Expression Of Intimacy Research Articles

“Somewhere over the rainbow”

Abstract Somewhere over the rainbow: Reality, still a dream, or something between? The legal and social climate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals varies across countries. The Netherlands, for example, is known worldwide for its liberal and tolerant climate regarding LGBT people; other nations have less tolerant attitudes and some even penalize homosexuality. But even in the Netherlands, a substantial proportion of the population has the opinion that a child needs a mother and a father for healthy psychological development, and a large percentage disapproves of adoption rights and public expressions of intimacy for same-sex couples. As a consequence, the Netherlands could be described as a society that values the tolerance of homosexuality, while also endorsing heteronormative beliefs. It is in this heteronormative society that children and adolescents are confronted with assumptions that their parents should consist of a mother and a father who identify as heterosexual and who view their gender in binary terms (i.e., female or male). It is also a society in which young sexual minority and gender nonconforming youth are growing up. Less is known about how the health and well-being of sexual minority and gender nonconforming parents and the offspring who are born and raised in these families are influenced by the assumptions of heteronormative society as well as what growing up in such a society means for these youth. In mine Chair position within the Department of Child Development and Education of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences I will concentrate on sexual and gender diversity in families and youth by encompassing research and education on (1) lesbian, gay, and transgender parenthood, and (2) sexual minority and gender nonconforming youth. In this slightly edited version of my inaugural lecture I describe why it is especially important to focus on protective factors and resiliency in lesbian, gay, and transgender families and in sexual minority and gender nonconforming youth.

Feeling Collective: The Queer Politics of Affect in the Riot Grrrl Movement

The Riot Grrrls were an underground, decentralized movement made up of young people who worked to channel feminist and queer politics through mediums of cultural production. To turn toward the affective and emotional dimensions of Riot Grrrl, I offer an analysis of the zine I ♥ Amy Carter. Focusing specifically on expressions of intimacy, I trace the contours of queer modes of being across the Riot Grrrl movement as a political force for imagining new relationalities. Mobilizing queerness as a possibility within their interpersonal relations, the Riot Grrrls embodied queer intimacies alongside a queering of intimacy through what I broadly identify as a “grrrl crush,” or an overlap and oscillation between friendship, admiration, and desire. As a specific articulation of queer intimacy, the grrrl crush offers a mode of belonging that is decidedly political, enabling greater theorizations of queer and feminist solidarity.

Intimacy as Related to Cortisol Reactivity and Recovery in Couples Undergoing Psychosocial Stress.

The importance of recovery from stress is evident in times of high prevalence of stress-related diseases. Intimacy has been found to buffer psychobiological stress reactivity, suggesting that emotional and physical closeness might trigger biological mechanisms that underlie the health-beneficial effects of couple relationships. Here, we investigated whether couples' spontaneous expression of intimacy before and after psychosocial stress exposure in the laboratory reduced cortisol reactivity and accelerated recovery. Data from 183 couples (366 individuals) were analyzed. Couples were randomly assigned to one of the following three experimental conditions: only the female partner (n = 62), only the male partner (n = 61), or both partners were stressed in parallel (n = 60) with the Trier Social Stress Test. Couples' behavior was videotaped and coded for expressions of intimacy, and saliva samples were taken repeatedly (nine times) to analyze cortisol levels before and after stress. Data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling. Observed partner intimacy reduced cortisol responses to stress in women (B = -0.016, SE = 0.006, p = .008), although this effect was eliminated among women using oral contraceptives. Observed partner intimacy also reliably accelerated cortisol recovery in men (B = -0.002, SE = 0.001, p = .023) and women (B = -0.002, SE = 0.001, p = .016). Spontaneous nonverbal expressions of intimacy seem to regulate the effects of acute environmental demands on established biological indices of stress response.

