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Palgrave Macmillan

Sex Clubs

Recreational Sex, Fantasies and Cultures of Desire

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  • © 2022

Overview

  • Offers a unique and insightful perspective into an under-researched area in Gender and Sexuality Studies
  • Explores a multiplicity of themes including around BDSM, race, LGBTQ, commodification, and sex tourism
  • Incorporates a multifaceted theoretical framework and includes ethnographic data

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About this book

This book explores the hidden world of sex clubs. These are not strip clubs, lap dancing clubs, or brothels; these are clubs that men and women visit to have no strings attached sex. Each year sex clubs, traditionally called swingers clubs, are visited by over one million people in the UK. Using social and cultural theory, the author explores the cultures of desire through themes such as erotic hierarchies, atmospheres and power, women and sexual fantasies, men, masculinity and non-consent, hypersexualized black bodies, heterosexuality and queer heteroeroticism and trans desires. From cuckolding to group sex, bareback sex to intergenerational sex, partner swapping and threesomes to BDSM and fetish nights, sex clubs host a diverse range of sexual encounters that are part of a growing trend of recreational sex.  Despite there being over 40 clubs in the UK alone, we continue to know very little about who is visiting the club, why they go there and what people do. 

Thisbook—drawing upon ethnographies, interviews and large-scale quantitative data—is one of the first in the field to systematically collect and critically interrogate sex clubs and their erotic encounters. This will not only be the first sustained social and cultural analysis of sex clubs themselves, but it also aims to lure the reader into the club through discussions of ethnographic encounters, enabling them to experience the unique dynamics of sex clubs and their cultures of desire.

 


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Keywords

Table of contents (8 chapters)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Media, Culture and Heritage, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

    Chris Haywood

About the author

Chris Haywood is a Reader in Critical Masculinity Studies at Newcastle University, UK. His work focuses on exploring gender and sexuality and the limits of identity. His previous work includes Men, Masculinity and Contemporary Dating (Palgrave) and co-author on The Conundrum of Masculinity (Routledge).

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Sex Clubs

  • Book Subtitle: Recreational Sex, Fantasies and Cultures of Desire

  • Authors: Chris Haywood

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14050-1

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-14049-5Published: 12 January 2023

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-14052-5Published: 12 January 2024

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-14050-1Published: 11 January 2023

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XV, 203

  • Topics: Gender Studies, Queer Studies

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