ABSTRACT
This chapter sets in motion the paradox between the block porn agenda and teenage girls’ playful sexual explorations as it opposes assumptions that suggest that the encounter with online porn threatens teenage sexuality. The chapter shows that teenage girls are resourceful sexual agents who make use of social media platforms in ways that are opposed to risk and danger. First, through recalling their experiences with online porn, the girls demonstrate how their early encounters debunk myths around sexual innocence. Second, the chapter claims that girls’ engagement with online porn and sexuality is an everyday affair, experienced and reinforced through peer, adult, and sibling relations and encounters with other forms of sexual material, including books. Finally, the chapter suggests that girls’ early experiences of sexuality are already embedded in the realm of the forbidden, where sexuality is hidden and denied and that this resulted in girls strategically navigating their sexual curiosities and adult expectations. Within this navigation, fear, shame, and secrecy were embedded into their early experiences of sexuality.
