Academic literature on the topic 'Homosexual fantasy'

The intent of this study was to obtain data on the incidence and types of sexual fantasies of homosexuals and heterosexuals as identified by an original Sexual Fantasy Questionnaire. Participants were 142 subjects, 72 heterosexual college students (39 men and 33 women) and 70 homosexuals (39 men and 31 women) associated with gay students' organizations. Analysis of responses to the 34 sexual fantasies led to conclusions that the 10 most common sexual fantasies differed between heterosexual and homosexual men more than between heterosexual and homosexual women. Fifteen sexual fantasies were significantly different between the groups of men, with 7 fantasies reported more often by the homosexual men. Only 8 fantasy items were significantly different between the groups of women, with 2 fantasies reported more often by the homosexual women.

Growing interest in the archive as an object of study for queer criticism justifies closer attention to the concept of provenance. For archivists, provenance imparts a fundamental measure of integrity to archival collections by certifying their origin and proper order. Record origin and order, however, rely on authorial identity to establish authenticity, placing provenance in tension with queer theories that describe subjectivity as polymorphous, not fixed. That tension leads Roger Casement's official reports on the atrocities committed against rubber gatherers in South America to use provenance as a credible—rather than strictly authentic—narrative structure for publicizing British investigations of imperial violence. Recognizing provenance as a practice of representation invites reconsideration of Casement's notorious private diaries, which document his sexual interest in large penises. Instead of simply providing evidence of homosexual identity, the diaries show how impersonal fantasy becomes a constituent part of archival practice.

Objetivo: determinar la relación entre la variable de funcionamiento familiar e identidad sexual enestudiantes adolescentes de instituciones educativas de Lima. Metodología: diseño no experimental,enfoque cuantitativo, de corte transversal y de tipo correlacional. Para la medición de la variable defuncionamiento familiar se utilizó la escala de Family Assessment Device (FAD) elaborado por Epsteinet al (1983); y la para la medición de la variable identidad sexual se utilizó Cuestionario de exploraciónde identidad sexual (CEIS), elaborado por León, Chaigneau, Rodríguez y Peña (2014). La muestraestuvo compuesta por 285 estudiantes que cursan el tercer, cuarto y quinto año del nivel secundario.Resultados: Se encontró relación negativa entre el nivel de funcionamiento familiar y la dimensiónfantasía/ conducta homosexual (rho= -.003; p>.05). Asimismo, no se encontró relación altamentesignificativa entre el funcionamiento familiar y la dimensión acuerdo con su sexo (rho = -.072; p< .01).Sin embargo, se encontró relación positiva altamente significativa con la dimensión fantasía/ conductaheterosexual (rho= .177; p> .01), es decir, cuánto mayor sea el funcionamiento familiar mayor será lafantasía/ conducta heterosexual. Conclusión: Existe relación negativa entre funcionamiento familiary la dimensión conducta homosexual, sin embargo se encontró relación positiva entre funcionamientofamiliar y la dimensión conducta heterosexual.

There has been a lot of ink spilled lately regarding the various symptoms generated in French intellectual, cultural, and political life by a malady diagnosed as the triumph of neoliberalism and American consumerism at the end of the Cold War. In recent years, some French scholars afflicted with the disease have revisited and revised well-worn political models, and others returned defensively to the tradition of French secular republicanism as an antidote to “multiculturalism” and “communitarianism” (what Americans would call identity politics), which French authors often envision as American imports. This defensiveness on both the French left and right responds to the apparent exhaustion of nationalism, of revolutionary ideals, and of French identity. Joan Scott's recent book onThe Fantasy of Feminist Historydoes a particularly incisive job of revealing the various investments in secular republicanism as themselves forms of sexism and racism or nostalgia, especially on the right. She cites a discussion in which Mona Ozouf, Phillipe Raynaud, and others argue that the particularly “French” form of “seduction” and heterosexual coupling encourages men to exercise dominance through gallantry if they want to win over women. Gallantry civilizes society by using sexual difference as armor against an imagined leveling and sameness represented by those who cannot understand seduction as a means metaphorically of reconciling the differences that inevitably arise in democracies—feminists, “militant homosexuals,” and Muslims who refuse to play by French rules. Here the play of difference relies on a rigid gender difference—and the subordination of women—that sells itself as natural and quintessentially French.

En 2014, Alain Guiraudie a publié son premier roman Ici commence la nuit (Prix Sade). Ce roman intervient à un moment opportun dans deux débats qui préoccupent les théoriciens “queer” aujourd'hui. Guiraudie écrit en réaction à l’asexualité ressentie des théories queer et aux accusations d’abstraction, de désincarnation et d’institutionnalisation qui leur sont faites. Il écrit aussi en réaction à la trajectoire principalement dystopique du “queer”, comme illustrée en particulier par le travail de Lee Edelman. Dans ce papier, j’affirme que Guiraudie a un rôle à jouer dans le futur et dans le potentiel de la littérature comme fantasme, pour réinventer les dynamiques du désir et de la pratique “queer”. Je démontrerai que l’originalité de Guiraudie réside dans la façon dont il redonne à l’homosexualité sa part de sexualité en vue de traverser les modalités sexuelles dominantes de relationalité, de monogamie et de narcissisme. À travers la pratique du “cruising”, du sadisme, de la renonciation de soi (rédemption) et de l’ascétisme, Guiraudie explore les contours d’un désir homosexuel durable, au-delà des pratiques sexuelles, de la personne et du corps. Au niveau méthodologique, l’article s’inspire du travail de Leo Bersani et de son concept de relationalité impersonnelle, ainsi que des trois aspects de la jouissance lacanienne : la jouissance comme manque (castration), la jouissance féminine (jouissance comme autre) et jouissance comme lalangue, moteur lacanien de l’inconscient.

