presidential appointment of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (1963). Research into the effects of erotic visual stimuli has typically employed male subjects (Neiger, 1966). The paucity of adequate research has not been a deterrent to the formulation of strong opinions regarding the nature of female sexuality. The present research has focused on female responses to visual representations of the nude male figure.

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that influence the relationship between counselors' sexual comfort and their willingness to discuss sexual issues with the couples they counsel. I surveyed 2000 members of the American Counseling Association (ACA). This study examined the relationships between counselors' sexual comfort and their willingness to discuss sexual issues with couples with a variety of variables. The results revealed that counselors' sexual education and training experience, supervision experience discussing sexuality, sexual attitudes, and age were all associated with both counselors' sexual comfort and willingness to discuss sexual issues with couples. Counselors' years of practice was found to be associated with their sexual comfort. Types of graduate specialization were found to be associated with counselors' willingness to discuss sexual issues with couples. The results of this study have implications for counselors, counselor educators, and supervisors. My hope is that counselor educators will utilize this knowledge to address counselors' in training sexual comfort level and willingness to discuss sexual issues with the couples.

Thesis advisor: Suzanne Conway / This paper looks at the ways in which pornography influences American society. It explores the rise of porn culture with an emphasis on Internet porn and the impact it has had on the distribution and availability of pornography. As a result, advertising companies and other producers of mainstream media have looked to the porn industry for ways to increase their profit margins. As sexual imagery has become a standard aspect of everyday life, it has impacted younger generations in terms of clothing and how they develop relationships. The popularity of social media applications has also helped to perpetuate the pornification of mainstream culture by focusing on physical appearance. The college hookup culture illustrates the lack of satisfaction that can result from the strictly sexual relationships highlighted in pornography. Acknowledging the effects of pornography can help to reduce the many problems that result from a hyper-sexualized society. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis advisor: Sarah Babb / How does sexuality differ across cultures? Across genders? I propose that women in the Philippines face unique constraints on acceptable sexualities. Historical context and contemporary influences (i.e. the mass media, Catholic doctrine, education, and family) continually define and redefine acceptable behaviors. I conducted ten qualitative, open-ended interviews with Filipina women via video- or voice-conferences in early 2014. Based on the data collected, non-traditional women’s sexual orientations primarily were constructed through appearance and behavior, and not simply on sexual orientation. Women appearing or acting in a masculine fashion are labeled tomboy. Attitudes surrounding these alternate practices varied, especially as a result of religious beliefs or personal experiences. The data collected from the participants supported the importance of appearance and external influences in the constructions of and attitudes towards women’s sexualities. Furthermore, trends in the responses suggest a changing social culture in the Philippines that could lead to greater social acceptance for same-sex oriented identities. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology Honors Program. / Discipline: Sociology.

This thesis throws into relief the nomadic meshings of sexualities with post/apartheid cultural politics. It explores how, why and with what effects sexualities and post/apartheid nationhood have been imbricated in signal events and phenomena. Terms used to construct the thesis’ title each allude to significant events and processes through which assemblages of nationhood, sexualities, gender and race are worked on/with in particular ways. I propose that these events form a prism through which we are able to see refracted how a race-­‐gender-­‐sexuality complex becomes a pivotal mechanism through which post/apartheid subjectivities, embodiments, nationhood and sovereignty are being constructed and contested. I conclude that the events under discussion index how sexuality is both a site of political contestation; and, a central and crucial component of post/apartheid nationhood. That it is a ‘machinic assemblage’, which conditions and constitutes a particular field of the political including a popular consciousness of the post/apartheid body politic and sovereignty. Presenting qualitative analysis that reflects on the rhetorical structures evident within the nationscapes under discussion, I analyse and make reference to a substantial sample of media representations of, and discourses about, each of the scenes evaluated across the thesis. To this end, I focalise what Lauren Berlant has termed, the ‘National Symbolic’; an imaginary, chimerical and affect-­‐laden screen projection through which citizens venture to ‘grasp the nation in its totality’. This interdisciplinary project both draws on and expands the South African, Feminist and Queer Studies Fields and is influenced by what Judith Butler calls the ‘New Gender Politics’. I achieve this by bringing diverse critical perspectives into a discursive exchange with emerging bodies of scholarship concerned with questions of gender, sexualities, dis/ability and race in the South African context. I introduce novel, or previously untapped, theoretical repertoires to pursue unexplored interpretive horizons that generate new discourses about post/apartheid sexuality and politics. In doing so, I analyse a range of topics including: the state’s management of contemporary virginity practices and its abstinence messaging; popular anti-­‐polygamy discourse; and, critical intersex and dis/ability politics, which the available scholarship has not addressed. Although President Jacob Zuma is not the subject of this inquiry, each chapter examines events and developments that are both explicitly, and more implicitly, associated with his presidency. These events have unfolded during a later period of the post/apartheid dispensation; sometimes called the post post/apartheid period. I have written about a time that marked a conservative twist in the transition, which is not imagined as a teleological process. This is a perplexing time of uneven shifts where old things seem to be hardening even as they are simultaneously thinning or leaking away while new things are emerging in unpredictable rhythms and forms.

