Porncom

Pornography has always been central to debates about sex and emerging new media technologies. Today, debate is increasingly focused on online pornographies. This collection examines pornography's significance as a focus of definition, debate, and myth; its development as a mainstream entertainment industry; and the emergence of the new economy of Porn 2.0, and of new types of porn labor and professionalism. It looks at porn style behind the scenes of straight hardcore, in gay, lesbian, and queer pornographies, in shock sites, and in amateur erotica, and investigates the rise of the online porn fan community, the sex blogger, the erotic rate-me site and the visual cultures of swingers. Treating these developments as part of a broader set of economic and cultural transformations, this book argues that new porn practices reveal much about contemporary and competing views of sex and the self, the real and the body, culture, and commerce.

An exploration of the modalities, affective intensities, and disturbing qualities of online pornography. Digital production tools and online networks have dramatically increased the general visibility, accessibility, and diversity of pornography. Porn can be accessed for free, anonymously, and in a seemingly endless range of niches, styles, and formats. In Carnal Resonance, Susanna Paasonen moves beyond the usual debates over the legal, political, and moral aspects of pornography to address online porn in a media historical framework, investigating its modalities, its affect, and its visceral and disturbing qualities. Countering theorizations of pornography as emotionless, affectless, detached, and cold, Paasonen addresses experiences of porn largely through the notion of affect as gut reactions, intensities of experience, bodily sensations, resonances, and ambiguous feelings. She links these investigations to considerations of methodology (ways of theorizing and analyzing online porn and affect), questions of materiality (bodies, technologies, and inscriptions), and the evolution of online pornography. Paasonen dicusses the development of online porn, focusing on the figure of the porn consumer, and considers user-generated content and amateur porn. She maps out the modality of online porn as hyperbolic, excessive, stylized, and repetitive, arguing that literal readings of the genre misunderstand its dynamics and appeal. And she analyzes viral videos and extreme and shock pornogaphy, arguing for the centrality of disgust and shame in the affective dynamics of porn. Paasonen's analysis makes clear the crucial role of media technologies—digital production tools and networked communications in particular—in the forms that porn takes, the resonances it stirs, and the experiences it makes possible.

After the “digital turn,” expansion of sexual representations has taken shape quantitatively(thanks to the multiplication of production and distribution channels) and qualitatively (giving riseto a plurality of new representational forms). In this context, several social groups – including women and non-normative sexual subcultures – have obtained full citizenship rights within the “pornosphere,” moving beyond their traditional marginalization or, indeed, exclusion. These “nonconventional” pornographies exist in a dialectical relationship with mainstream production in so far as they are at the same time a development and a repudiation of the latter (on an aesthetic, economic and political level).This volume investigates the emergences of alternative pornographies, highlighting theirdiscursive heterogeneity, their cultural status and connections to identities and non-normativepractices, and their role in redefining the very idea of pornography.The publication maps the main areas relating to alternative pornographies, such as alt porn,queer pornography, indie porn, post porn, feminist pornography, and amateur porn.With a foreword by Feona Attwood

Repetition and seriality are inherent in pornography and is constitutive for its functionality as a film genre, an industry, and an area of gender studies. By linking the styles of the genre to processes of serial production, consumption, and discussion, Schaschek questions the dominant assumptions about pornography and the stability of the genre.

This book is a timely and innovative exploration of the vital relationship between sex and capitalism in the digital age. It provides a lively, provocative analysis of how specifically digital forms of capitalist accumulation and labour shape and discipline the contemporary sexual body. Rebecca Saunders focuses on pornography in order to investigate the impact of digital forms of capitalism on contemporary sexuality and reveals the centrality of pornography to the digital attention economy, affective economics, the information economy, the creative industries and neoliberalism. Saunders uncovers a fundamental shift in the aesthetics and meaning of pornographic film, from a genre concerned with representing sexual pleasure to one that has become focused on representing sex as labour. Contemporary pornographic film is therefore read as a sign and symptom of how digital forms of capitalism regulate the twenty-first century sexual body through digital interfaces and technologies. Bodies of Work analyses major porn studios, dominant streaming platforms, significant directors and performers and queer and alternative pornographies, and presents new and significant concepts such as sexual datafication, the labour of visibility and interventionist pornography. Discussing pornographic film, sexuality, digital culture, labour and capitalism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across gender studies, media and cultural studies, digital humanities and economics.