Elevator to the shallows: spatial verticality and the questionable depth of social relations in Mad Men

ABSTRACTSet in the world of Madison Avenue advertising during the 1960s, a century after the earliest construction of vertical lifts in New York City, Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men illustrates how central the elevator has become to the urban spatial imaginary, perpetuated in part through such cultural productions as Billy Wilder’s 1960 film The Apartment (a source of inspiration for Weiner). Like Wilder’s classic comedy, Mad Men stages several interpersonal encounters inside the cramped spaces of elevator cars, which are private zones of physical and verbal intimacy as well as public areas where individuals from different social classes come together, if only momentarily. Inspired by the work of Andreas Bernard (author of Lifted, which focuses on literary and cinematic representations of elevators), I explore the contradictory aspects of this prominent yet overlooked type of human conveyance, looking at the fleeting personal exchanges that take place inside vertical lifts on Mad Men as well as on other television programs. As Bernard states, because it combines ‘freedom of access while stopped and hermetically sealed impenetrability while in motion’, the elevator cab is ripe for interpretation as a means through which to tell the story of the modern metropolis and its demographically diverse inhabitants.

Music therapy and intimacy behaviors of hospice family caregivers in South Korea: A randomized crossover clinical trial

ABSTRACTFamily caregivers may experience emotional and relational distress due to decreased intimacy and communication with their loved one at end-of-life. The purpose of the study was to examine intimacy behaviors in a family–patient relationship at the end-of-life with the central research question: Is there a difference in frequency of family caregivers’ intimacy acts, defined and recorded as verbal intimacy, affective intimacy, and physical intimacy with their dying loved one when comparing music therapy and chaplaincy? Ten patient and family caregiver dyads participated in both a 15-min music therapy session, and a 15-min chaplaincy session in a randomized controlled crossover trial with AB/BA design. Sessions were video recorded and analyzed using the Family Intimacy Observation Scale, a researcher-developed tool. Intimacy behaviors were compared using the Wilcoxon Signed-rank Test. Music therapy resulted in statistically significant higher affective intimacy and physical intimacy behaviors toward a dying loved one when compared to chaplaincy. No statistically significant differences were found in overall verbal intimacy; however, the verbal behavior of “letting go of loved one” was significantly higher in music therapy versus chaplaincy. Music therapy may be an effective therapeutic modality to increase emotional and physical intimacy in a family–patient relationship at the end-of-life.

II

II Julie Hanlon Rubio4 This year marks the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae and of all of the various responses by clergy and lay people that followed its publication. The division that was so evident then remains with us now. In 2018, progressive Catholics remembered HV as a symbol of a church that refuses to listen to the experiences of the laity and the arguments of trained theologians. Traditional Catholics celebrated the opening of a path toward the renewal of sexual ethics which began with Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body, and pointed to widespread evidence confirming Paul VI’s prophetic vision regarding the consequences of approving artificial birth control (i.e., marital infidelity, decreasing respect for women, declining morals, and government imposition of contraception). Rarely do the two camps engage each other. Rarely do they turn together to engage the world. The brief document that is subject of this roundtable, “Pastoral Approaches,” was written by members of the papal birth control commission and submitted to Paul VI along with the majority report, the minority report, and the response to the minority report at the conclusion of the commission in 1966. Along with the other documents, it was anonymously leaked to two news organizations and the National Catholic Reporter broke the story in July 1967. According to theologian Joseph Selling, it was “approved by the cardinals and bishops of the Commission to complement the final report. That report, being of a technical, theological nature, was felt by some prelates to be difficult for the layperson to understand. Thus, they asked for a more pastorally oriented, easily understandable statement to serve as an introduction [End Page 9] to the theological report and possibly as a basis for an official pronouncement on the matter.”3 Though brief, the document is much more pastoral in tone and content than the commission’s other documents or HV. The vision it presents had the potential to inspire good conversation on sexual practice. It led me to wonder, “What if Catholics had engaged in the conversation and formation the document seeks to begin? Would we still be so divided? Would we have a better chance of engaging in dialogue with the world?” This last question is particularly important in light of the #MeToo, #SilenceIsNotSpiritual, and #ChurchToo moment which began in the fall of 2017 and continues to unfold. These movements have brought to light not only the reality that sexual violence is still a far too prevalent feature of women’s lives, but also that scripts of dominance and disrespect which result in what has been dubbed “bad sex” are a normal part of many women’s sexual experience. Unfortunately, churches are not often spaces where women can count on support, let alone prophetic speech. Catholics have not been major voices in the recent public conversation on sexual violence and bad sex. The Catholic public sexual ethics presence is limited to discussion on contraception. With a few notable exceptions, Catholics have not shown up for women the way they have for other vulnerable populations. And because we have not shown up, we have missed an opportunity to lead a public conversation that goes beyond consent to the deeper problems brought to light in this heart-breaking public story-telling moment. But what if “Pastoral Approaches” had been adopted and implemented? How might that have changed things? The document points us to three key questions: What is sex for? What is marriage for? What kind of sacrifice is necessary in a good life? What is sex for? Much attention has focused on HV’s claim on the inseparability of the two purposes of sex. “Pastoral Approaches” focuses on the unitive side without diminishing the essential outward facing dimension of fruitfulness. “Sexuality in marriage must be a unifying force,” it says. There is a recognition that this will take time, effort, and growth. “The act of love, like all expressions of intimacy between them, needs to be humanized, progressively refined.” Abstinence still might be called for at times in light of the desires and needs of each person. Love and passion are to be nurtured but discipline is still important. Developing the unitive meaning...

