Dr Gwyn Easterbrook-Smith
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drgesmith.bsky.social
Dr Gwyn Easterbrook-Smith
@drgesmith.bsky.social
810 followers 190 following 110 posts
Media studies researcher and teacher based in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Mostly I write about sex work, but right now I'm working on a project about smell and identity. Views are my own.

They/them.
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drgesmith.bsky.social
I suggest that conventionally produced porn has a kind of aura even though it can be reproduced, because it represents one specific occurrence of a sexual act/encounter, unlike AI porn which is unmoored in time and space. I also argue that porn has a "ritual value" (jorkin' it)
Screenshot of a journal abstract. Title: Pornographic aura, AI and the value of authenticity. Text: The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools which can produce images and video from text inputs has prompted questions about the impacts of the technology on the pornography industry. While there has been extensive research into the implications of pornographic deepfakes, work which addresses the impacts of generative AI images and video that do not mimic a specific person is presently limited. Authenticity in pornography refers to multiple concepts, ranging from the depiction of non-simulated acts to the representation of ‘authentic’ pleasure. Multiple types of pornographic authenticity add value to a scene and can enhance the viewers’ enjoyment. This article argues that generative AI is unlikely to significantly disrupt the pornography industry, because the material it produces lacks a kind of auratic authenticity which pornography that depicts human subjects does possess, ultimately undermining the pleasure derived by the viewer.
June 17, 2025 at 5:26 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
Wrote a shorter summary of one of my latest articles, looking at how many different things brothel interiors are asked to do: drgesmith.substack.com/p/why-do-bro...
Image of a gold tap and velvet headboard, with the title "Why do brothels look like that?"
February 9, 2025 at 7:47 PM
drgesmith.bsky.social
In 2022/23 I spoke with some trans, nb, and gender diverse people about how they used and felt about smell, and my new article from that project is out, looking especially at identity and smell. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Screenshot of the abstract of "I’ve adopted it as my smell”: transgender identity and the olfactory Hsu posits that a collection of all the scented items used by an individual, their “self- curated olfactory ambience,” offers “abundant information about their class, their rituals of self-care, and their olfactory presence” (Hsu 2019, 25). The participants in this project were acutely attuned to the information offered by their smell, and explained how in many cases they took pains to consider how to use scent as part of the sensory assemblage which would best allow them to manage the point of tension where their internal sense of identity interacted with the rest of the world. As Sione (they/them) put it, trans people “do almost everything in advance to prepare for that moment of contact with someone who is not trusted, is not known to us.” Sione explained scent was part of how they managed these “moments of contact,” where they were “hoping that either there’ll be some sort of engagement where . . . I can actually say that this is who I am, and this is how I am addressed.” Scent is transitory and permeable, and it communicates silently,invisibly, bridging space between the self and the other. As Sione points out, it can openup the possibility for productive discussions. Simultaneously, when used thoughtfully, itmight close off the possibility of upsetting interactions by communicating a genderidentity unmistakeably
January 21, 2025 at 10:05 PM
drgesmith.bsky.social
Spot the difference (mine needs more string)
Wall covered with several dozen handwritten post-its clustered into five groups Reaction meme from Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia where Charlie gestures wildly in front of a board covered with red lines and notes
November 28, 2024 at 10:10 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
I read this for the first time somewhere around 2014, when I was fairly new to SW and even newer to SW research and it was critical in shaping my perspective on both: audaciaray-tumblr-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/audaciar...
Text which reads But the reality is that people who don’t like sex, or don’t like having sex with strangers, or aren’t sexually oriented toward the gender of the clients they see, or don’t like doing sexualized performances, work in the sex industry every day. And it is just that parenthetical “attractively high [fee]” that is the reason for their actions. For the majority of people who work in the sex industry, money, not sex, is the driving factor. Until a day comes when jobs are available that have wages that are competitive with the sex industry, particularly for cis and trans women, people of color, and young people who need to get out of unstable or violent housing situations, many people will sell or trade sex.
November 13, 2024 at 1:38 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
Getting re-established on here is as good an excuse as any to share this - I'm really interested in cultural production by sex workers, and last year I wrote about sex work memes: www.mdpi.com/2411-5118/4/...
