scholarly journals Painful pleasures: Sacrifice, consent, and the resignification of BDSM symbolism in The Story of O and The Story of Obi

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Kustritz
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Coercion ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Sexual Consent ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
Power Exchange ◽  
Systems Of Domination ◽  
Slash Fan Fiction

This paper examines slash fan fiction's contributions to BDSM discourses and symbolism. BDSM is culturally delegitimated as a sexual pathology, and protest against it highlights broad concerns about sexual consent within patriarchy while also misdirecting unease about sexual coercion onto the ritualized and eroticized exchange of power rather than social systems of domination. Contrasting the BDSM classic The Story of O with The Story of Obi, a Star Wars–based slash rewrite, facilitates a conceptual separation between erotic domination and the historical and cultural contexts that give shape to individual enunciations of sexualized power exchange, particularly by shifting from a psychoanalytic paradigm to consideration of chivalric "suffering for love." By calling upon the extensive shared knowledge of fan readers and the symbolism attached to the sexual conjunction of two same-sexed bodies, authors of slash fan fiction produce a constantly proliferating array of BDSM representations that challenge the speciation of erotic domination as an inherently destructive, unidirectional deadlock. They thus create unique narrative and semiotic tools for rethinking erotic uses of power.

Confronting Enterprise Slash Fan Fiction

Extrapolation ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kylie Lee
Keyword(s):  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Slash Fan Fiction

scholarly journals Online Collectivism, Individualism and Anonymity in East Asia

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 424-440
Author(s):  
Kenneth Farrall
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
South Korea ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Online Anonymity ◽  
Individual Privacy ◽  
Collective Cognition ◽  
Tripartite Relationship

Anonymity on the internet has come under increasing criticism as a threat to public civility and safety. This article draws data from related academic studies, trade press and mass media to examine recent variations in the salience, use, and comparative value of anonymity, and its tripartite relationship with individuality and collectivism, across three specific cultural contexts: China, South Korea, and Japan. While online anonymity in East Asia plays a role in affiliation and in acts of collective cognition, it is also valued as an individual privacy resource. We must be especially wary about assuming social systems might be better off, more secure, without it.

scholarly journals The Value of Vulnerability: Sexual Coercion and the Nature of Love in Japanese Court Literature

1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 1059-1079 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret H. Childs
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Coercion ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Considerable Effort ◽  
Classroom Experience ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Experience Teaching ◽  
Court Literature ◽  
American Society ◽  
Society Today

While modern readers willingly acknowledge the virtues of informing themselves about the ways the cultural contexts of fiction of various times and places differ from their own and the ramifications this may have for interpretation, we tend to assume that the emotions depicted in the fiction of other cultures are essentially the same as those we find in our own hearts. Scholars of literature exert considerable effort to help readers understand such things as contemporary political systems, kinship structures, marriage practices, and norms of etiquette, but we have not wondered whether the smiles, tears, and frowns of characters of other times and places reflect the same feelings as our own. Love, hate, jealousy, anger, joy, and sadness are popularly taken to be universal human emotions. However, classroom experience teaching classical Japanese literature and close readings of texts have led me to the conclusion that there are subtle but significant differences between the nature of love as depicted in premodern Japanese literature and love as we expect to find it in American society today.

scholarly journals Follow the trope: A digital (auto)ethnography for fan studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milena Popova
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Consent ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Field Site ◽  
Digital Ethnography ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Auto Ethnography ◽  
Theoretical Issues

In this paper I investigate the methodological challenges posed by the intersection of two factors commonly found in some types of fan studies research: studying a community one is already a member of and that community existing in a digital setting. I propose an approach shaped by traditional ethnography, digital ethnography, and autoethnography that is theoretically grounded, takes into account both practical and theoretical issues, and seeks to leverage the strengths of the digital environment and the ethnographer's knowledge of the community they are researching. I pay particular attention to the role and positionality of the ethnographer in this environment, as well as the process of field site construction, which I conceptualize as a journey. To illustrate this follow-the-trope approach in action, I present a case study based on my research on sexual consent in fan fiction.

scholarly journals The Rule of Two: A Star Wars Edict or a Method of Reproducibility and Quality?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Forrester
Keyword(s):  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Manuscript Review ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Biomedical Investigation ◽  
Scientific Workforce ◽  
Collective Thinking

In recent years, biomedical research has faced increased scrutiny over issues related to reproducibility and quality in scientific findings(1-3). In response to this scrutiny, funding institutions and journals have implemented top-down policies for grant and manuscript review. While a positive step forward, the long-term merit of these policies is questionable given their emphasis on completing a check-list of items instead of a fundamental re-assessment of how scientific investigation is conducted. Moreover, the top-down style of management used to institute these policies can be argued as being ineffective in engaging the scientific workforce to act upon these issues. To meet current and future biomedical needs, new investigative methods that emphasize collective-thinking, teamwork, shared knowledge and cultivate change from the bottom-up are warranted. Here, a perspective on a new approach to biomedical investigation within the individual laboratory that emphasizes collaboration and quality is discussed.

