Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Female sexual liberation is being operationalized in a new way in tandem with new media such as Twitter. Through this study, I describe the practice, exercise, and discourse surrounding sexual liberation of Filipino female millennials on Twitter, as well as the social context that surrounds them as a group and as individuals. I then theorize the concept and form a descriptive account of sexual liberation as understood, expressed, and experienced by Filipino female millennials on Twitter and the social situation and features that characterize and complicate it. To do this, I employed multi-sited ethnography by conducting in-depth interviews and direct observation of online posts and made use of grounded theory and situational analysis to build upon these findings and come up with a viable descriptive account of sexual liberation for Filipino female millennials on Twitter. I found that in these women’s exercise of sexual liberation on Twitter, they are able to push boundaries and represent a much wider array of female sexualities like never before. However, it largely remains to be an individual movement, that still evidently panders to traditional structures. That said, freedom of sexual expression is an important aspect of female sexual liberation, and is a step towards the ideal of freedom of sexual choice for all women across the board.