1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910457486303321

Autore

Flowers Amy

Titolo

The fantasy factory [[electronic resource] ] : an insider's view of the phone sex industry / / Amy Flowers

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, Pa., : University of Pennsylvania Press, c1998

ISBN

1-283-21121-1

9786613211217

0-8122-0074-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (153 p.)

Collana

Feminist cultural studies, the media, and political culture

Disciplina

306.77

Soggetti

Telephone sex - United States

Intimacy (Psychology)

Feminist theory - United States

Technology and civilization - United States

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [125]-139) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Researching the Fantasy Factory -- Chapter 2. Fantasy Girls Are Felt But Never Seen -- Chapter 3. Phone Sex Consumers: Husbands and Friends? -- Chapter 4. The Manufacture of Fantasy -- Chapter 5. The Real Product of Fantasy -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

The Fantasy Factory explores the world of women on the other end of the phone sex lines advertised in magazines like Playboy and Hustler. The author's interviews with these women, as well as her own first-hand experiences as an operator, reveal the complex ways operators and callers negotiate the shifting borders between desire and disgust, fantasy and reality, deception and belief. The Fantasy Factory raises provocative questions about the manufacture of artificial intimacy and the technological mediation of intimacy, as well as about the social construction of sexuality and gender.Flowers discovers that operators—who assume names like Tiffany and Corvette—create a virtual reality in which callers can act out fantasies that operators may find boring, disgusting, or even frightening. She also discovers that even those



women who are skilled at keeping their "true self" and their phone sex persona separate find that they have to struggle to protect that self and to maintain the ability to experience real intimacy.