Abstract
AbstractIn a 2010 online Reuter’s news article, Andrew Stern claimed that Tiger Woods placed the condition known as ‘sex addiction’ in the spotlight. Accordingly, this article discusses the extent to which ‘sex addiction’ is discursively produced within, and by, the media and explores the extent to which Stern’s claim can be substantiated. This paper presents an analysis of articles retrieved from nytimes.com that were published between February 18th, 2009, and February 20th, 2011. It goes on to summarize four key findings: (1) ‘sex addiction’ was more directly and openly discussed as a concept in the year following Stern’s article than it was in the year prior; (2) ‘sex addiction’ was discursively constructed as a male problem and regarded as an underlying reason for them to commit extramarital affairs; (3) in the year before Stern’s article ‘sex addiction’ was discursively positioned as a social problem; and (4) in the year following Stern’s article, ‘sex addiction’ was also discursively positioned as a medical problem. The paper concludes that the concept of ‘sex addiction’ is discursively constructed, and that Tiger Woods did, indeed, place a spotlight on the topic. As a result, the author argues that the media has a significant impact on the production, interpretation, and understanding of what many consider to be a sexual problem.
Funder
California Institute of Integral Studies
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
Cultural Studies,Gender Studies
Reference44 articles.
1. Ahsan, S. (2019, October 22). Rob Lowe says his 1988 sex tape is ‘the best thing that ever happened’ to him. Retrieved from The National Post: https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/rob-lowe-says-his-1988-sex-tape-is-the-best-thing-that-ever-happened-to-him
2. American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth edition, text revision ed.). American Psychiatric Association Publishing.
3. Andreassen, C. S., Pallesen, S., Griffiths, M. D., Torsheim, T., & Sinha, R. (2018). The development and validation of the Bergen–Yale sex addiction scale with a large national sample. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 144. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00144
4. Braun-Harvey, D., & Vigorito, M. A. (2015). Treating out of control sexual behavior. Springer Publishing Company.
5. Bruce. (2010, February 22). What is sex addiction? In a society which is often uncomfortable about, sex and sexuality, when not averse to it [Comment on the online post How Sex Addiction is Treated]. New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/how-sex-addiction-is-treated/?searchResultPosition=4