Anti-gender ideology and the depiction of lesbians in the manosphere

Recent far-right and religious fundamentalist coalitions in Europe and the U.S. seek populist support through "anti-gender" rhetoric. These coalitions are in alignment with the manosphere in endorsement of biological essentialism and antifeminist, anti-LGBTQ stances. Based upon an examination of the data gathered for projects examining two manosphere communities (Red Pill and Incel), a clear picture emerges wherein they casually disparage lesbians and conflate lesbians with feminists, unearthing 1970s and 1980s political lesbian writings and discussing them out of context. Ironically, the dissatisfaction with gender relations that drove lesbian separatists at the time drives the manosphere, especially Incel, to be even more misogynistic and violent in service of their feelings of entitlement to women's bodies. This can be understood as part of a backlash against feminist and LGBTQ rights that is empowering fascists using anti-gender rhetoric in their rise to power.

“Don’t fake the big O”: Portrayals of faking orgasm among women in Cosmo and Glamour

Many women report faking orgasm, at least on occasion, during heterosex (i.e., heterosexual sexual activities). The reasons for the practice include validating the skill of a male lover, a way of ending sexual encounters, and to avoid pathologization that is often associated with orgasmic absence. Constructions of heterosex, female sexuality, and sexual pleasure are influenced by multiple sources including the media. However, there is a lack of systematic research on how faking orgasm is presented in the media. This gap in research provided an opportunity to investigate women’s magazines’ portrayals of the practice. Using constructionist thematic analysis, 69 online articles, published by two popular women’s magazines, Cosmopolitan and Glamour, were analyzed. From the examined articles, two major themes emerged: faking as a common practice (especially via women’s first-hand accounts) and instructing the reader not to fake. It is our contention that together the two themes create a distinctly postfeminist portrayal of faking orgasm. On the one hand, the magazines included and highlighted women’s own experiences and reasons for faking orgasm. On the other hand, female readers were instructed to avoid faking in the name of personal responsibility and empowerment. Notably, the magazines omitted any discussion of gender power relations in their appeals for choice and sexual agency. Overall, this study expands our understanding of women magazines’ contradictory portrayals of women’s sexuality, sexual pleasure, and navigation of its absence.

From ignorance to knowledge: Sexual consent and queer stories

The problem of sexual assault has received increasing public attention over the last few years, with an increasing focus on the concept of sexual consent to solve the problem. Education efforts focus on teaching people what consent is and how to explicitly communicate about sex, constructing consent as a knowledge problem. Using the stories of queer adults, this study calls for the development of an epistemology of sexual consent. I argue that the current research and scholarship fail to recognise existing knowledge about sexual consent, relegating sexual consent to an epistemology of ignorance. Queer participants in this study demonstrated sophisticated knowledge of sexual consent through their talk on the role of verbal consent cues and articulating how they “tune in” to their partners during sex. Within their talk, verbal consent was sometimes viewed as essential to consent, while at times was not necessary, and at other times was not enough to understand a partner's sexual consent. Importantly, they described deep knowledge about partners’ comfort, discomfort or hesitation through “tuning in”. Developing an epistemology of sexual consent requires recognising and valuing what participants tell us about what they know about their partners’ willingness to engage in sex.

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t”: Women’s accounts of feigning sexual pleasure

Faking orgasm has been identified as a common practice among women and feminist scholars have probed the connections between the socio-cultural meanings associated with faking and heterosex. Expanding on this line of inquiry, feigning sexual pleasure was explored in interviews with 14 women who reported having sex with men. Using a feminist critical discourse analytic approach, we attend to the dilemma that was frequently evoked in women’s accounts. Participants explained that feigning sexual pleasure was done in order to protect their partners’ ego. However, participants also talked about faking orgasm as being problematic in the sense that it was “deceitful” and “dishonest”. These contrasting discursive patterns created a dilemma whereby faking was situated as “necessary” but “dishonest”. As a way of negotiating this dilemma, participants made a distinction between exaggerating sexual pleasure and faking orgasm. We posit that exaggeration can be interpreted as a form of material (during the sexual encounter) and discursive (during accounting of the encounter) disruption of dominant discourses of heterosex such as the orgasmic imperative. Drawing on Annamarie Jagose’s and Hannah Frith’s problematizations of the prevailing tendency to position orgasm as either “authentic” or “fake”, we discuss women’s negotiation of the limited constructions of “real” pleasure.