Anne Lister (1791-1840), a provincial gentlewoman of Shibden Hall, near Halifax in the West Riding of Yorkshire, produced between 1806 and her death a four-million-word diary documenting her daily life, intimate thoughts, ambitions, sexual and emotional adventures with women and her musings on the nature of her sexuality. About a sixth is written in cipher. Lister scholarship so far has focused mainly on the social and cultural implications of her writings. This thesis, however, examines the diary as a literary text and considers Lister's deployment of literary forms and structures, strategies and conventions in producing a sense of self. It explores her relationship to contemporary ideas of authorship and to notions of public and private, and investigates the impact of reading in the autobiographical writing of Lister and her circle and the significance of the cipher in her social and sexual self-representation. It asks whether her literary production helped accommodate her self-representation as a traditional country gentlewoman with her unconventional sexuality. The linking theme throughout the thesis, bringing together the many different aspects of Lister's self-fashioning, is the significance of literary considerations in her diary and letters. It begins the work of investigating the literary structures and strategies of her writings, and offers a fresh perspective on this remarkable work of literary self-construction.

Contestations around religion and secularism in the UK continue to unfold. These debates converge most polemically around women’s religiosity, as evidenced by proposed bans on the hijab, and the criminalisation of female circumcision. Research on religious women creates a binary juxtaposition between religion as an oppressive force, on the one hand, and religion as a means of emancipation for women, on the other. These accounts fail to address how religious women experience their religious communities as oppressive and choose to stay. In this doctoral thesis, I introduce a new analytic approach to the study of religious women by investigating how women stay in a restrictive religious context and the strategies they employ, in order to theoretically expand understandings of agency. This research examines how British evangelical Christian women negotiate their religious and gendered identities in London. My findings are based on a 12-month ethnography and 33 semi-structured interviews with unmarried evangelical women (aged 22 – 40) living in London. Recognising the unique challenges that single religious women face, including dating and sexual abstinence, I focussed on unmarried women. My research asks: How is the female evangelical subject formed through religious practices such as observing sexual purity, attending Bible study groups and fellowship with like-minded believers? Taking a lived religion approach leads me to theoretically analyse how women practice their religion in everyday, ordinary ways. I then examine how these practices shape women’s identities. Evangelical women are assumed to be either empowered by submission, or frustrated and leaving the church, but an exploration of the everyday, ordinary ways that women live their religion reveals the nuanced and important identity negotiations that women make. My key finding is that evangelical women confront a double bind in their identity formation; the attachment to a Christian identity liberates and supports women, but also ensnares them in a constraining network of norms. Through this discovery, I emphasise the salience of gender in the study of religious practice. By analysing how identities require exclusion for consolidation, I also explore women’s responses to marginality, and re-conceptualise agency. Despite important theoretical contributions to understanding religious women’s agency, scholars continue to ground their approach to agency solely in piety and submission, obscuring alternative modalities. By refusing to align with one side of the emancipation/oppression binary, my research brings a renewed attention to the benefits and the costs of religious belonging.