PORN CULTURES:

REGULATION, POLITICAL ECONOMY,

TECHNOLOGY
Monday 15- Tuesday 16 June, Weetwood Hall Leeds

conference programme and book of

abstracts
 Monday 15 June

Registration and Coffee 9- 9.30 am

Welcome

Presentation of the Porn Cultures and Policy Network and aims

of the conference
Porn Cultures and Policy Network convenors
Katharine Sarikakis Director Centre for International Communications
Research (Leeds)
Liza Tsaliki (University of Athens)
Conference Co-organiser Dave Hesmondhalgh, Director Media
Industries Research Centre

9.30-10.30 BRAMLEY ROOM

Sessions A and B 10.30- 12.00

Session A Session B
Bramley Room Linden Room

The Political Economy of the Children and Pornography

Pornography Industry
Chair: Dave Hesmondhalgh Chair: Liza Tsaliki

Pornography in the Global Sex The Death of “Child Erotica”

Industry
Sheila Jeffreys University of
Melbourne Australia
The ‘Real’ Dominatrix: Myths,
Mothers and Mobile Phone
Numbers Jenny Barrett Edge Hill
University UK
Mikhail Bakhtin’s “fanciful
anatomy:” Internet
pornography and the politics
of pleasure within a theory of
proletarianization.
Marcus Breen Northeastern
University Boston USA
Ksusha’s Story: Film screening
Mary G. Leary Catholic University
of America USA
Consuming Innocence:
Pornography and the
Sexualisation of Children
Debate
Catharine Lumby University of
New South Wales Australia
Child pornography on the
internet and policy questions.
The Greek case
Panayiota Tsatsou Swansea
University UK
Young People and
Pornography: An Insight from
and discussion
Sue Sudbury Bournemouth
University UK
Monday 15 June Continued
Lunch 12.15-1.30 Woodland Suite
Sessions A and B 1.45 -3.15
Bramley Room
Activism, Art and Politics
Chair: Rebecca Sullivan
The Rhetoric of Porn in
Feminist and Postfeminist Art:
From Critique to Complicity
Sarah Smith The Glasgow School
of Art UK
Voices of resistance: the re-
emergence of feminist anti-
porn activism
Julia Long London South Bank
University UK
Defining feminist pornography
as an extension of the Third
Wave
Rachel Liberman University Of
Colorado at Boulder USA
The pornification of popular
culture in Australia and the
movement against it
Melinda Tankard Reist Women’s
Forum Australia
Coffee Break 3.00 – 3.15
North-East England
Aylssa Cowell Streetwise Young
Peoples Project
Linden Room
Socialisation of the Sexually
Explicit Imagery
Chair: Marcus Breen
Does pornography damage
young people?
Alan McKee Queensland University
of Technology Australia
Sexually Explicit Material and
Adolescent Sexual Health – A
cause for concern?
Clare Bale UK
Deconstructing Sexuality:
Pornography and Docility
Janelle McLeod University of
Manitoba Canada
Beyond the raincoats: The
porn consumer in mainstream
media
Karen Boyle University of Glasgow
UK
Monday 15 June continued

PLENARY 3.15- 4.45 Bramley Room

Revisiting Porn Cultures and Policy

Chair: Katharine Sarikakis

Mapping Pornography: Constructing and Deconstructing the

Text
Prof Gail Dines, Wheelock College Boston USA

Regulating Pornography in the Age of the Internet

Prof Julian Petley, Brunel University UK

Regulating Extreme Pornography in the UK: the turn to law

Prof Clare McGlynn, Durham University, UK

4.45-5.30 Discussion and expression of interest for network

research

5.30 Wine Reception

7.30pm Conference Dinner

Thai Edge Restaurant (New Portland Street, 7 Calverley Street, Leeds

LS1 3DY)
 Tuesday 16 June
Registration and Coffee 8.30 -9
Sessions A and B 9-10.30
Bramley Room
Reflections on Regulation
Chair: Katharine Sarikakis
What’s so wrong with
morality? The regulation of
‘extreme pornography’ in the
UK
Paul Johnson University of Surrey
UK
Where the Web meets
regulation: the case of Karen
Fletcher
Beth Concepcion University of
South Carolina USA
Not A Love Story: Framing the
Canadian Sex Crisis
Rebecca Sullivan University of
Calgary Canada
An analysis of Brazilian
regulation on pornographic
advertising
Cristiano Aguiar Lopes Office of
Legislative Counsel and Policy
Guidance Brazilian Parliament
Brazil
Coffee Break 10. 30- 10.45
Linden Room
Complicating the debates about
the ‘pornification’ or
‘sexualisation’ of culture
Convenor: Rosalind Gill
Beyond the ‘sexualisation of
culture’ thesis: an
intersectional analysis,
Rosalind Gill Open University UK
altpornification: porn cultures
and new online sex media,
Feona Attwood, Sheffield Hallam
University UK
The Sex Inspectors’: Porn
culture and sexual failure,
Laura Harvey, Open University UK
Too young to understand”?
Children and ‘sexualised’
media
Sara Bragg, Open University
Putting pornification and the
sexual commodification of
girls on the UK educational
policy ‘Gender Agenda’
Jessica Ringrose, Institute of
Education, University of London
UK
Tuesday 16 June continued
Sessions A and B 10.45- 12.15
Bramley Room
Technologising Production
and Consumption
Chair: Liza Tsaliki
A paradox of power: The male
pornography consumer
Jennifer A. Johnson Virginia
Commonwealth University USA
Virtually Commercial Sex,
Sarah Neely University of Stirling
UK
‘The Escort Experience’
Discourses of Commercial Sex
Evangelos Liotzis University of
Athens Greece
Sites of intersectionality:
Cyberporn and body
geographies
Pedro Pinto University of Minho
Portugal
Lunch 12.30- 2.00 Woodland Suite
Linden Room
The Porn Paradigm
Chair: Gail Dines
The Medical Authority of
Pornography
Meagan Tyler University of
Melbourne Australia
Public Sex, public choice and
public policy: sexist
advertising under scrutiny
Lauren Rosewarne University of
Melbourne Australia
Sexually explicit imagery in
the Romanian media
Valentina Marinescu University of
Bucharest Romania
From Jekyll to Hyde: How the
Porn Industry Grooms Male
Consumers
Rebecca Whisnant University of
Dayton USA
Tuesday 16 June continued

PLENARY 2.00- 3.30 Bramley Room

Reflecting on Action

Chair: Clare McGlynn

The Personal and the Universal Spectrum - the experience of

the European Women’s lobby and trafficking
Elizabeth Law UK Board Member, European Women’s
Lobby

Controlling Access to Indecent Images: Mediated Internet

Communications
Prof Ian Walden Vice- Chair of Internet Watch Foundation,
Queen Mary, University of London

