Annie Potts

“The Essence of the Hard On”: Hegemonic Masculinity and the Cultural Construction of “Erectile Dysfunction”

The condition known as “impotence” demonstrates the inscription on individual male bodies of a coital imperative: the surface of the male body interfuses with culture to produce the “fiction” of a dysfunctional nonpenetrative male (hetero)sexuality. The impotent man embodies this cultural narrative; his perceived failure to erect his penis and perform (with it) according to dominant phallocratic notions of healthy male heterosexuality infiltrates his flesh, actions, and thoughts. This article employs feminist poststructuralist discursive analysis to investigate the effect of the metonymic relationship between the penis and the phallus on the cultural construction of male “sexual dysfunctions.” It explores the medicalization of male sexuality, focusing on the impact of so-called “erectile dysfunction” on male bodies and lives; in particular, the use of intrapenile injections as a medical intervention for this “disorder.” It is argued that by relinquishing the peniss executive position in sex, male bodies might become differently inscribed, and coded for diverse pleasures beyond the phallus/penis.

The science/fiction of sex : feminist deconstruction and the vocabularies of heterosex

Introduction. Part One: The Science/Fiction of Sex. Sexual Science Fiction. War of the Worlds. Part Two: The Vocabularies of Heterosex. The Day the Earth Stood Still. The Man with Two Brains. The Incredible Shrinking Man. Innerspace. The Final Frontier. Brave New Worlds. Parting Comments, Future Sexes.

Deleuze on Viagra (Or, What Can a ‘Viagra-Body’ Do?)

In this article I employ Deleuzian theory in an exploration of men’s and women’s experiences of sexuality and sexual relations when encountering erectile difficulties and/or using sexuopharmaceuticals such as Viagra (sildenafil). I analyse the ways in which accounts of the function of Viagra-assisted erections can be seen to restore or re-establish previous sexual conventions or patterns (in Deleuzian terms, to ‘re-territorialize’ desire in ‘molar’ directions), and the ways in which Viagra use may change or challenge such patterns. Also examined are the alternative stories of those for whom Viagra hasn’t ‘worked’; these accounts demonstrate how the persistence of erectile difficulties produces positive opportunities for experimentation, creativity and transformation in the realm of the erotic.

Vegan Sexuality: Challenging Heteronormative Masculinity through Meat-free Sex

The terms ‘vegansexuality’ and ‘vegansexuals’ entered popular discourse following substantial media interest in a New Zealand-based academic study on ethical consumption that noted that some vegans engaged in sexual relationships and intimate partnerships only with other vegans. At this time it was suggested that a spectrum existed in relation to cruelty-free consumption and sexual relationships: at one end of this spectrum, a form of sexual preference influenced by veganism entailed an increased likelihood of sexual attraction towards those who shared similar beliefs regarding the exploitation of non-human animals; at the other end of the spectrum such a propensity might manifest as a strong sexual aversion to the bodies of those who consume meat and other animal products. The extensive media hype about (and public response to) vegansexuality was predominantly negative and derogatory towards ‘vegansexuals’ and vegans/vegetarians. A particular aggression was evident in online comments by those positioned as heterosexual meat-eating men. In this article we examine the hostile responses to vegansexuality and veganism posted by such men on internet news and journalism sites, personal blogs and chatrooms. We argue that the rhetoric associated with this backlash constructs vegansexuals — and vegans more generally — as (sexual) losers, cowards, deviants, failures and bigots. Furthermore, we suggest that the vigorous reactions of self-identified omnivorous men demonstrate how the notion of alternative sexual practices predicated on the refusal of meat culture radically challenges the powerful links between meat-eating, masculinity and virility in western societies.

The Discursive Condition of Viagra

This research investigates the socio-cultural implications of Viagra as a biomedical solution to a medically defined problem. This New Zealand-based research involved interviews with 33 men, to examine how they discursively constituted meanings around masculinity, erections, and the role of Viagra. It is argued that the relationship between discourses of mechanistic functionality of erections, the primacy of the male as performer, and the partners pleasure as measure of success, create the conditions of possibility for a pharmaceutical solution directed at the male. The problem is configured as the uncertainty accompanying the instability evident in the relationship between these discourses. The mens discourse on the solution, Viagra, confirms this analysis.

