Valerie Webber
Biographic Data
| ID | 658500 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Valerie Webber |
| GIVEN NAMES | Valerie |
| FAMILY NAME | Webber |
| SIGNATURE | WEBBER V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Dalhousie University |
| ORCID | 0009-0003-9482-4405 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Digitally Facilitated Sex Work: A Scoping Review Articulating Men’s Labor Experiences
A multitude of factors shape the labor conditions of men engaged in digitally facilitated sex work. To examine these labor conditions, we conducted a scoping review of research conducted with men about their use of internet technologies to facilitate in-person sex work and/or provide sexual services online through digital platforms. We retrieved 72 papers and book chapters published between 1990 and 2024. We summarize some descriptive characteris…
Bimbo Idiots Fighting Against Their Own Best Interests”: Epistemic Injustice and Occupational Health in Porn Production
From 2004 to 2020, there were multiple attempts to enforce mandatory condom use in adult film production in California, USA. The nonprofit and government figures pushing these occupational health policies did not adequately consult the perspectives of porn workers. This study collected data between 2016 and 2020, using fieldwork at porn events and film sets in Canada, Germany, and the USA; interviews with 36 adult industry workers including perfo…
Are Queer Men Queering Consent? A Scoping Review of Sexual Consent Literature Among Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Men
Objectives: To review the literature on Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (GBTQ) men and sexual consent. Methods: Eight electronic databases were searched in June 2022, yielding 1924 articles; 30 were included for review after screening. Results: We found a growing body of literature focused on GBTQ men, with an increasingly intersectional lens. Most studies adopted a nuanced definition of sexual consent. Many discussed the unique sexual scripts de…
Sex exceptionalism and erasure in porn health protocols
Porn production, like all forms of labour, entails certain occupational health and safety (OHS) risks. Porn production has generally not been subject to state occupational health oversight, and porn workers have instead implemented self-regulatory OHS systems. However, in California, where the industry is most established, governmental and non-governmental bodies have made several paternalist attempts to legislate standardised OHS protocols. Thei…
This is fucking nuts’: The role of payment intermediaries in structuring precarity and dependencies in platformized sex work
This article explores the impact of governance developed and enforced by payment intermediaries on the working conditions of performers working on adult labour platforms. At the level of the payment infastructure, credit card networks Visa and Mastercard and payment processors set requirements for (adult) platforms on allowable content and how this should be moderated and verified. These rules are subsequently implemented by adult platforms. Base…
The definitional creep: Payment processing and the moral ordering of sexual content
Discussions of online content moderation often focus on the platform, however credit card networks and payment processors determine what content can be monetized and therefore placed on adult platforms. Through fieldwork and interviews among adult industry stakeholders and a survey of adult content creators, this paper demonstrates how these financial actors impose a moral ordering of sexuality that prioritizes credit card brand reputation and op…
Pornhub and Policy: Examining the Erasure of Pornography Workers in Canadian Platform Governance
Background: In 2021, the Canadian Parliamentary Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (ETHI) conducted an inquiry around Pornhub, following allegations that parent company MindGeek profits from non-consensual content. Analysis: This article offers a discourse analysis of the ETHI’s process, testimony, and report on Pornhub using Carol Bacchi’s policy analysis method, “What is the problem represented to be?” Conclusions a…
No respect: Sex research as sex work
In this scholarly conversation, Dr Rebecca Sullivan and Dr Valerie Webber share their experiences in sex work and how it has informed their research in their different areas of sexuality studies. Dr Webber, who has worked as both a porn and cam performer, is a postdoctoral scholar at Dalhousie University's Sexual Health and Gender (SHaG) Research Lab. Dr Sullivan, a professor in the Department of English at University of Calgary, had a brief stin…
Constructing a crisis: Porn panics and public health
I’m Not Gonna Run Around and Put a Condom on Every Dick I See”: Tensions in Safer Sex Activism Among Queer Communities in Montréal, Quebec
Stigmatizing surveillance: Blood-borne pathogen protocol and the dangerous doctor
HIV and hepatitis B and C are viruses that have been unduly set apart from other infectious diseases in terms of the symbolic pull they exert and the anxiety they produce. This is reflected in health care policy and protocol. Hospitals, health care regions and colleges of physicians and surgeons create guidelines and procedures that single out HIV or hepatitis B and C as requiring special attention. This paper examines such surveillance and stigm…
Public health versus performer privates: Measure B's failure to fix subjects
Porn performance and its interface with the public inhabit a blurry and shifting zone that is difficult to fix. The sex and bodies of pornography are both public and private, both real and fantasy, both individually inhabited and collectively viewed. What happens when the state tries to locate its role and intervene in such a slippery relationship? As of November 2012, Measure B legislation mandates condom use in pornography made in Los Angeles C…
Reproductive Lives
Shades of gay: Performance of girl-on-girl pornography and mobile authenticities
Sexuality is often considered to be ‘naturally’ derived, and thus subject to discourses of authenticity. Through a discussion with non-exclusively heterosexual women performing lesbian sexuality in pornography, this article seeks to complicate ideas surrounding performance and authenticity. I argue that performance itself, by reiterating certain culturally salient codes, determines what is generally viewed as ‘authentic’. In addition, I argue tha…
Constructing a crisis: Porn panics and public health
The definitional creep: Payment processing and the moral ordering of sexual content
Discussions of online content moderation often focus on the platform, however credit card networks and payment processors determine what content can be monetized and therefore placed on adult platforms. Through fieldwork and interviews among adult industry stakeholders and a survey of adult content creators, this paper demonstrates how these financial actors impose a moral ordering of sexuality that prioritizes credit card brand reputation and op…