Depraving and Corrupting - Sex Works and Obscenity in the

UK
Murray Perkins Senior Examiner (18 and R18 Categories)
British Board of Film Classification

Coffee 3.30-3.45

3.45-5.30 Bramley Room

Open assembly:
common ground for research agendas and
intervention
PORN CULTURES:
REGULATION, POLITICAL ECONOMY,
TECHNOLOGY

The Porn Cultures and Policy Network is

convened by Katharine Sarikakis
(University of Leeds) and Liza Tsaliki
(University of Athens). PCPN consists of a
founding team: Salam Al-Mahadin
(Jordan) Despina Chronaki (Athens), Gail
Dines (Wheelock College), Mary Griffiths
(Adelaide), Valentina Marinescu
(Bucharest), Steven McDermott (Leeds), Kiran Prasad (Oman), Rebecca
Sullivan (Calgary Canada); and has been enriched by the energy and
commitment of later members Alison Beale (Simon Fraser Canada),
Karen Boyle (Glasgow), Marcus Breen (Northwestern), Jennifer Johnson
(Virginia Commonwealth), Steven Maddison (UEL). The network is
considered as a collaborative and open working group which aims to
bring together individuals and organisations with an interest in the
development of global trends in the production and consumption of the
sexually explicit imagery and in the development of regulatory
responses. PCPN is designing research and policy agendas through
establishing common ground in terms of methodology, research
questions and standards or comparison.

The Porn Cultures: Regulation, Political Economy and Technology

conference is the follow-up meeting of scholars, policymakers and
activists interested in the dynamics and politics of the global
pornography industry. The first meeting took place in Athens in
September 2008 under the auspices of the Globalization, Media and
Adult/Sexual Content: Challenges to Regulation and Research
conference, sponsored by the Hellenic Audiovisual Institute. The
network and its activities are supported by the British Academy under
the project: Socialisation of the Global Sexually Explicit Imagery:
Challenges to regulation and Research. PCPN’s website is
http://sgsei.wordpress.com/ for information on previous activities and
how to get involved.

PCPN is interested in working with colleagues and those involved in the

shaping of the regulation of the industry and calls for the expression of
interest. We hope that this conference will help participants and
interested parties identify common ground with each other in
identifying a research and policy intervention agenda. We thank all
participants, our keynote speakers and all those who supported our
work and wish you a constructive, thought provoking and inspiring
conference.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Gail Dines

Mapping Pornography: Constructing and Deconstructing the Text

Much of the academic work on pornography, was conducted in the 1980s and
1990s, before the internet became a “domesticated” technology. In the last
ten years or so, the profits of the pornography industry has reached such a
staggering level, that even the pornographers express shock when
interviewed. This increased level of production and profit has had a dramatic
effect on the industry in terms of both organization and products produced.
Much discussion of pornography proceeds without reference to the actual
content of the genre, which dramatically limits the value of debates. Although
pornography is a wide-ranging genre, the market is well-developed, yet, it is
possible to identify the most popular varieties and track trends in content.
Based on recent qualitative studies of the content of mass-marketed
video/DVD heterosexual pornography over the past decade, I will identify
basic themes and describe recent trends in the industry, with special
attention to the way in which the films construct race and gender identity.

Bio

Dr. Gail Dines is Professor of Sociology and Chair of American Studies at

Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a nationally known
researcher, an award-winning speaker and a prolific writer. She is a long-time
feminist activist and is co-founder of the recently formed group, Stop Porn
Culture. Gail Dines is co-editor of the best-selling textbook Gender, Race and
Class in Media and co-author of Pornography: The Production and
Consumption of Inequality. She has written numerous articles on
pornography, media images of women and representations of race in pop
culture. Dr Dines is a regular guest on national television and radio shows,
including CNN, Entertainment Tonight, MSNBC and National Public Radio. She
is co-producer, together with Dr. Rebecca Whisnant and Dr. Robert Jensen, of
the feminist anti-pornography slide show, Who Wants to be a Porn Star? She
is currently writing a book about the ways that porn has infiltrated our lives,
our relationships and our culture.
The personal and the universal spectrum - the experience of the
European Women’s lobby and trafficking

Elizabeth Law European Women’s Lobby, UK Board Member

Consider the impact of pornography. If we see matters we would wish to

change, at any level, in any way, we should not underestimate the task facing
us. Tthere is a spectrum of violence against women and of its impact; all
aspects of life must recognise – education, health, media. It is imperative
that we not only understand and stand against violence against women but
also that we work to end the causes of violence against women – including
how we portray women. This requires careful work in a world where VAW
remains the acceptable dinner table joke and people find it easy to charge
others with political correctness:

Personal – we each are personally diminished by pornography and our

collective / individual response. The work to change images of women is an
enormous challenge but we must begin it with ourselves to ensure it is built
on integrity.

Universal – the example of the European Women’s Lobby Nordic Baltic

Project: international; inter agency; multi faceted (care) – legislation,
services. EWL has, through its European Policy Action Centre on VAW and its
Nordic Baltic Project, developed a model for combating VAW which works in a
world with diminishing borders and internet communication.

Bio

Elizabeth Law is a member of the Executive Committee of the European

Women’s Lobby, the European Commission’s expert NGO on women. She is
the UK Board member for the Lobby and, as treasurer, serves on the Board of
the EWL’s European policy Action Centre on Violence Against Women. With a
long connection in a voluntary capacity with Women’s Aid, Elizabeth’s current
paid work is as a policy worker with the Equality Commission for Northern
Ireland.

Clare McGlynn, Durham University

Regulating Extreme Pornography in the UK: the turn to law

Just when the number of obscenity prosecutions was falling to an all-time low,
and the written word was thought immune from challenge, the UK is
witnessing a ‘turn to law’. In an apparent attempt to deal with demand, to
challenge the unassailable nature of internet regulation and to establish
ethical guidelines, England & Wales has adopted new measures criminalising
the possession (not just production and distribution) of ‘extreme’
pornography. Scotland is debating similar legislation, though promising to ‘go
further’.

This presentation critiques the new measures, arguing that they represent an
unsatisfactory compromise between the demands of moral-conservatives and
fundamentalist liberals. The polarisation of debate between these two broad
constituencies largely obscured feminist arguments (from all perspectives). In
doing so, a positive opportunity to rethink the regulation of pornography was
lost. Further, the concentration on ‘extreme’ pornography, and excessive
focus on debating possible ‘causal’ links, eclipsed the need for a more
nuanced approach to both the harms of pornography and potential
justifications for legal action. Finally, considering issues of efficacy and
strategy, this ‘turn to law’ is questioned.

