Sneers and Leers: Romance Writers and Gendered Sexual Stigma

Gender and Society 29 (4):459-483 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Drawing on four years of ethnographic research with romance novel writers, we show how their affiliation with romance—a literary genre known for stories containing sexual content—prompted outsiders to sexually stigmatize them. Our work examines both the application and management of this stigma. We describe how outsiders applied the stigma in two ways: by conveying blatant disapproval through “sneering” and inviting writers to display a highly sexualized self through “leering.” Writers interpreted outsiders’ sneering as slut-shaming rhetoric and responded discursively to manage the stigma; leering, however, sent a more complicated message that was harder for writers to manage. In revealing how these interactions threatened to strip writers of their sexual agency, our analysis suggests gender may be a primary mechanism by which stigma is applied and managed, which has theoretical implications for the stigmatization of women’s sexual selves.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,388

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-11-27

Downloads
21 (#1,049,356)

6 months
11 (#246,005)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature.Janice A. Radway - 1984 - Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press.
Reading romance novels in postcolonial india.Jyoti Puri - 1997 - Gender and Society 11 (4):434-452.

Add more references