Vestiges of Motherhood: The Maternal Function in Recent Black Cinema

While the lack of black femme presence is theorized explicitly with respect to film genres and the canon of American cinema in the work of Kara Keeling, the ontological position of the black femme (whom Keeling understands to be both visually impossible and interdicted yet full of cinematic possibility) has long been a point of interrogation in Black Studies with an extensive critical genealogy. In Saidiya Hartman's book Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, the loss of the black mother animates the historical imagination of transatlantic slavery, just as her loss is irreducibly felt in relation to its afterlife. In the work of Frank B. Wilderson III, there is an explicit rejection of the potential of the black woman within film, specifically the viability of her maternal function, insofar as the black mother remains categorically essential to the construction of black (masculine) subjectivity. In light of the contradictory arc of this genealogy, the current task is not only to theorize the black maternal as an extension of the black femme, but to bring that position into view as the unthought. The black mother tends to be dramatized as the singular figure through which the cinema cultivates a distinctly black visual historiography. Even when placed under narrative erasure or withheld from view, the mother crystallizes a cinematic black aesthetic that fashions and envisions diasporic culture and forms of black collectivity as tied to a speculative and fraught filial genealogy. The critical arc in black narrative cinema over the last ten years from Get Out to Pariah, to Mother of George, and finally to Moonlight insists upon black motherhood as integral to the aesthetics of form and the genre-making capacities of film. One could go so far as to claim that the elements of cinematic form that drive these narratives reflect aesthetic choices that have to do with coloration, shot position, and narrative flashbacks that are themselves bound up with and inflected through the haunting and cipher-like construction of black maternal figures. Furthermore, these films insist upon simultaneously marking and excluding the mother from the emotional drama of black subjective life and its complex and contradictory expressions of intimacy, which have as much to do with the breaking and splintering of familial bonds as bridging gaps. It is clear that the mother sutures these bonds; she is a scar, a visible reminder and remainder of a terrible historicity that cannot be assimilated into the idealization of the American family.

Dyadic Qualitative Analysis of Condom Use Scripts Among Emerging Adult Gay Male Couples

ABSTRACTSexual risk reduction among gay male couples has received increasing attention in light of evidence that primary partners account for many—and possibly most—new HIV infections. This study examined the content of condom use scripts in interviews conducted with both members of 17 HIV-negative gay male couples. In each couple, at least one partner was an emerging adult (aged 18 to 29). Three scripts were identified: romantic love, unanticipated condomless anal intercourse (CAI), and negotiated safety. Scripts varied in their emphasis on emotional factors versus HIV risk reduction, the salience of sexual agreements, and the presence of an explicit communication goal. Results indicated that condom use may vary for couples as a result of script content and from the fluid adoption of scripts across contexts. Results highlighted potential tensions between emotional closeness and HIV prevention. Condom use cessation and sexual agreements—a potential mechanism for HIV risk reduction—may also serve as expressions of intimacy. This implies interventions that facilitate direct communication about sexual and relational goals—as well as those that expand couples' repertoires for expressing emotional closeness—may enhance sexual health for gay couples, particularly during the period of emerging adulthood.

Ethics, intimacy and sexuality in aged care.