Bio

Clare McGlynn is a Professor of Law at Durham University, UK. Her research

on extreme pornography has been published in the Criminal Law Review
(with Rackley) and the Journal of Law and Society (with Ward), as well as
being widely discussed in policy debates. She is currently co-editing (with
Munro) Rethinking Rape Law: international and comparative perspectives
(Routledge-Cavendish) and is the author of Families and the European Union:
law, politics and pluralism (CUP) and The Woman Lawyer: making the
difference (Butterworths).

Murray Perkins British Board of Film Classification

DEPRAVING AND CORRUPTING SEX WORKS AND OBSCENITY IN THE

UK

After formal appeals by UK distributors and a Judicial Review, in July 2000 the
British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) produced new Guidelines which
allowed explicit representations of real sex between consenting adults at the
R18 category (restricting the legal sale of such works to licensed sex shops).

In 2001 the BBFC required that cuts be made to 7% of R18 sex works
submitted for classification before they could be legally sold in the UK. By
2007 the number of sex works which were cut before being issued with an
R18 certificate had grown to 27%. In 2008, this statistic was repeated. A
substantial proportion of cuts required to R18 sex works are made in
accordance with the current interpretation of the Obscene Publications Act
1959. In all such cases the material which is removed is judged to have a
tendency to ‘deprave and corrupt’ a significant proportion of those who would
be likely to view it.In the classification of sex works the BBFC does not make a
moral judgement on whether something is likely to ‘deprave and corrupt’.
This is an interpretation which belongs in the hands of a jury. But the BBFC
is obliged not to pass any material which it believes to be in breach of the
criminal law. Whether the significant increase in required cuts is indicative of
more conservative interpretation of the Obscene Publications Act 1959,
reflecting changes in juries attitudes, or to changes to the nature of
pornography can be addressed by looking at the material itself. In the latest
legislation relating to pornography in the UK, the Criminal Justice and
Immigration Act 2008 can into force this year. Under this law it is an offence
to possess of an extreme pornographic image. What constitutes an extreme
pornographic image includes a subset of the material which would fall foul of
the Obscene Publications Act 1959 if published or distributed. Material
classified under the Video Recordings Act 1984 is excluded from prosecution.
It is the aim of this presentation to consider the impact of harm concerns,
both moral and physical; how obscenity legislation affects the classification of
sex works in the UK; and the impact of the latest developments.

Bio

Murray Perkins joined the British Board of Film Classification as a Film and
Video Examiner in May 2000. In 2005 he became the Senior Examiner
responsible for the 18 and R18 categories, which has involved consulting with
the Obscene Publications Unit of the Metropolitan Police and consulting on
new legislation on extreme pornography. Prior to coming to the UK, Murray
worked for the New Zealand Office of Film and Literature Classification.

Professor Julian Petley Brunel University

Regulating Pornography in the Age of the Internet

Given both the global nature of the Internet and the fact that different
countries have very different standards of acceptability when it comes to
sexual imagery, democratic governments which wish to restrict the
availability of online pornography, have found this an extremely difficult task.
They have instead persuaded Internet Service Providers or bodies such as the
Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to act as self-regulators, thus causing them
to be seen by some as self-censors, and/or made it illegal simply to possess
certain kinds of pornographic material (the 'extreme pornography clauses of
the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2009 furnishing a particularly clear
example of the latter course of action). Both strategies raise important
questions. In particular, what sort of authority and legitimacy do bodies such
as ISPs and the IWF possess in this field, to what extent are they accountable
both to Internet users and to the wider polity, and to what extent is
surveillance of Internet users compatible with democratic values?

Bio
JP is Professor of Screen Media and Journalism in the School of Arts at Brunel
University. His most recent books are Censoring the Word, Censoring the
Moving Image (with Philip French), and his next book, Censorship: a
Beginner’s Guide will be published by Oneworld this summer. He is Chair of
the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom and a regular contributor
to the Index on Censorship.

Professor Ian Walden Queen Mary University of London

Controlling Access to Indecent Images: Mediated Internet

Communications

The clamour for greater controls over Internet content, including

pornography, continue unabated, most recently from the House of Commons
Culture Media and Sport Committee, in a report published at the end of July
2008 (HC 353-I). This paper will examine the experience of the Internet Watch
Foundation (IWF), an oft-quoted model for controlling illegal content in the
UK, specifically child sexual abuse images. The IWF provides an important
case study, in terms of the methodologies being deployed to control illegal
content, as well as the regulatory structures through which such controls are
implemented. The paper will particularly focus on the operation of the notice-
and-take-down regime for domestically hosted content; the deployment of a
database for filtering users’ egress traffic accessing foreign content; issues of
international co-operation and the ‘public function’ of self-regulation. The
experience of the IWF has implications for all areas of content control in a
converging media environment.

Bio

Dr Ian Walden is Professor of Information and Communications Law and head

of the Institute of Computer and Communications Law in the Centre for
Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London. His publications
include EDI and the Law (1989), Information Technology and the Law (1990),
EDI Audit and Control (1993), Cross-border Electronic Banking (1995, 2000),
Telecommunications Law Handbook (1997), E-Commerce Law and Practice in
Europe (2001), Telecommunications Law and Regulation (2001, 2005, 2009),
Computer Crimes and Digital Investigations (2007) and Media Law and
Practice (forthcoming 2009). Ian has been involved in law reform projects for
the World Bank, the European Commission, UNCTAD, UNECE and the EBRD,
as well as for a number of individual states. In 1995-96, Ian was seconded to
the European Commission, as a national expert in electronic commerce law.
Ian has held visiting positions at the Universities of Texas and Melbourne. Ian
is a solicitor; Of Counsel to the global law firm Baker & McKenzie
(www.bakernet.com); a Trustee and Vice-Chair of the Internet Watch
Foundation (www.iwf.org.uk).
PCPN Convenors

Katharine Sarikakis is Senior Lecturer in Communications Policy and

Director of the Centre for International Communications Research at the
University of Leeds. Her work is informed by political philosophy and focuses
on the political processes and political economic dimensions of media and
communications policies, nationally and globally. She is interested in the
ways in which empowerment and disempowerment of citizens become
inherent elements in public policy addressing communication (either as
technology or process) and expression (whether political, cultural or other). In
her work, institutions are central spaces for the construction of ideas,
legitimacy and exercise of control. Katharine’s publications include Media
Policy and Globalization (2006 co-authored), Feminist Interventions in
International Communication (2008 coedited) and is coedits (with N Blain) the
International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics. She is an honorary
Research Fellow at Hainan University and the inaugural Anders Foundation
Professor in Global Media Studies at the University of Karlstad in 2009.

