Background
The World Health
Organization's publication, Developing sexual health programmes,
states that the media is an important source of information about sexuality.
Although the media can promote awareness of sexual health issues, it also acts
as a vehicle for defining and regulating sex norms. In other words, the
standards of ‘normal’ sex are in part defined by the media. Accordingly, it has
become imperative to analyse the media's construction of sexual norms in order
to reveal how they are related to specific ideological views. For the purposes
of this study, the focus will be limited to analysing the South African
publication Intimacy.
Aim
The study aims to reveal
how the sex advice articles written in Intimacy for women in regard to their male
partner's sexuality reflect patriarchal and phallocentric ideologies.
Method
A discourse analysis of
the sex advice articles in the magazine Intimacy was conducted. It was informed by
feminist theories of sexuality that seek to examine the ways in which texts are
associated with male-centred versions of sexual pleasure.
Results
The discourse analysis
identified a number of key themes regarding male sexuality. These include: (1)
biological accounts of male sexuality; (2) phallocentric scripting of the sex
act; and (3) the melodramatic penis.
Conclusion
Constructions of male
sexuality require the inclusion of alternative modes of male erotic pleasure.
This requires texts that encourage men to explore and also to experiment with
pleasurable feelings associated with non-genital erogenous zones of the body.
…Intimacy's aim to
‘empower you as its reader and give you permission to take control of your sex
life’,34 is,
at best, only a pseudo-empowerment for women in heterosexual relations.8 It
can only ever promote an illusory sense of female control and pleasure as it
persists in defining male sexuality according to patriarchal standards. The
patriarchal underpinning of male sexuality in Intimacy has
been revealed to delimit the sexual act, female sexuality and men to predefined
potentials and gender relations: restriction of male sexual expression to the
erect penis; notions of ‘real’ sex as penile-vaginal penetration (at the
expense of diverse erotic experiences derived from non-genital erogenous
zones); biological accounts of the male sex drive (that negate acts of
communication and negotiation); the relegation of any sexual act that departs
from coitus to foreplay (and thus of secondary importance); and the continual
description of the penis as a revered icon of sexual pleasure for both men and
women…
Full article at: http://goo.gl/tclUtA
By:
1Department of Visual Arts, University of
Pretoria, South Africa
Corresponding
author.
Correspondence to: Rory du Plessis Email:Email: az.ca.pu@sisselpud.yror, Postal
address: Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa
How to cite this article: Du Plessis R. A
discourse analysis of male sexuality in the magazine Intimacy. Afr
J Prm Health Care Fam Med. 2015;7(1), Art. #691, 7 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/phcfm.v7i1.691
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