Erotic Access: Pole Dancing as a Sexual Script

• In Event: 41058 - Sports and Sexuality

Abstract

The sexualization of culture has been a divisive subject among gender scholars, feminists, and activists for the past several decades. In a society where cis-hetero monogamy and patriarchy are hegemonic, the object of sexual desire is often presumed feminine, and the subjective arbitrator of sexual desire is presumed cis, hetero, and masculine. Recent scholarship has focused on the contemporary shift of sexualized behaviors into the mainstream, describing such trends as “raunch culture” and “porno-chic.” One side of the debate surrounding mainstream sexualized behaviors argues that women who openly engage with in erotic behaviors are subjecting themselves to, and therefore reproducing, patriarchal oppression. The other side of this debate commands nuanced attention to female choice in the decision to engage in erotic behavior, and argues that erotic power is constantly renegotiated as it is enacted.
In this paper, I examine pole dancing as a site of erotic expression which has recently become a mainstream recreational activity. My analysis draws upon 20 in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldnotes I collected while dancing alongside recreational pole dancers in a metropolitan area in the Southwestern United States. I seek to reframe the existing debate surrounding the sexualization of mainstream culture. I operationalize pole dancing as a sexual script that individuals use to engage the erotic. Using Simon and Gagnon (1984)’s sexual scripts theory as a lens, I find that dancers use pole dancing to access their sexuality intra-psychically, yet meaning-making does not always transfer across levels of sexual scripting. Recreational pole dancers experience empowerment at the intra-psychic and interpersonal levels of sexual scripting, and empowerment arises as a renegotiation of the cultural-level sexual script of pole dancing. My findings imply that hegemonic gendered expectations shape the cultural-level script of sexualized pole dancing impacting who may access empowerment through this form of sexual expression.

Author

• Elizabeth Anne Miller, University of California-San Diego