Journal Articles by Alex Dymock
This article aims to expand interpretations of the representational and spectatorial politics of ... more This article aims to expand interpretations of the representational and spectatorial politics of images by investigating what Wacquant has termed 'law-and-order pornographies'. By this, he refers to images of crime and punishment accorded signifiers of the pornographic and the prurient in order to describe the fusion of the erotic and the punitive. The first part of the article brings into conversation the fields of porn studies and visual criminology. It examines more closely what is at stake in imbuing crime images with the grammar of the pornographic. The second part of the article argues that the application of the pornographic to images of law and order has been refracted back onto the sphere of adult entertainment, in particular, the phenomenon of 'revenge pornography'.
Journal of the International Network for Sexual Ethics and Politics 2(1), Nov 2014
Kitty Stryker is a sex-worker, educator and activist currently based between San Francisco (CA) a... more Kitty Stryker is a sex-worker, educator and activist currently based between San Francisco (CA) and London, whose work on sexuality, community and consent has gained an international audience. Stryker’s work has been published in The Huffington Post, Salon.Com and numerous edited collections, and she regularly receives invitations to speak about her projects across a range of community, sexual health, and academic settings.
Stryker has been particularly instrumental in contributing crucial activist energies to questioning the ethics and politics of so-called ‘sex-positive’ communities and subcultures through her project, Consent Culture, and it is her work on this theme that this interview explores. Previously, critical scrutiny of the ways in which consent is constructed in these communities has only emerged from the ‘outside’, particularly through two recent ethnographic studies (Weiss, 2011; Newmahr, 2012). Kitty’s project, having been part of both London and San Francisco’s sexual subcultures for many years, is to confront and educate these communities directly from ‘within’ them, initiating a conversation that invites communities to be self-critical, and address the ethics and politics of BDSM spaces and practices. In particular, her work has been instrumental in challenging the ‘safe, sane and consensual’ (SSC) mantle that has previously been heralded as the gold-standard for engaging in ethical BDSM practices, and that often shields such communities from legal intervention.
While Consent Culture began, as Kitty tells me, with a single workshop called Safe/Ward in San Francisco, the project has begun to receive global attention from bloggers, academics and mainstream media, and a new book is in the works. In this interview, Kitty tells me about the aims of the Consent Culture project, as well as the events and experiences that have informed her work.
Sexualities 16(8), Dec 2013
This article offers a critical reading of the Fifty Shades phenomenon by situating the novels as ... more This article offers a critical reading of the Fifty Shades phenomenon by situating the novels as works of transgressive erotic fiction that stimulate circuits of female consumption and the production of sexual identity as commodity. It submits a novel contribution to current scholarship on the mechanisms of sexual transgression by acknowledging its neutral or even reactive qualities, and by laying bare its relationship with disciplinary regimes of social power. It demonstrates that, rather than a politically progressive utopian strategy that might delimit the parameters of sexual desire, transgression now primarily functions as a mechanism through which capitalism is reinforced and the institutions of heteronormativity maintained.
Psychology and Sexuality 3(1), Jan 2012
This article constitutes a theoretical critique of the limits by which BDSM is policed by law and... more This article constitutes a theoretical critique of the limits by which BDSM is policed by law and psychiatry from a feminist jurisprudential perspective. In particular, it discusses types of female masochism that disavow narratives of ‘safe, sane and consensual’ and BDSM’s transformative potential and instead makes an argument for a feminist ethics of female masochism. Through an engagement with psychoanalysis and Jacques Lacan’s notion of jouissance, the essay makes a claim that law in this context functions as a kind of ‘pleasure principle’ and that the notion of ‘harmful’ consensual sexual experiences relies upon a normative tendency to relate feminine masochism with compliance, not only to the will of another, but with the social order of ‘reproductive futurity’.
