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There has been a vast proliferation of categories, descriptors and labels used to describe gender and sexual identity over the past few years, with terms now numbering in the hundreds. Many terms, such as heteroflexible, asexual, demigirl and sapiosexual actively contest masculine/feminine and hetero/homo binary arrangements of identity, and LGBTQ minority rights discourses and arguably represent an epochal shift in gender/sexual knowledge frameworks. The cultural conditions that make such change possible have yet to be explored. This paper draws on theoretical approaches to populism to analyse the role of popular culture, digital communication and contestation of institutional and expert knowledges in driving the emergence of new gender and sexual terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author talks about the role played by mass media in sexual advice by referring to the book "Mediated Intimacy" by Meg-John Barker, Rosalind Gill, and Laura Harvey. Topics discussed include the representation of men and women in media, female sexuality in context with television programs such as "Girls", "Fleabag" and "Insecure", an increase in the representation of LGBT people and relationships in mainstream media, and heteronormativity.

The author talks about interactions between masculinity, sex, and sexuality by referring to several fields of study including sociology, sports and health studies, and media and cultural studies. Topics discussed include the conference Doing Sex: Men, Masculinity and Sexual Practices Conference held at the Newcastle University, England in July 2017, porn consumption, and shaming as a mechanism for social and personal control.

Drawing on a comparative ethnography of four small US cities with growing lesbian populations, this article explicates the gap between lesbian, bisexual, and queer female (LBQ) individuals’ expectations (before moving) and experiences (after relocation). The article asks how prospective LBQ migrants encounter knowledge of lesbian-friendly reputations, and, once encountered, why they are so powerful. Four mechanisms communicate lesbian-friendly reputations and make them particularly dominant, with different mechanisms doing this work to different degrees in different cases. First, some of the sites are situated in regions that possess lesbian-friendly reputations; prospective migrants attend to regional reputation, missing the heterogeneity of places within a region. Second, facts and figures mislead; while LBQ migrants conduct background research before relocating, their attention to facts and figures related to lesbian-friendliness, such as the proportion of lesbian couples, out politicians, and marriage votes, distracts from knowledge of on the ground LBQ ties and identities. Third, much initial contact with place is with heterosexuals. Many such actors – realtors, business owners, institutional ambassadors – go out of their way to present a place as lesbian-friendly to prospective migrants. Yet, such individuals are often unaware of or otherwise fail to communicate the particularities of LBQ culture in their city. A final force is the belief that a certain set of cities belong in a “lesbian-friendly” category with corresponding expectations of cultural homogeneity. Cumulatively, the article highlights the (sometimes obscuring) power of place reputation, underlines gaps between place reputation and identities on the ground, and advances knowledge of the heterogeneity and place-specificity of contemporary LBQ identities and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on research funded by the National Union of Students, which explored women students’ experiences of ‘lad culture’ through focus groups and interviews. We found that although laddism is only one of various potential masculinities, for our participants it dominated the social and sexual spheres of university life in problematic ways. However, their objections to laddish behaviours did not support contemporary models of ‘sexual panic’, even while oppugning the more simplistic celebrations of young women’s empowerment which have been observed in debates about sexualization. We argue that in their ability to reject ‘lad culture’, our respondents expressed a form of agency which is often invisibilized in sexualization discussions and which could be harnessed to tackle some of the issues we uncovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a progressive Constitution and affirming legislation, sexual and gender minorities experience discrimination in South Africa. This reflects the ongoing impact of heteronormativity, ‘culture’ arguments and violence in suppressing non-normative sexual and gender identities. In the present study we conducted interviews with eight young, lesbian women and gay men in eThekwini municipality in KwaZulu-Natal province. Three major themes emerged: Language and constructions of gender and sexuality; Experiences of homophobia; and Challenging ‘culture’ arguments. Participants tended to replicate heteronormativity and traditional understandings of gender in their lives; they experienced homophobia and homophobic violence; and they challenged homophobic ‘culture’ arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Female sexuality is a highly policed domain within many societies with women and girls being violated daily in relation to performing their gendered and sexual identities. This article explores the politics of inner labia elongation, and the socially constructed notions of genital beauty through the lens of gendered violence. It highlights the silences around sexual pleasure and desire for Basotho women through discussing the importance of labial elongation in the construction of sexual identities. It presents the challenges that women face as they negotiate the spaces between the social constructions of proper womanhood and female sexualities within a hetero-patriarchal society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Material queer analyses argue the urgent need to reincorporate class to comprehend sexual (re)formations in advanced capitalism, and some theorists propose a revitalized historical materialism as a framework for doing this. In contrast, this article illuminates the significance of class for late modern sexualities by taking a ‘cultural’ approach to the issue. By analysing gay men’s personal accounts of class (dis-)identification that were told in interviews in Britain, the article elucidates the ways in which class and sexuality were articulated as intertwined, and how class and gay identities were constructed relationally through each other. Specifically, it generates insights into the performativities of classed gay identities; the differential value attached to working- and middle-class identities; and how narratives of (dis)identification often articulate gay and working class identities as relational ‘Others’. Contrary to some theoretical and popular notions of gay identities as classless, my analysis shows that class identities can be centrally important to gay ones. While the relationship between gay classed identities and socio-economic positioning is not straightforward, such identities illuminate how cultural, social and economic (dis-)incentives promote distancing from ‘working-class’ forms of existence and strong attachments to ‘middle-class’ ones and to the idea of gay class transcendence. Such distancing and attachments are also features of sexualities theory and research that deny the significance of class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the arguments on the local histories pertaining to pornography. It discusses the Finnish tradition of porn regulation, which aims to determine the changing culture of sexually explicit representation concerning to healthy and good sexuality in Nordic countries. It also focuses on the issue of porn regulation with consideration on the role of feminist critique in those that were not influenced by sex wars unlike the U.S.

This article reviews and examines emerging academic approaches to the study of 'sexualized culture'; an examination made necessary by contemporary preoccupations with sexual values, practices and identities, the emergence of new forms of sexual experience and the apparent breakdown of rules, categories and regulations designed to keep the obscene at bay. The article maps out some key themes and preoccupations in recent academic writing on sex and sexuality, especially those relating to the contemporary or emerging characteristics of sexual discourse. The key issues of pornographication and democratization, taste formations, postmodern sex and intimacy, and sexual citizenship are explored in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]