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Papers by Monique Mulholland

Scholars of young people and sexualisation have noted an omission of studies that attend to race ... more Scholars of young people and sexualisation have noted an omission of studies that attend to race and whiteness. In the main, a white-Anglo middle-class child is placed at the centre of media, policy and academic debates about the effects, production and consumption of sexualised media. In light of this, it is important to ask: how can research in this area disrupt the tendency to place normative white subjects at the centre of debates, and position 'raced others' at the sidelines? Drawing on postcolonial and critical race and whiteness theory, this paper presents the findings from a study undertaken in South Australia with young people and young adults from a broad variety of cultural backgrounds. Through a series of focus groups designed to explore participant views of sexualised media, a powerful set of resistant narratives emerged. Firstly, participants discussed how their views on sex and sexuality are often read 'through difference'. They revealed how 'difference gets in the way', frustrating conversations they want to have about sexy media, along with moments when they felt stereo-typed and type-cased. Secondly, by presenting perspectives of sexualised media on their own terms, participant narratives were not constrained or bounded by fixed cultural viewpoints. Through a series of 'transitional moves', participants employed notions of freedom, individual choice and rights, expressing an urgent desire to speak 'outside of difference'.

To cite this article: Monique Mulholland (2016) 'The pathological native' versus 'the good white ... more To cite this article: Monique Mulholland (2016) 'The pathological native' versus 'the good white girl': an analysis of race and colonialism in two Australian porn panics, Porn Studies, 3:1, 34-49,

Heteronormal histories have been shaped by a recurring set of debates about what kinds of explici... more Heteronormal histories have been shaped by a recurring set of debates about what kinds of explicit sexual expression and representation are publicly allowed, structured by a form of line-drawing that sanctions certain forms of public heterosexual practice in popular culture and representation. While depictions of heterosexual activity in popular cultural representations are tolerated within certain parameters, and while such parameters around what is possible and acceptable have shifted over time in Anglophone discourses of sexuality, overtly pornographic depictions are consistently cast as a non-normative, deviant form of heterosexual expression.

Heterosexuality as an idea and a practice exists only as a result of a constant interplay between... more Heterosexuality as an idea and a practice exists only as a result of a constant interplay between what counts as normal and what is relegated to the illicit. This paper will explore a contemporary social phenomenon*pornification*that is potentially refiguring normative boundaries, and consider how this might be reorganising heteronormativity. Here I use a case study*SEXPO Health, Sexuality and Lifestyle Expos*through which to examine an instance of the 'pornification of the mainstream'. It will be argued here that in the case of SEXPO, while many of the acts and expressions of heterosexual practice are changing shape, a heteronormative culture remains front and centre

This article foregrounds the public voices of children of gay and lesbian parents in Australia. I... more This article foregrounds the public voices of children of gay and lesbian parents in Australia. In doing so, it contributes to scholarship about these children but its focus is one that has been only partially explored. It begins by showing how children's welfare continues to be the ground on which both homophobic and pro-gay public discourse stakes territory. The article documents the emergence in Australia, since the early 2000s, of a new self-defined subject position, evident in a range of Internet sources. The article analyzes the ways in which the voices which speak from this position are both constituted by the pro-gay discourse and also speak back to it. Three themes are identified and analyzed: resistance to the binary opposition of the child at risk versus the prospering child, responses to heteronormativity and homophobia, and the "love makes a family" discourse. While the children of gay and lesbian parents are not immune to the public discourses that create them as objects of debate, attention to their self-consciously political voices reveals that they also resist the norms of the pro-gay position (and the homophobic position) and begin to create space for a more diverse picture of their lives.

This paper aimed to problematise what is meant by 'difference' and consider what such a reinterpr... more This paper aimed to problematise what is meant by 'difference' and consider what such a reinterpretation might mean for methodological interventions in sex education research. Our concern is the tendency for sex education research to treat difference as a set of categories to be 'added-on', such as religious difference, cultural difference and sexual plurality. The danger of this is that it leaves the normative unchallenged, confirming the hegemony of the heteronormative, unraced subject. Constructing difference as an 'add-on' fails to address how young people locate themselves in a world in which they negotiate their sexualities through complex 'glocal' routes in popular and youth culture. We argue that decentring methodological strategies are required which draw on critiques made by post-colonial and decolonising methodologies. In the first section of the paper, we review the problem of difference, and how it is considered within current debates in youth and sexualities research. This frames a reflection on rethinking our own methodological practices through a consideration of two research moments. In the conclusion, we propose a metaphorical framework to scaffold a reimagining of methodological approaches to ensure that the normative is always a question mark.