Katherine Frank is a cultural anthropologist (Ph.D. Duke University, 1999), sex researcher, and writer. Her most recent book, Plays Well in Groups: A Journey Through The World of Group Sex (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), explores the phenomenon of group sex across time and place. She is also the author of G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire (2002) and a coeditor of Flesh for Fantasy: Producing and Consuming Exotic Dance (2006). Frank is an affiliate research faculty member of the Department of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and faculty associate at The College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, ME.
Primetime Harem Fantasies: Marriage, Monogamy, and a bit of Feminist Fan-fiction on ABC’s “The B... more Primetime Harem Fantasies: Marriage, Monogamy, and a bit of Feminist Fan-fiction on ABC’s “The Bachelor” (2007) in Third Wave Feminism and Television (edited by M.L. Johnson)
In Dirt, Undress, and Difference: Critical Perspectives on the Body’s Surface, edited by Adeline... more In Dirt, Undress, and Difference: Critical Perspectives on the Body’s Surface, edited by Adeline Masquelier. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (2005)
This article provides a narrative overview of research on HIV/STI risk and collective sexual beha... more This article provides a narrative overview of research on HIV/STI risk and collective sexual behavior based on an inclusive analysis of research on environments where people gather for sexual activity—sex clubs, swingers’ clubs, bathhouses, parks, private sex parties, etc. The aim is to analyze how collective sex has been approached across disciplines to promote conversation across paradigms and suggest new lines of inquiry. Attention to context—such as the location of sex—was a necessary redress to universalizing models of sexual risk-taking behavior, leading to insights rooted in the particularities of each environment and its users. However, the identification of ever more precise risk groups or environmental idiosyncrasies eventually becomes theoretically restrictive, leading to an overestimation of the uniqueness of sexual enclaves, and of the difference between any given enclave and the broader social milieu. Using a theoretical framework of transgression to interpret the interdisciplinary literature, similarities in the spatial and social organization of collective sex environments are identified. Insights generated from this complementary perspective are then applied to understandings of collective sex: first, the example of male–female (MF) “swingers” is used to illustrate the need to establish, rather than assume, the distinctiveness of each non-normative sexual enclave, and to broaden the conceptualization of context; second, questions are raised about the practicality of interventions in collective sex environments. Finally, new lines of intellectual inquiry are suggested to shed light not just on collective sex but on sociosexual issues more generally, such as increasing protective sexual health behavior or negotiating consent in sexual encounters.
In Badfellas: Crime, Tradition, and New Masculinities, criminologist Simon Winlow explores the ch... more In Badfellas: Crime, Tradition, and New Masculinities, criminologist Simon Winlow explores the changing role of violence and masculine identity in northeast England due to the processes of deindustrialization and globaliza-tion and the arrival of postmodernity. Though his focus ...
Research methods are ideally value-neutralthat is, each method is a potential means of gathering ... more Research methods are ideally value-neutralthat is, each method is a potential means of gathering information about the world-but researchers develop "favorites" and academic disciplines value certain methods over others. The study of human sexuality often requires a researcher to work across disciplinary boundaries, however, and to deploy multiple methods. In my own research, I have used observation, participant observation, multiple in-depth interviews with each participant, one-time interviews, surveys, case studies, archival research, and so on. Each method, I have come to believe, has strengths and weaknesses. We should choose our methods not on tradition ("everyone in anthropology does ethnography" or "if you don't collect quantitative data, no one will take you seriously in sociology") but for their appropriateness for the questions being asked, the research setting, and each researcher's traits, skills, and personality.
Drawing on ethnographic and interview data collected from the United States and Finland on lifest... more Drawing on ethnographic and interview data collected from the United States and Finland on lifestyle (''swinging'') events, this article explores the implicit and explicit rules influencing negotiations for group sex as a type of play. Participants maintain a sense of freedom and spontaneity while acting within situational constraints—ethical expectations, preexplicated rules, implicit rules, and complex negotiations that occur during the play itself either openly or more subtly. Because it has implications for the participants' everyday lives, lifestyle group sex is a phenomenon on the border between games and adult play. Through an analysis of the rules and social contracts arising in group sex, we demonstrate how participants learn to read interactions at group sex events in the way that players learn game systems and how they can and do become ''good players'' in such situations.