Epistemic Responsibility in Sexual Coercion and Self-Defense Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 305-320
Author(s):  
Hallie Liberto
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Coercion ◽  
Sexual Consent ◽  
Epistemic Responsibility ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Reasonable Person ◽  
Reasonable Expectation ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Reasonable Person Standard ◽  
Alternative Suggestion ◽  
Better Than

Those accused of sexual coercion and unjustified killing can defend themselves in American courts by arguing that a reasonable person in their situation could have held an exonerating belief—respectively: a belief in another person’s sexual consent, or another person’s murderous intentions. In this chapter, Liberto argues that this reasonable belief standard is problematic. Liberto presents an alternative suggestion by Donald Hubin and Karen Healey with regard to cases of sexual coercion that she labels the “reasonable expectation from state” (REfS) standard. Liberto argues that adopting a REfS standard for adjudicating both self-defense and sexual coercion cases is better than the “reasonable person” standard. However, contra Hubin and Healey, Liberto argues that expectations from the state towards victims of these criminal cases—expectations that ascribe epistemic responsibility to the victims—are misdirected.

Grandfamilies in the United States: an intersectional analysis

2018 ◽  
pp. 189-208
Author(s):  
Megan L. Dolbin-MacNab ◽  
April L. Few-Demo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Grandparents Raising Grandchildren ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Family ◽  
Political Intersectionality

This chapter utilised the theoretical framework of intersectionality to provide a critical analysis of grandparents raising grandchildren, or grandfamilies, in the United States. The analysis focused on how grandparents’ multiple social identities may overlap and conflict with one another, and how these social identities are embedded within historical and cultural contexts that privilege some social identities over others. By considering representational, structural, and political intersectionality, the current analysis revealed that oppressive discourses related to age, gender, race, and class are central to understanding the challenges facing grandfamilies. Even the family structure itself can be a basis for marginalisation. Finally, the analysis also revealed how social systems of oppression are reproduced structurally through federal and state policies that, while designed to be supportive, may further oppress and disempower grandfamilies with specific social identities..

scholarly journals Sex and Sexualities in Popular Culture: A Networking Knowledge Special Issue

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Milena Popova ◽  
Bethan Jones
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Sexual Consent ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
The Public Sphere

In November 2015, we held a symposium on the theme of Sex & Sexualities in Popular Culture at the Watershed, Bristol. Having met at a conference on popular music fandom and the public sphere, earlier that year, the symposium was a result of our shared interest in, and work on, sex and sexualities in popular culture. Bethan has worked extensively on antifandom of Fifty Shades of Grey and the moral panics surrounding the ‘irrational’ behavior of One Direction and Twilight fans. Milena’s research focuses on sexual consent in erotic fan fiction, and they have a keen interest in how media and culture interact with the discursive construction of sex, sexualities, and consent. Through the symposium, then, we wanted toafford a platform for postgraduate researchers and creative practitioners exploring the nuances of sex and sexualities within popular culture to meet and share ideas. Of course, the terms ‘sex’, ‘sexualities’ and ‘popular culture’ are not fixed or immutable and while we included suggestions for what papers might examine, the abstracts we received covered a range of topics, from literature and computer games to social media and fan fiction, and advertising to social activism. The symposium was well received both in person and online. We encouraged attendees to live tweet using the hashtag #popsex15, and discussions took place both at the Watershed and on Twitter about consent, the normative depictions of sex andrelationships in popular culture, misogynistic hate speech and intersex characters in literature. The amount of engagement with the ideas and themes coming out of the symposium suggested that a deeper analysis was needed, and this special issue of Networking Knowledge - Journal of the MeCCSA-PGN attempts to engage in more detail with some of these.

scholarly journals From Slash Fan Fiction to Crip Fan Fiction: What Role Does Disability Have in Fandom?

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-95
Author(s):  
Derek Newman-Stille
Keyword(s):  
Social Power ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Heterosexual Couples ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
Love Relationships ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Do So ◽  
Slash Fan Fiction

Slash fiction is perceived by scholars like Henry Jenkins as capable of presenting a counterhegemonic message that critically questions and disrupts power structures in the production of fiction. Slash fiction presents a critical queering of characters, disrupting the heterocentrism of canonical fiction. Slash fiction is a creation of fan fiction where canonically heterosexual couples are paired with one another in love relationships, allowing for an imagined queer potential.  Even though slash, with its queering of relationships would seem to be a doorway into empowerment for disability fiction - replacing one oppressed identity (queer) for another (disability), many of the conventions of slash, mixed with the overwhelming social power of stereotypes around disability serve to further replicate patterns of oppression upon disabled characters. One of the conventions of slash fiction is the need to make canonically straight male characters more vulnerable, more willing to explore their vulnerability in relationships. This vulnerability allows for male protagonists to disrupt the rigid boundaries of patriarchal, heterosexist constructions of masculinity by making the characters more open to vulnerabilities, which tend to be constructed as threats to the construction of patriarchal masculinity. Because of disability’s cultural association with vulnerability in the cultural imagination, disablement is often utilized by slash fiction authors as a means of achieving vulnerability of the characters in a slash fiction relationship. These relationships are often referred to as “Hurt/Comfort” or “H/C” and often depend on the assumption that disablement represents a weakening of the disabled character, problematically representing disability as weakness.  Through an examination of the association between slash and disability on the popular fan fiction site Archive of Our Own, this paper illustrates that although slash fiction has the potential to represent a liberatory counterhegemonic text, it fails to do so where disability is concerned and relies on tropes and assumptions about disability in order to ‘queer’ hegemonic texts. 

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