“Gaming Sexual Exclusion,” considers how contemporary media negotiate “the comparative unfuckability of black women and Asian men” (Amia Srinivasan) through how dating apps, dating shows, and data science render sexual exclusion a “political fact.”
Roundtable: Technological Mediations of Sex and Play
organized by Josef Nguyen and Bo Ruberg sponsored by the Media, Science and Technology Scholarly Interest Group
Abstract
This roundtable explores how media technologies shape cultural imaginaries of sex. From how films enable us to represent and screen sex to how dating and hookup apps modulate our feelings of sexual intimacy, critical studies of media technologies show how they are central to understandings of, attitudes toward, and practices of sex (Williams; McGlotten). Additionally, key interventions have demonstrated how vital the history and imagination of toys, games, and play are to the development of media technologies and understandings of sex and erotics, from sex toys to digital games (Comella; Patterson). In conversation with media studies, science and technology studies, feminist and queer theory, and play and game studies, speakers in this roundtable discuss how media technologies shape and are shaped by the cultural politics of sex and play.