Liza Tsaliki, Liza Tsaliki, University Lecturer at the Faculty of

Communications and Mass Media, National and Kapodistrian University of
Athens, was awarded her Ph.D. on the role of Greek television on the
construction of national identity from the University of Sussex. She taught at
the University of Sunderland from 1996 till 2000. Between 2000-2002, she
was a Marie Curie Post Doctoral Fellow at the Radboud University of Nijmegen
in the Netherlands, researching the digital civil society across the European
Union. From 2002 to 2006 she was working as the Director of International
Relations at the Hellenic Culture Organization (www.cultural-olympiad.gr).
She resumed her academic duties, as a lecturer, at the Faculty of
Communication and Media Studies at the National and Kapodistrian
University of Athens in March 2006. Her current interests involve ICTs and
democratic participation; online activism; gender and new technologies; the
public sphere; cultural policy-making; internet safety. Since 2006, she is a
Visiting Research Fellow at the London School of Economics (media@LSE), on
the EU-funded project ʽEU Kids Onlineʼ (www.eukidsonline.net). She is also the
commentaries editor for the International Journal of Media and Cultural
Politics (MCP)
SPEAKERS
Sexually Explicit Material and Adolescent Sexual Health – A cause for
concern?

Clare Bale

Increase in exposure to sexually explicit material is cited as a significant

factor influencing adolescent sexuality and health. Concern about the
negative impact of this material is increasingly prominent within policy,
professional groups, and the media - however little research has been
conducted within this area.

My research aims to explore young people’s perspectives of sexuality, sexual

identity and health within the context of sexualised culture and health, and
examine how and where young people discuss/consider these issues,
providing an authentic account of young people’s engagement with, and
experiences of, sexualised culture as ‘agents’ in their own right. These
findings will be set against the development of sexual health policy in the UK.

This interactive paper will present an overview of the literature, providing

rationale and context for my research. It will present preliminary findings
from my interaction with young people and also highlight/discuss my
experiences and challenges associated with conducting research with young
people in the ‘sensitive’ area of sex and sexuality across the disciplines of
medicine, health, media and cultural studies.

Bio

Clare Bale is a Registered General Nurse, with over 7 years experience as a

Senior Manager in the NHS, most recently as Public Health Principal for sexual
health in Nottinghamshire, serving a population of over 750,000. She was
secretary to the European Honours Society of Nursing and Midwifery 2002-
2003, and is a member of the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV.
Clare has worked in both the public and private sector and is trained as a
Master Facilitator.

The ‘Real’ Dominatrix: Myths, Mothers and Mobile Phone Numbers

Jenny Barrett Edge Hill University

British pornography producers DOM Promotions, particularly the prolific work

from J.D. Storm, currently dominate the home market on dominatrix
pornography with a selection of titles starring working dominatrices. From
these videos, can be gleaned a certain celebration of the mythology of the
indomitable, invulnerable dominant woman, conforming to a range of
expectations of the dangerous, kinky female. The producers of the films go
to great lengths to assure the viewer that these women are the ‘real deal,’
that the videos are recorded in ‘real dungeons’ and that appropriate safety
precautions were taken. Thus, with this stamp of authenticity, the ‘real’
dominatrix is constructed on screen as separate from the pornographic
dominatrix of less specialised pornography.

This paper observes these women at work, involved in a range of

performances that allude to the punishing mother. It considers the
implications of unplanned events occurring on screen, causing a fissure in the
performance and thus a failure of the woman as dominatrix. Finally, it
contemplates the consequences of the real dominatrix presenting herself on
screen as available to the viewer, even to the extent of making her mobile
phone number accessible in the box of the DVD.

Bio

Jenny Barrett is Programme Leader in Film Studies at Edge Hill University. She
is currently researching representations of the dominatrix in the media, with a
chapter forthcoming in Peep Shows: Essays in Cult Visual Erotica (Wallflower,
2009), entitled “‘Let’s Do Something You Won’t Enjoy’: Dominatrix Porn,
Performance and Subjectivity”.

Beyond the raincoats: The porn consumer in mainstream media

Karen Boyle University of Glasgow

In their recent The Porn Report, McKee, Albury and Lumby present their
analysis of porn consumption in a chapter entitled Dirty? Old? Men? The work
of this chapter is to counter “mainstream” depictions of the porn consumer:
“everybody who reads newspapers”, they write, “knows that the people who
use pornography are sad, dirty, old men.” These kind of hyperbolic claims
about popular culture’s representation of pornography – and those who
consume it - are by no means unique to The Porn Report. However, there is
little careful analysis of specific representations of porn consumers in popular
culture though this is surely an important context in which to understand how
the possibilities for porn consumption are presented to current and future
users. This paper will take on this challenge through an analysis of a range of
media texts aimed at young men, including docu-porn series, best-selling
weekly and monthly magazines and drama/ comedy series.

Bio

Dr Karen Boyle is Senior Lecturer in Film & Television Studies (University of

Glasgow) and author of Media & Violence: Gendering the Debates (Sage,
2005). She is currently editing Everyday Pornography (Routledge, 2010) and
has a range of articles about porn’s representation in academic and popular
discourse, most recently in Feminist Media Studies (2008) and Reading
Pornography on Screen (edit Kerr & Hines).

Mikhail Bakhtin’s “fanciful anatomy:” Internet pornography and the

politics of pleasure within a theory of proletarianization.

Marcus Breen Northeastern University Boston

Bakhtin’s discussion of the human body within the carnival suggests a

liberatory scenario when it is applied to Internet pornography. This paper
appropriates Bakhtin’s concept of the body as “grotesque” to ask a series of
questions about the politics of pleasure that operate within proletarianization.
Taking proletarianization as the culture of the underclass, this paper will look
at an alternative reading of Internet pornography, as an expression of
previously regulated culture. Is it possible that utopian readings of grotesque
performatory acts of the body that Bakhtin theorized in his study of Rabelais
can be “materially” realized through Internet pornography? If so, how can we
imagine pornography in its newly circulating intensity through the Internet? Is
it possible to see unregulated pornography as a radical expression of
unregulated behavior and as such the realization of a type of truth? If so, how
does Internet pornography help theorize proletarianization within a
democratic view of what Terry Eagleton referred to as ‘the politics of
pleasure.” Does politics itself need to be rethought with the emergence of
Internet pornography?

Bio

Marcus Breen was born and educated in Australia. After a short career as a
print journalist covering the popular music and film industries he moved into
the research community where he worked as director of the cultural
industries research program at the Centre for International Research on
Communication and Information Technologies in Melbourne. After specializing
in multimedia consulting he moved to an academic position in the US and
continued consulting with governmetns in North America, Mexico, the
Caribbean and with global technology firms. He is currently Associate
Professor in hte Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern
university, Boston. His last book was Rock Dogs: Politicis and the Australian
Music Industry. He is currently working on Uprising: The Internet's Unintended
Consequences.

