Bikini selfies and suggestive lip dubs:
Examining queer women’s
performances of sexual desire in
digital media
Stefanie Duguay, PhD Candidate @Dugstef
Professor Jean Burgess @jeanburgess
Professor Ben Light @doggyb
Digital Intimate Publics Symposium
19-20 November 2015
University of Queensland
Digital Media Research Centre

Let’s talk about sex
Focus:
• Images of sexual desire that shape the
digital intimate publics of same-sex
attracted women on social media
platforms
• What content is attached to same-sex
attracted women’s hashtags (e.g. #lesbian,
#gaygirl) on Instagram and Vine?

Technology-facilitated LGBTQ publics
• Early tech – phones, videotext,
Usenet
• Same-sex attracted men’s digital
publics
• Sex, relationships, and friendship
• What about women?
• BBS, chat rooms
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Image from Doug’sArtGallery.com

LGBTQ+ networked publics
• Networked public =
• networked tech
• imagined audiences
• platformization
• Imagined audiences &
communities
• Trans people’s vlogs;
• ‘Coming out’ videos;
• Tumblr’s asexual counterpublic
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Networked tech & Platformization
• Social Shaping of Technology
& Actor Network Theory
• Platform affordances and
constraints
• Shaped by politics and
economies
• Embedded and enrolled in
platform design, software,
and algorithms
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Image via Facebook

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Mediated performances of female
sexual desire
• Same-sex attracted women
as an intimate public -
addressing performances of
sexual desire to an imagined
audience?
• Radical feminism & gendered
power relations
• Contradictions of post-
feminism
• Queer possibilities
Image from Lost Girl via Bilerico

• Owned by Twitter
• 6.5 second videos
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• Owned by Facebook
• Photos & 15-second
video
• Emerging research:
• User content
• Platform features
• User interactions
with the platform
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Method I: Walkthrough
• Interdisciplinary (ANT, HCI,
political economy) and
vernacular step-by-step ‘how to’
procedures
(Burgess, Light & Duguay, 2015)
• User interface
• Functions and features
• Textual content and tone
• Aesthetics and symbolism
• Identifying mediators of
performances of sexual desire
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Method II: User-generated content analysis
1 Instagram Scraper
3 days of collection
22 diverse hashtags
20(ish) images per scrape
422 Instagram images
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0 automated Vine tools
3 widely-used hashtags
10 Vines collected per #
50 collected previously
80 Vines
Telling people about my day job?
Priceless!
+

a) Porn and sexual services
• Businesses
• Mainstream hashtags
• Male audience, heterosexy tropes
Digital Media Research Centre
Sexual desire on Instagram
#lesbian #les
#girlswholikegirls

Sexual desire on Instagram
b) Memes, animations
and popular media
• Mostly teen accounts
• Cross-posted from
Tumblr
• Addressed to fan and
youth audiences
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#lgbt #loveislove #hellagay #lesbiancouple

c) Images of idealised
lesbians
• Teenagers and
pseudonymous
accounts
• Lesbian stereotypes &
fashion
• Feminine, resembling
mainstream media
• Addressed to oneself?
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#lesbiancouple, #lesbianlove
Sexual desire on Instagram
Image from MTV

d) Personal selfies and sexy
photos
• Full spectrum of sexual
performance, from seductive
gaze to underwear shot
• Broader range of body types,
gender presentation, race,
and age
• Addressed to other women
Digital Media Research Centre
#lezzigram #inkedlesbians
#lipsticklesbian #dykesofinstagram
Sexual desire on Instagram
Image from Autostraddle

Sexual desire on Vine
• Fandom + popular media + idealised lesbians
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Sexual desire on Vine
• E.g. https://vine.co/v/iBPqMTEz9IV
• Gazing at the camera, lip syncing, and
dancing
• Produced by individual women;
• Focused on the camera;
• Rap and hip hop;
• Addressed to? Women and/or Vine
communities relating to platform
practices, musical taste, possibly race
and location
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Co-hashtags: #ttsquad,
#grindonme, #teamuntamed
Image from Glamour

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Mediators of sexual performances
• Instagram
• Filters, photoshopping, delayed
censorship
• Vine
• Music, content channels, rapidly
spreading trends
• Shared
• Captions, emojis, manipulation of
brightness and camera angles,
hashtags (but used differently across
platforms), 3rd party apps (collages,
frames, blurring)
Image from Vine

Digital Media Research Centre
So what?
• There are digital intimate publics of same-sex attracted women
performing sexual desire, but these occur within a varied visual
landscape including porn, memes, and media images
• Digital affordances evolve and shift in use across platforms
Next steps?
• Further analysis of visual content, trends, and context
• Interviews with content producers

Thanks!
Digital Media Research Centre
Stefanie Duguay, PhD Candidate
stefanie.duguay@qut.edu.au @Dugstef
Professor Jean Burgess
je.burgess@qut.edu.au @jeanburgess
Professor Ben Light
ben.light@qut.edu.au @doggyb
#bne #socialmedia #digitalmethods #UQ #publics
#LGBT #lesbians #bisexual #queergirls #les #dyke
#lipsticklesbian #lesbianfunhouse #inkedlesbians
#instagaygirls #boi #stud #RainbowGang
#LGBTCrew #tbt #followme #follow4follow #lols

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