Lecture 1: The Construction of Sexuality

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Lecture 1The Construction of Sexuality

• Why is sexuality
• a construction?

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• The media what do the media consist of?
• Syllabus A no. of concepts
• Lecture 1 Social Constructionism, Maintexts/
  Subtexts

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Bluebeard(???)

• Bluebeard a rich and handsome man in France?
  kind man whose wives died one way or another ?
  forever getting married
• A new girl was happily married to him and they
  lived in the huge castle....
• One day, Bluebeard had to leave the castle
• his new wife took care of all the keys she must
  never use the smallest one that opened the small
  room at the far end of the corridor
• Curious? opened the door ? the dead bodies of his
  former wives hanging inside the room .
• she locked the room again
• The key stained with blood ?could not be rubbed/
  washed away ....
• to be continued

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Social Constructionism

• ??????
• -ism . E.g. romanticism, realism . What
  do they mean?
• A school of thought which holds that things taken
  by granted by people are in fact the results
  constructions - of social forces and
  institutions.
•  
• A Key figure Michel Foucault (1926-84)
• Power determines right and wrong, normal
  and abnormal.
• Relevance to this course Categories of gender
  and sexuality are not natural and inborn, but
  is continuously conditioned and shaped by social
  forces.
•  

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Examples .

• Influences of Christianity on sexual attitudes
• (According to St. Paul, sex is bad highest form
  of lovelove for God
• Later Reformation and Protestantism Priests
  allowed to have their families
• ? post-WWII? 1960s liberal attitude
• Christianity still a strong hold on values today
  pre-marital sex is forbidden Good Christians
  should act accordingly)
• Lecture 5 Social constructionist perspective on
  sexual orientation/ homosexuality
• Other examples
• What about the image of menopausal (???) women
• (irritable, difficult)? Beauty/ Physical
  attractiveness? ? are these social constructions?

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• Lets return to Bluebeard .
• Bluebeard returned to the castle earlier than
  expected? demanded the key back? discovered what
  happened
•  
• Angered he wanted to murder his wife
• His wifes sister and 2 brothers arrived on time
  to save her?they killed Bluebeard
• Happy ending the woman was later married to a
  genuinely good man?forgot what happened
•  
• The end
• is NOT the end .

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Main Text vs Subtext(s)

• The story you read is the main text there is/
  are subtext(s) in it. 
• 1.      It is important for women to obey what
  men say gender inequality.
• 2. The wife is finally saved by her elder
  brothers, not her sister.
•  
• 3. The wife can only overcome the trauma after
  being re-married to a good man unable to
  overcome it on her own.
•  
• 4. It is further possible to identify symbols in
  the story the castle is a prison the key to the
  room ? the key to the virginity belt.
• (find out more about the virginity belt .)

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• What are maintexts in this case?
• The story itself
• There might be many versions (e.g. on the
  Internet) ? but relatively objective
• What are the subtexts
• sub ? underneath
• The messages hidden in/ underlying the maintexts
• Relatively subjective? depend on the
  interpretation of the audience/ reader

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Why did I bring up this story?

• Before TV, the radio, or even the newspapers were
  invented, folktales/ fairytales (collected by the
  Grimm Brothers Written by Andersen) important
  forms of media.
• told by parents/ adults to children? were passed
  down many generations in various forms? important
  tools of socialisation, and even of control.
• 1. Within the story, the husband wants to control
  his wife
• 2. The story shapes our ways of thinking
• those with the power to invent stories ?
  control the public? back to social
  constructionism
•  
• Next time Cinderella and the male gaze

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 Quills

• based on real-life figures and real places .
• Socio-historical Background Mainly a no. of
  years after the French Revolution France under
  Napoleon
• 4 major characters (??)
• Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush)
• French writer of highly erotic stories
• The Priest (Joquain Phoenix)
• Head of the Charenton Asylum
• Madelaine (Kate Winslet)
• A chambermaid responsible for cleaning dirty
  linen and helps smuggling out pages of his book
• The Psychiatrist (Michael Caine)
• Sent by Napoleon in an attempt to change (i.e.
  reform) the writers behaviour