Primetime Harem Fantasies: Marriage, Monogamy, and a bit of Feminist Fan-fiction on ABC’s “The B... more Primetime Harem Fantasies: Marriage, Monogamy, and a bit of Feminist Fan-fiction on ABC’s “The Bachelor” (2007) in Third Wave Feminism and Television (edited by M.L. Johnson)
In Dirt, Undress, and Difference: Critical Perspectives on the Body’s Surface, edited by Adeline... more In Dirt, Undress, and Difference: Critical Perspectives on the Body’s Surface, edited by Adeline Masquelier. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (2005)
This article provides a narrative overview of research on HIV/STI risk and collective sexual beha... more This article provides a narrative overview of research on HIV/STI risk and collective sexual behavior based on an inclusive analysis of research on environments where people gather for sexual activity—sex clubs, swingers’ clubs, bathhouses, parks, private sex parties, etc. The aim is to analyze how collective sex has been approached across disciplines to promote conversation across paradigms and suggest new lines of inquiry. Attention to context—such as the location of sex—was a necessary redress to universalizing models of sexual risk-taking behavior, leading to insights rooted in the particularities of each environment and its users. However, the identification of ever more precise risk groups or environmental idiosyncrasies eventually becomes theoretically restrictive, leading to an overestimation of the uniqueness of sexual enclaves, and of the difference between any given enclave and the broader social milieu. Using a theoretical framework of transgression to interpret the interdisciplinary literature, similarities in the spatial and social organization of collective sex environments are identified. Insights generated from this complementary perspective are then applied to understandings of collective sex: first, the example of male–female (MF) “swingers” is used to illustrate the need to establish, rather than assume, the distinctiveness of each non-normative sexual enclave, and to broaden the conceptualization of context; second, questions are raised about the practicality of interventions in collective sex environments. Finally, new lines of intellectual inquiry are suggested to shed light not just on collective sex but on sociosexual issues more generally, such as increasing protective sexual health behavior or negotiating consent in sexual encounters.
In Badfellas: Crime, Tradition, and New Masculinities, criminologist Simon Winlow explores the ch... more In Badfellas: Crime, Tradition, and New Masculinities, criminologist Simon Winlow explores the changing role of violence and masculine identity in northeast England due to the processes of deindustrialization and globaliza-tion and the arrival of postmodernity. Though his focus ...
Research methods are ideally value-neutralthat is, each method is a potential means of gathering ... more Research methods are ideally value-neutralthat is, each method is a potential means of gathering information about the world-but researchers develop "favorites" and academic disciplines value certain methods over others. The study of human sexuality often requires a researcher to work across disciplinary boundaries, however, and to deploy multiple methods. In my own research, I have used observation, participant observation, multiple in-depth interviews with each participant, one-time interviews, surveys, case studies, archival research, and so on. Each method, I have come to believe, has strengths and weaknesses. We should choose our methods not on tradition ("everyone in anthropology does ethnography" or "if you don't collect quantitative data, no one will take you seriously in sociology") but for their appropriateness for the questions being asked, the research setting, and each researcher's traits, skills, and personality.
Drawing on ethnographic and interview data collected from the United States and Finland on lifest... more Drawing on ethnographic and interview data collected from the United States and Finland on lifestyle (''swinging'') events, this article explores the implicit and explicit rules influencing negotiations for group sex as a type of play. Participants maintain a sense of freedom and spontaneity while acting within situational constraints—ethical expectations, preexplicated rules, implicit rules, and complex negotiations that occur during the play itself either openly or more subtly. Because it has implications for the participants' everyday lives, lifestyle group sex is a phenomenon on the border between games and adult play. Through an analysis of the rules and social contracts arising in group sex, we demonstrate how participants learn to read interactions at group sex events in the way that players learn game systems and how they can and do become ''good players'' in such situations.
With a recent burst of feature films, documentaries, and books on strippers, the business of exot... more With a recent burst of feature films, documentaries, and books on strippers, the business of exotic dancing is hotter than ever. Over the last decade there has been a steadily expanding interest in exotic dance, from its role as an" art form" to its benefits as a means of exercise. While the breadth of discussion generated on this topic has expanded, the fundamental debate remains the same: are female strippers empowering themselves or allowing themselves to be exploited? With her follow-up to Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of ...
Uploads
Papers by Katherine Frank