TO DO THIS WEEK:
This week was the dreaded ASSESSED summative review presentation - it actually seemed to go fairly well, despite several technical difficulties and even if I definitely sped through it and probably could have edited it down a bit. Thank god that's out of the way.
Feedback on the presentation included:
Overall I'm just thankful that I don't have to worry about that again (at least until the unit 3 presentation lol) and glad that people understood my points and were interested in the research! Now to spend the rest of this week stressing about the thesis!
Diane, it's 14:31 on a Wednesday and I have six days to get this thesis into some kind of reasonable condition. Dropping a bunch of bits and pieces I've cut out in editing here, starting with My Entire Outline:
1. Introduction
a. What am I researching?
b. Why is this important?
c. Outline of sections
2. Key Definitions
a. Asexuality
b. Aromanticism
c. Split Attraction Model
d. A-spec
i. Kind of want to change all these definitions from CR just because I think the phrasing I’ve been using so far is a bit inconsistent – Tessler has good definitions!
e. ALSO MAYBE ADD IN DEFINITIONS OF QPRS ("A relationship that 'bends the rules' we use to distinguish romantic relationships from non-romantic ones. It typically involves more intimacy and closeness (physical or emotional) than what is considered normal or socially acceptable for friends. At the same time, it doesn't fit conventional ideas about what romantic relationships should 'look like'" (Young, 2023, p.220)) AND RELATIONSHIP ANARCHY (“where individuals negotiate their relationships based on terms they agreee on rather than predefined relationship categories such as 'romantic relationship'" (Tessler, 2023, p.15)
3. Societal Attitudes
a. Stereotypes of a-spec people
i. From CR: Ace people seen as cold, emotionless, inhuman, aro people also seen as inhuman
ii. TO ADD: Tessler’s (? I think it was Tessler) discussion of how aro people are also stereotyped as cold, go into more detail on the medicalisation stuff either here or in compulsory sexuality section
b. Other stereotypes relating to sex and romance
i. From CR: Black people stereotyped as hypersexual, Asian men stereotyped as non-sexual, women sexualised
ii. TO ADD: Literally anything about how romance plays into this, romance seen as more important for women, Tessler and Winer’s research into differing stereotypes for men and women, hegemonic masculinity stuff! Sexualisation of Asian women, literally fucking anything about disability, maybe the stuff from Chen about how trans women are sexualised as well! Oh god there’s so many nuances I don’t think I’m gonna actually have space for them all
1. "Manliness is thus intimately bound up with not only having sex but also with ostentatiously performing an interest in sex when among other men" - Ela Przybylo, Masculine Doubt and Sexual Wonder, p.232
2. “Single women often face intense pressure and stigma for not fitting into gendered expectations of marriage and motherhood as the pathway to adulthood" - Tessler, The stability of singlehood, p.445
3. "“Men want sex and women want love.” Although crude, contested, and at least partially unfounded (Allen, 2003, 2007), this cultural narrative plays an important role in constructing gender identities " - Hannah Tessler and Canton Winer, Sexuality, romantic orientation, and masculinity, p.2
4. "We find that while sex is fundamental in both constructing and reflecting masculinities, romance is another factor that shapes masculinities, and thus asexuality is positioned as inadequately masculine and aromanticism as excessively masculine" - Tessler and Winer, p.2
c. Compulsory sexuality
i. From CR: Definition and how it connects to medicalisation stuff
ii. TO ADD: Overlap with pronatalism, intersections with gender maybe? Nuances of moralisation of sex, FOUCAULT
d. Amatonormativity
i. From CR: Definition, overlap with singlism, impact on a-spec community
ii. TO ADD: More detail about how it functions and who it affects (not just aro people!!), also again how it overlaps with gender – women get it in the neck way more than men, moral value attached to marriage and how that leads to demonisation of sex outside of marriage and divorce and such
4. Media and Society
a. Representation of social groups
i. From CR: Media replicating stereotypes, media challenging stereotypes, symbolic annihilation
ii. TO ADD: Stuff specific to TV, “visibility is a trap”
1. "In relation to television, the study of ideology looks at how people and ideas are represented in programming, to identify whether such concerns as race, gender, age-group or ethnicity are being distorted in ways that need to be modified - Orlebar, p.53
2. "In general, streaming TV distributors either matched or trailed already-lagging broadcast and cable distributors in representations of race and gender behind and in front of the camera" - Christian, p.249
3. "Both British and US sitcoms have recognised the need to engage with cultural change, especially the changing position of women (see Hallam 2005), if only as a response to broadcasters' need to deliver a new generation of affluent and confident women consumers to the advertisers who sponsor or support programmes" - Jeremy Orlebar, The Television Handbook, p.38
b. Ideology
i. From CR: What is ideology? Is ideology intentional in media?
