#seggs without shame?

An objectiv-hermeneutic analysis of shame management strategies in sex education videos on TikTok

Abstract

The article is dedicated to ways of dealing with shame in the context of sex education on the social media platform TikTok. For this purpose, a video of a far-reaching sex education channel on the topic of female ejaculation/squirting is reconstructed with the method of objective hermeneutics. As a structural moment, the ambiguity of the sexual educator’s self-presentation is worked out, which appears inconspicuous and conspicuous, personal and impersonal, infantile and adult, playful and serious, professional and unprofessional as well as scientific and unscientific. In dealing with sexual shame, a specific relationship between thematization and dethematization can be reconstructed. The de-shaming of female ejaculation or squirting is achieved, among other things, through reference to statistical normality, the provision of scientific language and a simplified differentiation from urine. At the same time ejaculation/squirting remains framed as a rather passive event, which undermines the intended valorization as potency. In addition, behind the manifest relief, the motif of a latent compulsion for freedom from shame was revealed.