Where the Web meets regulation: the case of Karen Fletcher

Beth Concepcion University of South Carolina

On August 31, 2005, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents seized computer
equipment from the Donora, Pa., home of Karen Fletcher — a writer and
webmaster for www.Red-Rose-Stories.com. Fletcher was arrested and
accused of distributing obscene material in violation of United States law, as
her website featured stories that featured the kidnapping, torture, sexual
molestation, and murder of children aged nine and under. Though the stories
certainly were disturbing and easily considered distasteful, they were not
necessarily illegal in terms of their availability on the Internet, especially as
the stories were fictional, text-only, and only accessible through a paid-
membership portal.

The Fletcher case is an interesting one because it combines incendiary topics

such as freedom of speech, obscenity charges, child
pornography/rape/torture, Internet regulation, and commercial versus non-
commercial speech. It is important to consider each of these issues in turn
within the context of the case, and the larger context of United States
Supreme Court rulings. The Fletcher case not only is historic, but a taste of
what is to come in the United States court system.

Bio

Beth Concepcion is a third-year doctoral student at the University of South

Carolina. She decided to pursue her Ph.D. in mass communication and
journalism after spending more than 20 years as a broadcast and print
journalist. Concepcion also is a professional writing professor at the Savannah
College of Art and Design and is a part-time meteorologist at WJCL/WTGS in
Savannah, Ga. She earned a B.A. in English from Oglethorpe University, a B.S.
in geosciences from Mississippi State University, and an M.A. and M.F.A. in
performing arts from SCAD.

Young People and Pornography: An Insight from North-East England

Aylssa Cowell Streetwise Young People’s Project

Concerns have been raised over the past couple of months regarding young
people and pornography. These concerns often focus on the effect of
pornography on young peoples sexual expectations and behaviour, however
there is growing concern over the phenomenon of 'sexting', that is the
sending of sexually explicit photographs and videos via mobile phones and
webcams. Under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 a young person aged under
18 cannot be filmed or photographed in a sexually explicit way. My
presentation will concentrate on research undertaken by practitioners in
Newcastle upon Tyne which highlights the extent to 'sexting' and the impact
that pornography is having on young people’s lives.

Bio
Aylssa Cowell is the Youth Work Service Manager at Streetwise Young Peoples
Project in Newcastle. She has worked in the sexual health field for 7 years
and as part of her role trains professionals in working with young people
around the issue of pornography. She completed her BA in Community and
Youth Work at Durham University in 2003 and is currently studying towards
her Masters in International Politics at Newcastle University. She is also an
editor of Youth & Policy, a journal published quarterly by the National Youth
Agency.

Pornography in the Global Sex Industry

Sheila Jeffreys University of Melbourne
Academic research on the ways in which different aspects of the sex
industry are connected, and form part of an industrialised and
globalised market sector, is only just beginning. Pornography is now
being examined by researchers as one aspect of this industry, and one
with a global reach. This represents significant progress in changing
the academic discussion of pornography from one that focuses on
‘representation’, to one that considers the economic and political
implications of the industry. In this paper I will suggest that
consideration of pornography as a global industry needs to go further
and focus on the way that it is integrated with other aspects of the sex
industry. The connections between pornography and stripping are
particularly strong with pornography companies; for instance,
operating strip club chains internationally, and women working in both
areas of the industry. Pornography creates male buyers for strip clubs
and prostitution. This paper will argue that an understanding of the
interconnectedness of pornography with other areas of the sex
industry is an important part of the feminist critique of this harmful
practice.
Bio
Sheila Jeffreys is a Professor in the School of Social and Political
Sciences at the University of Melbourne in Australia, where she teaches
sexual politics and international feminist politics. She is the author of 7
books on the history and politics of sexuality including The Industrial
Vagina: the political economy of the global sex trade, Routledge, 2009.

To catch a curious clicker: A network analysis of the online

pornography industry

Jennifer A. Johnson, PhD Virginia Commonwealth University

Extending Hartman’s theory on the sexual division of labor to pornography,
this research examines the political economy of the online pornography
industry in order to map how the industry milled $2.6 billion dollars in 2006
predominately out of the pockets of men. The male consumer operates at
the nexus of a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and patriarchy
where his consumption practices reflect the way in which patriarchy defines
male/female sexuality in such a way that it is amenable to capitalist
exploitation. A social network analysis of reported business connections
established in 2007 reveals a spider-like network that casts wide blooms of
‘gonzo’ porn to attract curious clickers and ensnare them in a web of
interrelated affiliate member sites in order to ‘convert’ them into member
clickers. These ‘gonzo’ porn sites attract men by playing on hegemonic
masculine needs and fears and entangle them in a series of click maneuvers
designed to prevent ‘leavers’ or those clickers who stop short of becoming
member clickers. The pivotal point in conversion process is the affiliate
website. This analysis illustrates how the online pornography industry
functions at the political economic intersection of patriarchy and capitalism
whereby the sexual exploitation of women is used to facilitate the economic
exploitation of men.

Bio

Jennifer A. Johnson, PhD is an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia

Commonwealth University located in Richmond, Virginia. Her current
academic research focuses on using social network analysis to map the
political economy of the online pornography industry in an effort to explore
the intersection of patriarchy and capitalism in a postmodern society. She has
done work for the U.S. department of defense conducting research on
adversarial networks and currently consults for local police departments in
the application of social network analysis to investigative analysis processes.
Other areas of academic work include non-profit organizational networks,
criminal networks and social stratification. She has published in the areas of
masculinity, gender theory, social and cultural capital and the domestic
division of labor.

What’s so wrong with morality? The regulation of ‘extreme

pornography’ in the UK

Paul Johnson University of Surrey

The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 introduced the new offence of
‘Possession of extreme pornographic images’ (section 63) into English law.
One aspect of the framework that section 63 uses to determine which images
will fall within its orbit is explicitly concerned with questions of morality:
images must be deemed ‘grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an
obscene character’. This paper will examine some of the justifications for,
objections to, and implications of the inclusion of the moral component of
section 63 and situate these arguments within long-standing debates about
the relationship between law, pornography and morality. Returning to the
influential but much critiqued work of Patrick Devlin, I will argue that the
framework that section 63 offers for the moral evaluation of extreme images
is an imperfect but appropriate method for determining the level of social
toleration for the private possession of violent pornographic imagery. In
considering some of the arguments made against the moral framework, and
in favour of a pure harm-based approach, I will argue that the morality
component offers both a practical way of evaluating images in relation to
contemporary standards of obscenity and provides a protective mechanism
for limiting the scope of the law’s application.

Bio

Paul Johnson is Lecturer in Sociology at the Department of Sociology,

University of Surrey. His research interests focus on the interrelationship
between identity and social control which he has explored through a number
of substantive areas, including: policing, identification and crime control;
technology and surveillance; securitization and biometrics; gender and
sexuality; and social class. He is the author of Love, Heterosexuality and
Society (Routledge, 2005) and Genetic Policing: The Use of DNA in criminal
investigations (Willan, 2008). He is currently working on socio-legal issues
around morality, law and sexuality as well as undertaking research on the
relationship between culture and mourning.