Book Reviews by Alex Dymock
Journal of the International Network for Sexual Ethics and Politics, Sep 1, 2013
Other Writing by Alex Dymock
Inherently Human: Critical Perspectives on Law, Gender and Sexuality, May 22, 2013
The Guardian, Aug 9, 2012
politics.co.uk, Aug 8, 2012
Invited Talks by Alex Dymock
Conference Papers by Alex Dymock
In Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, he stipulated that all sexuality was potentia... more In Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, he stipulated that all sexuality was potentially inherently perverse: ‘even in the most normal sexual process we may detect rudiments which, if they had developed, would have led to the deviations described as perversions’ (Freud, 1905: 149). However, he still differentiated ‘normal’ perversion of the sexual drive from pathological perversity, rather than following his own highly original thesis of ‘polymorphous perversity’ to its own ends. Criminal law in England & Wales has tended to rely upon medico-legal constructions of sexuality to identify and isolate the ‘abnormal’ and ‘dangerous’ sexual criminal, making a strict differentiation between the ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ along remarkably similar lines to those first put forth by sexologists in the late nineteenth century.
In light of Freud’s claims, this paper examines the case of R v. Peacock (January 2012), in which a man was charged with six counts of distributing ‘extreme’ gay pornography under the Obscene Publications Act (1959). The material was put to jury test to determine whether it was likely to ‘deprave and corrupt’ its potential viewers. I make the argument that, even though Peacock was cleared on all six counts and his case was touted as a landmark victory for sexual liberties in England & Wales, his defence inadvertently supported the basis of the OPA because the principle that there is a differentiation to be made between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ sexuality along familiar medico-legal lines was still keenly adopted. If there is such a differentiation to be made, the Crown Prosecution Service’s contention in the case that ‘the line must be drawn somewhere’ would surely be correct and it would follow that the OPA should be upheld. I suggest that, if we follow Freud’s thesis of ‘polymorphous perversity’ to its ends, new discourses of sexuality in the context of the criminal court might emerge that make space for alternative (and perhaps more ethical) ways of judging and regulating sexuality.
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Journal Articles by Alex Dymock
Stryker has been particularly instrumental in contributing crucial activist energies to questioning the ethics and politics of so-called ‘sex-positive’ communities and subcultures through her project, Consent Culture, and it is her work on this theme that this interview explores. Previously, critical scrutiny of the ways in which consent is constructed in these communities has only emerged from the ‘outside’, particularly through two recent ethnographic studies (Weiss, 2011; Newmahr, 2012). Kitty’s project, having been part of both London and San Francisco’s sexual subcultures for many years, is to confront and educate these communities directly from ‘within’ them, initiating a conversation that invites communities to be self-critical, and address the ethics and politics of BDSM spaces and practices. In particular, her work has been instrumental in challenging the ‘safe, sane and consensual’ (SSC) mantle that has previously been heralded as the gold-standard for engaging in ethical BDSM practices, and that often shields such communities from legal intervention.
While Consent Culture began, as Kitty tells me, with a single workshop called Safe/Ward in San Francisco, the project has begun to receive global attention from bloggers, academics and mainstream media, and a new book is in the works. In this interview, Kitty tells me about the aims of the Consent Culture project, as well as the events and experiences that have informed her work.
Book Reviews by Alex Dymock
Other Writing by Alex Dymock
Invited Talks by Alex Dymock
Conference Papers by Alex Dymock
In light of Freud’s claims, this paper examines the case of R v. Peacock (January 2012), in which a man was charged with six counts of distributing ‘extreme’ gay pornography under the Obscene Publications Act (1959). The material was put to jury test to determine whether it was likely to ‘deprave and corrupt’ its potential viewers. I make the argument that, even though Peacock was cleared on all six counts and his case was touted as a landmark victory for sexual liberties in England & Wales, his defence inadvertently supported the basis of the OPA because the principle that there is a differentiation to be made between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ sexuality along familiar medico-legal lines was still keenly adopted. If there is such a differentiation to be made, the Crown Prosecution Service’s contention in the case that ‘the line must be drawn somewhere’ would surely be correct and it would follow that the OPA should be upheld. I suggest that, if we follow Freud’s thesis of ‘polymorphous perversity’ to its ends, new discourses of sexuality in the context of the criminal court might emerge that make space for alternative (and perhaps more ethical) ways of judging and regulating sexuality.
