Janice M. Irvine

Is sexuality research ‘dirty work’? Institutionalized stigma in the production of sexual knowledge

Sexuality research has a long history of controversy in the USA. This article examines sexuality research as a form of “dirty work,” an occupation that is simultaneously socially necessary and stigmatized. Using survey data of contemporary sociologists engaged in sexuality research, historical data on 20th century sexologists, and content analysis of top-tier sociology journals, I focus on the university system and its related functions of publishing, funding, and ethical review boards. I argue that sexuality research is constructed as dirty work by systematic practices of the university system, and further suggest that these practices impose stigma effects that are not simply individual but represent persistent patterns of institutional inequality. Further, I show how these institutional practices are shaped by cultural schemas regarding sexuality, enacted through cognitive and affective bias of institutional actors. The construction of sexuality research as dirty work affects not only researchers themselves but shapes the broad production of sexual knowledge.

Transient Feelings: Sex Panics and the Politics of Emotions

Throughout the 1990s, during my field research into conflicts over sexuality education, I was initially riveted by what I found — public discussions that flared into furious arguments. Neighbors hurled epithets like “ fascist” and “McCarthyite” at each other, while school board meetings went from sleepy affairs to late-night shouting matches involving hundreds of residents. Adrenaline buzzed throughout public meetings, all of us alert to the next outburst. School board members told me about receiving death threats, being spit on, and having tires slashed. After explosive meetings they received police escorts to their cars. One prominent sex education foe collapsed from an anxiety attack during his speech at an especially rancorous meeting, while those of us left waiting in the school auditorium worried in hushed whispers that he had died of a heart attack. Sex education conflicts escalated rapidly through the 1990s and spread to nearby cities as though contagious. Sensational media coverage heightened these public battles, while officials scrambled for solutions. These were the feelings of community controversies, local dramas played out in the shadow of national politics.

Can’t Ask, Can’t Tell How Insitutional Review Boards Keep Sex In The Closet

Insitutional Review Boards (IRBs) pose many challenges for sexuality researchers. Sociologist Janice M. Irvine explores how IRBs marginalize sexuality research and the effects of this process.

The politics of youth sexuality: Civil society and school-based sex education in Croatia:

This article analyzes the development of school-based sex education programs in Croatia to identify the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in shaping government policy outcomes. We trace the history and recent activities of faith-based and pro-comprehensive education CSOs to identify the political advantages and cultural challenges in advocating systematic sexuality education. Focusing our analysis on the 2004–2008 negotiation process over sexuality and health education programs in Croatian public schools, we aim to make transparent the state reluctance in handling controversial issues, as well as its covert privileging of faith-based initiatives. This decision-making process, we argue, exposes political links between heterosexual values and national culture. It also highlights how sex education policy became a site for reinforcing and challenging heteronormative values, and reveals complex relationships between sexuality, religiosity, and national culture.

The Other Sex Work: Stigma in Sexuality Research

This article examines subjective experiences of stigma by contemporary sociologists in the field of sexuality studies. Many sexuality scholars reported experiences of stigma and marginalization in academic departments, such as disparaging jokes and assumptions about the researcher’s personal sexual identity or behavior. Women were more likely than men to report these types of subjective experiences. Although preliminary, these findings suggest the possibility of stigma in the academic workplace based on the area of research.