Over the last decade or so, much has been written about the possibilities offered by the internet for creating sites of community based on exchange, collaboration, and reciprocity. Since Howard Rheingold published his polemic, The Virtual Community, in 1993, much has been written on this subject. The notion of just what constitutes ‘virtual reality’ has been extensively debated; however, ‘community’ is almost universally assumed to be good. There are failed communities and successful communities, but the critique of ‘community’ itself as a concept stops there. How, then, do we account for websites that create a sense of community precisely through the promotion of hatred and violence, and on which hatred of others is what the community ‘has in common’? Community as Good: The Origins of Virtual Community The term ‘community’ suggests communication; indeed, the work derives from the Latin communicare, which, as Peter Gould explains, ‘originally meant to share, to join and to unite” (3), and from which is also derived the verb ‘to communicate.’ Hence, accounts of online culture draw on this definition of community, suggesting that computer technology brings people together by allowing them to communicate. Such proximity is, therefore, privileged over geophysical location. In recent debates about cyber-culture, definitions of online community tend to define community through the concept of ‘shared interests’. What is more, some accounts of cyber-culture share a certain view of online community as inherently liberating. The Bad Community: God Hates Fags God Hates Fags is perhaps one of the best-known far-right sites on the Web. It is a non-interactive website, set up and maintained by Benjamin Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, in association with his grandfather Fred Phelps, who originally founded the church in 1964. Phelps first achieved notoriety in 1991 when he organised a picket of the San Francisco Pride Parade, to ‘warn this evil city that they’re going the way of Sodom’. In 1997, the church’s members were ordered by the American Supreme Court to limit their picketing activities after they targeted a local Episcopalian church that they claimed had promoted gay rights. Since the ruling, church members have continued their campaign of homophobic picketing. However, it is as an online promoter of homophobia and other forms of hatred that Phelps has achieved notoriety on an international scale. On paper, Westboro Baptist Church’s Website seems like the perfect example of the Net’s utility as a means of giving voice to small, marginalised community groups, and of bringing together people who share ‘a commonality of interests and goals’. However, this, like other Christian fundamentalist sites, challenges the view of such networks as essentially liberating (though they are certainly utopian in tone), since their shared interests happen to include insisting that creationist dogma be taught in schools, picketing the funerals of those who die of Aids or as a result of homophobic attacks, and promoting violence against lesbians and gay men. God Hates Fags sees itself as both a site of community and as a pressure group fighting a desperately immoral liberal society. It also draws on the idea of a society becoming good through the erasure of certain marginalised subjects, with the erasure to take the form of individuals suppressing their sexual identity in real life, not just online. While God Hates Fags and other sites like it primarily express the fantasy of a post-apocalyptic New Jerusalem. They do so by referring to fantasies of the nation (as a space that must be purified in order for this apocalyptic transformation to take place), of the online community (here imagined as a community of haters), and of the local community producing the site (who, far from being a small, marginal force, are re-presented as a community of ‘knowers’ attempting to promote ‘the truth’ about life in the United States: that is, as a force for good). Fantastic communities are often unaware of their own violence, and the community that hates is no exception, although its claims to peacefulness often stretch credulity to a greater than usual extent. Here is Westboro’s description of its ‘peaceful’ protests: WBC engages in daily peaceful sidewalk demonstrations opposing the homosexual lifestyle of soul-damning, nation-destroying filth. We display large, colourful signs containing Bible words and sentiments, including: GOD HATES FAGS, FAGS HATE GOD, AIDS CURES FAGS, THANK GOD FOR AIDS, FAGS BURN IN HELL, GOD IS NOT MOCKED, FAGS ARE NATURE FREAKS [sic] … FAGS DOOM NATIONS, etc. (God Hates Fags) The site’s authors are able to claim such sentiments as ‘non-violent’ precisely because of the way that violence is imagined purely in terms of the physical act; that is, as embodied. Discursive violence, the violence of the text, is not recognised as such. Reading the passages above, I find it hard to maintain any sense of critical distance at the notion of picketing a funeral, and then going online to publicise the activity and exhort others to do the same. The site is frustrating precisely because it assumes the reader’s sympathy. For Phelps, a community of ‘fag haters’ already exists within the wider, corrupt national community of the United States; the site merely serves to unite this community and to provide it with resources. Nevertheless, the statement is itself part of the process by which the site attempts to construct a community through a process of rehabilitation, which aims to re-position hatred of homosexuals both as a political position and as an identity position. The site assumes that the experience of hatred, like that of other extreme emotions, has been wrongly constructed as essentially private, even impossible to articulate. Phelps assures us that it is not, that our hatred (and the reader is always assumed to be on side; the site is never defensive in tone, and never attempts to address its critics) is shared by others. The community exists in the bodies of individuals; by making hatred public and visible, the community can finally become visible in the public domain. This site, and others like it, provide a chilling new perspective on the notion of ‘shared interests’ as a basis for community, as well as giving an insight into the ways in which inequalities might not only translate from geophysical into online communities but actually be heightened, not least by the liberal rhetoric of free speech in which the intended victims of such assaults are urged simply to ignore them, even as they are imposed an ever-increasing number of victims (Porter 234-5). In order to justify their attacks on outsiders, hate sites reproduce discourses of virtual community alongside fundamentalist dogma. So, for example, Westboro Baptist Church claims that it is necessary to draw together a community based on a shared homophobic response in order to protect the larger community of the nation from destruction. In order to construct the virtual community then, it is necessary to mobilise fantasies of the nation as it might be in an ideal world. The community does not simply represent the wider community of the United States; that is, it is not a ‘virtual America.’ Rather, it draws upon a fantasy of the nation as perfectible, and this fantasy assumes a desire to purify the nation by destroying or expelling strangers. Despite the dystopian violence of Phelps’s vision, however, I do not think it is enough to argue that such manifestations are simply an example of a medium with great potential for spiritual growth falling into the wrong hands. Margaret Wertheim seems to predict the use of the Internet to promote hatred when she writes that ‘[t]here is every potential, if we are not careful, for cyberspace to be less like Heaven, and more like Hell’ (298). This reading of virtual culture tends to normalise the idea of a utopian internet community, from which deviations occur only as the result of insufficient vigilance. What is more, the invocation of a group of right-thinking cyber-citizens—the ‘we’ who must be ‘careful’—reproduces the very liberal rhetoric which, as I have argued, tends to perpetuate, or at least obscure, power structures within online communities. Indeed, the notion of ‘the online community’ invoked here seems, ironically, to reproduce the notion of a single unlimited community which, if it is not conterminous with all mankind exactly, is certainly conterminous with all (responsible) users of the internet. As I have shown, it is by drawing on the notions of universality and redemption that underpin utopian theories of cyber-culture that Phelps is able to present his site as a site of community. I would suggest, then, that the notion of a community that has the potential to be good but is constantly under threat from deviant outsiders, is inadequate. Rather, it is necessary to pay attention to the ways in which utopian rhetoric might in itself play a role in reproducing inequalities that exist in society more generally, both online and off. References Gould, P. “Dynamic Structures of Geographic Space.” Collapsing Space and Time: Geographic Aspects of Communications and Information. Eds. S.D. Brunn and T.R. Leinbach. London: HarperCollins, 1991. 3-30. Porter, J.E. “Liberal Individualism and Internet Policy: A Communitarian Critique.” Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st-Century Technologies. Eds. G.E. Hawisher and C.L. Selfe. Logan: Utah State UP, 1999. Rheingold, H. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. HarperPerennial, 1993. 16 Oct. 2002 http://www.well.com/www/hlr/vcbook/index.html>. Wertheim, M. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. London: Virago Press, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ferreday, Debra. "Bad Communities: Virtual Community and Hate Speech." M/C Journal 8.1 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0502/07-ferreday.php>. APA Style Ferreday, D. (Feb. 2005) "Bad Communities: Virtual Community and Hate Speech," M/C Journal, 8(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0502/07-ferreday.php>.

