Reconceptualizing bodies and pleasure: considerations by and for sex-positive service workers

Date

2016-04-27

Authors

Henderson, Charlotte

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Abstract

Human sexuality has been overrun with narratives that limit the possibilities of pleasure. Sex-positive workers have the potential to challenge the ways in which these limitations become embodied. In this research I explore narratives of sex education and youth, pleasure as prevention, and the medicalization of sexuality. I engage in collective biography as a way to identify how these narratives shape the way bodies and pleasure get taken up in specific places. Drawing from poststructural feminist theory I propose three ways of reconceptualizing bodies and pleasure as emergent sites of change and potential. Through an analysis of the experiences of sex-positive service workers in Canada, I consider what else, and for whom, bodies, pleasure, and sex education might look like.

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Keywords

collective biography, sex-positive, sexuality, poststructuralist, stories, sex-positive service workers, pleasure, bodies, risk, sex education, medicalization of sexuality, prevention, bronwyn davies, possibility, limit experience, body without organs

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