Bad Sexuality

Is there a hierarchy of what is sexually acceptable? How has our conception of what Gayle Rubin called “evil sexuality” changed in recent decades? In this session we revive certain debates opened up by lesbian-feminism in the 1980s and 1990s as related to BDSM, pornography or sex work, which led to what were known as the “sex wars”. With the new millennium and the appearance of post-pornography as a feminist tool for the destabilisation of normative, hetero-centric sexuality, this polarised mood seemed to have been surpassed. However, the current moralising offensive of certain sectors of anti-pornographic and trans-exclusionary feminism seems to have resuscitated the causes of sexual, gender and political correction.