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Category Archives: Arts and Health
Using virtual reality to implement disability studies’ advocacy principles: uncovering the perspectives of people with disability
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How homophobic propaganda produces vernacular prejudice in authoritarian states
Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
An understanding of gendered homophobia in authoritarian states like Russia provides insights into intolerance as a function of propaganda. What is the effect on ordinary attitudes of “political homophobia” (Boellstorf, 2009) disseminated at fever pitch by state-controlled media intent on dividing the world geopolitically into debauched gay-friendly states, and those willing to defend “traditional Christian” values? Despite authoritarian societies appearing very different from pluralist ones, attitudes are plastic, diverse views possible, and survey polling unreliable. The ethnographic materials presented here show the need to meaningfully engage with vernacular prejudice and differentiate it from regime and media messaging. Everyday forms of homophobia and heterosexism have their origins in complex social phenomena and historical legacies beyond geopolitically-motivated hatred.
An understanding of gendered homophobia in authoritarian states like Russia provides insights into intolerance as a function of propaganda. What is the effect on ordinary attitudes of “political homophobia” (Boellstorf, 2009) disseminated at fever pitch by state-controlled media intent on dividing the world geopolitically into debauched gay-friendly states, and those willing to defend “traditional Christian” values? Despite authoritarian societies appearing very different from pluralist ones, attitudes are plastic, diverse views possible, and survey polling unreliable. The ethnographic materials presented here show the need to meaningfully engage with vernacular prejudice and differentiate it from regime and media messaging. Everyday forms of homophobia and heterosexism have their origins in complex social phenomena and historical legacies beyond geopolitically-motivated hatred.
“Digital kink obscurity: A sexual politics beyond visibility and comprehension”
Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
Based on an interview-driven ethnographic study of the Swedish digital BDSM, fetish and kink platform Darkside, this article explores digital kink expressions at a moment when kink communities are both marginalized and seemingly mainstream, navigating a tricky balance between visibility and invisibility, intelligibility and unintelligibility. Across queer, postcolonial, and digital media theorizing, “opacity” provides a way of rethinking these tensions, challenging the idea of public visibility and identification as that which legitimizes sexual otherness. Building on this work, I suggest the term “kink obscurity” as a way of conceptualizing a set of tactics for sexually marginalized groups to exist, resist, and transgress without becoming fully visible or graspable. To these ends, I foreground a “closet positive” analysis of Darkside, not primarily of shame, secrecy, and isolation, but of shared spaces of vulnerability and intensity, a temporary safe house which partly protects against normative regulation. Although the platform activist ethos speaks to the value of openness and outness for the sake of sexual justice, the users are quite invested in anonymous and pseudonymous online presence and sexual expression. Opacity implies a lack of clarity; something opaque may be both difficult to see clearly as well as to understand. Drawing on Édouard Glissant’s idea of opacity as a form resistance to surveillance and imperial domination, a digital sexual politics of obscurity could help provide recognition without a demand to fully understand sexual otherness, opening up for new modes of obscure and pleasurable sexual expressions and transgressions.
Based on an interview-driven ethnographic study of the Swedish digital BDSM, fetish and kink platform Darkside, this article explores digital kink expressions at a moment when kink communities are both marginalized and seemingly mainstream, navigating a tricky balance between visibility and invisibility, intelligibility and unintelligibility. Across queer, postcolonial, and digital media theorizing, “opacity” provides a way of rethinking these tensions, challenging the idea of public visibility and identification as that which legitimizes sexual otherness. Building on this work, I suggest the term “kink obscurity” as a way of conceptualizing a set of tactics for sexually marginalized groups to exist, resist, and transgress without becoming fully visible or graspable. To these ends, I foreground a “closet positive” analysis of Darkside, not primarily of shame, secrecy, and isolation, but of shared spaces of vulnerability and intensity, a temporary safe house which partly protects against normative regulation. Although the platform activist ethos speaks to the value of openness and outness for the sake of sexual justice, the users are quite invested in anonymous and pseudonymous online presence and sexual expression. Opacity implies a lack of clarity; something opaque may be both difficult to see clearly as well as to understand. Drawing on Édouard Glissant’s idea of opacity as a form resistance to surveillance and imperial domination, a digital sexual politics of obscurity could help provide recognition without a demand to fully understand sexual otherness, opening up for new modes of obscure and pleasurable sexual expressions and transgressions.
Reviving the sociology of organizations in higher education: the case of how global university rankings influence the strategic management of Canadian universities
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How is disability addressed in a job interview?
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Peer work in Australian mental health policy: What ‘problems’ are we solving and to what effect(s)?
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Reifications in Disease Ecology 2: Towards a Decolonized Pedagogy Enabling Science by, and for, the People
‘With arms wide open’. Inclusive pedagogy in higher education in Spain
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Striving to abolish a deficit approach to disability: frames applied by frontline workers and activist entrepreneurs in employment
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