Agency, Ethics and Sexuality

Question 1

Pleasure and Empowerment

Answer 1

• Pleasure in heterosexual relationships framed as a marker of women’s empowerment
• “The presence or absence of ‘pleasure’ can inaccurately reflect sexual power relations. Failing to experience pleasure during sexual activity despite concerted personal and partner(s) effort may have less to do with power than corporeal conditions (e.g. tired or unresponsive bodies). It may also be TOO SIMPLISTIC to equate sexual pleasure with an exercise of agency or as proof of empowerment. Sexual pleasure can be experienced under conditions that are not of a subject’s choosing and in which they exercise minimal or no power as those subjected to sexual abuse have testified”

Question 2

Pleasure Imperative

Answer 2

• Pleasure as an ideal or expected outcome of sexual activity
• Slippage in talk (heteronormative)
• Normative/Regulatory implications
• “The idea that sex should be pleasurable implies that if it is not, then something is wrong and/or missing. Pleasure becomes a new gauge against which young people might measure themselves and their relationships” (Allen, 463)

Question 3

Hermeneutics of suspicion

Answer 3

“start with the assumption that the structures of the hook up culture are not neutrally geared toward everyone’s benefit”

Question 4

Sexism in Hookup Culture

Answer 4

• Many women report negative experiences
• Double standard
• Slut shaming
• Social marginalization

Question 5

Hook Up Culture as Exclusionary and Oppressive

Answer 5

• Sexist and heterosexist values
• Dominant script
• Coercive
• Illusion of choice