Doing the naughty or having it done to you? Agent roles in erotic writing

Bibliographic Data

ID13086107
AuthorsAlon Lischinsky (0000-0001-8449-2046, Oxford Brookes University, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume5
Issue2
Pages156-174
Publication date2017-06-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePorn Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2326-8743 • E-ISSN: 2326-8751
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/23268743.2017.1301215
OpenAlexW2726613906
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited48

Frequent criticisms of pornography have argued that it reproduces hegemonic misogyny by emphasizing representations of females as passive, powerless and submissive. Nevertheless, attempts to substantiate such claims have been scarce. This article seeks to provide empirical evidence on this question through an analysis of the representation of sexual activity in a large corpus of online pornographic stories. I employ corpus linguistic methods to examine the grammatical patterns used to attribute agency to male and female participants in sexual acts. The analysis shows that these narratives tend to represent sexual intercourse as an asymmetric engagement between an agent and a patient, rather than as a joint collaborative activity. Although representations emphasizing female agency are not rare, they are significantly less common than those assigning males the agent role, thus reinforcing rather than challenging dominant discourses of gender and sexuality. Linguistic methods such as these have the potential for a more nuanced and finer-grained description than is often possible for visual materials, and can profitably add to our understanding of gender and genre differences in pornography

Agency (philosophy · Hegemony · Human sexuality · Linguistics · Narrative · Political science · Pornography · Psychoanalysis · Representation (politics · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Social Psychology

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