Aura Lehtonen – författare

This book explores the relationship between sexuality and politics in Britain’s recent political past, in the decade preceding the Covid-19 pandemic, and asks what sexual meanings and logics are embedded in the dominant political discourses and policies of this time.A discursive framing of ‘exceptionality’ has commonly attached to the politics of austerity, crisis and neoliberalisation that have characterised the 2010s in Britain, with many noting the depoliticising effects of such a crisis politics. The book’s four case studies each investigate a binary concept that has played a key role in these limited and limiting discourses: the stable family/troubled family; deserving/undeserving; public/private and material/cultural. Deploying an expansive notion of sexuality, these binaries are examined by analysing a range of cultural and political texts in which they are reproduced, from policy and legal documents to popular films and TV series.This empirically informed and theoretically innovative analysis makes an important contribution to understandings of sexuality, identity and inequalities, as well as of crisis and neoliberalism. It will be of interest to scholars and students in gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, sociology, politics and social policy.

This book explores the relationship between sexuality and politics in Britain’s recent political past, in the decade preceding the Covid-19 pandemic, and asks what sexual meanings and logics are embedded in the dominant political discourses and policies of this time.A discursive framing of ‘exceptionality’ has commonly attached to the politics of austerity, crisis and neoliberalisation that have characterised the 2010s in Britain, with many noting the depoliticising effects of such a crisis politics. The book’s four case studies each investigate a binary concept that has played a key role in these limited and limiting discourses: the stable family/troubled family; deserving/undeserving; public/private and material/cultural. Deploying an expansive notion of sexuality, these binaries are examined by analysing a range of cultural and political texts in which they are reproduced, from policy and legal documents to popular films and TV series.This empirically informed and theoretically innovative analysis makes an important contribution to understandings of sexuality, identity and inequalities, as well as of crisis and neoliberalism. It will be of interest to scholars and students in gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, sociology, politics and social policy.

Bad Sex traces the evolution of representations of sex on screen, from earlier portrayals of sex as glamorous or taboo, to more complex depictions of often awkward or painful experiences and feelings.Jacqueline Gibbs, Billy Holzberg, and Aura Lehtonen examine the representation of sex and sexuality in contemporary English language drama and ‘dramedy’ shows like Fleabag (2016, 2019), Sex Education (2019-23), I May Destroy You (2020) and Euphoria (2019-), arguing that TV is where the politics of sexuality and gender is negotiated under the contemporary conditions of neoliberalism.Through a cultural analysis of key television shows, they identify this shift as driven by the diversification of representations of sex and sexuality, as women, trans and non-binary, Black and minority ethnic, working-class and disabled TV professionals carve some space in a traditionally white, middle-class, cis male dominated industry. In doing so, they explore the affective potential and limits of ‘bad’ sex on our screens and what these representations can tell us about sexual politics and gender cultures today.