Confessions of the Flesh: Power and Sexuality in the Facebook Confessional

Abstract

In this thesis I examine the Facebook confessional page NZ Sex Confessions R18. As a contemporary form of the confessional, Facebook users confess to acts or events through confessional “posts” which appear on the page. Other Facebook users then have the ability to comment on or “like” the confessional posts. Michel Foucault argues that subjects are disciplined in the space of the confessional, thereby producing heteronormative subjects. This begs the question: Is NZ Sex Confessions R18 working as a space that reproduces norms of heteronormativity? By examining the mechanisms that produce heteronormativity in the confessional that Foucault theorises, I argue that NZ Sex Confessions R18 reproduces heterosexuality, intelligible genders, and the coding of the gendered body. I demonstrate this argument by examining how dominant norms are reproduced through performances of sexuality and gender on the page. By examining the confession as performance through Judith Butler’s notion of “performativity”, I explore how, as a collection of statements about sex, the confessions are subsequently performative of gender. Building upon Foucault’s theorising of sexuality, I use the work of feminist thinkers such as Judith Butler, Linda Williams, Julia Kristeva, and Elizabeth Grosz as a framework to examine and critique the forms gender that the page is producing and how the bodies of women are produced through the confessions. In particular, I examine how performances of masculinity are “authenticated” through a discussion informed by Linda Williams’ discussion of the “money shot”; how confessions on the page repeat gendered performances found in mainstream heterosexual pornography; how the gendered body is coded as being active/passive and solid/leaky as discussed in Elizabeth Grosz’s work, and how the feminine body is coded as being abject, which is informed through the work of Julia Kristeva.