To analyse the accounts of staff, family and residents to advance ethical insights into intimacy and sexuality in residential care. Discourses of ageing readily construct people in residential aged care as postsexual, vulnerable and at risk of sexual exploitation, and therefore, expressions of intimacy and sexuality may be responded to as deviant and inherently risky. Staff may manage decision-making tacitly, without recourse to policies and education. The proof-of-concept study used a discursive methodology, identifying discourses that shape diverse meanings of intimacy, sexuality and ageing. Data analysis involved thematic analysis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four participants in 2015 as part of a mixed-methods study. This article reports on the qualitative data. Four themes were identified in the data analysis: mediated intimate relationships and everyday ethics; self-referential morality; knowing the person then and now; and juggling ethical priorities. Data indicated that participants used their personal moral compass to inform their decision-making, without any related policies and applied ethics and communication education. As a result, staff described moral uncertainty and moral distress. Staff indicated that there were tensions in terms of the role of proxy decision-makers, as there were situations where staff believed they were more aware of residents' current wishes and cognitive capabilities than family members. Staff, families and residents routinely address intimacy and sexuality in aged care. Ethically informed education and policies may enhance the role of staff as advocates, ensuring older people living in RAC are as at home and autonomous as possible.

Committee Opinion No 706 Summary: Sexual Health.

Sexuality involves a broad range of expressions of intimacy and is fundamental to self-dentification, with strong cultural, biologic, and psychologic components. Obstetrician-gynecologists often are consulted by patients about sexual health and are in a unique position to open a dialogue on sexual health issues. Several obstacles to frank conversations with patients about sexual health exist, including a lack of adequate training and confidence in the topic, a perception that there are few treatment options, a lack of adequate clinical time to obtain a sexual history, patients' reluctance to initiate the conversation, and the underestimation of the prevalence of sexual dysfunction. However, data on reproductive and sexual health morbidity suggest sexual health is an important health care issue. Each year, an estimated 45,000 new cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and approximately 20 million sexually transmitted infections occur, 3 million women experience unintended pregnancies, and 1 million women are sexually assaulted. Openly discussing sexual health has the potential to prevent these unnecessary sexual health-related outcomes. Clinical conversations should acknowledge the contributions of sexuality, relationships, and sexual behavior to overall health. Obstetrician-gynecologists can address sexual health issues across a lifespan with their patients and encourage a strategic foundation for women's sexual health issues, resulting in improved public health overall. Obstetrician-gynecologists also can support policies that broaden the coalition for effective prevention of sexually transmitted infections and promote healthy sexuality, with the ultimate goal of improving health outcomes and public health.

Committee Opinion No 706: Sexual Health.

Sexuality involves a broad range of expressions of intimacy and is fundamental to self-dentification, with strong cultural, biologic, and psychologic components. Obstetrician-gynecologists often are consulted by patients about sexual health and are in a unique position to open a dialogue on sexual health issues. Several obstacles to frank conversations with patients about sexual health exist, including a lack of adequate training and confidence in the topic, a perception that there are few treatment options, a lack of adequate clinical time to obtain a sexual history, patients' reluctance to initiate the conversation, and the underestimation of the prevalence of sexual dysfunction. However, data on reproductive and sexual health morbidity suggest sexual health is an important health care issue. Each year, an estimated 45,000 new cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and approximately 20 million sexually transmitted infections occur, 3 million women experience unintended pregnancies, and 1 million women are sexually assaulted. Openly discussing sexual health has the potential to prevent these unnecessary sexual health-related outcomes. Clinical conversations should acknowledge the contributions of sexuality, relationships, and sexual behavior to overall health. Obstetrician-gynecologists can address sexual health issues across a lifespan with their patients and encourage a strategic foundation for women's sexual health issues, resulting in improved public health overall. Obstetrician-gynecologists also can support policies that broaden the coalition for effective prevention of sexually transmitted infections and promote healthy sexuality, with the ultimate goal of improving health outcomes and public health.

Fathoming the constellations: Ways of working with families in music therapy for people with advanced dementia

This article will focus on the role of music therapy for people with advanced dementia and their families as well as considering the resource that the family can be for the Music Therapist in informing their work. Information on meaningful themes in the life of the person with dementia can be provided by the constellation of significant people around them. The importance of personal history and identity will be explored. Family members can influence music therapy in numerous ways, both outside and within sessions. This article will explore ways in which a reciprocal relationship, or therapeutic alliance, can be developed with family members and their loved one, with an emphasis on finding a unique approach that fits the family concerned. Much pain is encountered in this work, requiring the Music Therapist to proceed with caution and sensitivity. Ways in which music therapy enables expression of intimacy, particularly between couples, will also be addressed. Clinical illustrations underpin themes of this article, demonstrating the value of alliances being made between the Music Therapist and family members.

