ABSTRACT
Historian Walter Kendrick has shown that, although sexually explicit representations have existed throughout human history, it is only in the nineteenth century in Western countries that pornography emerged as a distinct category of human culture. Consumers of pornography are the objects of much controversy in the news media. There has been concern that pornography can damage people - particularly young people. The concept of the Other has proven productive for cultural theory. From its initial applications to gender and colonial relations between national, ethnic and racial groups, the term has been expanded to include, for example, queer groups and the working classes. Despina Chronaki has shown that young people learn about sex from journalism, among other sources, and the version of sex they learn about from the news is not a positive one. The situation is changing. Certainly in academic writing, and occasionally in journalistic news, the voices of consumers are starting to be heard.