IntroductionJohn Berger provides a compelling analysis in Ways of Seeing on how we’ve been socialized through centuries of art to see women as objects and men as subjects. This way of seeing men and women is more than aesthetic choices but in fact shapes our ideologies of gender. As Berger asserts: “The art of the past no longer exists as it once did… In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose” (33).What happens when there are no historical images that represent your identity? How do others learn to see you? How do you learn to represent yourself? This article addresses the challenges that bisexuals face in constructing and contending with media representations of non-normative sexualities. As Berger suggests: “A people or class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history” (33). This article seeks to apply Berger’s core concepts in Ways of Seeing studying representations of bisexuality in mainstream media. How bisexuality is represented, and therefore observed, shapes what can ultimately be culturally understood and recognized.This article explores how bisexuals use digital media to construct self-representations and brand a bisexual identity. Bisexual representations are particularly relevant to study as they are often rendered invisible by the cultural hegemony of monosexuality. Cultural norms ideologically shape the intelligibility of representation; bisexuality is often misinterpreted when read within the dominant binaries of heterosexuality and homosexuality in Western European culture. This work addresses how users adapt visual, textual, and hyperlinked information in online spaces to create representations that can be culturally recognized. Users want to be seen as bisexuals. The research for this article examined online social spaces created by and for bisexuals between 2013-2015, as well as mainstream media addressing bisexuality or bisexual characters. The social spaces studied included national and regional websites for bisexual organizations, blogs dedicated to bisexual issues and topics, and public bisexual groups on Facebook and Tumblr. Participant observation and semiotic analysis was employed to analyze how bisexual representation was discussed and performed. Learning to See Bisexuality Bisexuality is often constructed within the domain of medical and psychological classification systems as a sexual identity situated between one polarity or the other: between desiring men or desiring women as sexual partners or between being gay or being straight in sexual orientation, as most widely put forth by Alfred Kinsey in the 1950s (Kinsey et al., 1948; e.g., Blumstein, 1977; Diamond, 1993; Weinberg, 1995). This popularly held conception has a particular history that serves to reinforce the normative categories of heterosexuality and monosexuality.This history does not reflect bisexual’s accounts of their own experiences of what it means to be bisexual. Bisexuals in the spaces I study express their sexuality as fluid both in terms of gender (objects of desire do not have to identify as only male or female) as well as in terms of the lifespan (desire based on sex or gender does not have remain consistent throughout one’s life). As one participant remarked: “I think of bisexual as a different orientation from both homosexuals (who orient exclusively towards same-sex romance/sexuality) and heterosexuals (who orient exclusively toward opposite-sex romance/sexuality). Bisexuals seem to think about the world in a different way: a world of ‘AND’ rather than a world of ‘OR’.” Or as another participant noted: “I saw video a couple of months ago that described ‘bi’ as being attracted to ‘same and different sexed people.’ I considered my internal debate settled at that point. Yes, it is binary, but only in the broadest sense.”This data from my research is congruent with data from much larger studies that examined longitudinal psycho-social development of bisexual identities (Klein, 1978; Barker, 2007; Diamond, 2008). Individuals’ narratives of a more “fluid” identity suggest an emphasis at the individual level less about fluctuating between “two” possible types of sexual partners than about a dynamic, complex desire within a coherent self. Nevertheless, popular constructions of bisexuality in media continue to emphasize it within hegemonic monosexual ideologies.Heterosexual relationships are overwhelmingly the most dominant relationship type portrayed in media, and the second most portrayed relationship is homosexuality, or a serial monogamy towards only one gender. This pairing is not only conveying the dominant hegemonic norms of heterosexuality (and most often paired with serial monogamy as well), but it is equally and powerfully reproducing the hegemonic ideal of monosexuality. Monosexuality is the romantic or sexual attraction to members of one sex or gender group only. A monosexual person may identify as either heterosexual or homosexual, the key element being that their sexual or romantic attraction remains consistently directed towards one sex or gender group. In this way, we have all been socialized since childhood to value not only monogamy but monosexuality as well. However, current research on sexuality suggests that self-identified bisexuals are the largest group among non-heterosexuals. In 2011, Dr. Gary Gates, Research Director of the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, analyzed data collected from nine national health surveys from the USA, United Kindgdom, Canada, Australia and Norway to provide the most comprehensive statistics available to date on how many people self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. While the population percentage of LGBT people varied by country, the ratio of lesbian, gay and bisexuals among LGBT people remained consistent, with self-identified bisexuals accounting for 40-60% of all LGBT populations regardless of country. This data is significant for challenging the popular assumption that bisexuals are a small minority among non-heterosexuals; indeed, this data indicates that non-monosexuals represent half of all non-heterosexuals. Yet we have learned to recognize monosexuality as dominant, normal and naturalized, even within LGBT representations. Conversely, we struggle to even recognize relationships that fall outside of this hegemonic norm. In essence, we lack ways of seeing bisexuals, pansexuals, omnisexuals, asexuals, and all queer-identified individuals who do not conform to monosexuality. We quite literally have not learned to see them, or—worse yet—learned how to not see them.Bisexual representations are particularly relevant to study as they are often rendered invisible in cultures that practice monogamy paired with hegemonic monosexuality. Members of bisexual spaces desire to achieve recognition but struggle to overcome bisexual erasure in their daily lives.Misrepresention: The Triad in Popular MediaWhen bisexuality is portrayed in media it is most commonly portrayed in a disingenuous manner where the bisexual is portrayed as being torn between potential lovers, on a pathway from straight to gay, or as a serial liar and cheater who cannot remain monogamous due to overwhelming attractions. Representations of bisexuals in media are infrequent, but those that are available too often follow these inaccurate stereotypes. By far the most common convention for representing bisexuality in visual media is the use of the triad: three people convey the (mis)representation of bisexuality as a sexuality in the “middle” of heterosexuality and homosexuality. For the purpose of this article, data analysis will be limited to print magazines for the sake of length and clarity.The 2014 New York Times Magazine article “The Scientific Quest to Prove Bisexuality Exists” (Denizet-Lewis) addresses the controversial nature of bisexuality. The cover image depicts a close-up of a man’s face, separated into two halves: in one half, a woman is nuzzled up to the man’s cheek, and the other half a man is nuzzled up to his ear. Presumably the man is bisexual and therefore split into two parts: his heterosexual self and his homosexual self. This visual depiction of bisexuality reifies the notion that bisexuals are torn between two polar desires and experience equal and concurrent attraction to more than one partner simultaneously. Furthermore, the triad represented in this way suggests that the essential bisexual is having simultaneous liaisons with heterosexual and homosexual partners.Within the convention of the triad there is also a sub-genre closely connected with hypersexualization and the male gaze. In these cases, the triad is commonly presented in varying states of undress and/or in a bed. An article in The Guardian from 11 April 2014 with the headline: “Make up your mind! The science behind bisexuality” (Browne) includes an image with three attractive young people in bed together. A man is sitting up between two sleeping women and smoking a cigarette – the cigarette connotes post-coital sexual activity, as does the smirk on his face. This may have been a suitable image if the article had been about having a threesome, but the headline—and the article—are attempting to explain the science behind bisexuality. Furthermore, while the image is intended to illustrate an article on bisexuality, the image is fundamentally misleading. The women in the image are asleep and to the side and the man is awake and in the middle. He is the central figure – it is a picture of him. So who is the bisexual in the image? What is the image attempting to do? It seems that the goal is to titillate, to excite, and to satisfy a particularly heterosexual fantasy rather than to discuss bisexuality. This hypersexualization once again references the mistaken idea (or heterosexual male fantasy) that bisexuality is only expressed through simultaneous sex acts.Many of these examples are salacious but they occur with surprising regularity in the mainstream media. On 17 February 2016, the American Association of Retired Persons posted an article to the front page of their website titled “Am I Discovering I'm Bisexual?” (Schwartz, 2016). In the accompanying image at the top of the article, we see three people sitting on a park bench – two men on either side of a woman. The image is taken from behind the bench so we see their backs and ostensibly they do not see us, the viewer. The man on the left is kissing the woman in the center while also holding hands behind the back of the bench with the man sitting on her other side. The man on the right is looking away from the couple kissing, suggesting