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Friday, November 11
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GEC04
Contemporary Pornographies: Issues of Production, Representation and Consumption in Sexually Explicit Media
F. Attwood
1
1
Middlesex University, Media, London, United Kingdom
The past decade has brought unequalled increase in the availability, volume and forms of online pornography, and the cultural visibility of pornography is
unprecedented. The sexual is ‘increasingly lived in worlds of mediated forms’ (Plummer 2008: 10) with ‘diminishing boundaries between online porn and
real life sexuality’ (Arvidsson 2007: 74) and as part of a broader set of shifting media practices. Academic interest in new technologies and sex has grown
as the mediation of sex, communication and intimacy has become more commonplace. This panel draws together emerging research on the proliferation
of pornography since the digital revolution. It explores a variety of representations of genders, sexualities and bodies across pornographic genres and subge‑
nres. It examines the issue of age in relation to porn in terms of representation and consumption. It considers how representational strategies and practices
of production and consumption are changing. The papers in this panel considers how contemporary gay pornography offers plural models of masculinity,
illustrating a ‘saturated’masculinity; shows how the ageing body is represented in pornography; investigates how young people describe their encounters
with and feelings about porn; and identifies some of the key shifts and developments in pornographic representation and production in terms of the main‑
stream and its alternatives and in terms of interactivity and immersion.
PN 238
Contemporary Gay Porn and Saturated Masculinity
F. Attwood
1
, J. Mercer
2
1
Middlesex University, Media, London, United Kingdom
2
Birmingham City University, Media, Birmingham, United Kingdom
Gay pornography, either in print or onscreen, remains a relatively under-researched area of cultural production. It is a complicated and often contradictory
form that exploits, subverts, celebrates, plays with and calls into question the ways in which masculinity is constructed and what contemporary masculinity
might mean. Given that the internet has resulted in an exponential growth in the sheer volume as well as the range of gay porn available to audiences
and greatly enhanced access to this material, the need for a sustained exploration of gay pornography and its modes of representation becomes ever more
pressing. The research that I have done that has culminated in the monograph Gay Pornography: Representations of Masculinity and Sexuality (IB Tauris
forthcoming) explores and situates the rhetorical strategies and iconography of contemporary gay pornography and discusses the paradigm of masculini‑
ties that it presents.This paper discusses the challenges that studying gay pornography presents for researchers in a university setting and will identify some
of the issues that all researchers in the field have to consider. My work in the field over the last 15 years has aimed to illustrate that gay pornography offers
plural models of masculinity that are more various and nuanced than they might seem. I argue that gay porn illustrates a contemporary ‘saturated’mascu‑
linity. Ranging from an analysis of ‘mainstream’ gay pornography to the marginal, from glossy professionalism to the artisanal and amateur, the paradox
that lies at the heart of gay porn is that it is at points both subversive and normative; undermining orthodoxies of masculine representation at the same
time as producing new norms of gay sexual conduct and sexual performance.
PN 239
“I found porn rather than porn finding me”: Young people, pornography, legislation and research
F. Attwood
1
, C. Smith
2
1
Middlesex University, Media, London, United Kingdom
2
University of Sunderland, Sunderland, United Kingdom
The UK government is certain that "Viewing pornography at a young age can cause distress and can have a harmful effect on sexual development, beliefs,
and relationships". Citing statistics that young people under 18 account for a tenth of all visitors to porn sites and that a fifth of all children have viewed
X-rated content online, Prime Minister David Cameron feels justified in waging a ‘war against pornography’, leading Europe in a range of potentially dra‑
conian measures against the tide of ‘vile images’available on the internet. As my paper will demonstrate, the government has taken a dismissive attitude
towards research which shows that young people’s engagements with pornography satisfy a range of motives (ranging from ‘wanting to know and learn
more about sex’, to ‘curiosity’, to ‘boredom’, as well as for masturbation) because those motivations don’t fit with a model of pornography as having cumu‑
lative effects or corrupting influence. Opposing current and proposed legal actions is difficult to do when the battle cry is the ‘protection of children’ and,
because little research has been conducted into quotidian consumption of pornography, the discourse of ‘harms’ is always assumed to be ‘common sense’.
Challenging these accounts, my presentation draws on findings from an investigation into the meanings and pleasures of pornography as young people
describe them in their responses to a complex online questionnaire combining quantitative and qualitative questions. Over 200 young people aged 16–24
answered the questionnaire. In answer to a number of qualitative questions, respondents explained how they first encountered pornography, their return
journeys to it and their current feelings about its place in their lives. Some expanded on their interests in sharing, while others detail the solitary pleasures
and displeasures of engaging with pornography. In these responses we can explore valences of feeling: the complexities of shame and surprise, delight and
disgust, fear of parents and of long term impacts, and their resonances and place in emerging sexual identities and everyday relationships. The data allows
us to explore the range of sometimes conflicting emotions experienced by young people. The data complicates any notion that young people encounter
sexual media primarily by inadvertent and/or unwanted ‘exposure’ to it, and suggests that the current focus on ‘trauma’ and ‘risk’ is counterproductive for
‘child online safety’. Sexually explicit materials have intricate meanings in adolescent respondents’everyday lives and go on to have multiple significances
for their senses of themselves as sexual subjects as they mature. The picture emerging from young peoples’ own accounts is ‘messy’ and demonstrates
the ways in which encounters with sexually explicit media are significant milestones in adolescent lives. While governments rush to legislate, their interests
in ‘protection’begin to look ever more punitive and puritanical.