All the buzzzzz: women making gender and sexuality at sex-toy parties in St. Louis

White, Donna

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/42438 Copy

Description

Title

All the buzzzzz: women making gender and sexuality at sex-toy parties in St. Louis

Author(s)

White, Donna

Issue Date

2013-02-03T19:45:39Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Manalansan, Martin F.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Manalansan, Martin F.

Committee Member(s)

• Moodie, Ellen
• Torres, Arlene
• Pleck, Elizabeth H.

Department of Study

Anthropology

Discipline

Anthropology

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Anthropology
• Ethnography
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Sex-Toy Party

Abstract

This ethnography explores the popular culture of in-home female-only sex-toy sales parties in St. Louis, Missouri. In particular, it examines how women socially construct gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and identity, through consumptive practices and conversations. As female-only spaces, women create these parties as safe spaces to consume intimate merchandise, perform dynamic identities, and enact captivating performances of gender and sexuality. At sex-toy-parties, women undergo sexual liberations; and they make revealing statements about their sexual identities, behaviors, fetishes, and deviances. Women bond and gossip about everything from national politics to neighborhood church scandals. Women at these intimate-product parties discuss and reveal intimate sexual desires, taboos, and indulgences. They also speak openly about their newly acquired sexual commodities and sexual liberations. In a conservative and southern cultured space, like St. Louis, these parties are intriguing spaces to better understand just how women socially construct their sexual identities, alter their sexual behaviors, and become enlightened about their bodies, minds, souls, and sexualities.

Graduation Semester

2012-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/42438

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2012 Donna White

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