Introduction: audiences and consumers of porn

Who are pornography consumers? If we are to believe the widespread media coverage, typically authored by journalists who are purportedly not themselves porn users, audiences are made up largely of men, young people and, increasingly, children (Belfast Telegraph Online 2014; Saul 2014), who are routinely watching ever more ‘extreme’ pornography depicting acts such as rape and bestiality or featuring underage performers (Cadwalladr 2013). What this media coverage tells us time and time again is that audiences are being ‘warped’ by what they see, their brain chemistry fundamentally altered by these ‘addictive’ scenes (Porn on the Brain 2013), their ideas of ‘healthy’ sex and relationships irrevocably corrupted and sullied by porn (Daubney 2013).

According to this formulation, pornography is responsible for many perceived social ills. In a sexual education vacuum, children in the playground are googling ‘porn’ on their smartphones and, in only a click or two, viewing pornography featuring surgically altered, coerced women performing ‘unthinkable’ acts, and assuming that this is what ‘normal’ sex looks like (Combi 2012; Purves 2013). Young and teenage men are then demanding and manipulating female sexual partners into activities lifted from their favourite porn scenes; acts such as anal sex and facial ejaculation that, naturally, no respectable heterosexual woman or girl would want to participate in (Saul 2014). Women are getting breast implants, removing their body hair, bleaching their anuses and undergoing genital cosmetic surgery, all in pursuit of the ‘perfect’ porn star image (Combi 2012). Similarly, with so many varieties of ‘porn’ available online, viewers are easily invited into homoerotic activity, or (even worse) into acts of bestiality, bodily scarification, sadism or other forms of erotic violence.

But when, why and how did it become ‘common sense’ to claim, first, that these practices are commonplace and/or problematic and, second, that porn is wholly and uncomplicatedly responsible for them?

Indeed, these arguments build on a particularly entrenched form of ‘common sense’, loosely based upon anecdotal evidence and partially researched statistics, while drawing on hegemonic assumptions of sexual ‘purity’ (and the purity of sexual subjects). The trope of the innocent journalist or researcher putting various search terms into Google and, to their horror, stumbling almost immediately across the most outrageous, shocking and depraved scenes has become wearingly predictable. The naivety of some of the claims made in these articles would be laughable (see Daubney 2013; Coslett 2014) if the attitudes about consumers underpinning such claims were not so taken for granted, and so influential. The logical leap that the writer must take from viewing this material, often for the first time, to holding forth upon its many pernicious effects on porn consumers is rarely examined in any detail, if at all. It is just so obvious, they claim, how can this kind of pornography not be negatively influencing the people who consume it?

The scholars included in this special issue of Porn Studies come from a variety of academic and professional backgrounds (including anthropology, media studies, cultural studies and sociology), but our common task is to bring that leap of logic into focus, to question and interrogate it instead of taking it for granted. The intervention into the debate being made by the editors and contributors to this special issue does not, despite what our critics may assume, involve being ‘cheerleaders’ for the porn industry (Cadwalladr 2013). We are not claiming that pornography is wholly unproblematic, or that watching porn has either no effect or, indeed, a ‘positive’ effect on consumers. What we do demand, however, is that porn consumers – and the various materials that they consume – should be taken seriously and that, in so doing, we move beyond this simplified effects model altogether. Taking consumers seriously does not involve uncritically endorsing and supporting the porn being consumed and the responses to it, but it does necessitate an acknowledgement that audiences may engage with porn in a range of complex, nuanced, critical – and yes, contradictory – ways that far exceed a simplistically described cause-and-effects framework.

To some, a special issue on porn consumption might seem a rather old-fashioned idea. Reflecting larger shifts within the global mediascape, recent academic work has highlighted the ongoing dismantling of established boundaries between the production, distribution and consumption of pornography (see Bell 2006; van Doorn 2010; Vernallis 2013). While there are differences between the ‘Polaroid’ generation of amateur porn that Paasonen (2011) discusses and the digitally-enabled content producers of today, it remains the case that these forms of production–consumption practice remain ‘niche’ and cannot be considered ‘mainstream’. For every reader who sent in an image of his wife to their favourite porn magazine back in the 1980s, there were countless readers who never discussed their consumption of such magazines with their wives (let alone suggested that they entered into this amateur arena and became producers themselves).

The same is true today. There are many producers of ‘porn’ outside of commercial studies and many domains for ‘distribution’ outside of purchase and rental formats. But the number of consumers of porn who are also producers of porn remains comparatively small. Thus, while not wishing to downplay the significance of ‘post-porn’ cultures and DIY porn, the editors contend that these new ‘agentic’ configurations of the producer/consumer relationship sit alongside a more traditional conceptualization of the consumer. This conceptualization, while not positioning the consumer as passive, does not a priori suggest that they are involved in a process of producing porn (although they may well be involved in producing cultures and communities of porn consumption). For every instance of a boundary that bleeds, we argue that there are countless others where such boundaries remain firmly entrenched. Tube cultures illustrate this well; while listings on such sites feature ‘genuinely’ amateur content, this material sits alongside professional content produced by studios, the audience of which rarely, if ever, upload anything beyond a comment or a rating. In putting together this collection we were conscious of wanting to provide a space in which consumption in and of itself – as a set of practices and responses to pornography – could be discussed.