The Death of “Child Erotica”

Mary G. Leary Catholic University of America

“Child erotica”: It is a term overflowing with symbolism and potential

interpretation. It is also a term utilized and mis-utilized in legal opinions and
media reports with increased frequency. Notwithstanding this use, the term
is highly problematic and must be revisited.

The negative aspects of the term are present in a number of forms. First, the
word ‘choice’ itself communicates a troubling meaning. The term “erotica” is
historically a legitimate art and literature term. By linking together the words
“child” and “erotica”, we create a phrase which validates the referenced
material. The use of an art and literature term to refer to material which
should be condemned as blatant sexual objectification, even if not legally
obscene, elevates the material to an undeserving and legitimizing level.
Language matters; and we should not legitimize the concept of sexually
objectifying children, by utilizing such a label. Secondly, the term is far too
general. While it suggests a limited reference to artistic or literary material,
courts and the media have morphed the term to reference any material
involving children which is considered sexual but does not meet the definition
of “child pornography.” Consequently, its use merges together a vast array
of images such as blatantly nude and sexual (although not legally obscene)
pictures, alleged “child modeling” images, and materials with legitimate
social utility in other contexts such as educational materials and novels. This
inaccurate label then diminishes the negative reality of the more severe
materials. This mislabeling by courts is manifest in, and could affect the
rulings of, motions to exclude evidence, sentencing hearings, and motions
regarding other activity of defendants. It is also felt in society as a whole
when the media puts forth a phrase suggesting there are limited times in
which adults can acceptably sexually objectify and commoditize children.

This paper proposes to review the history of the terms “erotica” and “child
erotica.” It will then examine the use and misuse of “child erotica” in the
courts and media. The paper then proposes an elimination of the use of the
term “child erotica” and a replacement with more precise and distinct labels
for more narrow and different types of material. Because the material at
issue is legal in some nations and not in others, the paper will examine
repercussions of this action on freedom of expression concerns in both such
arenas.

Bio

Mary Graw Leary is an Associate Professor of Law at the Catholic University of

America. Professor Leary has written and presented in the areas of child
abuse, focusing on child sexual exploitation and family violence, in numerous
outlets. Prior to teaching, Professor Leary worked directly with victims as a
prosecutor on both the state and federal level. She is also the former
Director of the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse at the American
Prosecutors Research Institute. She recently acted as the Head of the
Delegation for the Holy See at the Third World Congress Against the Sexual
Exploitation of Children and Adolescents. Her University biography is located
at http://law.cua.edu/Fac_Staff/LearyM//index.cfm.

Defining feminist pornography as an extension of the Third Wave

Rachael Liberman University of Colorado at Boulder

The rise in female participation within the pornography industry has resulted
in the supposed entrance of female sexual interests. While past studies have
concluded that female directors depict women in a problematic fashion,
attention has not been directed toward a new genre, feminist pornography.
This current study analyzes the work of three self-proclaimed feminist
pornography directors: Candida Royalle, Tristan Taormino, and Joanna Angel
against the backdrop of feminist history. Three films from each director were
viewed as part of a textual analysis that focused on depictions of pleasure,
violence, and oppression. Unfortunately, these feminist pornographers failed
to depict women as more empowered than generic female pornographers.
This conclusion, coupled with the literature used to review the three waves of
feminism, supports the claim that feminist pornography emerged as a result
of the deconstructed climate of Third Wave feminism. The personalized
adoption of feminism that these female directors employ has a direct
relationship with the philosophy of Third Wave feminists.

Bio

Rachael Liberman is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Mass

Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has participated
in pornography studies at New York University and provided research
assistance for Dr. Chyng Sun's documentary ‘The Price of Pleasure:
Pornography, Sexuality, and Relationships’. Her research interests include
mediated constructions of sexuality, the media's role in the perpetuation of
female competition, and the limits of identity construction in late capitalism.

‘The Escort Experience’: Discourses of Commercial Sex

Evangelos Liotzis University of Athens
This paper will examine how individual internet users, who actively
participate in e-moves aiming at exchanging information and opinions on the
sex market in general, talk about and assess their experience of having sex
with particular escorts. These reviews/evaluations - posted on the biggest
Greek porn portal, bourdela.tv (i.e. brothels.tv) - are indicative of the way in
which concepts such as sexualization, pornographication commodification
and objectification relate to the notion of sexual democratization and the
vision of ‘liberated’ sex in interactive porn networks. Evidence from this
discourse analysis suggests that beside and beyond the formulated ‘ideal
mode of we-ness’ based on the particularistic value of a shared sex taste and
aesthetic, there is a tendency to objectify and depersonalize women overall
in regard of sex workers’ “sincerity of intentions” (i.e. quite the opposite of
what happens for the most part with women in everyday life), which is highly
appreciated by the commentators/reviewers.
Bio
Evangelos Liotzis is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Athens (dissertation
title: “Individualization and pornography on the internet: a discourse
analysis”) and holds a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarships
Foundation. He received his B.A. in Political Science and his M.A. in
Communication and Media Studies from the University of Athens. His current
research interests focus on porn studies, contemporary theorizing and
sociology of the internet.

Voices of resistance: the re-emergence of feminist anti-porn activism

Julia Long London South Bank University

It is recognised both within academic feminism and the popular media that
whilst anti-pornography activism was a key element of radical feminist
movements of the 1970s and 1980s, this declined in the 1990s with the
ascendancy of a more individualistic, liberal feminist discourse of
'empowerment' and 'choice' regarding women's participation in pornography
and the sex industry. This paper examines what appears to be the re-
emergence of a feminist anti-pornography agenda in the context of the
cultural mainstreaming of pornography. It investigates what motivates
feminists involved in anti-pornography actions, the understandings and
analyses of pornography that inform their campaigns, how groups organise
themselves, the nature of anti-porn campaigns and activities, and what the
significance of this activism might be in terms of contemporary feminism. In
particular, the paper focuses on issues of motivation and the impact of
participation in activism on personal biography, in order to problematise
common assumptions about the relationship of young women to feminism
and to illuminate the complexities of how activists develop and maintain a
feminist consciousness in relation to a 'pornified' society.

The paper draws on my doctoral research, in which I use qualitative methods

to investigate the presence and impact of feminist anti-pornography activism
in the 21st century. The research involved two ethnographic studies and
twenty-three semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted amongst
activists across the UK. The paper utilises social movement literature and
radical feminist theory in order to develop an argument as to the meanings
and significance of current feminist anti-porn activism.