Till death do us part? Conversations with deceased celebrities through memorial pages on Facebook

ABSTRACTWithin the considerable body of research that the notion of parasocial interaction (PSI) has generated since the late 1950s, one aspect has been largely overlooked: the maintenance of one-sided relationships between fans and celebrities after the death of the latter. The present study focuses on this particular form of PSI, as reflected by memorial pages on Facebook dedicated to deceased public figures. Through a combination of content and theme analyses, we explored expressions of intimacy, role modelling, and identification by visitors of these pages and the subjects for whom these virtual shrines are designed. Corroborating findings from previous studies, our data revealed that a large number of postings serve a pseudo-dialogical function, allowing visitors to engage in public, unilateral ‘conversations’ with dead celebrities. Moreover, our analyses identified three recurrent themes underlying these pages: expansion of fans’ communicating capabilities across different dimensions of reality; legitimisation of a traditionally disenfranchised form of social engagement through grief; and tacit expansion of the economies of attention that sustain the culture of celebrities. These themes have important implications for future explorations of PSI in connection with broader institutional and social factors.

The botany of friendship and love

This article examines the interrelation of objects and emotion in a bourgeois Swedish family influenced by the 18th-century concept of sensibility – the Gjörwells. Headed by noted publicist Carl Christoffer Gjörwell (1731–1811), this family served as the centre of a large circle of friends in late 18th-century Stockholm. One of the unifying aspects of this group was an expressly emotional relationship to the aesthetics of natural scenery. In this setting, pressed flowers became important emotional tokens frequently exchanged in letters between family members, friends and couples. Using Monique Scheer’s concept of emotion as a form of practice, this article examines how flowers were used in the practices of communicating emotion, remembering loved ones and emotionally significant events as well as experiencing pleasant emotions. Furthermore, this article demonstrates how flowers as objects facilitated the expression of intimacy and the upholding of social ties within this group, paying special attention to the gendered aspects of these practices. By focusing on the intersection of emotion and objects, this article contributes to the growing research on emotion and material culture.

Diminutives as Intimacy Expressions in English and Armenian

Diminutives are an important means of expressing attitudes and emotions in both English and Armenian. Diminutives as intimacy expressions have been much studied in English, meanwhile this aspect of communication has received less scholarly attention in Armenian. The comparative analysis of English and Armenian diminutives carried out in the present paper demonstrates the linguistic differences between Armenian and English diminutive systems, and comes to prove that the conceptualization of intimacy may vary across cultures.

The Chinese-Western Intercultural Couple Standards Scale.

We developed the Chinese-Western Intercultural Couple Standards Scale (CWICSS) to assess relationship standards that may differ between Chinese and Western partners and may challenge intercultural couples. The scale assesses 4 Western-derived relationship standards (demonstrations of love, demonstrations of caring, intimacy expression, and intimacy responsiveness) and 4 Chinese-derived relationship standards (relations with the extended family, relational harmony, face, and gender roles). We administered the CWICSS to 983 Chinese and Western participants living in Australia to assess the psychometric properties of the scores as measures of respondents' relationship standards. The CWICSS has a 2-level factor structure with the items reflecting the 8 predicted standards. The 4 Western derived standards loaded onto a higher order factor of couple bond, and the 4 Chinese derived standards loaded onto a higher order factor of family responsibility. The scale scores were structurally equivalent across cultures, genders, and 2 independent samples, and good convergent and discriminant validity was found for the interpretation of scale scores as respondents' endorsement of the predicted standards. Scores on the 8 scales and 2 superordinate scales showed high internal consistency and test-retest coefficients. Chinese endorsed all 4 family responsibility standards more strongly than did Westerners, but Chinese and Western participants were similar in endorsement of couple bond standards. Across both cultures, couple bond standards were endorsed more highly than were family responsibility standards. The CWICSS assesses potential areas of conflict in Chinese-Western relationships.

