For Sex-Positivity? Potential and limits of representing sex and sexuality in Ulli Lust’s comics across genres
: Vuorinne Anna
: Kristy Beers Fägersten, Anna Nordenstam, Leena Romu, Margareta Wallin Wictorin
: 2021
: Comic Art and Feminism in the Baltic Sea Region: Transnational Perspectives
: Routledge Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Comics
: 105
: 126
: 978-0-367-48333-3
: 978-1-003-03940-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003039402-8(external)
: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003039402-8/sex-positivity-anna-vuorinne(external)
This chapter examines the representations of sex and sexuality Ulli Lust’s comics, bringing her oeuvre in a conversation with sex-positive feminism. The chapter maps out the possibilities and challenges of genre conventions and comics storytelling for dealing with sex and sexuality, while simultaneously considering the ways in which comics, as representations with political implications, may challenge and/or reproduce anti-feminist discourses on sex and sexuality. The chapter concludes that Lust’s work has an ambivalent relationship to sex-positive feminism. On the one hand, her comics attest to the creative potential of comic art with regard to non-normative and diversity-acknowledging approach to sexuality, and offer valuable opportunities to reflect the feminist possibilities of the medium when representing sex. On the other hand, they demonstrate how challenging it may be to oppose essentialist and hierarchical ideas about sex, deeply ingrained in the hegemonic Western culture.