Another Month, Another Chapter

So the last time I wrote here, I expressed my frustration and lack of self-confidence in writing postgraduate research.

Sufficed to say, my work so far is apparently okay, but I really need a thorough deconstruction of what intimacy is, so that when I go through the literature, I can clearly show why I have a case for claiming to have potentially uncovered a new form of intimacy.

Other than that, not much has changed, though the majority of my literature review is completed to a degree that I can now focus on the methodology of my thesis. I've been given a figurative mountain of literature by one of my supervisors (thank you, you know who you are) on qualitative methods and Goffman / Presentation of Self. I don't know anything about Goffman to any great extent, having somehow avoided him in my undergraduate years.

That aside, I'm hoping it will allow me to explain why I need to talk to the people I want to talk to in the way I want to. As the space in which my research precludes an open, visible analysis (ie the way intimacy is carried out is privately, behind the screen if you will), Goffman and Symbolic Interactionalism will hopefully give me a framework for interpreting and understanding how all of this online intimacy stuff goes down.

I can't really say too much else at this stage, as I haven't even begun. But I was obligated to post something this week, and I suppose this will have to do.

Here's an amusing picture of a cat that was recently posted on imgur to distract you from the brevity of this posting.

Stupidity, Acceptance and Determination

Not much has progressed in the last week. I submitted the first draft of my literature review to my supervisors, with mixed results. One one hand, they appreciated my delineation of the literature, but I neglected my own 'voice' too much, and subsequently have to go back and 'silence the cacophony', so to speak. TL;DR - Need to voice my own thoughts more rather than stand on the shoulders of giants.

It's hard, man. In the bachelors degree, you don't get taught to any great extent how to think critically, or express your own thought as much...Perhaps I'm wording that incorrectly...You aren't taught or prepared to think at a postgraduate level, which means that when you do get to that stage, you're dropped in the deep end. Some people thrive on pressure, and while I do work well under the hammer (I think, at least), I couldn't help but wonder - am I 'cut out' for research (See image above for an accurate depiction of my face as I left my supervisory meeting)?

As it stands, I'm currently rewriting the parts of my chapter that let me down, namely my introduction paragraph (done), and the 'toning down' of my citations. I'm reading The Transformation of Intimacy (1992) and Liquid Love (2003) again. I need to figure out how to overcome my self-doubt and confidently critique these writings (I still feel like I am a lowly undergrad with no right to an opinion, which isn't doing me any favours).

I guess for me, the problem is never going to be a 'writing block' or lack of inspiration. For me, it's a lack of motivation that is psychologically based on my low sense of self-worth. I'm unsure if my other classmates suffer from the same lack of confidence (I can think of two girls in particular that rock at what they do, and would be surprised to think they feel otherwise), but perhaps I can bring this up in class on Monday. I can't be the only fresh-faced honours student filled with doubt in the formative stages of their thesis?

Oh well, I just need to keep on writing, nothing will get done by procrastinating. More to come on my progress when there's actually progress to comment upon.



References

Bauman, Z 2003, Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds, Polity Press, UK.

Giddens, A 1992, The Transformation Of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies, Polity Press, UK

Sexualisation/Pornification/Frustration

So, one of my supervisors recently suggested that I should look into the influence / impact of porn on intimacy; that essentially intimacy had become 'pornified'. I thought it sounded like a fair assumption to make, there are a few adult-dating sites out there, such as Adultmatchmaker and Ashleymadison that I'm sure feminist critique would label as having a negative impact on relationships...Indeed, as people like Adam Turpin (2006) and Pamela Paul (2005) would have you believe, society is more or less "pornified", and that men in particular are "wired for porn", an addictive force not unlike heroin use or binge drinking.

A fellow postgraduate student of mine (thanks Joy!) over the weekend linked me to a BBC production called 'Websex: What's The Harm?' (2012), a tongue-in-cheek documentary which purports to give "a revealing look at the growing trend of young people initiating sexual relationships on the internet and mobile devices. What are they risking? What are the boundaries?". It revolves around recent research concuted by Andy Phippen over at the University of Plymouth, who argues that an alarmingly high number of young people in their teenage years are using the internet, and their mobile devices, for casual sex.

However, as I have learnt there are recent critics of the pornification theses and the moral panic. Academics and researchers such as Jacobs (2007), Lumby & Albury (2010), Paasonen (2011), and Smith (2010) have labelled it as being reductive, overly negative and caught in a binary mode of thinking. They argue that the internet, and porn, have changed the way sex and sexual identity is expressed.

