Intoxicating substance use, sexuality and gender

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Intoxicating substance use, sexuality and gender
Department of Sociology
Alexandra Bogren, PhD
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• Yes, but they the powder whores are out
  every weekend. You see them more often drunk on
  town and stuff like that. Those who cry That
  football guy dumped me. (Lalander, 2001)
• OK, from a guys point of view, if youre out
  just looking for some fun, you know, youre going
  to buy a girl as many drinks as you can, to get
  her as off guard as you can. And youre going to
  try and have your way with her and be on your
  way. (Ferris, 1997)
• They see me all the time with different guys, I
  guess now it is the bullshit talk of the town,
  Svenne said something about it Are you together
  with him or? No, Im not. No, but then you
  sleep with him anyway, but I definitely dont.
  (Lalander, 2001 216).

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Previous research

• Balanced placebo design (BPD) to be able to
  distinguish psychological or social psychological
  (i.e., placebo) effects, from pharmacological or
  physiological effects of ethanol intake.
• Survey methodology statistical analyses of
  relationships between, e.g., consumption levels
  and sexual attitudes and experiences.
• Qualitative and theoretical analyses including
  analyses of texts, documents and photos,
  interviews (individual and focus group),
  participant observation.

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Out-of-the-ordinary

• Intoxication and certain sexual experiences as
  examples of ecstasy
• Ecstasy as transcendence of everyday limits or
  frames
• According to some both common sense and
  scientific views, women do not want or need
  transcendence (e.g., in becoming intoxicated or
  in having many sexual partners)
• Gender dimension

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Sara Heinämaa

• Inspiration from Simone de Beauvoir
• Beauvoir studied the meanings of woman, female
  and feminine.
• Thus, when Beauvoir asks how does one become a
  woman, she in fact asks how it is possible that a
  body, intertwined with the world and other
  bodies, can both repeat certain postures,
  gestures and expressions, and change and modify
  them (Heinämaa, 1997b 32).
• Embodied ways of relating to the world styles of
  being.
• Totality of life (can be captured, e.g., in life
  history approaches to interviewing).

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Roslyn Bologh

• Subject object relationships
• Subject the affecting, imposing self
• Object (body) the affected, imposed-upon other
• Each individual can change at any moment ?the
  relationship can change instantaneously.
• Therefore, positions vary (it is not a given that
  women are objects and men subjects).
• Asymmetrical form of relationship (playfulness or
  friction)

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Table 14.1 Harmonious relationships of erotic
love (from Bologh, R., 1990, p. 220)
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Strategies for analysis

• Metaphors (Love is a physical force, Love is
  war, Love is madness)
• Counterfactual thinking (anthropologist models,
  the researcher as Marsian estrangement)
• We vs Them, We vs the Other(s) (subject
  object) Negative Other presentation
• Chains of association

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Department of Sociology
www.sociology.su.se