The Science/Fiction of Sex. A Feminist Deconstruction of the Vocabularies of Heterosex

Abstract

This research conducts a feminist poststructuralist examination of the vocabularies of heterosex: it investigates those terms, modes of talking, and meanings relating to sex which are associated with discourses such as scientific and popular sexology, medicine and psychiatry, public health, philosophy, and some feminist critique. The analysis of these various representations of heterosex involves the deconstruction of binaries such as presence/absence, mind/body, inside/outside and masculine/feminine, that are endemic to Western notions of sex. It is argued that such dualisms (re)produce and perpetuate differential power relations between men and women, and jeopardize the negotiation of mutually pleasurable and safer heterosex. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which sexological discourse deploys such dualisms as normal/abnormal, natural/unnatural, and healthy/unhealthy sex, and produces specifically gendered 'experiences' of sexual corporeality. The thesis examines a variety of written texts and excerpts from film and television; it also analyzes transcript material from individual and group interviews conducted by the researcher with heterosexual women and men, as well as sexual health and mental health professionals, in order to identify cultural pressures influencing participation in risky heterosexual behaviours, and also to identify alternative and safer pleasurable practices. Some of these alternative practices are suggested to rely on a radical reformulation of sexual relations which derives from the disruption of particular dualistic ways of understanding and enacting sex. The overall objective of the thesis is to deconstruct cultural imperatives of heterosex and promote the generation and acceptance of other modes of erotic pleasure. It is hoped that this research will be of use in the future planning and implementation of sex education and safer sex campaigns in Aotearoa/New Zealand which aim to be non-phallocentric and non-heterosexist, and which might recognize a feminist poststructuralist politics of sexual difference.