Social distance and the multimodal construction of the Other in sectarian song

This paper introduces the concept of “tonal gravity” through a multimodal analysis of a YouTube video to demonstrate how multimodality is key to the construction of “Rule Britannia” as a sectarian song. The analysis focuses upon the multimodal semiotics of social distance which has been a key concept in sociological and anthropological traditions in recent times. This concept offers a means to understand the social semiotic relationship between Self and Other in multimodal discourse. Following previous work in social semiotics and music studies which examine how visual composition, music and the voice have constructed social distance or expressions of intimacy, I introduce the concept of tonal gravity which extends the metaphors of semiotic space in previous work in the musical mode, to account for a fuller understanding of how music helps narrate the multimodal Self and Other. This is introduced via a close multimodal analysis of “Rule Britannia” as a Rangers Football fan video which is only transformed into a sectarian text through multimodal collocation where different semiotic resources in various modes act in combination to produce a dominant Self actively prejudiced against a low Other.

Exploring Gender in Portuguese Bedrooms: Men's and Women's Narratives of Their Sexuality through a Mixed Methods Approach

The nature of intimacy and self-identity changed profoundly over the past century. The disruption between sex and procreation enabled the emergence of new forms of relationships and contributed towards the legitimacy of a sexuality focused on pleasure, as a mean of self-realization and an expression of intimacy. Despite the evidence that most individuals now approach close relations with expectations of mutual emotional support and romantic love, intimate relationships remain highly gendered, particularly in societies where traditional roles of men and women persist in the growing diversity of sexual relationships. To address this topic, an empirical research was conducted in the Greater Lisbon area using a mixed methods approach. First, a quantitative study, with 323 primary healthcare users, intended to explain how gender influences self-constructions of sexuality and intimacy. Then, a qualitative study, with a subsample of 10 heterosexual men and 15 heterosexual women, employed in-depth interviews to explore how individuals construct their etiquette of sexual behavior. Building upon Gagnon and Simon's scripting theory and Giddens’ transformations of intimacy, along with feminist criticisms concerning male dominance in hetero-relationships, we have reached an explanatory typology that focuses on Portuguese specificity in terms of the subjective experience of sexuality and intimate relationships. Sexuality and intimacy are complex and multifaceted phenomena that are affected by sexual and non-sexual factors, both in and out of the bedroom. Key findings reveal a coexistence of highly gendered sexual scripts with increasingly more egalitarian sexual roles, namely among the youngest and the most educated generations in Portuguese society.

Sharing Domestic Life through Long-Term Video Connections

Video chat systems such as Skype, Google+ Hangouts, and FaceTime have been widely adopted by family members and friends to connect with one another over distance. We have conducted a corpus of studies that explore how various demographics make use of such video chat systems in which this usage moves beyond the paradigm of conversational support to one in which aspects of everyday life are shared over long periods of time, sometimes in an almost passive manner. We describe and reflect on studies of long-distance couples, teenagers, and major life events, along with design research focused on new video communication systems—the Family Window, Family Portals, and Perch—that explicitly support “always-on video” for awareness and communication. Overall, our findings show that people highly value long-term video connections and have appropriated them in a number of different ways. Designers of future video communication systems need to consider: ways of supporting the sharing of everyday life rather than just conversation, providing different design solutions for different locations and situations, providing appropriate audio control and feedback, and supporting expressions of intimacy over distance.

The house of ill repute: Malayalee House, reality television and morality debates in contemporary Kerala

This paper maps the production history of Malayalee House (2013) a reality television show telecast by Surya TV, one of the many Malayalam satellite channels in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Publicized as a Malayalam edition of Bigg Boss, it soon ran into controversy with the filing of the injunction at the Bombay High Court by Endemol group, the makers of Bigg Boss who alleged copyright infringement. This was followed by protests by women's organizations and an outcry for television censorship. The making and the telecast would leave the participants and the producers at loggerheads about the unsaid norms which govern the so called “appropriate” content to be telecast during the prime time. Using an ethnographic lens, I map out the varied circuits taken by the television program and the “afterlives” of the participants, to explore the social dynamics that shaped the debates in the post-telecast phase. In doing so, I try and see how rather than a mere deployment of “electronic eyes” and voyeuristic gaze, Malayalee House was an attempt to push the limits of tolerance that Malayali society would have towards the open expression of intimacy and sexuality.