Abstract

Sexuality is conceived here as socially constructed dimension of human beings and as such characterised by forms of control, self-control, representation and reinterpretation forms. This research reveals how users of swingers' clubs in Milan share mental frames of reference for sexuality with those generally present in society, analysing how on the one side such frames are considered by actors as forms of repression to be freed from and on the other, elements which when re-defined become essential for the existence itself of the swingers clubs and for the formation of the interactive dynamics and the sense of sexual pleasure «inside» the clubs. Actors adapt interaction strategies which unconsciously depend on and originate in frames of reference existing «outside», whose linchpin is the concept of transgression. In swingers clubs people create eroticised practices in terms of interactions and pleasure by self-regulation.