This paper draws upon an interview study with age players, which forms a part of my doctoral thesis in Gender Studies. Age play can be seen as a specific kind of BDSM practice, which uses performative age positions as a central component, in a sexual role play or as an integrated part of everyday identity. For example, a person can assume the position of a child, while their partner is taking the position of a caregiving adult. Drawing upon theories about queer temporalities, such as the work of Jack Halberstam, Elizabeth Freeman, Lee Edelman, José Esteban Muñoz and Kathryn Bond Stockton, I investigate how age play can create non-linear, perverse temporalities. I explore how the adult-appearing-as-child renegotiates central aspects of the heteronormative structure, exposing the normative and sexed assumptions about natural progression and distinct boundaries between grown-ups and not-yet-grown-ups. The specific paper that I aim to present at the conference explores how the figuration of the monster can be used as an analytical tool to discuss how age play challenges the boundaries between the past and the here and now, as well as the boundaries between the innocent child and the (hetero-)sexualized adult body. Monster theory, which has been developed within the theoretical fields of transgender studies and crip studies, shows how phenomena that cannot be sorted into a binary system, or that are composed of parts that are considered as each other’s opposites, are understood as monstrous. The adult-appearing-as-child in a sexual age play context creates a confusion of the boundaries between sexuality and asexual innocence. By claiming identities, attributes or behaviors that are connected to childhood or youth, age play practitioners are considered as not only perverse and unnatural but also as a pedophilic threat against children – even though there are no real children present. The paper discusses how ageplay creates both monstrous children and a monster-shaped (non-)presence in the form of the threat from the pedophile, and how these monstrous concepts can help us theorizing the boundaries of gender, age and sexuality that are fundamental in heteronormativity and chrononormativity.

I am a PhD student in Gender Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. I hold a Master’s Degree in Gender Studies from Sodertorn University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Lund University. I have also studied at Biskops Arno’s Nordic School of Creative Writing. My research interests are focused on queer sexualities and temporalities. In my Master’s thesis, I did a queer temporal analysis of identity politics and ressentiment in the theoretical work of Sara Ahmed and Wendy Brown. Apart from my PhD studies, I work as a novelist. My debut novel Mellan vinter och himmel was published in 2013. My second novel Ormbunkslandet was nominated to The August Prize and the Nordic Council Prize. My most recent novel, Rosenregimen, was published just a few months ago. Before I initiated my PhD studies, I worked as a project leader at the Swedish Association for Sexual Education (RFSU).

No co-authors.