This book presents thought-provoking research and data about pornography that will prompt readers to reconsider their positions on a highly controversial and current issue. Why do people use pornography? Is porn addiction a fact or myth? What is revenge porn and is it illegal? Can pornography be more diverse? This interdisciplinary collection presents well-researched facts and up-to-date data that encourage informed discussion about controversial and relevant issues in contemporary society. Chapters address topics such as the history and cultural trends of pornography, labor and production practices in creating porn, the effects of technology, current issues in obscenity law, and myths and facts about the effects of pornography. New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law challenges assumptions about this popular yet controversial industry. Contributors include top scholars from media studies, sociology, psychology, gender studies, criminology, politics, and the law. This book provides a comprehensive overview of pornography that will help students, educators, and general readers deepen their understanding of this provocative subject.

Out of the Ordinary: Representations of LGBT Lives is a book that introduces readers to the politics and practices of representation as they apply to the lives and perspectives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups and individuals. The chapters collected in this volume issue a challenge to the ordinariness of heterosexuality, and an associated invisibility of those who are situated outside of or beyond the ordinary. The book demonstrates that social and cultural representations serve as both a site of fruitful reinvention and a battleground for the emergence and visibility of ‘non-normative’ voices and interests. It will support readers in developing an in-depth understanding of the politics of sexuality and gender identity alongside a broader appreciation of the diverse terrain and conditions under which a multiplicity of identities are negotiated, contested and regulated in everyday life.

Examining the fascinating history of female genital cosmetic surgery, Camille Nurka traces the origins of contemporary ideas of genital normality. Over the past twenty years, Western women have become increasingly worried about the aesthetic appearance of their labia minora and are turning to cosmetic surgery to achieve the ideal vulva: a clean slit with no visible protrusion of the inner lips. Long labia minora are described by medical experts as ‘hypertrophied,’ a term that implies deformity and the atypical. But how far back does the diagnosis of labial hypertrophy go, and where did it originate? Female Genital Cosmetic Surgery tells the story of the female genitalia from the alien world of ancient Greek gynaecology to the colonial period of exploration and exploitation up to the present day. Bringing together historical, medical, and theoretical documentation and commentary, Nurka uncovers a long tradition of pathologizing female anatomy, a history sure to be of interest to any reader who wishes to know more about how medicine shapes our commonly held ideals.

Pornography is no longer considered to be a single, homogenous 'thing'. Nor are debates about pornography limited to the reductive anti-porn versus anti-censorship controversies of the mid-twentieth century. Whether we like it or not, pornography today is out in the open, from the ubiquity of porn produced and consumed via the Internet to the mainstreaming of porn aesthetics and practices into mass media and everyday life. Pornography is therefore of central concern to social scientific, arts and humanities research that focuses on sexual freedoms and oppressions, empowerment, gender, feminism and postfeminism, queer identities, normative and non-normative bodies, politics and more. This book conceives of pornographies in the plural and its twelve chapters engage directly with porn across a range of media and from a variety of critical perspectives. From the conceptual importance of pornography in the feminist 'sex wars' to porn produced for female and/or queer sexual pleasure, via examinations of vaginal performance artists, fetish clinics, sexperts, amputee porn, barebacking, tattoos and Japanese erotica, this book illuminates the many ways in which pornographies may be understood in scholarship today.

This book investigates what women enjoy about consuming, and in some cases producing, gay male erotic media–from slashfic, to pornographic texts, to visual pornography–and how this sits within their consumption of erotica and pornography more generally. In addition, it will examine how women’s use of gay male erotic media fits in with their perceptions of gender and sexuality. By drawing on a piece of wide-scale mixed methods research that examines these motivations, an original and important volume is presented that serves to explore and contribute to this under-researched area.