This is fucking nuts’: The role of payment intermediaries in structuring precarity and dependencies in platformized sex work
This article explores the impact of governance developed and enforced by payment intermediaries on the working conditions of performers working on adult labour platforms. At the level of the payment infastructure, credit card networks Visa and Mastercard and payment processors set requirements for (adult) platforms on allowable content and how this should be moderated and verified. These rules are subsequently implemented by adult platforms. Base…
I’m Not Gonna Run Around and Put a Condom on Every Dick I See”: Tensions in Safer Sex Activism Among Queer Communities in Montréal, Quebec
Shades of gay: Performance of girl-on-girl pornography and mobile authenticities
Sexuality is often considered to be ‘naturally’ derived, and thus subject to discourses of authenticity. Through a discussion with non-exclusively heterosexual women performing lesbian sexuality in pornography, this article seeks to complicate ideas surrounding performance and authenticity. I argue that performance itself, by reiterating certain culturally salient codes, determines what is generally viewed as ‘authentic’. In addition, I argue tha…
Reproductive Lives
Stigmatizing surveillance: Blood-borne pathogen protocol and the dangerous doctor
HIV and hepatitis B and C are viruses that have been unduly set apart from other infectious diseases in terms of the symbolic pull they exert and the anxiety they produce. This is reflected in health care policy and protocol. Hospitals, health care regions and colleges of physicians and surgeons create guidelines and procedures that single out HIV or hepatitis B and C as requiring special attention. This paper examines such surveillance and stigm…
Public health versus performer privates: Measure B's failure to fix subjects
Porn performance and its interface with the public inhabit a blurry and shifting zone that is difficult to fix. The sex and bodies of pornography are both public and private, both real and fantasy, both individually inhabited and collectively viewed. What happens when the state tries to locate its role and intervene in such a slippery relationship? As of November 2012, Measure B legislation mandates condom use in pornography made in Los Angeles C…
I’m Not Gonna Run Around and Put a Condom on Every Dick I See”: Tensions in Safer Sex Activism Among Queer Communities in Montréal, Quebec
Constructing a crisis: Porn panics and public health
Pornhub and Policy: Examining the Erasure of Pornography Workers in Canadian Platform Governance
Background: In 2021, the Canadian Parliamentary Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (ETHI) conducted an inquiry around Pornhub, following allegations that parent company MindGeek profits from non-consensual content. Analysis: This article offers a discourse analysis of the ETHI’s process, testimony, and report on Pornhub using Carol Bacchi’s policy analysis method, “What is the problem represented to be?” Conclusions a…
No respect: Sex research as sex work
In this scholarly conversation, Dr Rebecca Sullivan and Dr Valerie Webber share their experiences in sex work and how it has informed their research in their different areas of sexuality studies. Dr Webber, who has worked as both a porn and cam performer, is a postdoctoral scholar at Dalhousie University's Sexual Health and Gender (SHaG) Research Lab. Dr Sullivan, a professor in the Department of English at University of Calgary, had a brief stin…
Are Queer Men Queering Consent? A Scoping Review of Sexual Consent Literature Among Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Men
Objectives: To review the literature on Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (GBTQ) men and sexual consent. Methods: Eight electronic databases were searched in June 2022, yielding 1924 articles; 30 were included for review after screening. Results: We found a growing body of literature focused on GBTQ men, with an increasingly intersectional lens. Most studies adopted a nuanced definition of sexual consent. Many discussed the unique sexual scripts de…
Sex exceptionalism and erasure in porn health protocols
Porn production, like all forms of labour, entails certain occupational health and safety (OHS) risks. Porn production has generally not been subject to state occupational health oversight, and porn workers have instead implemented self-regulatory OHS systems. However, in California, where the industry is most established, governmental and non-governmental bodies have made several paternalist attempts to legislate standardised OHS protocols. Thei…
This is fucking nuts’: The role of payment intermediaries in structuring precarity and dependencies in platformized sex work
This article explores the impact of governance developed and enforced by payment intermediaries on the working conditions of performers working on adult labour platforms. At the level of the payment infastructure, credit card networks Visa and Mastercard and payment processors set requirements for (adult) platforms on allowable content and how this should be moderated and verified. These rules are subsequently implemented by adult platforms. Base…
The definitional creep: Payment processing and the moral ordering of sexual content
Discussions of online content moderation often focus on the platform, however credit card networks and payment processors determine what content can be monetized and therefore placed on adult platforms. Through fieldwork and interviews among adult industry stakeholders and a survey of adult content creators, this paper demonstrates how these financial actors impose a moral ordering of sexuality that prioritizes credit card brand reputation and op…
Bimbo Idiots Fighting Against Their Own Best Interests”: Epistemic Injustice and Occupational Health in Porn Production
From 2004 to 2020, there were multiple attempts to enforce mandatory condom use in adult film production in California, USA. The nonprofit and government figures pushing these occupational health policies did not adequately consult the perspectives of porn workers. This study collected data between 2016 and 2020, using fieldwork at porn events and film sets in Canada, Germany, and the USA; interviews with 36 adult industry workers including perfo…
Digitally Facilitated Sex Work: A Scoping Review Articulating Men’s Labor Experiences
A multitude of factors shape the labor conditions of men engaged in digitally facilitated sex work. To examine these labor conditions, we conducted a scoping review of research conducted with men about their use of internet technologies to facilitate in-person sex work and/or provide sexual services online through digital platforms. We retrieved 72 papers and book chapters published between 1990 and 2024. We summarize some descriptive characteris…
Sociology (11 works) · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology (10 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (9 works) · Sex work and related issues (9 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Medicine (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Law (5 works)