ii. TO ADD: TV specific arguments, what is my actual position here?
1. "When taking the first approach, and looking at the ways in which texts convey signs of their production, some critics, particularly in the neo-marxist mode, have noted the ways that a text may encode the 'ideology' of its makers or of its context, and hence convey the 'dominant ideology' of its times - Holland, p.60
2. "Ideology refers to the 'natural' and common-sense values that keep civil society running. It was an idea most thoroughly developed by radical Marxist writers who looked for ways of explaining how social injustice can continue without people recognising it and changing things. What ideology does is to make ways of thinking about ourselves and others seem self-evidently right, whereas a more careful analysis of the way things are might reveal that there is much that should be changed" - Orlebar, p.53
c. Influence of media
i. From CR: Feminist arguments for media being influential, arguments for limited effects, importance of “common sense” ideas
ii. TO ADD: Maybe a bit more TV stuff, my own position
5. Depictions of Queerness
a. From CR: General depictions
b. TO ADD: Stuff about TV specifically, Davis, arguments about whether TV can properly represent queer characters, improvements over the years, has advent of streaming changed things?
i. "The scope, for both men and women writers, has become wider. Across the genres, dramas are now able to deal with issues of sexuality, exploring gay and lesbian themes as well as a more nuanced reflection of the relations between the sexes " - Holland, p.205
ii. "A number of theorists have argued that television as a medium has developed in such a manner that its institutionalised form is antipathetic or inimical to queerness." - Glyn Davis, 'Saying It Out Loud': Revealing Television's Queer Teens, p.129
iii. The genre of the teen show "offers great potential for the representation of teen lives and desires, including those of queer teens" - Davis, p.131
iv. "Almost all televisual representations of queer teens are remarkably 'positive': their potential as role models or transmitters of politicised messages messages seems to have been recognised by liberal drama writers, service producers and television executives. It is possible to detect here the Reithian 'public service broadcasting' notion that television can serve as an educative tool to improve and inform its audiences" - Davis, p.134
v. "'Given this critical state of affairs,' writes Ben Gove, 'popular representations and debates hold an especially intense significance as informal methods of sex education, and as self-validation, for gay and lesbian youths'" - Ben Gove, 1996, p.179, quoted in Davis, p.135
vi. "After decades of virtual invisibility, the 1990s and 2000s saw a sharp rise of popular and niche media targeting gay (p.112) men, lesbians, and, to a much lesser degree, bisexual and transgender people. Still, media representations focused almost exclusively on portraying gays and lesbians as 'normal', eradicating the sexual revolution's promise of celebrating difference and confining GLBTQ politics to matters of the home, primarily love, marriage, and military service. What was lost was the power of nonnormative sexuality to expand mainstream views of sex" - Christian, p.111
6. Depictions of Asexuality and Aromanticism
a. Increase in representation from 2010 to present
i. From CR: Lack of representation and harmful stereotypes e.g. in House prior to 2014, absence of aromantic representation, Increase in visibility of asexuality
ii. TO ADD: Subtextual depictions like Dexter and Game of Thrones (might put Game of Thrones in next section actually)
1. "There has been an increased interest in the study of asexuality over the last 15+ years, along with a change from a pathological to a more affirming perspective [...] This change is arguably linked with the increase presence of asexuality in online communities, such as the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), and the inclusion of asexual characters in mainstream media (e.g. BoJack Horseman TV show). - Ana Catarina Carvalho and David Rodrigues, Sexuality, Sexual Behavior, and Relationships of Asexual Individuals, p.2159
b. TO ADD: Distinction between asexuality and aromanticism – increased attention to distinction between the two, most asexual characters not aromantic
c. TO ADD: Trends? Common genres: Teen shows, Common storylines: Romance, coming out, self-discovery
7. Methods and Methodology
a. From CR: Overview of analysis methods, interview methods, and ethical issues
b. TO ADD: What methods am I actually using lol?