This double issue includes an entire section dedicated to female consumers of pornography and we feel it is necessary to explain why this decision – to dedicate one-half of the issue to women – has been taken. When sketching out the aims and objectives of this issue, the editors felt that a specific focus on female consumption practices was imperative if this collection of essays was to make an intervention into the ongoing public discussions of pornography use and effect. Since the very beginnings of the modern ‘porn wars’, women have been central to the discussion of pornography (Morgan 1980; Donnerstein, 1980; Steinem, 1995; Dworkin 2000). While some (Stoltenberg 1991; Jenson 2007) have discussed the effects of pornography on and between men, the overriding focus of this public debate has been on women, often positioned as the victims (less so the consumers) of pornography.

There have been countless studies that have sought to support or attack this political stance on pornography. Many of the more nuanced and sophisticated responses to the porn debate have recognized that pornography is a bundle of contradictions. Linda Williams (1992) identified both the misogynistic and racist dimensions of pornography and its potential to be emancipating, educating and ‘perversely’ political. Richard Dyer (1992) eloquently discussed the problematic racial and gender representations in gay male pornography while also identifying the important role that such material plays in the lives of gay men living an isolated, atomized and very lonely existence. Kobena Mercer's (1996) response to Robert Mapplethorpe's erotic photographs articulated the contradictions that many of us feel when consuming pornography, as we struggle to reconcile our political beliefs with our libidinous desires.

However, as is evident from the recent resurgence of feminist anti-porn activism in the West, the focus on the effect of men's porn consumption on women remains a key focus within the public arena. This ongoing discussion struggles to acknowledge the fact that women are themselves consumers of pornography and that social stigma, restricted modes of access and a lack of ‘women-oriented’ material (rather than a lack of interest) have been reasons why women have not been such ‘visible’ porn consumers.

We include a section on women as consumers of porn in order to engage these issues – and in order to affirm women's agency in their own efforts to engage them. We do not want to fall foul of the same gender double-standard that proliferates in much mainstream pornography today. While not wishing to align ourselves with the rhetoric of post-feminist individualized consumption alluded to above, we do recognize that (for whatever reason) some women do watch pornography. Some women also produce pornography, and in both cases these women gain pleasure from watching pornography. To write off such women as ‘cultural dupes’ in the manner that Adorno and Horkheimer ([1944] 1997) derided mass culture would not only be discriminatory, it would fly in the face of an entire history of feminist media studies, which has sought to validate ‘feminine’ texts and practices of female consumption that have been derided by both popular culture (itself an object of derision) and the academy.

The specific focus on women in the second ‘half’ of this double issue thus acknowledges the role that women have played in the public discussion (as both the object and subject of discussion) and private consumption of pornography. The editors do not seek to take sides in the post-/feminist dimension of the porn debate, although the contributors to this issue offer a range of perspectives on such a discussion. Instead, we offer a platform for critically-engaged discussions of women's use of pornography; and in doing so hopefully reflect the diversity of these consumption practices, and the politics that support (or contradict) such practice.

The call for papers that began this issue's trajectory towards publication did not use the term ‘pro-porn’ but did demand that authors adopt an intellectual approach to their object of study. All submissions were blind peer-reviewed and work was judged based solely on the academic quality and intellectual strength of that work. As a result, work that was uncritically ‘pro-porn’ or ‘anti-porn’ was rejected, in much the same way that under-theorized and poorly researched submissions for history or English literature journals are routinely turned down.

In our selection of articles, we have sought to showcase a diverse range of opinions, approaches and foci. When it comes to the final selection of articles, there is perhaps one criticism that we must concede. We intentionally sought out articles that worked closely with both mainstream (i.e. heterosexual cis-gendered men) and more ‘niche’ (i.e. everyone else) audiences. In doing so, the voices of ‘minority’ audiences (trans people, gay men, young people) are perhaps over-represented in comparison with the number of heterosexual, able-bodied, cis-gendered men in the world who consume pornography. We put our hands up – guilty as charged. We hope that a subsequent issue of Porn Studies picks up the gauntlet we lay down here and focuses solely on the ‘majority’ user of pornography. Such research is certainly under-represented in the discipline of porn studies and is arguably where the discipline should be investing (some) of its time and resources. We hope that this special issue begins the discussion of consumption within Porn Studies and look forward to seeing future issues dedicated to audiences, reception and consumer practices.