I’ve been obsessively curious about human sexuality for as long as I can remember. Naturally, once I got my hands on an iPod touch I started doing some googling and wound up watching porn fairly regularly. I’m sure this habit had effects that weren’t helpful, but I can honestly say that the biggest harm by far was simply the shame of it all. I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone about what I was watching every night, and the sources I could find discussing it only made things worse. I imagined myself forever tainted, an idea fed to me by a myriad of sex-negative religious sites. Even women around me who were generally non-judgemental about sexuality would talk about porn as if it existed entirely to subjugate women and peddle unrealistic body standards. I internalized that as signs of my moral failure, but as I aged I started realizing how unfair it was to judge all media made to arouse. I’d been exposed to plenty of violent movies, sinister advertisements, fashion magazines peddling unhealthy body image, and other media made in a patriarchal world since I was a child, so why was porn singled out as by far the most sinister?
Over a decade has passed since those initial guilt-ridden web searches, and despite the fact I’ve grown into a staunchly sex-positive person, I still find myself constantly surrounded by similar attitudes. I hardly ever hear anyone talk about porn seriously, and when they do it’s always negative and simplistic. To make it worse, as I strive to write more on this subject, I see how little research has been done on pornography and how much of it entirely centers on the possible existence of harmful effects. I believe pornographic media, like all media, should be looked at critically, of course. It’s a category of art and certainly is capable of reproducing inequalities and beliefs that would be better dismantled. However, I think it does a disservice to porn as a genre (not to mention the creators of porn) when academics and the broader public limit their exploration to black-and-white judgments and assessments of pure effect.
As far as I can tell, and with the help of Carolyn Bronstein’s work on the matter, an academic exploration of explicitly erotic media really began in the late 20th Century when it became the center of the now infamously titled Sex Wars. This was a period in feminism were a major rift formed between feminists who saw porn (and sex more broadly) as primarily a site of patriarchal subjugation and those who resisted censorship and saw the erotic as potentially liberating. Although there are real truths on both sides of this debate, anti-pornography activism of this era has set the stage for modern discourse on the medium in a way that I believe is supremely unhelpful. Pornography as a whole was positioned as violently degrading “antifemale propaganda” (Garry, 395). It was presupposed that media created primarily to arouse was worthless with no “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific merit” (Garry, 396). Although the Sex Wars have mostly died down at this point, the anti-pornography movement has continued into the 21st Century with books like Not For Sale (2004), Everyday Pornography (2010) and Pornland (2010).
Academia’s treatment of erotic media has been greatly impacted by anti-pornography activism. An absurd amount of the work done on pornography revolves around the specific outcomes of its consumption: Does viewing porn harm your relationships? Does it make you more sexist? Does it make you more likely to support violence? In some ways, this is useful. Research like this can sort out fact from fiction when it comes to the effects of porn: showing what’s just sex-negative mythology and pointing out places pornography really can cause harm. At the same time, it’s a tiny sliver of questions that could be asked. A 2020 study showed that over 90% of men and 60% of women in the United States consumed pornography in the past month, and that’s just self-reported (Solano). Porn isn’t something mysterious that needs to be assessed for safety, it’s an umbrella term that covers huge swaths of popular entertainment that most people consume at least some of. Limiting academic investigation of porn to simply assessing its effects is ludicrous. Imagine if every film studies discussion was just a debate between people arguing that films cause violence and mental illness and people insisting that’s not true. Questions about the effects of porn should be asked, but pornography is like any other form of art; it deserves diverse, nuanced, and exploratory criticism.
In my opinion, the way pornography is treated in academia and popular culture is an example of what Gayle Rubin famously outlined in her 1984 essay “Thinking Sex.” The culture tends to think of sexuality as unimportant and “lower” than other areas of human experience, but it also treats anything sexual with misplaced suspicion. So, while non-pornagraphic movies are treated as worthy of discussion in general and can be criticized for their harmful messaging without being denied all of their worth, pornography is practically ignored until it’s being accused of causing assault, impotence, cultural degradation, and so on. I think media designed to arouse offers us an invaluable peek into the cultural unconscious, into the things that tantalize and terrify people. Rather than treating porn as suspicious or even frivolous fun, I believe we should be looking in-depth into the everchanging landscapes of pornographic media, the diverse narratives being formed within them, and the multifaceted needs of those who work in pornographic industries.
There are people out there who share my perspective. In 2014 “first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal” to focus on studying pornographic products and services was launched: The Journal Of Porn Studies. Despite facing anti-porn backlash, this journal publishes nuanced and detailed research on porn and is currently in its ninth volume. It’s even included at least one person on its board who works in pornography production, an important first step in fighting the way sex workers are often silenced except when used as examples of the harms porn can produce.
I’m very glad Porn Studies exists, but one quarterly journal is not enough to explore a section of media that is so ubiquitous and popular. The time for simple denunciation and defense has passed. Now that the Sex Wars are mostly behind us and we’re in an age of easy accessibility to pornographic media, it’s time to change how we talk about porn. Porn should be brought out of people’s Incognito browsers and into serious discussion. When I wanted to know more about porn as a kid, I shouldn’t have been met with just sex-negative feminism and religious conservatism. There needs to be more conversations about porn that critically engage with this genre broadly with nuanced, detailed, and diverse inquiries.
By Aiden/Estelle Garrett