Kiwis Against Possums: A Critical Analysis of Anti-Possum Rhetoric in Aotearoa New Zealand

The history of brushtail possums in New Zealand is bleak. The colonists who forcibly transported possums from their native Australia to New Zealand in the nineteenth century valued them as economic assets, quickly establishing a profitable fur industry. Over the past 80 or so years, however, New Zealand has increasingly scapegoated possums for the unanticipated negative impact their presence has had on the native environment and wildlife. Now this marsupial—blamed and despised—suffers the most miserable of reputations and is extensively targeted as the nations number one pest. This paper examines anti-possum rhetoric in New Zealand, identifying the operation of several distinct—yet related—discourses negatively situating the possum as (a) an unwanted foreign invader and a threat to what makes New Zealand unique; (b) the subject of revenge and punishment (ergo the deserving recipient of exploitation and commodification); and (c) recognizably “cute, but...” merely a pest and therefore unworthy of compassion. This paper argues that the demonization of possums in New Zealand is overdetermined, extreme, and unhelpfully entangled in notions of patriotism and nationalism.

Kiwi chicken advocate talks with Californian dog companion

An influential feminist scholar in the field of human-animal studies, Donna Haraway (Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz) has over the past couple of decades provided ground-breaking critiques of such subjects as twentieth century primatology (and its links to race, gender and first-world/third-world politics), the place of nonhuman animals in laboratory science, and the phenomenon of pedigree dog breeding. Her most recent work focuses on our relationships with ‘companion species’, a term Haraway employs in her analysis of the diverse forms of human-animal interactions and exchanges that are part of everyday life. Drawing from ecological developmental biology, she suggests that companion species are the fruit of ‘multispecies reciprocal inductions’. In the following interview with Annie Potts (Co-Director, the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies), Donna Haraway discusses her views on, amongst other things, feminism and multispecies issues, human exceptionalism and posthumanism, and the pleasures of ‘becoming with’ our companion species.

Introduction: Combating speciesism in psychology and feminism

These are the words of prominent African-American feminist Alice Walker, Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Color Purple (1982). They appeared almost 20 years ago in her foreword to Marjorie Spiegel’s The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery (1996: 14). Walker’s declaration, which speaks to the focus and flavour of this special issue, was made around the time that a new multiand interdisciplinary field of inquiry was emerging. Human-Animal Studies (HAS), also called Animal Studies or Anthrozoology, draws upon a wide range of disciplinary formations: sociology, philosophy and history; studies of literature, the visual arts, cinema and popular culture; biobehavioural biology; science, technology, and health studies; gender and cultural studies; and of course psychology. What unites HAS work from all these disciplines is a determination to find new ways of thinking about animals and about human-animal relationships. Many lines of inquiry are pursued by HAS researchers. These include but are not limited to:

Cyborg masculinity in the Viagra era

The figure of the cyborg has, to date, been predominantly conceptualized and examined in terms of human–machine or animal–machine hybridization. Outside the field of psychopharmacology, little has been written on cyborgs arising from human–drug combinations. This paper, however, explores the twenty-first century masculinity of Viagra cyborgs, the recent creations of sexuopharmacology. Using material from interviews conducted in 2001 with New Zealand men and women, the ways in which the experiences and perspectives of those using Viagra and engaging in Viagra-assisted sex are reinforcing and/or disrupting the discursive construction of nature and culture, originality, and authenticity are explored and the kinds of stories being told about hyper-masculinity and super-natural erections are investigated.

Review: Lorna Jowett: Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005, 240pp.

with this new sensibility [postfeminism], and move forward to more open, equal, hopeful and generous gender relations’ (p. 271). This is a very clearly written scholarly work, an excellent starting point for readers who may want to become more familiar with some of the research cited. The book will be of great value to academics and students in a range of disciplines and interdisciplinary work – notably (critical) social psychology, sociology, media and cultural studies, and will foster reflection on the gendered patterns of media and material consumption (including the reader’s own!) in contemporary western society and on the heterosexist, classist and covertly racist agenda promulgated by the media under a superficial and illusory veneer of empowerment.