ABSTRACT
When I tell friends, family and students that I study pornography, the smiles and giggles are
instantaneous. It is difficult to find the correct language to describe research on such a topic
that cannot be converted into a joke about the stigmatized and deviant aspects of porno-
graphy consumption – for the comedians, it’s as simple as placing methodological terms like
‘‘research,’’ ‘‘investigate,’’ ‘‘examine,’’ etc. in quotation marks to shift their meanings from
statements of scholarly interest and intent to confessions of ‘‘prurient interests.’’ While I
understand why people laugh, and often play up it to keep students’ attention, I do feel that
unfortunately it reproduces stereotypes about what is, in reality, one of the most crucial sites
in debates over gender, sexuality, and culture. Pornography represents a vital and active mode
through which pass various strands of thought, research, and practice about gender, sex,
sexuality, culture, inequality, social movements, law, crime and deviance, politics, identities,
media, morals, work, organizations, and economics. The depth, breadth, and diversity of
topics and issues available through the study of pornography have often been cast as vicious
polemics, wherein perspectives are often reduced to simplistic binaries. Much of what aca-
demics know about pornography comes from the ‘‘pornography debates’’ within
feminism in the 1970s and 1980s, where pornography was cast as a causative factor in
the subjugation and abuse of women. The shadow of these debates still looms large over
the study of pornography, and in doing so complicates and even denies a productive
research site wherein questions of the social construction of sexuality can be asked and
answered.