8. Results of primary research (NOT OBTAINED YET)
9. Conclusion
[STUFF ABOUT GENDER AND HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY + MORE STUFF ABOUT ROMANCE HERE] in bit about overlap of a-spec stereotypes with other stereotypes
[STUFF ABOUT QPRS/RELATIONSHIP ANARCHY/ALTERNATIVE RELATIONSHIP STYLES HERE] in definitions section - I would LOVE to add both these things but unfortunately Emma may have had a point when she told me to stop adding random tangents that belong in a sociology paper before I've done the analysis and focus groups and have a better understanding of whether any of this will actually be relevant.
This research project is motivated by a need to address this gap and provide greater understanding of the experiences of the a-spec communities.
These focus groups will include a discussion of participants’ understandings of a-spec identity, a screening of a series of clips from shows dealing with a-spec identity, and a second discussion about how these clips compared with participants’ expectations and existing understanding.
These methods will be used to determine common patterns in depictions of a-spec characters, and how these may reflect or challenge dominant societal beliefs.
[4b. Depicting Asexuality vs Aromanticism] Another important development is an increased attention to the distinction between asexuality and aromanticism. In the Sex Education episode, Florence mentions that she “still want[s] to fall in love”, prompting Jean to explain that “some asexual people still want romantic relationships, but they don't want the sex bit” (Sex Education, Episode 12, 2020). BoJack Horseman features a similar scene, where Todd gets some advice on his newly discovered asexuality from an asexual meet-up group, one of whom tells him “Some asexuals are also aromantic, but others have relationships like anyone else.” (BoJack Horseman, Stupid Piece of Sh*t, 2017). While explicitly aromantic characters are still rare, with most asexual characters either being explicitly interested in romance or it being left unspecified, in 2023 Heartstopper included a storyline in its second season about the character Isaac discovering he was both aromantic and asexual, making it a rare example of a show that directly labels a character as aromantic (Heartstopper, season 2, 2023).
Sinwell (2014, p.171) also discusses subtextual depictions where characters may not be explicitly referred to as asexual but are depicted as not experiencing sexual attraction/desire, such as the TV show Dexter and the film Mysterious Skin. Although not as explicitly as the infamous House episode, these depictions do also “restrict our cultural understanding of asexuality to be one defined by its relationship to trauma, pathology, and abnormality". In the case of Dexter, lack of sexual attraction (and potentially romantic attraction – the protagonist claims to “fak[e] all human interactions”, including with his girlfriend (Ibid., p.169)) is linked to “abnormality” and “psychosis” (Ibid.), while in Mysterious Skin, it is explained as a trauma response to childhood sexual abuse (Ibid., p.170).
Hall ([1981] 2015, p.104) defines ideology as “images, concepts and premises which provide the frameworks through which we represent, interpret, understand and 'make sense' of some aspect of social existence"
Anyway, to sum up the general vibe of this week:
For the sake of not giving anyone a heart attack I do want to specify that my piercing turned out to not actually be infected. Everything else however is fucking. bad.