Ad libidinem: Forms of female sexualisation in RoastMe humour

Abstract

This article reports the findings of a qualitative and quantitative study of seemingly aggressive but inherently benevolent humorous jibes that involve the sexualisation of women in the RoastMe practice performed by a growing social media community on Reddit. Based on a corpus of jocular insults, six forms of sexualisation comments are proposed: hyper-sexualisation, de-sexualisation and meta-sexualisation, each concerning the female body or practices. We account for the distribution of these categories, offering conclusions about humour and sexist ideologies, which RoastMe insults jocularly echo. Although the RoastMe community operates with a humour mindset, producing and recognising sexualisation jibes as a playful activity within a humorous frame, RoastMe insults speak volumes about the contemporary sexist ideologies and the salience of sexuality as a topic arbitrarily invoked in humour performance.

Pro Domo Sua: Narratives of Sexual Abstinence

“…As these aspects suggest, sexual abstinence and the criticisms of mundane sexuality can be interpreted as a wider opposition to the so-called "sexualisation of culture" (Gill 2012). At least for the Western society, the sexualisation of culture refers to the progressive saturation of sexual representations and discourses (see also Poppi and Dynel 2020). The "sexualisation of culture" presents sex as a "big story" that permeates the society.…”