This issue presents examples of graphic art, music, and film that resist sexual conventions. Andrea Wood explores lesbian sex and romance in comics, a genre that has long captivated lay readers. Rachel Lumsden turns to Ethel Smyth’s 1913 composition “Possession,” an ode to same-sex intimacy that sonically melds passion, desire, and political commitment. Sharmila Lodhia’s account of Nina Paley’s film Sita Sings the Blues considers how a sexually-charged animated representation of a Hindu epic spurred battles over cultural authenticity. Ariane Cruz examines how sexual pleasure presses against racist histories in her study on black women and BDSM. Chloe Taylor addresses how women’s sexual desire is policed in contemporary sexology, while Lynn Comella explores recent books on pornography and the sex industry. Kawika Guillermo’s short story set in Las Vegas creatively renders the interplay between pleasure and danger, which is at the core of many articles in this issue. In News and Views, Wang Zheng recounts the recent jailing and release of five young feminists in China for their activism against sexual harassment.

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Related media

The rendition of the song “Possession,” by Ethel Smyth, discussed in Rachel Lumsden’s article “The Music Between Us”: Ethel Smyth, Emmeline Pankhurst, and “Possession”:

The animated film Sita Sings the Blues, by Nina Paley, discussed in Sharmila Lodhia’s article Deconstructing Sita’s Blues: Questions of Mis/representation, Cultural Property, and Feminist Critique in Nina Paley’s Ramayana:

The Multimedia Issue

Chloë Taylor
Female Sexual Dysfunction, Feminist Sexology, and the Psychiatry of the Normal
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Andrea Wood
Making the Invisible Visible: Lesbian Romance Comics for Women
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Rachel Lumsden
“The Music Between Us”: Ethel Smyth, Emmeline Pankhurst, and “Possession”
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Sharmila Lodhia
Deconstructing Sita’s Blues: Questions of Mis/representation, Cultural Property, and Feminist Critique in Nina Paley’s Ramayana
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Ariane Cruz
Beyond Black and Blue: BDSM, Internet Pornography, and Black Female Sexuality
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Lynn Comella
Revisiting the Feminist Sex Wars (Review Essay)
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Kawika Guillermo
Libido Ergo Sum (Short Story)
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Wang Zheng
Detention of the Feminist Five in China (News and Views)
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Cover Art

Front cover: Digitally blended composition of stills from Nina Paley’s animated film Sita Sings the Blues (2008).

Back cover: Lea Hernandez, Clockwork Angels, 1999. Published by Image Comics, 1999.