he is not directly included in their intimate activity. Furthermore, the two men are holding hands behind the bench, which could also be code for behind the woman’s back, suggesting infidelity to the dyad and depicting some form of duplicity. This triad reinforces the trope of the bisexual as promiscuous and untrustworthy.Images such as these are common and range from the more inoffensive to the salacious. The resulting implications are that bisexuals are torn between their internal hetero and homo desires, require simultaneous partners, and are untrustworthy partners. Notably, in all these images it is never clear exactly which individuals are bisexual. Are all three members of the triad bisexual? While this is a possible read, the dominant discourse leads us to believe that one of person in the triad is the bisexual while the others adhere to more dominant sexualities.Participants in my research were acutely aware of these media representations and expressed frequent negative reactions to the implications of the triad. Each article contained numerous online comments expressing frustration with the use of “threesomes.” As one commentator stated: “Without a threesome, we’re invisible. It’s messed up. I always imagine a t-shirt with 3 couples stick figure like: girl + girl, girl + boy, and boy + boy. and it says “6 bisexuals.” What is made clear in many user comments is that the mainstream social scripts used to portray bisexuality are clearly at odds with the ways in which bisexuals choose to describe or portray themselves. Seeing through CapitalismOne of the significant conclusions of this research was the ways in which the misrepresentation of bisexuality results in many individuals feeling underrepresented or made invisible within mainstream media. The most salient themes to emerge from this research is participants’ affective struggle with feeling "invisible.” The frequency of discourse specific to invisibility is significant, as well as its expressed negatively associated experiences and feelings. The public sharing of those reactions among individuals, and the ensuing discourse that emerges from those interactions, include imagining what visibility “looks” like (its semiotic markers and what would make those markers “successful” for visibility), and the articulation of “solutions” to counter perceived invisibility. Notably, participants often express the desire for visibility in terms of commodification. As one participant posted, “their [sic] is no style for bi, there is no voice tone, unless I'm wearing my shirt, how is anyone to know?” Another participant explicated, “I wish there was a look. I wish I could get up every day and put on the clothes and jewelry that identified me to the world when I stepped out of my apartment. I wish I was as visible on the street as I am on facebook.” This longing for a culturally recognizable bisexual identity is articulated as a desire for a market commodification of “bisexual.” But a commodified identity may be a misguided desire. As Berger warns: “Publicity is not merely an assembly of competing messages: it is a language in itself which is always being used to make the same general purpose… It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more” (131). Consumerism—and its bedfellow—marketing, aim to sell the fantasy of a future self whereby the consumer transforms themselves through material objects, not transforming the culture to accept them. Berger further elicits that marketing essentially convinces us that we are not whole the way we are and sells us the idea of a wholeness achieved through consumerism (134). Following Berger’s argument, this desire for a commodified identity, while genuine, may fundamentally undermine the autonomy bisexuals currently have insomuch as without a corporate brand, bisexual representations are more culturally malleable and therefore potentially more inclusive to the real diversity of bisexual identified people.However, Berger also rightly noted that “publicity is the culture of the consumer society. It propagates through images that society’s belief in itself” (139). Without any publicity, bisexuals are not wrong to feel invisible in a consumer culture. And yet “publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy. The choice of what one eats (or wears or drives) takes the place of significant political choice” (149). A commodified identity will not likely usher in meaningful political change in a culture where bisexuals experience worse mental health and discrimination outcomes than lesbian and gay people (LGBT Advisory Committee, 2011). Bisexuals Online: New Ways of SeeingThe Internet, which was touted early as a space of great potential for anonymity and exploration where visibility can be masked, here becomes the place where bisexuals try to make the perceived invisible ‘visible.’ Digital technologies and spaces provide particularly useful environments for participants of online bisexual spaces to negotiate issues of invisibility as participants construct visible identities through daily posts, threads, videos, and discourse in which bisexuality is discursively and visually imagined, produced, articulated, defended, and desired. But most importantly these digital technologies provide bisexuals with opportunities to counter misrepresentations in mainstream media. In the frequent example of intimate partners in the physical world rendering a bisexual’s identity invisible, participants of these online communities grapple with the seeming paradox of one’s offline self as the avatar and one’s online self as more fully integrated, represented, and recognized. One participant expressed this experience, remarking:I feel I'm more out online that offline. That's because, in the offline world there's the whole ''social assumptions'' issue. My co-workers, friends, etc, know I have a boyfriend, wich [sic] equals ''straight'' for most ppl out there. So, I'll out myself when the occasion comes (talking abt smn I used to date, the LGBT youth group I used to belong to, or usually just abt some girl I find attractive) and usually ppl are not surprised. Whereas online, my pic at Facebook (and Orkut) is a Bisexual Pride icon. I follow Bi groups on Twitter. I'm a member of bi groups. So, online it's spelled out, while offline ppl usually think me having a bf means I'm straight.The I Am Visible (IAV) campaign is just one example of an organized response to the perceived erasure of bisexuals in mainstream culture. Launched in January 2011 by Adrienne McCue (nee Williams), the executive director of the Bi Social Network, a non-profit organization aimed at bringing awareness to representations of bisexuality in media. The campaign was hosted on bisocialnetwork.com, with the goal to “stop biphobia and bi-erasure in our community, media, news, and entertainment,” Prior to going live, IAV implemented a six-month lead-up advertising campaign across multiple online bisexual forums, making it the most publicized new venture during the period of my study. IAV hosted user-generated videos and posters that followed the vernacular of coming out and provided emotional support for listeners who may be struggling with their identity in a world largely hostile to bisexuality. Perceived invisibility was the central theme of IAV, which was the most salient theme for every bisexual group I studied online.Perhaps the most notable video and still image series to come out of IAV were those including Emmy nominated Scottish actor Alan Cumming. Cumming, a long-time Broadway thespian and acclaimed film actor, openly identifies as bisexual and has criticized ‘gaystream’ outlets on more than one occasion for intentionally mislabeling him as ‘gay.’ As such, Alan Cumming is one of the most prominently celebrated bisexual celebrities during the time of my study. While there are numerous famous out gays and lesbians in the media industry who have lent their celebrity status to endorse LGBT political messages—such as Ellen DeGeneres, Elton John, and Neil Patrick Harris, to name a few—there have been notably fewer celebrities supporting bisexual specific causes. Therefore, Cummings involvement with IAV was significant for many bisexuals. His star status was perceived as contributing legitimacy to bisexuality and increasing cultural visibility for bisexuals.These campaigns to become more visible are based in the need to counteract the false media narrative, which is, in a sense, to educate the wider society as to what bisexuality is not. The campaigns are an attempt to repair the false messages which have been “learnt” and replace them with more accurate representations. The Internet provides bisexual activists with a tool with which they can work to correct the skewed media image of themselves. Additionally, the Internet has also become a place where bisexuals can more easily represent themselves through a wide variety of semiotic markers in ways which would be difficult or unacceptable offline. In these ways, the Internet has become a key device in bisexual activism and while it is important not to uncritically praise the technology it plays an important role in enabling correct representation. ReferencesBarker, Meg. "Heteronormativity and the Exclusion of Bisexuality in Psychology." Out in Psychology: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Perspectives. Eds. Victoria Clarke and Elizabeth Peel. Chichester: Wiley, 2007. 86–118.Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books, 1972.Blumstein, Phillip W., and Pepper Schwartz. “Bisexuality: Some Social Psychological Issues.” Journal of Social Issues 33.2 (1977): 30–45.Browne, Tania. “Make Up Your Mind! The Science behind Bisexuality.” The Guardian 11 Apr. 2014.Denizet-Lewis, Benoit. "The Scientific Quest to Prove Bisexuality Exists." New York Times 20 Mar. 2014.Diamond, Lisa. Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire. Harvard UP, 2008.Diamond, Milton. “Homosexuality and Bisexuality in Different Populations.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 22.4 (1993): 291-310.Gates, Gary J. How Many People Are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender? Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, 2011.Kinsey, Alfred, et al. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1953.Klein, Fitz. The Bisexual Option. London: Routledge, 1978.Leland, J. “Not Gay, Not Straight: A New Sexuality Emerges.” Newsweek 17 July 1995: 44–50.Schwartz, P. “Am I Discovering I Am Bisexual?” AARP (2016). 20 Mar. 2016 <http://aarp.org/home-family/sex-intimacy/info-2016/discovering-bisexual-schwartz.html>.

