Browse

Abstract

Although there is abundant research regarding group sex between men, much of the current literature constructs group sex as homogenous and overlooks the nuance of how and why men engage in particular sexual behaviors. Accordingly, this research expands our understanding of group sex by focusing on a specific type of sex: the threesome. The results demonstrate how perspectives on threesomes may develop over time; at first appearing exciting before becoming relatively normalized and indistinct from dyadic sex. Encounters and exposure are fostered through the sexual opportunities available, in particular, geo-social networking apps. Despite their normalization, threesomes are not necessarily viewed as risk free. Thus, this research offers insight and understanding into how gay men engage in group sex and the contextual factors which make it possible.

Abstract

Outside of bodybuilding, queer women in fitness and exercise cultures have received little attention in popular discourse and academic research. In this article, I examine how queer use of gym space can inform and reify a queer identity, specifically the enactment of queer female masculinity. I use Jack Halberstam's work on female masculinity and literature in the fields of cultural studies and sport studies to discuss how queer identity, space, and power operate on the body in the context of fitness culture.

Abstract

This article examines the temporal and phenomenological philosophies of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Paolo Virno, specifically in relation to the transmedia franchises of the Japanese game studio, Type-Moon. Against linear, national, and majoritarian grand narratives of the historical, the otaku artists, writers, and developers responsible for the Fate series postulate whether it is possible to harness the intense and affective forces described by Jay Lampert as “the Joan of Arc effect” in the blink of an eye or in the palm of your hand. Through a philosophical and formal analysis of three spinoff series from the Fate franchise, this article investigates how Type-Moon's deployment of the “anime machine” encourages its viewers and users to see and feel the abundance of flowing “nomadic memories” or counter-historical visions from the perspective of minor populations. Through this highly embodied and tactile experience of transhistorical (un)becomings, Type-Moon's series offer a deterritorialized, post-national world-image of the otaku database which mediates between the overloading affects of becoming-woman and the digitally encoded logic of transversal through the frames, windows, interfaces, devices, platforms, and bodies that constitute Type-Moon's vibrant anime ecology.

Abstract

As millions of customers across the world invite digital voice assistants into their homes, the public debate has increasingly centered on security and privacy concerns connected to the use of the device. Drawing on Tania Bucher's work at the intersection between technology and everyday experience, this article proposes an understanding of an algorithmic imaginary of Alexa-enabled devices as explicitly nonthreatening in its ordinariness, positive potential, and gendered presence. As a case study, this article uses commercials for Alexa-enabled devices as a starting point: Instead of foregrounding the functionality and thereby the algorithmic intelligence underlying the voice assistant, these commercials focus on an affective potential as a narrative strategy to address privacy and security concerns. By connecting everyday interactions with emotional and empowering narratives, the way Alexa is portrayed as an embodied object functions as a balance to the equally public and publicized understanding of digital voice assistants as threats.

Aria S. Halliday (ed.). 2019. The Black Girlhood Studies Collection. Toronto: Women's Press.

Abstract

During the early part of the twentieth century, Black girls in the United States attended Young Women's Christian Associations (YWCAs) where they received instruction in sports and physical activity. Using archival research, in this article I examine the role of swimming in Black girls’ sports and physical activity practices in Northern YWCAs. With a focus on the construction of Black girlhood, health, and embodiment, I trace how girls navigated spatial segregation, beauty ideals, and athleticism. I highlight the experiences of Black girl swimmers—subjects who have often been rendered invisible in the historical and contemporary sporting landscape.

Abstract

This article applies materialist rhetoric to Christopher Nolan's 2000 neo-noir film Memento and positions its protagonist Leonard Shelby, a man with a brain injury that prevents him from making new memories, as a figure of mētis: a classical concept addressing the cunning ability to respond to the contingent, kairotic moment by engaging situations through a reciprocal process of change. As evidence for its assertion, the article examines Leonard's relationship to his shifting bodily archive of tattoos, handwritten notes, and annotated Polaroid pictures. It also aligns him with the ancient hero Odysseus and the sophistic rhetorician Gorgias, two classical exemplars of mētis. Leonard's mētic existence informs how contemporary selves emerge from networks of objects both physical and virtual.

Abstract

In this contribution, I consider some appreciative links and qualified connections between Raewyn Connell's work and my own. In particular, I use the example of sport, a key area in the making of boys and young men in many parts of the world, with special reference to body, practice, and theoretical and empirical conceptualizations of masculinity.