Engaging with pornography: an examination of women aged 18–26 as porn consumers

ABSTRACT

In this article we discuss a large scale research project aimed at uncovering people’s everyday engagements with pornography. We focus on women aged 18–25; the only category of our participants in which women outnumbered men. Looking at responses from women in this group we examine their narratives, views, feelings, positions and judgments. We focus in particular on the elements of pornography that engaged them in terms of content and scenario, style and aesthetics, emotion and thought, tone and mood, and identification, and we consider the accounts of four participants in more detail. Our discussion illustrates what different forms of engagement with pornography can look like and outlines what they suggest about the possible relations of porn engagement and sexuality. We situate our discussion in relation to qualitative cultural studies work, a tradition of feminist audience studies, an emerging porn studies, and accounts which understand both sexuality and media and consumption as part of everyday life.

KEYWORDS:

• Pornography
• pornography consumers
• young women
• online questionnaire

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Feona Attwood

Feona Attwood is Professor of Cultural Studies, Communication and Media at Middlesex University, UK. Her work investigates the changing place and significance of sex and sexuality and their representation in contemporary society. It examines the ways in which sexual practices and representations are caught up in wider debates around bodies, media and technologies, and the emerging centrality of new technologies in conceptions of gender and sexuality. She has particular research interests in the developing study of forms of sex media, public and political debates and discourses around pornography, the role of media and technology in relation to sexual health and wellbeing and audience studies, especially in relation to forms of controversial media. She is the co-editor of Sexualities, the leading critical sexualities studies journal and founding co-editor of Porn Studies. E-mail: [email protected]

Clarissa Smith

Clarissa Smith is Professor of Sexual Cultures at the University of Sunderland, UK. Her research interests cover sexuality and sexual representations in the contemporary moment; the institutional practices, representational strategies, uses and meanings of sexually explicit media and particularly those designated as ‘pornographic’; audiences and their meaning making across mainstream and more taboo media forms; relationships between media representations, identities and practices and social policy; discourses and practices of health and wellbeing as they relate to young people. She is founding co-editor of Porn Studies, the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to critically explore pornographic productions and their cultural, economic, historical, institutional, legal and social contexts. E-mail: [email protected]

Martin Barker

Martin Barker is Emeritus Professor, Aberystwyth University, UK. He has researched and published in many fields of media and cultural studies, including: contemporary British racism; the media, moral scares and censorship campaigns; comicbooks; The Last of the Mohicans and its transformations; the Iraq war film cycle; and methods of film analysis. Over the last 25 years he has focused on the field of audience research, including leading international projects on The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit, and conducting commissioned research for the British Board of Film Classification. He helped found the journal Participations in 2003, and has remained one of its editors. E-mail: [email protected]