A slash manip is a photo remix that montages visual signs from popular media with those from gay pornography, creating a new cultural artefact. Slash (see Russ) is a fannish practice that homoeroticises the bonds between male media characters and personalities—female pairings are categorised separately as ‘femslash’. Slash has been defined almost exclusively as a female practice. While fandom is indeed “women-centred” (Bury 2), such definitions have a tendency to exclude male contributions. Remix has been well acknowledged in discussions on slash, most notably video remix in relation to slash vids (Kreisinger). Non-written slash forms such as slash vids (see Russo) and slash fanart (see Dennis) have received increased attention in recent years. This article continues the tradition of moving beyond fiction by considering the non-written form of slash manips, yet to receive sustained scholarly attention. Speaking as a practitioner—my slash manips can be found here—I perform textual analysis from an aca–fan (academic and fan) position of two Merlin slash manips by male Tumblr artist wandsinhand. My textual analysis is influenced by Barthes’s use of image semiotics, which he applies to the advertising image. Barthes notes that “all images are polysemous”, that underlying their signifiers they imply “a ‘floating chain’ of signifieds, the reader able to choose some and ignore others” (274). That said, the advertising image, he argues, constructs an “undoubtedly intentional […] signification”, making it ideally suited for analysis (270). By supplementing my analysis with excerpts from two interviews I conducted with wandsinhand in February and April 2013 (quoted here with permission), I support my readings with respect to the artist’s stated ‘intentional reading’. I then contextualise these readings with respect to canon (Merlin) representations and gay pornography—via the chosen sexual acts/positions, bukkake and doggystyle, of the pornographic base models, as selected by the artist. This approach allows me to examine the photo remix qualities of slash manips with respect to the artist’s intentions as well as how artistic choices of inclusion function to anchor meaning in the works. I describe these choices as the ‘semiotic significance of selection’. Together the readings and interviews in this article help illustrate the value of this form and the new avenues it opens for slash scholars, such as consideration of photo remix and male production, and the importance of gay pornography to slash. My interviews also reveal, via the artist’s own assessment of the ‘value’ of his practice, a tendency to devalue or overlook the significance of this particular slash form, affirming a real need for further critical engagement with this under-examined practice. Slash Photo Remix: Famous Faces, Porny Bodies Lessig defines remix culture as based on an activity of “rip, mix and burn” (12–5); while Navas describes it as a “practice of cut/copy and paste” (159)—the latter being more applicable to photo remix. Whereas Lessig is concerned primarily with issues of copyright, Navas is interested in remix’s role in aesthetics and the political economy. Within fan studies, slash vids—a form of video remix—has been a topic of considerable academic interest in recent years. Slash manips—a form of photo or image remix—however, has not attracted the same degree of interest. Stasi’s description of slash as “a non-hierarchical, rich layering of genres” points to the usefulness of slash manips as an embodiment of the process of slash; whereby artists combine, blend and mutate graphic layers from popular media with those from gay pornography. Aesthetics and the slash manip process are central concerns of this article’s consideration of slash photo remix. Slash manips, or slash photo montage, use image manipulation software (Adobe Photoshop being the community standard, see wandsinhand’s tutorial) to layer the heads of male fictional characters from stills or promotional images with scenes—static or moving—from gay pornography. Once an artist has selected pornographic ‘base models’ anatomically suited to canon characters, these models are often then repositioned into the canon universe, which in the case of Merlin means a medieval setting. (Works not repositioned and without added details from canon are generally categorised as ‘male celebrity fakes’ rather than ‘slash manips’.) Stedman contends that while many fan studies scholars are interested in remix, “studies commonly focus on examples of remixed objects rather than the compositional strategies used by remix composers themselves” (107). He advocates moving beyond an exclusive consideration of “text-centred approaches” to also consider “practice-” and “composer-centred” approaches. Such approaches offer insight into “the detailed choices composers actually make when composing” (107). He refers to recognition of the skills required by a remix composer as “remix literacy” (108). This article’s consideration of the various choices and skills that go into the composition of slash manips—what I term the ‘semiotic significance of selection’—is explored with respect to wandsinhand’s practice, coupling my reading—informed by my experience as a practitioner—with the interpretations of the artist himself. Jenkins defines slash as “reaction against” constructions of male sexuality in both popular media and pornography (189). By their very nature, slash manips also make clear the oft-overlooked connections between slash and gay pornography, and in turn the contributions of gay male participants, who are well represented by the form. This contrasts with a tendency within scholarship to compare slash with heterosexual female forms, such as the romance genre (Salmon and Symons). Gay pornography plays a visible role in slash manips—and slash vids, which often remix scenes from popular media with gay cinema and pornography. Slash as Romance, Slash as Pornography Early scholarship on slash (see Russ; Lamb and Veith) defines it as a form of erotica or pornography, by and for women; a reductive definition that fails to take into account men’s contribution, yet one that many researchers continue to adopt today. As stated above, there has also been a tendency within scholarship to align the practice with heterosexual female forms such as the romance genre. Such a tendency is by and large due to theorisation of slash as heterosexual female fantasy—and concerned primarily with romance and intimacy rather than sex (see Woledge). Weinstein describes slash as more a “fascination with” than a “representation of” homosexual relationships (615); while MacDonald makes the point that homosexuality is not a major political motivator for slash (28–9). There is no refuting that slash—along with most fannish practice—is female dominated, ethnographic work and fandom surveys reveal that is the case. However there is great need for research into male production of slash, particularly how such practices might challenge reigning definitions and assumptions of the practice. In similar Japanese practices, for example, gay male opposition to girls’ comics (shōjo) depicting love between ‘pretty boys’ (bishōunen) has been well documented (see Hori)—Men’s Love (or bara) is a subgenre of Boys’ Love (or shōnen’ai) predominately created by gay men seeking a greater connection with the lived reality of gay life (Lunsing). Dennis finds male slash fanart producers more committed to muscular representations and depiction of graphic male/male sex when compared with female-identifying artists (14, 16). He also observes that male fanart artists have a tendency of “valuing same-sex desire without a heterosexual default and placing it within the context of realistic gay relationships” (11). I have observed similar differences between male and female-identifying slash manip artists. Female-identifying Nicci Mac, for example, will often add trousers to her donor bodies, recoding them for a more romantic context. By contrast, male-identifying mythagowood is known for digitally enlarging the penises and rectums of his base models, exaggerating his work’s connection to the pornographic and the macabre. Consider, for example, mythagowood’s rationale for digitally enlarging and importing ‘lips’ for Sam’s (Supernatural) rectum in his work Ass-milk: 2012, which marks the third anniversary of the original: Originally I wasn’t going to give Sammy’s cunt any treatment (before I determined the theme) but when assmilk became the theme I had to go find a good set of lips to slap on him and I figured, it’s been three years, his hole is going to be MUCH bigger. (personal correspondence, used with permission) While mythagowood himself cautions against gendered romance/pornography slash arguments—“I find it annoying that people attribute certain specific aspects of my work to something ‘only a man’ would make.” (ibid.)