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- Title
The Siren Scream of Telesex: Speech, Seduction and Simulation.
- Authors
King, C. Richard
- Abstract
This article argues that within heterosexual telesex, talk about sex has become, on the one hand, a fully embodied practice, while on the other hand, it has become more real than sexuality itself. Telesex implements the sophisticated communicative, economic, and sexual technologies of late capitalism to release/capture, construct, exchange and satisfy carnal desires. Through seduction and simulation, telesex makes itself into sex; talk about sex become more real than the reality if sexuality; taken together, telesex makes sex more real than the real. the hyper-realization of sexuality as exemplified by telesex has a number of implications. Telesex argues that sex operates as a signifier, while what is signified remains unclear. It further asserts that a hyperreal sexuality threatens because it exposes sexuality as nothing more than a conglomeration of simulacra. Much like telesex, the hyper-realization of sexuality will retrace the relations and dynamics of the current reality of sex. To the chagrin of feminists and others, it promises to replicate the phalocentrism expressed everywhere in the erotic. If the reality of sex enshrines the prick, a hyperreal sexuality conjures and worships the technoprick. For it is the technoprick that draws the attentions, energies, and desires of telesex as an icon of hypersex; the technoprick is its center, its focus, its guiding principle. In contrast with its proponents, telesex does not liberate, but rather represses. The same is true for a hyperreal sexuality.
- Subjects
TELEPHONE sex; SEDUCTION; PORNOGRAPHY; HUMAN sexuality
- Publication
Journal of Popular Culture, 1996, Vol 30, Issue 3, p91
- ISSN
1540-5931
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.0022-3840.1996.00091.x