Sexual Fantasies
At the Convergence of the Cultural and the Individual
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the Author
- About the Book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: At the Convergence of the Cultural and the Individual
- Secret gardens
- Chapters and contributors
- References
- Feminism and Sexual Fantasy: Reading and Defending Fifty Shades of Grey as Pornography
- History and context
- But what is pornography, really?
- Ana’s/reader agency
- Depictions of abuse and BDSM
- Pornographic tactics and pornotopia
- Conclusions
- References
- Written Fantasies: A Case of Language-Induced Sexual Excitement
- Introduction
- Sexual words
- Female cum in my corpus of written amateur erotica
- Maximum visibility in filmed pornography
- ‘Real’ vs. faked female sexual pleasure and the effortless orgasm
- Eroticisation of female bodily fluids – a feast of consumption
- Written depictions of the female cum: authorship and readership
- Female cum in sexual fantasy
- References
- Making the Fantasy: Consumption, Relationships, and the RealDoll
- Normalisation of the doll in popular culture
- The RealDoll: creating the ideal
- Making the fantasy real: what is available
- What purchasers see: making the fantasy come to life
- Objectification and consumption of the human
- Concluding thoughts
- References
- The Politics of Sexual Fantasies: The Inversion of Sexual Fantasies in Orientalism and Occidentalism
- Sexual stereotypes of the Other
- The veil and the colonial gaze
- The harem: within the forbidden sexual space
- Western erotica of the Orient
- Oriental sexualities
- Postcolonial deconstructions: the example of the veil
- Islamism and the promiscuous Occident
- Foucault reassessed and final reflections
- References
- Blocking out Sexual Fantasies for a Fantasy of Eternal Sex: Islamist Views
- Islam as an institution for sexual discipline
- Sexual fantasies from an activist perspective
- Therapeutic solution
- Paradise and sex
- Summary
- References
- Fantasies Becoming Practice: BDSM as Ritual
- Introduction
- Background
- Gender and fantasy
- BDSM – where your dreams come true?
- Playing with taboos
- Personal fantasies become collective rituals
- BDSM – both fantasy and reality
- References
- Documenting Fantasy and Expanding Reality in Queer Pornography
- Introduction to the films
- Validating queer reality
- BDSM as reparative criticism
- A zone of experimentation
- References
- Fantasies Becoming Illegal: The Manga Case, Child Porn Law, and the Regulation of the Sexual Mind
- Background
- Theoretical framework
- A criminalisation of the mind?
- The Manga case
- Concluding discussion
- References
- Johns’ Fantasies of ‘the Prostitute’
- Forbidden fruit
- Space and place
- Curiosity and sexual variation
- Another kind of sex
- The girlfriend experience
- The fantasy of the kind-hearted comforter
- Fantasies of another kind of woman
- Concluding comments
- References
- Just Faking It? Pretend Theory Meets Sexual Fantasising
- The great pretenders
- Why believe in Pretend Theory?
- Real emotional responding to fictions
- A radically enactive take on sexual fantasising with real emotions
- Sexual arousal as a basic emotion
- Full emotional spectrums and fantastical manners
- The final analysis
- References
- Sexual Fantasies in Sexological Psychotherapeutic Settings
- Theories for the practice
- Recent research on sexual fantasies and psychodynamic therapy
- Case vignettes
- Case 1
- Case 2
- Case 3
- Case 4
- Why and how sexual fantasies matter in sexually oriented psychotherapy
- References
- Contributors
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There are a number of foundations, institutions, and individuals that have been helpful in the work with this volume. First of all, we would like to thank our contributors, who throughout the process have dedicated themselves not only to researching and writing their respective chapters to the volume, but also to offering insightful response to the other contributions and to the volume as a whole. Sven-Axel Månsson kindly read and commented on the introduction in its final stages. In addition, we would like to thank those contributors who travelled far to participate in the workshops that were arranged during the project, and Ylva Hernlund who worked efficiently with language revision of all our texts. Any remaining mistakes are not due to her reading. Our colleagues at our respective home departments at Malmö University and Stockholm University have provided stimulating scholarly environments.
This volume is produced in association with the newly started Center for Sexology and Sexuality Studies at Malmö University. The two workshops – one in Skanör, the other in Vitemölla – were generously supported by the Department of Social Work at Health and Society, Malmö University, and the Crafoord Foundation. We are deeply grateful for this support.
Finally, and as always, our warmest thanks go to our families.
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Introduction: At the Convergence of the Cultural and the Individual
Fantasy and imagination are vital parts of what makes us human beings. Our capacity to form mental images or concepts of things that are not actually present, together with our ability to let our minds and imaginations wander, aid us in our everyday lives. Although we can fantasise about many different things – from positive daydreaming about more or less attainable goals to nightmare visions about accidents or illnesses – one significant aspect of fantasy has to do with our sexual worlds. Sexual fantasies might be shameful or embarrassing, they might create awkwardness in real-life situations, or a questioning of one’s own sexual identity, but they might also be rich and rewarding, a path that leads to exploration, self-discovery, and pleasure. Moreover, they contain a weird paradox: on the one hand, they are the most private and secretive in people’s lives (some never admit their sexual fantasies even to a partner who is very close); on the other hand, they are both shared by many and, in some way, dependent on a world that supplies structures, images, symbols, narratives, and so on, that can be deployed in various ways within those fantasies. On the one hand, fantasies emanate from the individual; on the other, they are produced in interaction with the world around us.
Using the terminology from sexual script theory by Simon and Gagnon (e.g., 2005[1973]; 1986), one could say that sexual fantasies are the place where the cultural scenario and the intrapsychic script converge and/or conflict. Sociologists Simon and Gagnon presented the sexual script theory in the early 1970s, and developed it through the years to come. ‘Script’ is a metaphor for how sexuality is not biologically determined but shaped in and by a social context. From an early age, individuals form their perception of sexuality through various bits and pieces of information; through taboos and misapprehensions; through sex education and other informational materials; through glimpses snatched from films, literature, and real life; through experiences and feelings aroused by erotica or pornography. Simon and Gagnon describe scripting as occurring on three different levels. The first one is that of the intrapsychic, or individual, scripts. At first glance, this is where sexual fantasies are located – they are a ‘symbolic reorganization of reality in ways that make it complicit in realizing more fully the actor’s many-layered and sometimes multivoiced wishes’ (Simon & Gagnon 1986: 99). As personal, private, ← 9 | 10 → and (often) secret parts of the self, sexual fantasies quite definitely belong within the intrapsychic scripts. The second level is that of the interpersonal scripts – here, two or more people interact in accordance with both expected codes of conduct within sexual activity and with their own intrapsychic scripts. As Simon and Gagnon explain it, the scripts in this case are rather a kind of template or a set of instructions for improvisation. For instance, that sex is ‘supposed to’ begin with kissing and petting in order to continue on to penetration and intercourse, is such a template within which two or more people can improvise. Included in the interpersonal script is everything from flirting to post-coital behaviour.
The cultural scenario is the third level. This is at once quite abstract and quite concrete: the cultural scenario provides the information from which individuals piece together their knowledge about sex, the inspiration for the personal, intrapsychic scripts, as well as a backdrop – or even a stage – for our interpersonal scripts. It is both a contemporary social context and a historical legacy of cultural tradition.
Details
- Pages
- 222
- Publication Year
- 2015
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783631649404
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783653040326
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9783653989731
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783653989748
- DOI
- 10.3726/978-3-653-04032-6
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2015 (March)
- Keywords
- sexuality fantasy culture erotica
- Published
- Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2015. 222 pp., 6 b/w fig.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
