The mainstreaming of masturbation

Tuck, Greg

Abstract

This chapter considers the way masturbation has entered mainstream culture, is promoted in self-help literature and magazines, is newly visible in film and on tv, and is foregrounded in the mediated sex offered by pornography, phone and cybersex. The chapter examines the paradoxical ways masturbation and masturbators are currently represented in the contemporary context (male negative – female positive). It discusses the relationship between anxiety and autonomy, autoerotic pleasure and sexual identity and articulates these concerns with regard to the more general sexualisation of consumer capitalism.

• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2009
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 77-92
• Book Title: Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualisation of Western Culture
• ISBN: 978-1845118273
• Keywords: masturbation, identity, anxiety, consumption
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/998486
• Publisher URL: http://us.macmillan.com/mainstreamingsex