Repository logo
 

Hetero-sexting as mediated intimacy work: ‘Putting something on the line’

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Change log

Abstract

jats:p This article is concerned with women’s digitally mediated practices of creating and sending private sexual images to men, here referred to as ‘hetero-sexting’. Drawing on material from individual interviews with adult British women about their experiences of hetero-sexting, the article develops an understanding of women’s hetero-sexting practices as a form of female-conducted ‘mediated intimacy work’, constituted by a constant negotiation of female risk taking and male trustworthiness. In doing so, it shows how the women relied on and made active use of the sexting-related risk of digital image abuse as a means to establish and enhance trust and, as such, stress the significance of their hetero-sexting activities as performances of intimacy. Sexting-induced vulnerability was therefore both drawn on and dismissed within the very same accounts of hetero-sexting, as it was applied as a means to perform a new form of normative femininity, namely that of the agentic intimacy worker. </jats:p>

Description

Keywords

Dick pics, intimacy, mediation, risk, sexting, trust, vulnerability, work

Journal Title

New Media and Society

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1461-4448
1461-7315

Volume Title

24

Publisher

SAGE Publications