Paixões Reguladas: a invenção da inibição do desejo sexual e da adicção sexual

Paixoes reguladas. A invencao da inibicao do desejo sexual e da adiccao sexual Resumo: A partir de um olhar sociologico, o artigo trata da emergencia das categorias de inibicao do desejo sexual (IDS) e da adiccao sexual no campo da sexologia norte-americana. O texto busca explicar tal emergencia a partir da triangulacao de imperativos e saberes medicos articulados a demandas e experiencias individuais e ansiedades culturais. Alem disso, nele se explora a constituicao historico-socio-politica do campo sexologico e medico neste contexto, bem como suas diferencas, mudancas, mediadores culturais, ambivalencias e contenciosos. Palavras-chave: sexologia; sexualidade; adiccao sexual; inibicao do desejo sexual Pasiones reguladas. La invencion de la inhibicion del deseo sexual y de la adiccion al sexo Resumen: Desde una mirada sociologica, este articulo aborda la emergencia de las categorias inhibicion del deseo sexual (IDS) y adiccion al sexo, en el campo de la sexologia norteamericana. El texto busca explicar tal emergencia a partir de la triangulacion de imperativos y saberes medicos articulados a demandas y experiencias individuales, y a ansidades culturales. Se explora la constitucion historico-socio-politica del campo sexologico y medico en ese contexto, asi como sus diferencias, cambios, mediadores culturales, ambivalencias y conflictos. Palabras clave: sexologia; sexualidad; adiccion al sexo; inhibicion del deseo sexual Regulated Passions: The Invention of Inhibited Sexual Desire and Sex Addiction Abstract: In this article the emergence of the categories Inhibited Sexual Desire (IDS), and Sex Addiction within North American sexology is explained as the result of the combination of medical imperatives and knowledge, articulated to individual experiences and demands, as well as to cultural anxieties. In that process the historical, social, and political constitution of the medical and the sexological field is also explored, as well as their differences, changes, cultural mediators, ambivalences, and conflicts. Keywords : sexology; sexuality; sexual addiction; Inhibited sexual desire

Mapping the Walk of Shame: Incorporating Emotions into Concepts and Methods

This article expands the concept of sexual scripts and the cognitive mapping method by adding an emotional dimension to both. It is based on a case study of college students reporting their experiences of the walk of shame, the term for women walking home in the early morning from a “hookup,” or casual sex, the night before. The walk of shame is a productive site in which to address conceptual and methodological challenges posed by sociology’s affective turn. In this article, I discuss emotional scripts as a conceptual framework for exploring women students’ experiences with the walk of shame. And I propose affective mapping as a methodological approach for capturing emotional dimensions in social life. Using the method to map the emergence of feelings and their temporal changes in relation to normative features of the spatial environment, I suggest that although the walk of shame appears to be a vehicle for the social control of women’s sexuality, women report more complexity during their walks, producing scripts of shame, pride, and ambivalence.

On lies, secrets, and right‐wing sexual politics: reflections on Laud Humphreys’ “breastplate of righteousness”

Charts the unfortunate events surrounding the 1974 wedding of a couple who later, on their honeymoon, discovered that they had both had sexual relations with the minister. Billy James Hargis. Contents the revelations forced his resignation as he also admitted 3 further liaisons with male students at the American Christian College. Mentions Laud Humphreys and his work to classify the meeting of men for homosexual acts in the “tearoom”, a place where up to 20 men go for oral sex, without commitment, as some are heterosexual.

Sexualities: Resisting sexual stigma for twenty years

Sexualities has saved careers! I don’t have the precise empirical evidence to support that claim, but close enough to be confident! Several years ago—on a whim almost—I conducted a survey of US sociologists who do research in sexualities studies. After a hallway conversation about Alfred Kinsey, with a colleague who quipped, ‘‘Well, the culture is much more liberal now and those controversies don’t happen anymore,’’ I realized that there were no systematic data about the career experiences of contemporary sexuality researchers. So in 2011, I conducted an online survey with members of the American Sociological Association (ASA) Section on Sexualities. The survey included 80 questions, and covered a wide range of topics. In what I now see is an egregious omission, I did not ask about publishing. But my respondents had plenty to say anyway. Although sociologists reported growing acceptance of the academic study of sexuality, many reported academic trouble. Both women and men perceived various types of problematic workplace experiences based on the subject of their research. Some of these difficulties—for example tenure and promotion decisions— are directly related to publishing. Sociologists reported problems with placing sexuality articles in disciplinary journals, despite intense pressure by their departments to do so. They also complained that their topics were trivialized, Sexualities 2018, Vol. 21(8) 1234–1237 ! The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1363460718772757 journals.sagepub.com/home/sex

Dirty words, shameful knowledge, and sex research

ABSTRACTDespite changes in the sexual culture over the last century, research on sexualities remains vulnerable to political controversies. Sexuality researchers and educators have been discredited by their association with a stigmatized topic—sex. Critics frequently charge that the sexual knowledge produced by sexuality scholars is pornographic, and insist that it should be censored, denied funding, or otherwise eliminated.