Learner, laugher, lover, critic

Young women’s normative and emerging orientations towards pornography

Bibliographic Data

ID13086145
AuthorsAlanna Goldstein (0000-0001-7116-9581, York University, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume8
Issue1
Pages5-20
Publication date2020-06-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePorn Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2326-8743 • E-ISSN: 2326-8751
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/23268743.2020.1736608
OpenAlexW3033821634
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited26

This article examines young women’s common ‘orientations’ towards pornography as they appear across a range of qualitative research. These orientations, which I define as ‘learner’, ‘laugher’, ‘lover’ and ‘critic’, reflect both common understandings of pornography as a problematic object as well as normative constructions of ‘good’ female sexuality. I outline the features of these orientations and draw on them to make sense of a set of pornography-related narratives shared by young female participants within a focus group study. I argue that while these young women generally oriented themselves in normative ways towards porn as reflected in other qualitative studies, they also at times broke from those orientations to situate themselves as unashamed viewers of pornography, suggesting a potential shift in the terrain of contemporary femininity that allows some young women to express a more banal relationship to porn, sex and sexuality

Art · Epistemology · Femininity · Human sexuality · Literature · Narrative · Normative · Pornography · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Philosophy · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Social Psychology

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