Screenshot of a journal abstract about sex workers online humour. Reads: Sex workers’ humor has received comparatively little attention in the literature to date, and work that does consider this phenomenon focuses on humor in face-to-face contexts. Increasingly, elements of sex workers’ labor and community building take place online. This article examines the emergence of sex work humor in online spaces, considering how this humor provides evidence of resilience within this community. The article uses a critical discourse analysis approach blended with a cultural studies lens to examine 171 discrete texts drawn from sex work communities in Australia and New Zealand. These include social media postings from peer-led organizations and correspondence between sex workers and their clients, which was profiled in news media during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The humor evident within these texts falls into three major categories: humor about clients; humor as a mechanism of discussing stigma and discrimination; and humor as an agent of activism and social change. The findings indicate that humor can be evidence of resilience among sex-working communities, that it is politically productive and effective from a communications perspective, and present the possibility that it may also contribute to resilience. The presence of humor in online sex work spaces of sociality further highlights the importance of these spaces for community building, and draws attention to additional harms created by deplatforming.
November 12, 2024 at 2:40 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
Sharing this statement from a collective of Asian and Asian Migrant SWs in Naarm (Melbourne) about the trial and sentencing of a client for the killing of Yuqi Luo and Hyun Sook Jeon in 2022. They're calling for solidarity and signatures from other SWs and allies: allmylinks.com/justiceforou...
Screenshot of an Instagram post from justiceforoursisters and vixenworkers, text on a purple background reading "grieving the loss of our sisters Yuqi Luo and Hyun Sook Jeon, and calling our Asian and SW community and allies for solidarity"
November 1, 2024 at 11:50 PM
drgesmith.bsky.social
End of year departmental field trip idea:
Bunnies in a burrow, safe from emails :)
October 15, 2024 at 10:09 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
This is also a great excuse to share this from a place I worked in the mid 2010s (not discussed in the article) There's a lot going on here so what you're seeing is: 2m wide green metallic bath, gilded taps, velvet headboard, LARGE sculpture of a cat, floral doorknobs
Collage of pics of a 2m wide green metallic bath, gilded taps, velvet headboard, LARGE sculpture of a cat, floral doorknobs
October 10, 2024 at 12:27 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
Delighted to share that I have finally written an article which examines one of my favorite topics: why do brothels look like that?? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Screenshot of the title Upmarket boudoirs and red lights: the physical environment of sex workplaces in New Zealand in the journal Social & Cultural Geography Screenshot of the abstract of the article Upmarket boudoirs and red lights: the physical environment of sex workplaces in New Zealand
October 9, 2024 at 11:55 PM
drgesmith.bsky.social
I'm also doing summaries of the key findings here, if you'd like the 90 second version: www.instagram.com/transpeoples...
Yellow and purple title page reading Boy Smell
October 8, 2024 at 9:43 PM
drgesmith.bsky.social
Very happy to be sharing the first article from my project on transness and smell! This one looks at how people's own smell changes when they start hormones: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Screenshot of title page for the article ‘Boy smell’: transgender and nonbinary people’s experiences of bodily smell Screenshot of text which reads Abstract Although smell is sometimes treated with little regard, it is invested with cultural meaning and conveys a great deal of information, including about gender, sexuality and identity. This article draws on interviews with 11 transgender and nonbinary people who have accessed gender affirming hormone therapy (GAHT), and focuses on how they understand and explain changes in how their own bodies smell. Although it is well documented that GAHT causes changes in skin oiliness, changes in smell are inconsistently documented, and within the medical literature are often commented on only in passing. Taking a discourse analytic approach, the article finds that participants noticed changes in their own smell during hormonal transition, that in many cases this change was understood as significant in some way, and that these changes could be experienced as affirming. Understandings of what changes in bodily smell meant were often
October 8, 2024 at 9:42 PM
drgesmith.bsky.social
I've got a Substack which I update when I publish/release something new and it's that time! drgesmith.substack.com/p/working-gi...
Image of a towel swan overlaid with the title "towel swans and working girls"
July 11, 2024 at 6:43 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
I wrote about the phrase "working girl" for the Radical History Review - everything from this issue is open access for a few months which is v cool read.dukeupress.edu/radical-hist...