Stryker has been particularly instrumental in contributing crucial activist energies to questioning the ethics and politics of so-called ‘sex-positive’ communities and subcultures through her project, Consent Culture, and it is her work on this theme that this interview explores. Previously, critical scrutiny of the ways in which consent is constructed in these communities has only emerged from the ‘outside’, particularly through two recent ethnographic studies (Weiss, 2011; Newmahr, 2012). Kitty’s project, having been part of both London and San Francisco’s sexual subcultures for many years, is to confront and educate these communities directly from ‘within’ them, initiating a conversation that invites communities to be self-critical, and address the ethics and politics of BDSM spaces and practices. In particular, her work has been instrumental in challenging the ‘safe, sane and consensual’ (SSC) mantle that has previously been heralded as the gold-standard for engaging in ethical BDSM practices, and that often shields such communities from legal intervention.
While Consent Culture began, as Kitty tells me, with a single workshop called Safe/Ward in San Francisco, the project has begun to receive global attention from bloggers, academics and mainstream media, and a new book is in the works. In this interview, Kitty tells me about the aims of the Consent Culture project, as well as the events and experiences that have informed her work.
In light of Freud’s claims, this paper examines the case of R v. Peacock (January 2012), in which a man was charged with six counts of distributing ‘extreme’ gay pornography under the Obscene Publications Act (1959). The material was put to jury test to determine whether it was likely to ‘deprave and corrupt’ its potential viewers. I make the argument that, even though Peacock was cleared on all six counts and his case was touted as a landmark victory for sexual liberties in England & Wales, his defence inadvertently supported the basis of the OPA because the principle that there is a differentiation to be made between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ sexuality along familiar medico-legal lines was still keenly adopted. If there is such a differentiation to be made, the Crown Prosecution Service’s contention in the case that ‘the line must be drawn somewhere’ would surely be correct and it would follow that the OPA should be upheld. I suggest that, if we follow Freud’s thesis of ‘polymorphous perversity’ to its ends, new discourses of sexuality in the context of the criminal court might emerge that make space for alternative (and perhaps more ethical) ways of judging and regulating sexuality.
While much has been written about the dangerous or abnormal subject cast out of the community (Young, 1996; Sharpe, 2010), the psychoanalytic category of perversion has predominantly been written out of socio-legal theory and jurisprudence, perhaps because it is not a structure of desire that easily finds kinship or evokes sympathy. However, a psychoanalytic model of perversion and jurisprudence have much in common, since both are concerned with prohibition and authority. I suggest that perversion’s potential as the ultimate form of ethical life, as Lacan perceived it, has much to offer jurisprudence. Furthermore, this disidentification from perversion in legal theory occurs because the ‘dangerous’ subject made outlaw is viewed as no subject at all. I suggest that, whether through the regulation of “obscene” texts or designating deviant individuals as outlaws, perversion is the site of the neither-subject-or-object: the domain Kristeva terms abjection, ‘the place where I am not’ (Creed, 1993), where the self separates itself from that which threatens the self. Where criminal law is concerned, the threat is deviant desire, particularly sexual desire, because it is seemingly unlimited in its variation. The perceived danger of perversion and its not-subjects is in fact, I suggest, limitlessness itself.
Taking a jurisprudence of perversion as its cue, my paper then interrogates the creation of the offence of possessing ‘extreme’ pornography in England & Wales (s. 63, Criminal Justice & Immigration Act (2008)) as a site of perversion. I demonstrate that the shift in criminal law under New Labour to penalising dangerousness, particularly where sexuality is concerned, literalises the fin-de-siécle ideology of perversion as a form of degeneracy. I then scrutinize the cases that this new offence has brought to the crown court to date to assess whether or not they serve the law’s aims in practice: to protect society from the social and cultural harms of violent pornography, particularly those done to women.
My paper questions what it is about these specific representations of the body that designates them as legally obscene. Through a brief investigation of the three categories of image described above, I ask whether certain sexual acts in which the body is conventionally understood to be violated can ever be considered anything other than ethically incomprehensible to criminal law in England & Wales.
