Navigating, challenging, and contesting normative gendered discourses surrounding women’s pornography use

ABSTRACT

While there exists some empirical research on women’s use of pornography, the manner in which women do, and how they understand their pornographic spectatorship, remains under-examined. Focusing on the narratives of 26 women gained through both focus groups and individual interviews, this research explores how women who use pornography and other sexually explicit materials navigate, reaffirm, challenge, and contest normative gendered boundaries that surround women’s sexuality, sexual pleasure, and women’s pornographic use. While ‘pornography as female degradation’ is the most visible feminist discourse, the findings of this study suggest that the meanings attributed to both the experience of engaging with pornography, as well as with pornographic materials themselves, were far from wholly degrading, and in fact, served to provide pleasure, sexual self-actualization, and even corporeal validation – disrupting normative discourses of desiring and desirable bodies.

KEYWORDS:

• Pornography
• sexual scripts
• gendered discourse
• empowerment
• women and pornography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Olga Marques

Olga Marques, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor (Criminology and Justice) at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Research interests include the construction, policing and regulation of gendered, sexed and raced bodies; Indigeneity and incarceration; the prison experience; and sex as deviance. Previous research focused on women’s use of sexually explicit materials, and the inter-relationships between gendered social norms, social control, and resistance. Current research explores gendered experiences of familial incarceration.