Vol. 4: No. 3: 2022

Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment in Digital Spheres: Connecting Intersectionality and Digitality

Abstract

Gender, sexuality and embodiment in digital spheres have been increasingly studied from various critical perspectives: From research highlighting the articulation of intimacies, desires, and sexualities in and through digital spaces to theoretical explorations of materiality in the digital realm. With such a high level of (inter)disciplinarity, theories, methods, and analyses of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in relation to digital spheres have become highly diversified. Aiming to reflect this diversity, this special issue brings together innovative and newly developed theoretical, empirical, analytical, and critical approaches in the study of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in digital spheres. By connecting intersectionality and digitality to one another, it adopts an integrated approach that reflects the intricacy and interconnectedness of social categories and markers of difference, privilege, performance, and discrimination. The contributions explore a range of differently situated digital cultural practices, including intimate and sexual experiences with(in) digital media, online self-presentation, expressions of digital resistance, and forms of backlash and online attacks. What connects all these articles, is their critical approach to intersectional inequalities and privileges in relation to digitality, plus their nuanced perspective on gender, sexuality, and embodiment interferentially. The final article is based on a roundtable discussion and aims to encourage interdisciplinary connections and suggests ways of doing research that builds bridges between academia and activism.

Rethinking ‘Sex Robots’: Gender, Desire, and Embodiment in Posthuman Sextech

Abstract

This paper interrogates the posthuman potential of sextech aimed at heterosexual men, positing that advertising and design of products with digital femininities emphasise the possibility for emotional interaction. This work firstly applies pressure to the monolithic conceptualisation of ‘sex robots’, that impedes rigorously appraising existing sextech constructions. Applying posthuman theory to sextech, particularly critical posthumanism and the formative work of Donna Haraway, affords this investigation the theoretical rigour to reflect on the potential for emotional interaction with digital feminised others. Through digital media analysis, this paper explores three gendered-female technologies: Azuma Hikari, (2020); the RealdollX Application (2020) and VirtualMate (2020) alongside their concomitant promotional material. This research illustrates that the complex convergence of interactive technologies, digital feminities and emotive advertising suggests a shift into posthuman sextech – where digital feminities are designed and advertised as capable of providing erotic and emotive interaction.

A Virtual Safe Space? An Approach of Intersectionality and Social Identity to Behavior in Virtual Environments

Abstract

Health measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic have confined millions to their homes and minimized social contacts. During this period, a significant proportion of social activities—including work, education, and recreation—moved to digital media platforms. Among these platforms, social virtual reality (VR) has gained importance offering “alternative” realities in which users can engage with others, participate in cultural and sports events, complete education-related activities, and (mental) health treatments, to name but a few functions. With the increasing popularity of social VR and the expanding range of activities these platforms can host, hitherto-unexplored questions arise regarding social interactions and the representation of virtual bodies. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to outline a potential framework for assessing how avatars that represent various body types and demographic characteristics, such as gender or ethnicity, may impact behaviors and identity. The paper presents a theoretical study that combines social identity theory and theories of intersectionality and applies them to the case of digitally created human-like bodies. By doing this, it illuminates the challenges and benefits virtual reality platforms and digital body representations hold—including remote social interactions due to social isolation and social dynamics based on online personas.

Towards an Entrepreneurial Ethics of Desire? LGBTQ Location-based Dating/Hook-up Apps and the Configurations of Sexual-affective Relationships Among Gay Men in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on how changes in digital sociability practices influence on the affective and sexual relationships among gay men in Northeast Brazil. We argue some of these changes are associated with an entrepreneurial ethics of desire, which is a set of desiring and sociability practices influenced by neoliberal imperatives, such as free competition, high selectiveness, meritocracy, economic rationale, utilitarianism, and self-entrepreneurship. In a mediatised reality under platform capitalism, we wonder: by taking on market-oriented practices, how do individuals constitute themselves as differentiated desiring subjects? We seek to elucidate this point by analysing seven in-depth interviews conducted with gay men whose affective-sexual trajectories have been impacted by communication technologies’ transformations in the last three decades. All respondents were gay men between 25-34 years old, residents in Recife’s metropolitan area and were contacted via Grindr. Focused on cultural scripts for sex mediated by digital media and on self-presentation in profiles, we investigate how these individuals negotiate homoerotic sociabilities simultaneously on different social platforms. In an attempt to constitute themselves as “desirable” subjects in digital spheres, these individuals experience several tensions that are triggered by social markers of desire, such as race, class, gender performativity and physicality. Based on an intersectional approach, we aim to identify aspects of what we define as an entrepreneurial ethics of desire. We also propose to investigate whether, in terms of resistance and indiscipline, we can think of an alternative sexual-affective ethics for sociability and desiring practices – namely a queer ethics of desire.

Pushing Intersectionality, Hybridity, and (Inter)Disciplinary Research on Digitality to Its Limits: A Conversation Among Scholars of Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment

Abstract

During the past two decades or so, the emergence and ever-accelerating development of digital media have sparked scholarly interest, debates, and complex challenges across many disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. Within this diverse scholarship, the research on digitality, gender, sexuality, and embodiment has contributed substantially to many academic fields, such as media studies, sociology, religion, philosophy, and education studies. As a part of the special issue “Gender, Sexuality, and Embodiment in Digital Spheres: Connecting Intersectionality and Digitality,” this roundtable consists of a conversation between five researchers from different (inter)disciplinary locations, all addressing matters of methodology, intersectionality, positionality, and theory in relation to the topics of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in digital spheres. Said roundtable begins with a critical self-positioning of the participants’ (inter)disciplinary and embodied locations using examples from their own research. The conversation then progresses to how these researchers have employed contemporary theories, conceptual vocabularies, methods, and analyses of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in digital spheres to then conclude with some ethico-political notes about collaborations between scholars and (digital) activists.