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 pornography 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 academics 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.