Bio

Julia Long is a final year doctoral student at London South Bank University,
and a feminist activist involved with Anti-Porn London, Object and the London
Feminist Network. Prior to returning to full-time academic study, she worked
in gender equality policy in the state sector, managed an HIV support
organisation and taught for several years in a sixth form college. Her
academic background is in English Literature and Women's Studies.

“Consuming Innocence: Pornography and the Sexualisation of

Children Debate”

Catharine Lumby University of New South Wales

This paper will examine public concerns that children are being sexualised for
the adult gaze through the lens of Australian debates. In particular, it will
outline a 2008 controversy surrounding photographs of naked children taken
by artist Bill Henson and explore popular and official discourses triggered by
it. In broader terms, the paper will ask what is at stake in claims that
sexualised images of children are proliferating and put these concerns into a
culturally historical context. The paper will also examine the role of digital
and online media in generating debates about children and sexualization.

Bio
Professor Catharine Lumby is the Director of the Journalism and Media
Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. She is the author and
co-author of six books, including The Porn Report (Melbourne University Press,
2008) which was based on a comprehensive study of the consumption and
production of pornography in Australia. Her recent research has focused on
youth media consumption and debates around regulation, education and
media literacy in a digital and online era.

An analysis of Brazilian regulation on pornographic advertising

Cristiano Aguiar Lopes Office of Legislative Counsel and Policy Guidance in

the Brazilian Parliament

In contrast with the globalism and modernity of Brazilian advertising industry,

its regulation is extremely weak. Since 1978, advertising in the country is
mainly regulated by a self-regulation code that has been written by
advertises only. As a result, Brazilian ads are believed to be more daring and
harmful to children than in most other countries - sometimes, they are so
daring that could be considered pornographic in many parts of the world.
Besides that, more and more children are being exposed in Brazil to
unregulated online advertising, including those produced by the sex industry.
This paper provides an analysis of our current regulatory reality on
pornographic advertising, with a special focus on the tools designed to
protect special and vulnerable groups from harmful content. It also assesses
the most prominent Bills regarding pornographic content that are currently
under analysis in the Brazilian Federal Legislative Power. It concludes that
benchmarking with international trends in pornographic content regulation is
a milestone towards producing effective regulation for children

Bio

Senior Specialist in Communication, S&T and Informatics at the Office of

Legislative Counsel and Policy Guidance in the Brazilian Parliament (since
January 2005). Masters Degree in Communication by the University of
Brasilia, Brazil. Professor of Media and Politics and Media Regulation (since
March 2005).

A case study of the sexually explicit imagery in Romanian media

Valentina Marinescu University of Bucharest
The presentation try to continue the research project made on Romanian
explicit imagery in media. This time we tried to provide an answer at the
general research question: What are the main empirical evidences of the
Romanian media patterns for sexually explicit imagery. We took as the
starting point on of the conclusions at which we arrived in analyzing the
general image of Romanian sexually explicit imagery in media: That of the
audience of such contents. The influence of the pornographic content on
young people and children’s behaviors is at stake. Thus, according to a
survey conducted in September 2007 on a sample made up of adults
(parents) and children (survey conducted by Metro Media Transilvania, 2007)
13% of the children aged between 6 and 15 years old admitted to have seen
a porn movie.In our opinion, it was obvious that here it remained a vast array
to study and to assess in relation to sexually explicit content in the Romanian
media. In order to approach this subject, we analyzed the following topics:
1. A brief introduction about Romanian opinions and attitudes towards this
type of media content. The secondary analysis was made on the data
resulted from the Cultural Consumption Barometer in 2008 about the
consumption of sexually explicit imageries in Romania ;
2. The presentation of the empirical results of a research project made in
February – May 2009 on the issue of sexually explicit imagery in Romania
media. The project used the triangulation of data and methods. As the main
methods of analysis we used:
a. The quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the articles with
sexually explicit content published in three national newspapers
(”Libertatea”, “Click” and “Can-Can”) during March-April 2009.
b. The survey made about the meanings of different sexually explicit
images among the Romanian public. The sample has a size of 400 cases -
students from various Bucharest Universities and the survey was made in
March-April 2009. Both statistical and discursive methods were used in
analyzing the data.
3. Some considerations about the relations between the peculiarities of
Romanian public consumption behaviors and media sexually explicit content.

Bio

Valentina Marinescu, Ph. D, Reader at the Faculty of Sociology and Social

Work – Bucharest University (Bucharest, Romania). She teaches
undergraduate and graduate courses in media and society, and methods of
researching mass communication. Her interests lie in media and
communication studies in Eastern Europe, particularly in Romania, and
gender studies.

Does pornography damage young people?

Alan McKee Queensland University of Technology

In recent debates about the regulation of technologies that deliver

pornographic content, the greatest concerns have been about the increasing
ease with which young people can access such material.Because of the
ethical difficulties in researching this topic, little data has been available on
the potential harms done to young people by exposure to pornography. This
paper gathers a number of sources of data that address this issue indirectly –
including the results of our own survey of over 1000 consumers of
pornography – to explore this issue. By comparing ages of first accessing
pornography with attitudes towards women; examining adult consumers’
recollections of first exposure; and looking at projects which have discussed
non-explicit representations of sexuality with young people, we are able to
address the issues of destroying innocence (it appears that innocence is a
quality not possessed by children, but created and projected onto them by
adults); creating negative attitudes towards women (this is not the case); and
whether exposure to sexually explicit images cause sexual or relationship
difficulties later in life (initial responses suggest this is not the case, but
another survey is currently being run to address these issues in more detail).

Bio

Alan McKee was a Chief Investigator on the “Understanding Pornography in

Australia” research projected funded by the Australian Research Council; and
is one of the authors of The Porn Report: who makes it, who buys it, and why
(Melbourne University Press, 2008). He teaches at Queensland University of
Technology.

