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.

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Google Books version of Professor Feona Attwood’s 2010 edited volume on porn studies. Quite a collection.

Here’s the blurb from publisher Peter Lang:

Pornography has always been central to debates about sex and emerging new media technologies. Today, debate is increasingly focused on online pornographies. This collection examines pornography’s significance as a focus of definition, debate, and myth; its development as a mainstream entertainment industry; and the emergence of the new economy of Porn 2.0, and of new types of porn labor and professionalism. It looks at porn style behind the scenes of straight hardcore, in gay, lesbian, and queer pornographies, in shock sites, and in amateur erotica, and investigates the rise of the online porn fan community, the sex blogger, the erotic rate-me site and the visual cultures of swingers. Treating these developments as part of a broader set of economic and cultural transformations, this book argues that new porn practices reveal much about contemporary and competing views of sex and the self, the real and the body, culture, and commerce.