Interview: Professor Feona Attwood, author, Porn.com
Most of the dialogue in the mainstream media about online sexuality tends to focus on access to porn and kinks, and particularly their problematic aspects. But what evidence is there that Web porn and kink-exposure has actually affected our sexual attitudes and behaviours?
I spoke with Professor Feona Attwood, Principal Lecturer in Communication at Sheffield Hallam Universirt and author and editor of Porn.com, a collection of research from academic specialists in this field published in 2009. Here, she discusses the ways in which the Web is making a difference in term of production and consumption of explicit sexual material, its long-term effects on the sexual evolution of today’s media-savvy young adults, and - importantly - how online porn is no different from porn in other media.
What are the practices, styles and cultures of online porn? How are these distinctive from porn in other media?
What’s now available online is making us think again about what porn is. For example, you’ll find many of the same things online as you will in other media - classic films, genres like gonzo, pin up pictures - but what’s also out there are amateur scenes in domestic settings; queer, kinky and feminist pornographies; subcultural and indie productions; lots of erotic and pornographic storytelling; practices which mix the sexual display we associate with porn with dating or social networking (for example on swinging or ‘rate-me’ sites). It’s this variety really that’s so distinctive about porn in an online setting.
How has the Web changed the production and consumption of porn?
It’s made both much easier in terms of entry level to production and ease and anonymity of consumption.
It’s no longer really possible to talk about a porn ‘industry’ as though this was an identifiable and monolithic thing; alongside the big companies like Vivid there are now loads of smaller producers and there’s tons of amateur material online.
In terms of consumption, the most striking thing for me is the way porn has become accessible to women; earlier forms of porn distribution which relied on visits to sex shops or on porn been passed among men made it really difficult for women to get hold of porn, as well as all kinds of other sex products. The Web has made it possible for women to access porn easily, which is hugely important for the way porn will develop in the future.
What effect has an increase in access to pornography via the Web had on our offline attitudes to sex, and to our sexual behaviours? How has it altered what sex means?
There’s extraordinarily little research on the way we interact with porn. There’s only one major study that’s been carried out with actual audiences of porn - in Australia a few years ago and written up in a book called The Porn Report (2008) - and this found that people who used porn thought it was largely beneficial in their sex lives; but this study didn’t really focus on online porn. So we haven’t had much evidence to help us think this question through.
This year though, a major new research project on porn audiences, led by Dr. Clarissa Smith and using online questionnaires, is being launched, and I think this will make a huge contribution to our knowledge. What we also know is that using online porn is part of a broader move towards bringing technology into our sex lives and one that you can already see in the way sex is discussed. For example, many sex advice guides often assume we might want to use toys and porn, take photographs and make films as part of our sexual repertoire. And the way that people now interact sexually online suggests a mixing of sex with media and technology. Both these developments suggest a big shift around what sex is, how you can do it and what it means.
How much has Web access to porn assisted in the ‘mainstreaming’ of sex and sexual kinks, in comparison with other media?
British culture has been fascinated by talking about sex for a very long time and in that sense sex has been a pretty visible subject for mainstream consideration. Older media have often been dominated by a view of sex as scandalous and dangerous, but on the whole their own depictions of sex have been pretty predictable. Access to a more diverse set of representations; particularly pornographies, and especially kinky kinds - hasn’t been possible for most people. Web access has made it possible to see a much broader variety of sexual representations than ever before. This doesn’t necessarily mean that many more people are using kinky porn - though this might be the case - but it definitely does mean that different views of sexual pleasure and identity are much more visible and accessible than in the past.
What are the problematic aspects of online porn? What are the positive aspects?
The opportunity the Web has provided for people to make and access more diverse representations and views of sex can only be viewed as a positive thing. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we are going to like or agree about everything that we find out there, but a grown up society can find ways of dealing with this. The problematic aspects of any porn - online or offline - remain what they’ve always been; are the people who work in porn treated fairly?, are they paid properly?, are their working conditions safe? - but these are questions that need to be asked about any form of production and indeed any kind of work.
How important is porn now to the development of sexuality and sexual practices in the media-savvy young generations, versus the pre-Web generations?
There are more young adults out there making porn for their own generation, and given that media and technology are such an important part of the lives of young people, I think online porn is definitely going to be part of the mix in future. What we need now is to move on from the kinds of panicked responses to online porn that we often see in the media and start to really think more broadly about how sex and sexuality - in all their aspects - are practiced, and what they mean in the twenty first century.