I thought that there would be something widely cited on the link between porn and online dating (particularly from the pornification angle, perhaps even a feminist critique which lambasted the way in which men hiding behind a screen treat online female daters with little respect), but so far I have found nothing. If I'm to be honest, the section on the sexualisation/pornificiation of intimacy is, I believe, my weakest part to the literature review so far. If you know of some research that's more along the line of how porn influences the way men and women negotiate dating websites, let me know, because that's essentially my train of thinking, I just don't see anything out there along that line.

References

BBC 2012, Web Sex: What's The Harm?, accessed 09/08/2012, http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/program/24626

Jacobs K, Pasquinelli M, Jannsen M 2007, C'Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader, Paradiso, Netherlands

Paul, P 2005, Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families, Henry Holt and Company, USA.

Paasonen, S 2011, Online Pornography: Ubiquitous and Effaced, The Handbook of Internet Studies, Mia Consavlo and Charles Ess (eds), Wiley-Blackwell, USA.

Turpin, A 2006, 'Not Tonight Darling, I Am Online', FT.com, accessed 10/08/12, http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/docview/228992003

The changing contours of online intimacy

NB: Before I get into explaining what my thesis is about, and where my interests lie, I feel that it is perhaps appropriate to note that my thesis is still in its infancy. As in, still compiling a literature review. Many of my collegial counterparts are well on their way to finishing their theses (I started in July as opposed to starting at the beginning of 2012). So, if you see a relative sparsity here in comparison to the information on offer through my links section, that's why.

Tumblr, as many of you might be aware by now, is a social networking site (SNS) centred around microblogging and inspires its users to “share anything...customise everything”. It is a virtual space where millions of users share the things they “do, find, love, think, create”; where inter-connected communities collaborate in the rapid dissemination of ideas, meme culture and information. As at the time of writing, tumblr (as it is styled) has over 67 million individual blogs, with over 28 billion individual posts. One particular micro-blog that has particular sociological significance for anyone interested in gender, cultural studies, and online intimacy goes by the label Girls Who Love Girls.

I had first heard of Girls Who Love Girls while engaging in a casual conversation on Facebook regarding internet dating. A lesbian friend had made mention that she utilised Girls Who Love Girls in order to reach a broader LGBT community, having had consequentially become disillusioned with the limited experiences on offer in Sydney, when looking to connect with other queer women. Girls Who Love Girls is a community-driven online-dating platform, whereby users participate globally in submitting their own self-portrait photographs or videos along-side brief descriptions of their age, location and interests. Their motivation is in the hope of attracting like-minded women to 'add' or 'follow' their personal tumblr blogs, and commence a communicative exchange (from anything ranging from what music they like, to what they seek in a lover).

I became fascinated by the concept that these women were actively challenging social norms surrounding dating, and engaging in what many would regard as unorthodox methods of attracting a potential romantic interest. I have since learned that there is a paucity in empirical research regarding online dating where users (specifically young adults) pursue intimacy in spaces that were not typically or originally designed to accommodate such function. By attempting to situate my research in the Australian context, I hope to complete a lacuna in research in online intimacy. There are a few current exceptions (see for example Barraket & Henry-Waring 2008; Hjorth 2009, 2011; Malta 2008), however none have investigated the experiences and attitudes of young adults aged 18 to 25, or how they are seemingly driving the reconfiguration of online spaces for desired intimacies.

There isn't much else to say at this point, as I mentioned earlier I am still writing my literature review, but I hope to have that completed by mid-August 2012. Through my supervisors I have been persuaded to consider the impact of pornography on online relationships, but I haven't as yet begun exploring that option. Sufficed to say, it should make for interesting reading...

Until next week :-)

References


Barraket, J and Henry-Waring, M. S. 2008, 'Getting it on(line) : Sociological perspectives on e-dating', in Journal of Sociology, vol. 44, no. 02, pp.149-165

Hjorth, L 2009, 'Web U2: Emerging Online Communities and Gendered Intimacy in the Asia-Pacific region', in Knowledge, Technology & Policy, vol. 22, pp.117-124

Hjorth L 2011, 'It's Complicated', in Communication, Politics & Culture, vol. 44, no. 01, pp.45-59

Malta S 2008, 'Intimacy and older adults: a comparison between online and offline romantic relationships', in Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA 2008): Re-imagining Sociology, Melbourne, Australia, 02-05 December, accessed 31/07/2012, Swinburne Research Bank.