—gay pornography occupies an important place in the lives of gay men as a means for entertainment, community engagement and identity-construction (see McKee). As one of the only cultural representations available to gay men, Fejes argues that gay pornography plays a crucial role in defining gay male desire and identity. This is confirmed by an Internet survey conducted by Duggan and McCreary that finds 98% of gay participants reporting exposure to pornographic material in the 30-day period prior to the survey. Further, the underground nature of gay pornographic film (see Dyer) aligns it with slash as a subcultural practice. I now analyse two Merlin slash manips with respect to the sexual positions of the pornographic base models, illustrating how gay pornography genres and ideologies referenced through these works enforce their intended meaning, as defined by the artist. A sexual act such as bukkake, as wandsinhand astutely notes, acts as a universal sign and “automatically generates a narrative for the image without anything really needing to be detailed”. Barthes argues that such a “relation between thing signified and image signifying in analogical representation” is unlike language, which has a much more ‘arbitrary’ relationship between signifier and signified (272). Bukkake and the Assertion of Masculine Power in Merlin Merlin (2008–12) is a BBC reimagining of the Arthurian legend that focuses on the coming-of-age of Arthur and his close bond with his manservant Merlin, who keeps his magical identity secret until Arthur’s final stand in the iconic Battle of Camlann. The homosexual potential of Merlin and Arthur’s story—and of magic as a metaphor for homosexuality—is something slash fans were quick to recognise. During question time at the first Merlin cast appearance at the London MCM Expo in October 2008—just one month after the show’s pilot first aired—a fan asked Morgan and James, who portray Merlin and Arthur, is Merlin “meant to be a love story between Arthur and Merlin?” James nods in jest. Wandsinhand, who is most active in the Teen Wolf (2011–present) fandom, has produced two Merlin slash manips to date, a 2013 Merlin/Arthur and a 2012 Arthur/Percival, both untitled. The Merlin/Arthur manip (see Figure 1) depicts Merlin bound and on his knees, Arthur ejaculating across his face and on his chest. Merlin is naked while Arthur is partially clothed in chainmail and armour. They are both bruised and dirty, Arthur’s injuries suggesting battle given his overall appearance, while Merlin’s suggesting abuse, given his subordinate position. The setting appears to be the royal stables, where we know Merlin spends much of his time mucking out Arthur’s horses. I am left to wonder if perhaps Merlin did not carry out this duty to Arthur’s satisfaction, and is now being punished for it; or if Arthur has returned from battle in need of sexual gratification and the endorsement of power that comes from debasing his manservant. Figure 1: wandsinhand, Untitled (Merlin/Arthur), 2013, photo montage. Courtesy the artist. Both readings are supported by Arthur’s ‘spent’ expression of disinterest or mild curiosity, while Merlin’s face emotes pain: crying and squinting through the semen obscuring his vision. The artist confirms this reading in our interview: “Arthur is using his pet Merlin to relieve some stress; Merlin of course not being too pleased about the aftermath, but obedient all the same.” The noun ‘pet’ evokes the sexual connotations of Merlin’s role as Arthur’s personal manservant, while also demoting Merlin even further than usual. He is, in Arthur’s eyes, less than human, a sexual plaything to use and abuse at will. The artist’s statement also confirms that Arthur is acting against Merlin’s will. Violence is certainly represented here, the base models having been ‘marked up’ to depict sexualisation of an already physically and emotionally abusive relationship, their relative positioning and the importation of semen heightening the humiliation. Wandsinhand’s work engages characters in sadomasochistic play, with semen and urine frequently employed to degrade and arouse—“peen wolf”, a reference to watersports, is used within his Teen Wolf practice. The two wandsinhand works analysed in this present article come without words, thus lacking a “linguistic message” (Barthes 273–6). However even so, the artist’s statement and Arthur’s stance over “his pet Merlin” mean we are still able to “skim off” (270) the meanings the image contains. The base models, for example, invite comparison with the ‘gay bukkake’ genre of gay pornography—admittedly with a single dominant male rather than a group. Gay bukkake has become a popular niche in North American gay pornography—it originated in Japan as a male–female act in the 1980s. It describes a ritualistic sexual act where a group of dominant men—often identifying as heterosexual—fuck and debase a homosexual, submissive male, commonly bareback (Durkin et al. 600). The aggression on display in this act—much like the homosocial insistency of men who partake in a ‘circle jerk’ (Mosher 318)—enables the participating men to affirm their masculinity and dominance by degrading the gay male, who is there to service (often on his knees) and receive—in any orifice of the group’s choosing—the men’s semen, and often urine as well. The equivalencies I have made here are based on the ‘performance’ of the bukkake fantasy in gay niche hazing and gay-for-pay pornography genres. These genres are fuelled by antigay sentiment, aggression and debasement of effeminate males (see Kendall). I wish here to resist the temptation of labelling the acts described above as deviant. As is a common problem with anti-pornography arguments, to attempt to fix a practice such as bukkake as deviant and abject—by, for example, equating it to rape (Franklin 24)—is to negate a much more complex consideration of distinctions and ambiguities between force and consent; lived and fantasy; where pleasure is, where it is performed and where it is taken. I extend this desire not to label the manip in question, which by exploiting the masculine posturing of Arthur effectively sexualises canon debasement. This began with the pilot when Arthur says: “Tell me Merlin, do you know how to walk on your knees?” Of the imported imagery—semen, bruising, perspiration—the key signifier is Arthur’s armour which, while torn in places, still ensures the encoding of particular signifieds: masculinity, strength and power. Doggystyle and the Subversion of Arthur’s ‘Armoured Self’ Since the romanticism and chivalric tradition of the knight in shining armour (see Huizinga) men as armoured selves have become a stoic symbol of masculine power and the benchmark for aspirational masculinity. For the medieval knight, armour reflects in its shiny surface the mettle of the man enclosed, imparting a state of ‘bodilessness’ by containing any softness beneath its shielded exterior (Burns 140). Wandsinhand’s Arthur/Percival manip (see Figure 2) subverts Arthur and the symbolism of armour with the help of arguably the only man who can: Arthur’s largest knight Percival. While a minor character among the knights, Percival’s physical presence in the series looms large, and has endeared him to slash manip artists, particularly those with only a casual interest in the series, such as wandsinhand: Why Arthur and Percival were specifically chosen had really little to do with the show’s plot, and in point of fact, I don’t really follow Merlin that closely nor am I an avid fan. […] Choosing Arthur/Percival really was just a matter of taste rather than being contextually based on their characterisations in the television show. Figure 2: wandsinhand, Untitled (Arthur/Percival), 2012, photo montage. Courtesy the artist. Concerning motivation, the artist explains: “Sometimes one’s penis decides to pick the tv show Merlin, and specifically Arthur and Percival.” The popularity of Percival among manip artists illustrates the power of physicality as a visual sign, and the valorisation of size and muscle within the gay community (see Sánchez et al.). Having his armour modified to display his muscles, the implication is that Percival does not need armour, for his body is already hard, impenetrable. He is already suited up, simultaneously man and armoured. Wandsinhand uses the physicality of this character to strip Arthur of his symbolic, masculine power. The work depicts Arthur with a dishevelled expression, his armoured chest pressed against