This paper constitutes first a detailed examination of the trial, and second, makes an argument that particular perverse consensual sexual desires simply remain ethically incomprehensible to criminal law, even if contemporary discourses of medicine, law and ideas about what constitutes ‘sexual health’ are carefully applied and the acts are declared not harmful. While the obscenity test is still mobilized in criminal law as the barometer of public morality where sexuality is concerned, I ask whether the OPA still has a relevant role to play in the governance of sexual perversion in England & Wales in light of this verdict.
En Occident, les femmes ont été largement sous-représentées dans la communauté psychédélique tout comme dans les études scientifiques portant sur cette classe de psychotropes. En effet, les caricatures de l’utilisatrice diffusées dans les médias ou dans les productions artistiques (sur sexualisée, disponible sexuellement) ainsi que l’axe systématiquement sanitaire des études menées sur les consommatrices de psychotropes, rendent particulièrement difficile à repérer et à analyser les usages féminins de psychédéliques. Par ailleurs, les chercheuses et thérapeutes ayant participé à la première vague d’études sur ces produits (1950-1970) ont été invisibilisées par l’historiographie (1,2).
Cette situation mène aujourd’hui à une absence de reconnaissance des apports et des réflexions scientifiques féminines sur ces substances (3), ainsi qu’à une méconnaissance des besoins (4) et des expériences spécifiques des femmes usagères (5). Comme l’explique l’historienne Erika Dyck, « l’histoire des psychédéliques en est venue à privilégier les perspectives masculines », déformant notre compréhension de ces substances.
Faisant le constat de la rareté des travaux ayant pour ambition de questionner les psychédéliques du point de vue du genre ou cherchant à étudier les contributions et les expériences des femmes dans ce domaine, nous souhaitons proposer dans ce webinaire un panel visant à combler ce manque. Nous étudierons ainsi les biais concernant les savoirs académiques en lien avec l’usage féminin de psychotropes, nous mettrons en lumière les rôles historiques et contemporains des femmes dans le champ des psychedelic studies, et nous questionnerons les pratiques genrées liées à l’usage de ces substances.
1. Dyck E. "What about Mrs Psychedelic? A historical look at women and psychedelics". Breaking Convention, 2019. Disponible sur : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T04atyEQqUk&t=112s
2. Dyck E. "Historian Explains How Women Have been Excluded from the Field of Psychedelic Science". Chacruna, 2018. Disponible sur : https://chacruna.net/historian-explains-how-women-have.../
3. Mangini M. "A Hidden History of Women and Psychedelics". MAPS Bulletin. 2019;29(1):14 7.
4. Tolbert R. "Gender and Psychedelic Medicine: Rebirthing the Archetypes". ReVision. 2003;25(3):4 11.
5. Hewitt K. "Psychedelic Feminism: A Radical Interpretation of Psychedelic Consciousness?" J Study Radicalism. 2019;13(1):75 120.
𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗠𝗠𝗘
𝗠𝗮𝗶̈𝗮 𝗡𝗘𝗙𝗙, Université Laval de Québec, Département de sociologie :
"Champ et hors-champ de la recherche académique sur les usages de drogues au féminin"
𝗦𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗵 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗥𝗜𝗡, Centre Émile Durkheim, Université de Bordeaux :
"Femmes et psychédéliques : vulnérabilités et ressources de genre"
𝗔𝗹𝗲𝘅 𝗗𝗬𝗠𝗢𝗖𝗞, Maîtresse de conférences en droit, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK :
"Psychédéliques et sexualité féminine" (VOSTFR)
𝗘𝗿𝗶𝗸𝗮 𝗗𝗬𝗖𝗞, Professeure d’histoire et titulaire de la Chaire de recherche en histoire de la médecine à l’Université de la Saskatchewan au Canada :
"Les femmes dans l’histoire médicale des psychédéliques" (VOSTFR)
𝗭𝗼𝗲̈ 𝗗𝗨𝗕𝗨𝗦 AMU-CNRS/TELEMMe, Institut des Humanités en Médecine :
"L'influence des femmes sur l’élaboration du concept de set and setting dans les années 1950-1970"
𝗜𝗹𝗹𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 : Manyoly, artiste marseillaise. Reproduction avec l’aimable autorisation de l’artiste. Site internet : https://www.manyoly.com/
Lien vers la vidéo de la séance : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkhW5w_XFVXiPaJBn9-vGEg