This thesis sets out to investigate the techniques and strategies used by members of the seduction community to perform masculinity, using as its primary sources material produced by the community ranging from published texts to online commentary. The research is interdisciplinary and incorporates theoretical frameworks drawn from performance studies, semiotics and cultural studies, sociology, literary theory and gender studies. The first chapter explains the origins and operations of the seduction community, positioning it as a force that regulates performances of masculinity and depends upon teamwork and co-operation in order to function. The second chapter discusses the community's dual understanding of masculinity as a construct open to adaptation and change, and also as an innate and natural category. This tension is addressed through an analysis of power relations evident through narcissism and self-display, and a reliance on the suppression of non-masculine elements through homosociality, and performances of leadership based upon embodied expertise. This leads me to conclude that the seduction community may be a heterosexual pretext for building fulfilling homosocial relations. The final chapter addresses how women and femininity are imagined in the community, specifically as inferior and in many ways incomplete without masculine intervention, an attitude which reflects broader social trends. Of particular importance here are the devaluation of female speech and sexuality and the imagining of sex as a commodity. The thesis argues that where women themselves appropriate the language and techniques of the seduction community, this is presented as complicity with conventional gender norms, but also a potential route to individual empowerment through learning to manage relationships more effectively.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:595773 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Turner, Elizabeth C. |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/59919/ |
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