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"Western culture is exhibiting its fascination with sex in new ways. Pole dancing is a form of keep fit, porn stars find work as agony aunts, pornography itself is just 'a mouse click away', and phone sex, email affairs and cybersex are now part of our everyday lives. This sexualization that is permeating every aspect of modern culture is the subject of this book ... Mainstreaming Sex uncovers the significant impact that new forms of sexualized phenomena are having on our culture, relationships, educational and working lives. In original chapters, the contributors engage with today's public concerns about sexualization, with the continuing debates about the regulation of sexual representations and practices, and with the idea that in all aspects of social and cultural life, sex is being 'mainstreamed'"--Jacket

Offering a series of case studies of recent media controversies, this collection draws on new perspectives in cultural studies to consider a wide variety of images. The book suggest how we might achieve a more subtle understanding of controversial images and negotiate the difficult terrain of the new media landscape

AbstractIn this paper, I focus on what has been called a paradigm shift in pornography research, driven by the development of particular theoretical and political concerns and by changing material conditions, and on the academic work that has emerged from this. I describe the current situation where studies in the area are more diverse than ever before, while public debate continues to draw on a relatively limited approach based on a concern with what media 'does' to behaviour. I outline two areas in particular which currently dominate public and political discussions; namely the sexualization of mainstream media and 'extreme' imagery on the fringes of culture, and suggest ways in which these present new challenges and opportunities for developing pornography research.

This article examines the representation of men as domestic experts in the lifestyle genre on British primetime TV. This is contextualized in relation to changing representations of the home as a space for the stylish individual and to changes in British primetime programming, where a movement towards hybrid TV forms appears to rearticulate the mission to 'inform, educate and entertain' and to transform private matters into public spectacle. The article aims to examine the ways in which contemporary representations of the male domestic expert struggle to negotiate perceived boundaries between the 'inside' of private space and the 'outside' of the public sphere and between the categories of femininity and masculinity, a struggle that is evident across the lifestyle genre and within individual programmes, such as BBC2's Home Front. In Home Front, aestheticism and camp become key strategies for the redefinition of the home and masculinity as matters of lifestyle.

This article examines the construction of woman's voice, gaze and desire in Jane Campion's Oscar-winning film The Piano, 1993, with particular reference to the film's central character, Ada, and to the traditional female figures which her character suggests – siren, mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard's wife. It investigates the ways in which The Piano interrogates and disturbs traditional patriarchal narratives, ways of speaking and seeing, and patriarchal constructions of bodily pleasure and desire; revealing these as partial, hard of hearing, short sighted and incapable of pleasure. It argues that while the film succeeds in this interrogation, it goes further in its attempt to envisage forms of speech, sight and pleasure which do not conform to traditional models based on the notion of rigid oppositions between self and other, masculine and feminine, active and passive. Instead, by focusing on mutual pleasure, sensuality, communication and the ability to be moved, it sets in motion 'other' ways of experiencing and understanding women's voices, looks, desires. It concludes that The Piano articulates a demand for an encounter with men, in which women are neither marginalized as 'the feminine' nor re-incorporated into a patriarchal order; and imagines the possibility of both autonomy and connection, power and pleasure.

The transformation of the sex industry since 2000 has meant that the image of the 'street prostitute' touting for business on dark street corners is less representative of sex work or sex workers than it has ever been. Much of our knowledge about the sex industry, and about wider transformations of economic, intimate and cultural life, is out of date (Bernstein, 2007a), and policy processes are taking place within the context of limited or outdated knowledge. The growth in visibility, consumption and diversity of sexual commerce is now well recognised (Weitzer, 2000; Agustín, 2005; Scoular and Sanders, 2010) and commercial sex industries are known to operate across a variety of locations, and within specific modes of production and consumption, which are historically, contextually and culturally contingent and where 'the meaning of buying and selling sex is not always the same' (Agustín, 2005: 619).