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Between commodified and improvisational pleasures: Uses and experiences of sextech by queer, trans, and nonbinary people in Sweden and Australia
Södertörn University, School of Culture and Education, Gender Studies. Uppsala University, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6047-4369
Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9043-8126
Queensland University of Technology, Australia.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8555-4456
2025 (English)In: Sexualities, ISSN 1363-4607, E-ISSN 1461-7382Article in journal (Refereed) Epub ahead of print
Abstract [en]

Sexual pleasure is a question of sexual justice and sexual rights in so far as who is allowed or denied pleasure is a vital issue for queer, trans, and nonbinary people. Pleasure is also intimately a technological question as sex was always entangled with and regulated by technologies. In this article, we seek to delineate a queer politics of pleasure by exploring LGBTQ+ people's uses and experiences of sextech in Australia and Sweden with a specific focus on sex toys. Which bodies, identities, pleasures, and practices do sextexch assume and extend? And how do these sextech users play with (while being played by) such norms and assumptions? We begin by considering the cultural specificity of queer and feminist histories of sex toys, including the commodification of sex and pleasure in late capitalism and how this relates to sexual identities and ideas of sexual liberation. We then discuss norms of sex, pleasure, and sextech. But rather than distinguishing the normative from the antinormative as a way of locating a transgressive potential, we rather consider how norms are always part of their own variation, opening up a broader sexual field of perhaps more mundane practices, yet no less significant. Finally, we explore how pleasure aligns with or disrupts an attention to norms and identities. In contrast to the commodification of sexual identities in sextech, and the linear enhancement of pleasure by design, we further an understanding of pleasure as something more improvisational and unpredictable with limited space in mainstream sextech data economies.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2025.
Keywords [en]
sextech uses and experiences, LGBTQ+ people, queer politics of pleasure, sexual capitalism, improvisation and unpredictability
National Category
Gender Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-56808DOI: 10.1177/13634607251324072ISI: 001441476900001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105000149736OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-56808DiVA, id: diva2:1946187
Part of project
Digital sexual health: Designing for safety, pleasure and wellbeing in LGBTQ+ communities, Forte, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare
Funder
Forte, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, 01927Available from: 2025-03-20 Created: 2025-03-20 Last updated: 2025-04-02Bibliographically approved

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Sundén, Jenny

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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
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  • harvard-anglia-ruskin-university
  • apa-old-doi-prefix.csl
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