Dolly Parton sitting at a typewriter
May 29, 2024 at 11:42 PM
drgesmith.bsky.social
If you've got a Spotify premium subscription it now includes access to 15 hours of audiobooks a month, including my book 👀 (I think this applies in NZ, Ireland and Canada)
Screenshot of the audiobook of Producing the Acceptable Sex Worker in Spotify
April 18, 2024 at 2:50 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
Laughing quite hard at this representation of the two basic types of cat
Google search for "can you buy cat gravy" and the sponsored results are two kinds of food, illustrated by an excited cat looking at a rain of kibble and a perfectly groomed longhair under the label "intense beauty"
March 9, 2024 at 5:05 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
Got the quintessential annoying article response (R1&R3 say publish, R2 wants major revisions) AND the email came through at 11pm on a Saturday night... why...
Photo of a small white cat looking so so tired
March 3, 2024 at 12:34 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
I don't think they're on bsky yet, but Just4Pal will be at the Newtown Festival today (Sunday 3rd) if you're heading along
Screenshot of a post from Just4Pal's Instagram feed, showing a design based on the Palestinian flag, and info that they're on Green Street, Sunday March 3, inviting people to send a postcard to parliament
March 2, 2024 at 12:20 PM
drgesmith.bsky.social
This is really cool!! I'm writing up a project right now where I spoke to 25 trans and nonbinary people about scent and smell, so I'm excited to see the role it plays being highlighted here too wwd.com/pop-culture/...
Screenshot of text which reads: Perfume became important to me when I really started to invest in how I present myself to the world. Perfume became just another way of showing everyone who I am and I didn’t think that it could be so important,” Monsoon said, adding, “In my own trans identity and my own gender journey, I’m constantly self-manifesting and constantly finding ways to be more myself, to find new ways to present myself to the rest of the world so that they see me and smell me the way I want them to know me.
March 1, 2024 at 1:32 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
The description is just the abstract and they haven't even bothered to change 'thesis' to 'book' lol
Image of the description of the book on Amazon, with the word 'thesis' highlighted
January 8, 2024 at 10:35 PM
drgesmith.bsky.social
The title of my thesis is fairly close to the title of my *actual* book so I'm concerned it might be confusing to anyone trying to buy a copy - although hopefully anyone who knows my work would realize I wouldn't sign off on a cover image of disembodied legs??
Image of an Amazon listing of a book for sale, the cover is pink with a pair of cartoon legs in suspenders
January 8, 2024 at 10:34 PM
drgesmith.bsky.social
Last year I taught myself how to run a macro in Word to highlight all sentences over X words long and I was soooooo proud of myself for about 0.5 seconds
Google search for "how long should a sentence be" Popup in a word doc that says 32 sentences longer than 50 words
December 26, 2023 at 7:05 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
All the searches I'm doing for this new project about smell have done something extremely funny to my advertising algorithm. Who knew Airwick had an IG??
Post from the Airwick Instagram promoting their gardenia scent air freshener.
December 21, 2023 at 4:11 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture publish fairly wide ranging reviews?
Text reads: With regard to the reviews featured in each issue, the journal welcomes reviews of a wide range of queer media and cultural artefacts. Like other academic journals, Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture certainly publishes reviews of recently released books on queer subject matter. Consistent with the journal's overall focus, however, we also strongly encourage the submission and publication of reviews pertaining to significant films, musical recordings, plays, television series, video games, exhibitions, and related cultural artefacts that are of relevance to queerness in its various forms.
December 18, 2023 at 5:33 AM
drgesmith.bsky.social
Today is International Day to End Violence Against SW - part of why my work focuses so intensively on media coverage is that we know it can contribute to stigma. I was part of the group who wrote these guidelines, aimed at journalists writing about our community #IDEVASW nzpc.org.nz/Best-practic...
Infographic which reads "we know stigma is a contributor to Violence. And that sometimes stigma is reinforced by media" Infographic which reads "so our community came together to provide guidance for journalists who care about the safety of sex workers"
December 16, 2023 at 11:44 PM