Sexways

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March 21, 2011

Fruits and Culture: A Preliminary Examination of Food-for-Sex Metaphors in English-language Caribbean Music

Posted by folkpub under Foodways, Gender, Music, Sexways
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Fruits and Culture: A Preliminary Examination of Food-for-Sex Metaphors in English-language Caribbean Music

Lyra Spang
Indiana University

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways that food, sexuality and gender roles interact in the Anglophone Caribbean, specifically in the country of Belize. Using analysis of food-for-sex metaphors in popular music, it explores the role of homosociality and separate gender roles in defining food and sexuality as highly charged spaces for cross-gender interaction. The objective of this exploratory analysis is to determine whether these two areas of interaction overlap to form a highly gendered “food-sex arena” that shapes discourse about food, sexuality and gender roles therein.

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March 24, 2009

Gerbilling Reconsidered: Comparing Talk of Foodways and Sexways

Posted by folkpub under Legends, Sexways
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Gerbilling Reconsidered: Comparing Talk of Foodways and Sexways

Christopher Lewis
The Ohio State University

Abstract
This paper considers the gerbilling legend of the early 1990s. The author contends that, by re-envisioning gay sex as gerbilling specifically rather than anal sex generally, heterosexual tellers of the legend grant themselves permission to participate in anal sex without participating in gay sex—a necessary function at the beginning of the AIDS pandemic. He also contends that reading it against rumors and legends of ethnic foodways more conclusively reveals that the gerbilling legend primarily stigmatizes the gerbil as a sex partner, not the act of rectal insertion, and that therefore the legend is not necessarily anti-anal sex. Meanwhile, it appears to remain anti-homosexual because of how tellers separate themselves from same-sex desire even while embracing traditional homosexual sexways. The paper concludes with a queer approach to the story that reconsiders gerbilling as an acceptable sexual act.
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