Mediated Intimacy: Sex Advice in Media Culture

by Meg-John Barker, Rosalind Gill, Laura Harvey

Mediated Intimacy looks at contemporary sex and relationship advice, exploring how our intimate lives are shaped through different media, from manuals and magazines to television and Twitter. By exploring how intimacy is constructed through different media texts, the authors consider which ideas and practices these changing forms of 'sexpertise' open up, and which they close down.The book reveals the intimate operation of power in mediated advice, how words and images, stories and sound can work to shore up social injustice. It critically engages with the ideas of choice and responsibility in sex self-help, arguing that these can obscure and/or justify oppression, even if they're sometimes experienced as empowering and/or pleasurable.This bold and incisive book provides a radical challenge to the assumptions underlying the sex advice industry, and presents a critical, collaborative and consensual vision for sex advice of the future.

Genres: Sexuality, Nonfiction

312 pages, Hardcover

Published April 30, 2018

About the author

Dr. Meg-John Barker is a writer, therapist, and activist-academic specialising in sex, gender and relationships. Their popular books include the (anti-)self-help relationship book Rewriting the Rules, The Secrets of Enduring Love (with Jacqui Gabb), Queer: A Graphic History (with Julia Scheele), and Enjoy Sex, How, When and If You Want To (with Justin Hancock). Meg-John is a senior lecturer in psychology at the Open University and has published many academic books and papers on topics including non-monogamous relationships, sadomasochism, counselling, and mindfulness, as well as co-founding the journal Psychology & Sexuality and the activist-research organisation BiUK. They were the lead author of The Bisexuality Report – which has informed UK policy and practice around bisexuality – and are currently co-editing a book on non-binary gender with similar aims in that area. They are involved in running many public events on sexuality and relationships, including Sense about Sex and Critical Sexology. Meg-John is a UKCP accredited psychotherapist working with gender, sexually, and relationship diverse (GSRD) clients.