“Real dolls” in international films: challenging the manufacturing of silence
Mirielle Michel
The dildo, the cyborg and the BwO
Yael Rozin
Pins and needles: body mod in bdsm
Angelika Tsaros
Experiments in extensivity: play piercing
Laura Kane
The paper explores how the post-/queer gender-fuck switch makes incoherent the active/passive dual structuring of heterosexual sex.
By looking at practices of play piercing – temporary piercings that slide under the surface of the skin – within the queer kink scene, the paper argues for new considerations for exploring penetration and climactic intensities. While sensitive to the “magnetic field of trauma” surrounding masculinity and penetration, the paper unfolds an argument for thinking about play piercing using the language of holes and orifices.
The paper looks at how piercing anchors and integrates the body in its environment, giving context and process primacy in negotiating bodies and genders, and argues that our current gender gestalt is effectively shifting the contours of what fucking can look and feel like.
Drawing upon the work of Henri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Elizabeth Grosz, Laura explores how representations of ‘normal’ bodes are undone by examining the affective aspect of piercing, paying attention to the politics of creating space though care and intention.
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