the ground, his chainmail hitched up at the back to expose his arse, Percival threading his unsheathed cock inside him, staring expressionless at the ‘viewer’. The artist explains he “was trying to show a shift of power”: I was also hinting at some sign of struggle, which is somewhat evident on Arthur’s face too. […] I think the expressions work in concert to suggest […] a power reversal that leaves Arthur on the bottom, a position he’s not entirely comfortable accepting. There is pleasure to be had in seeing the “cocky” Arthur forcefully penetrated, “cut down to size by a bigger man” (wandsinhand). The two assume the ‘doggystyle’ position, an impersonal sexual position, without eye contact and where the penetrator sets the rhythm and intensity of each thrust. Scholars have argued that the position is degrading to the passive party, who is dehumanised by the act, a ‘dog’ (Dworkin 27); and rapper Snoop ‘Doggy’ Dogg exploits the misogynistic connotations of the position on his record Doggystyle (see Armstrong). Wandsinhand is clear in his intent to depict forceful domination of Arthur. Struggle is signified through the addition of perspiration, a trademark device used by this artist to symbolise struggle. Domination in a sexual act involves the erasure of the wishes of the dominated partner (see Cowan and Dunn). To attune oneself to the pleasures of a sexual partner is to regard them as a subject. To ignore such pleasures is to degrade the other person. The artist’s choice of pairing embraces the physicality of the male/male bond and illustrates a tendency among manip producers to privilege conventional masculine identifiers—such as size and muscle—above symbolic, nonphysical identifiers, such as status and rank. It is worth noting that muscle is more readily available in the pornographic source material used in slash manips—muscularity being a recurrent component of gay pornography (see Duggan and McCreary). In my interview with manip artist simontheduck, he describes the difficulty he had sourcing a base image “that complimented the physicality of the [Merlin] characters. […] The actor that plays Merlin is fairly thin while Arthur is pretty built, it was difficult to find one. I even had to edit Merlin’s body down further in the end.” (personal correspondence, used with permission) As wandsinhand explains, “you’re basically limited by what’s available on the internet, and even then, only what you’re prepared to sift through or screencap yourself”. Wandsinhand’s Arthur/Percival pairing selection works in tandem with other artistic decisions and inclusions—sexual position, setting, expressions, effects (perspiration, lighting)—to ensure the intended reading of the work. Antithetical size and rank positions play out in the penetration/submission act of wandsinhand’s work, in which only the stronger of the two may come out ‘on top’. Percival subverts the symbolic power structures of prince/knight, asserting his physical, sexual dominance over the physically inferior Arthur. That such a construction of Percival is incongruent with the polite, impeded-by-my-size-and-muscle-density Percival of the series speaks to the circumstances of manip production, much of which is on a taste basis, as previously noted. There are of course exceptions to this, the Teen Wolf ‘Sterek’ (Stiles/Derek) pairing being wandsinhand’s, but even in this case, size tends to couple with penetration. Slash manips often privilege physicality of the characters in question—as well as the base models selected—above any particular canon-supported slash reading. (Of course, the ‘queering’ nature of slash practice means at times there is also a desire to see such identifiers subverted, however in this example, raw masculine power prevails.) This final point is in no way representative—my practice, for example, combines manips with ficlets to offer a clearer connection with canon, while LJ’s zdae69 integrates manips, fiction and comics. However, common across slash manip artists driven by taste—and requests—rather than connection with canon—the best known being LJ’s tw-31988, demon48180 and Tumblr’s lwoodsmalestarsfakes, all of whom work across many fandoms—is interest in the ‘aesthetics of canon’, the blue hues of Teen Wolf or the fluorescent greens of Arrow (2012–present), displayed in glossy magazine format using services such as ISSUU. In short, ‘the look’ of the work often takes precedent over canonical implications of any artistic decisions. “Nothing Too Serious”: Slash Manips as Objects Worth Studying It had long been believed that the popular was the transient, that of entertainment rather than enlightenment; that which is manufactured, “an appendage of the machinery”, consumed by the duped masses and a product not of culture but of a ‘culture industry’ (Adorno and Rabinbach 12). Scholars such as Radway, Ang pioneered a shift in scholarly practice, advancing the cultural studies project by challenging elitism and finding meaning in traditionally devalued cultural texts and practices. The most surprising outcome of my interviews with wandsinhand was hearing how he conceived of his practice, and the study of slash: If I knew I could get a PhD by writing a dissertation on Slash, I would probably drop out of my physics papers! […] I don’t really think too highly of faking/manip-making. I mean, it’s not like it’s high art, is it? … or is it? I guess if Duchamp’s toilet can be a masterpiece, then so can anything. But I mainly just do it to pass the time, materialise fantasies, and disperse my fantasies unto others. Nothing too serious. Wandsinhand erects various binaries—academic/fan, important/trivial, science/arts, high art/low art, profession/hobby, reality/fantasy, serious/frivolous—as justification to devalue his own artistic practice. Yet embracing the amateur, personal nature of his practice frees him to “materialise fantasies” that would perhaps not be possible without self-imposed, underground production. This is certainly supported by his body of work, which plays with taboos of the unseen, of bodily fluids and sadomasochism. My intention with this article is not to contravene views such as wandsinhand’s. Rather, it is to promote slash manips as a form of remix culture that encourages new perspectives on how slash has been defined, its connection with male producers and its symbiotic relationship with gay pornography. I have examined the ‘semiotic significance of selection’ that creates meaning in two contrary slash manips; how these works actualise and resist canon dominance, as it relates to the physical and the symbolic. This examination also offers insight into this form’s connection to and negotiation with certain ideologies of gay pornography, such as the valorisation of size and muscle. References Adorno, Theodor W., and Anson G. Rabinbach. “Culture Industry Reconsidered.” New German Critique 6 (1975): 12–19. Ang, Ien. 1985. Watching Dallas. London: Methuen, 1985. Armstrong, Edward G. “Gangsta Misogyny: A Content Analysis of the Portrayals of Violence against Women in Rap Music, 1987–93.” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 8.2 (2001): 96–126. Barthes, Roland. “Rhetoric of the Image.” Image, Music, Text. London: HarperCollins, 1977. 269–85. Burns, E. Jane. Courtly Love Undressed: Reading through Clothes in Medieval French Culture. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Bury, Rhiannon. Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Cowan, Gloria, and Kerri F. Dunn. “What Themes in Pornography Lead to Perceptions of the Degradation of Women?” The Journal of Sex Research 31.1 (1994): 11–21. Dennis, Jeffery P. “Drawing Desire: Male Youth and Homoerotic Fan Art.” Journal of LGBT Youth 7.1 (2010): 6–28. Duggan, Scott J., and Donald R. McCreary. “Body Image, Eating Disorders, and the Drive for Muscularity in Gay and Heterosexual Men: The Influence of Media Images.” Journal of Homosexuality 47.3/4 (2004): 45–58. Durkin, Keith, Craig J. Forsyth, and James F. Quinn. “Pathological Internet Communities: A New Direction for Sexual Deviance Research in a Post Modern Era.” Sociological Spectrum 26.6 (2006): 595–606. Dworkin, Andrea. “Against the Male Flood: Censorship, Pornography, and Equality.” Letters from a War Zone. London: Martin Secker and Warburg, 1997. 19–38. Fejes, Fred. “Bent Passions: Heterosexual Masculinity, Pornography, and Gay Male Identity.” Sexuality & Culture 6.3 (2002): 95–113. Franklin, Karen. “Enacting Masculinity: Antigay Violence and Group Rape as Participatory Theater.” Sexuality Research & Social Policy 1.2 (2004): 25–40. Hori, Akiko. “On the Response (or Lack Thereof) of Japanese Fans to Criticism That Yaoi Is Antigay Discrimination.” Transformative Works and Cultures 12 (2013). doi:10.3983/twc.2013.0463. Huizinga, Johan. The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Dawn of the Renaissance. Trans. F. Hopman. London: Edward Arnold & Co, 1924. Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. London: Routledge, 1992. Kendall, Christopher N. “‘Real Dominant, Real Fun!’: Gay Male Pornography and the Pursuit of Masculinity.” Saskatchewan Law Review 57 (1993): 21–57. Kreisinger, Elisa. “Queer Video Remix and LGBTQ Online Communities.” Transformative Works and Cultures 9 (2012). doi:10.3983/twc.2012.0395. Lamb, Patricia F., and Diane L. Veith. “Romantic Myth, Transcendence, and Star Trek Zines.” Erotic Universe: Sexuality and Fantastic Literature. Ed. D Palumbo. New York: Greenwood, 1986. 235–57. Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas. New York: Vintage, 2001. Lunsing, Wim. “Yaoi Ronsō: Discussing Depictions of Male Homosexuality in Japanese Girls’ Comics, Gay Comics and Gay Pornography.” Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context 12 (2006). ‹http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue12/lunsing.html›. MacDonald, Marianne. “Harry Potter and the Fan Fiction Phenom.” The Gay & Lesbian Review 13.1 (2006): 28–30. McKee, Alan. “Australian Gay Porn Videos: The National Identity of Despised Cultural Objects.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 2.2 (1999): 178–98. Morrison, Todd G., Melanie A. Morrison, and Becky A. Bradley. “Correlates of Gay Men’s Self-Reported Exposure to Pornography.” International Journal of Sexual Health 19.2 (2007): 33–43. Mosher, Donald L. “Negative Attitudes Toward Masturbation in Sex Therapy.” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 5.4 (1979): 315–33. Navas, Eduardo. “Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture.” Mashup Cultures. Ed. Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss. New York: Springer, 2010. 157–77. Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1984. Russ, Joanna. “Pornography by Women for Women, with Love.” Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans, and Perverts: Feminist Essays. Trumansburg: Crossing Press, 1985. 79–99. Russo, Julie Levin. “User-Penetrated Content: Fan Video in the Age of Convergence.” Cinema Journal 48.4 (2009): 125–30. Salmon, Catherine, and Donald Symons. Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Human Sexuality. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001. Sánchez, Francisco J., Stefanie T. Greenberg, William Ming Liu, and Eric Vilain. “Reported Effects of Masculine Ideals on Gay Men.” Psychology of Men & Masculinity 10.1 (2009): 73–87. Stasi, Mafalda. “The Toy Soldiers from Leeds: The Slash Palimpsest.” Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet. Ed. Karen Hellekson, and Kristina Busse. Jefferson: McFarland, 2006. 115–33. Stedman, Kyle D. “Remix Literacy and Fan Compositions.” Computers and Composition 29.2 (2012): 107–23. Weinstein, Matthew. “Slash Writers and Guinea Pigs as Models for Scientific Multiliteracy.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 38.5 (2006): 607–23. Woledge, Elizabeth. “Intimatopia: Genre Intersections between Slash and the Mainstream.” Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet. Ed. Karen Hellekson, and Kristina Busse. Jefferson: McFarland, 2006. 97–114.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2009.
Title from screen (viewed on September 3, 2009). Department of Communication Studies, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): John Parrish-Sprowl. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-83).

El objetivo de la presente investigación es conocer qué lugar ocupan los hijos en la fantasía de familia producidas por la pareja homosexual, al encontrarse frente a una alternativa cada vez más accesible de reproducción asistida. Esto nos permite entender la organización del futuro de estas parejas cuando la posibilidad de hijo puede ser una realidad. Para ello se utilizó una metodología cualitativa desde la teoría psicoanalítica, mediante entrevistas y gráficos con parejas homosexuales. Participaron nueve parejas (cinco de hombres y cuatro de mujeres) las cuales tenían más de dos años conviviendo. Surge del análisis temático, tres ejes: uno en el que aparece la fantasía de hijo en la fantasía latente y manifiesta, otro en el que aparece la fantasía de hijo solo en la fantasía latente y un tercero dónde no aparece la fantasía de hijo. Los resultados apuntan a que el diálogo con el futuro en las parejas homosexuales, se hace mediante la aparición de los hijos en la fantasía de familia, los cuales toman distintas formas de acuerdo a la estructuración psíquica de la pareja.
The aim of this research is to understand the place of children in family fantasies that the homosexual couple engenders, when confronted with the increasingly affordable choice of assisted reproduction. These discoveries will allow us to understand these couples’ future organization in situations when the possibility of a child could become a reality. To conduct this research we applied psychoanalytic theory, qualitatively, by means of interviews and graphical stimuli. Nine gay couples with more than two years of cohabitation were studied (five male and four female). The thematic analysis presents three axes: in the first, the fantasy of having a child appears in the latent and manifest discourse; in the second, the fantasy of having a child appears only in the latent fantasy; in the third, the fantasy of having a child does not appear. The results of the study suggest that the dialogue with the future in homosexual couples is made through the appearance of children in the family fantasy, which take different forms according to the psychic structuring of the couple.
Tesis

This study is concerned with men's sexual fantasies content that appears either within partner's sexual lovemaking or during masturbation. Except fantasy description and classifying it also pays attention to the associations with sexual satisfaction. The study results have proved that they appear much more and in higher variety with masturbation. One of the most popular fantasies is lovemaking with the own partner. Most men state one deviant fantasy at least, homosexual fantasy is an ordinary phenomenon even with heterosexual men. From the point of sexual satisfaction some differences have been approved in the fantasy content in contrast with unsatisfied individuals. Sharing mutual fantasy with the own partner has been approved to be very important.

In this chapter, Robin Osborne reexamines what Kenneth Dover called “intercrural intercourse.” Following Dover’s lead, scholars have constructed a history of Greek homosexuality in which penetration was taboo and instead older lovers enjoyed only intercourse in which their pleasure came from rubbing their penis between a boy’s thighs. This has been taken to support a model of sexual behavior in which penetration and power stand at the center. Osborne argues instead that intercrural intercourse is a modern fantasy. On the basis of a close examination of the corpus of relevant images, he makes the case that the scenes should be read not as literal representation of some curious homosexual ritual, but as ways of exploring the nature of homoerotic desire. The point of these pictures is not to show what was visible in life, but to find a visible way of allowing the viewer to fantasize about men’s homoerotic pleasures.

This chapter examine how the French porn industry channels and manipulates tensions and fears related to the immigration debate and the place of Arabs in France, at times offering erotic “remedies.” This has culminated in a new pornotrope: Porno Ethnik, or pornography involving men and women of color, usually Arab or black. The chapter begins with a discussion of the output of French directors who were the first to feature Franco-Arab actors in gay male pornography: Jean-Daniel Cadinot (Cadinot), Jean-Noël René Clair (JNRC), and Stéphane Chibikh (Citébeur). It then considers heterosexual pornography featuring Franco-Arab women and asks whether or not this field of production is so different in its representations of minority sexuality that it precludes comparison with homosexual pornography. Tropes of sex tourism to North Africa, the hypersexualization of single immigrant men, the “eroticization of poverty” as regards both women and men, the veil as striptease, and the “homothug” type are all surveyed. Pornography, often seen as apolitical, does tackle issues of undigested colonial memory and contemporary race relations in a much more forthright (if politically incorrect) way than do the traditional journalistic means available.