Deconstructing Sexuality: Pornography and Docility

Janelle McLeod University of Manitoba

Human sexuality is a product of sociocultural and historical constructs. In

modern, contemporary society, pornography has emerged as the dominant
form of sexual discourse, transforming the human body as an object to be
manipulated, shaped, and trained. In this paper, I will argue that
pornography is the vehicle for disciplinary practices that transforms human
bodies into sexual bodies that are mere representations of itself. As Michel
Foucault describes it in Discipline and Punish (1977), discourse does not
function all by itself to produce effects of power, but rather the efficacy of
discourse is tied to the systematic and calculated use of force by definite
agents on definite human bodies. Modern pornographic sexual discourse is
only part of a power-knowledge formation that includes subtle and often
direct coercion over the body. Men acting as sexual partners extract from
pornography a ‘knowledge’ of sexuality that they use to organize their
personal domination over women, in order to turn women into docile bodies
that learn to adopt various positions or gestures. Even though, if discipline is
successful, coercion is minimized, economized, to generate the maximum
effect of control through the minimum expenditure of force, a force that
never disappears completely. When society is saturated with pornographic
representations as a normative standard, which in turn operates as an ideal
to which people ‘voluntarily’ aspire, it is only because of the operation of this
efficient economy of force, which goes mostly unnoticed. Perceived as a
natural, innate human characteristic, sexuality is instead a social construct
where all of the body’s movement, gestures, and attitudes are manipulated,
and thus obedient to a pornographic ideal of sexual experience.
Virtually Commercial Sex, Sarah Neely

Sarah Neely University of Stirling

This paper considers how pornography and other forms of commercial sex
function within the 3D virtual world of Second Life. Set against an historical
account of the porn industry in relation to technological change, I aim to
distinguish the virtual world from other forms of online porn. I will focus in
particular, on the way in which boundaries of production andconsumption in
Second Life are blurred, thinking through modes ofparticipation and identity.
As sexuality per se becomes wholly commodified (players can "purchase"
designer genitalia and sex positions or acts) whatis the function of
recognisably commercial "professional" sex (prostitution,pornography,
stripping)? In conclusion, this paper will consider how ananalysis of the
possibilities for "amateur" participation in commercial sexraises broader
implications for the regulation of virtual worlds.

Bio

Dr Sarah Neely is a member of the Stirling Media Research Institute and a

Lecturer in the department of Film, Media & Journalism at the University of
Stirling. She has written on a number of areas of film adaptation including the
heritage genre, adaptations of Shakespeare, and the use of classic literature
in the ‘chickflick’. Her current research on commercial sex in virtual worlds
will be published in Karen Boyle’s collection, Everyday Pornographies
(Routledge, forthcoming).

Sites of intersectionality: Cyberporn and body geographies

Pedro Pinto University of Minho

The democratization of Internet resources has pushed the porn lexicons and
imageries to the center of the mainstream western culture. The proliferation
of new domestic technologies reinvented the apparatus of bodies’
sexualization, thus facilitating the expression of non-normative sexualities
and alternative politics of desire. However, regardless of the innovative and
subversive potential of cybernetics, a significant segment of cyberporn
industry continues to convey a monolithic regime of representation where
“sex”, “gender” and “race” play a major role. The range of recurrent “sexual”
categories offered by most of the Internet porn sites suggests a biopolitical
map of interdependent dominant discourses on bodily aesthetics and
performativities: 18th century’s biomedical invention of sexualities (e.g. ‘anal’,
‘oral’), John Money’s gender reassignment theory of the 1950’ (e.g. ‘big dick’,
‘big tits’), and the colonialist construction of a hyper-sexuality of the “other”
(e.g. ‘Asian’, ‘interracial’). Drawing on a poststructuralist queer perspective,
we aim to reflect on how mainstream porn Web pages tend to operate as
sites of heteronormative and racial power intersections. In particular, by
deconstructing the semiotic arrangement of three top-rated porn sites with
the use foucaultian discourse analysis, we will discuss how they
simultaneously function as biotechnologies of gender and of “othering”.

Bio

Pedro Pinto was born in Lisbon, where and he has first graduated in
Anthropology. Nowadays, he is working at University of Minho, currently
dedicated to his PhD project on the emergence of new sex markets in
Portugal and their politics of bodies’ representation. Pedro is an anti-anti porn
feminist.

Public Sex, public choice and public policy: sexist advertising under
scrutiny

Lauren Rosewarne University of Melbourne

In this paper I will examine two media products – outdoor advertising and
late-night television advertisements – examining the highly sexualised
content of each and highlighting the discrepancies that exist in public policy
as related to each product. Outdoor advertising is a medium where, despite
the often highly sexualised content, images are displayed to an
indiscriminate audience who cannot avoid their exposure. A double-standard
exists with outdoor advertising where the kind of images that would be
inappropriate inside workplaces (due to sexual harassment legislation) are
freely displayed in public space. This paper will undertake a comparison
between the images displayed in outdoor advertising and those contained in
late-night television advertising where a similar sexualisation of women
occurs. Television is a medium that is comparatively more highly regulated
than outdoor advertising but unlike outdoor advertising is often exonerated
for sexist content because of the choice that exists for audiences to “turn
off”. While those offended can turn off, the burden of having to do this
because of content concerns can prove socially exclusionary for a women, in
a manner very similar to the social exclusion witnessed in public spaces
saturated by highly sexualised outdoor advertisements.

Bio

Dr Lauren Rosewarne is a Lecturer in Public Policy and the Associate Director

of the Centre for Public Policy at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Lauren’s first book, Sex in Public: Women, Outdoor Advertising and Public
Policy was published in 2007 and her second book, Cheating on the
Sisterhood: Infidelity and Feminism will be published in 2009.
The Rhetoric of Porn in Feminist and Postfeminist Art: From Critique
to Complicity

Sarah Smith The Glasgow School of Art

Thanks to the illuminating writing of scholars such as Diane Negra and Angela
McRobbie, we are beginning to understand the prevalence of postfeminist
address in the media, part of which is a mainstreaming of pornography.
Although we might suppose that contemporary art provides a complementary
site of critique that challenges popular representations of women, in fact
postfeminist expressions have acquired a rather celebrated and ‘glamorous’
position within recent art practice and a substantial body of this work
involves various appropriations of pornographic images in art by women.

This paper focuses on the prominence of porn imagery in art practice by

women since the 1990s, proposing that despite its close resemblance, such
work represents a broad spectrum of positions that range from the critical
(feminist) to the complicit (postfeminist). From Ghada Amer’s highly
mediated canvases that use stitching to produce overlaid drawings of typical
porn poses, to Natacha Merritt’s ‘adult-oriented’ online digital photographs of
herself and others, distinguished women artists are directly enlisting the
rhetoric of porn, yet there is a disquieting reluctance on the part of art
criticism to problematise this work. Drawing on the theses of Negra and
McRobbie and feminist writings on parody (Rubin Suleiman, 1990; Hutcheon,
2002), this paper investigates the criticality of these artworks in order to
elucidate pervasive postfeminist articulations in contemporary art.

Bio

Dr Sarah Smith is a Lecturer in the Department of Historical and Critical

Studies at The Glasgow School of Art. Her research interests are in
experimental cinema, and feminist art and she is currently working on a
number of separate projects, which include visual representations of
contemporary Irishness and the role of pornographic imagery in
contemporary art by women.

Ksusha’s Story

Sue Sudbury Bournemouth University

This presentation will include a screening of Ksusha’s Story, a 15 minute film

which gives a unique insight into the workings of the global pornography
complex. Born in Russia in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down,
Ksusha’s life has been shaped by the ensuing globalisation of work and, in
particular, ‘sex work’. She entered prostitution at the age of 17 to help fund
her studies and was then trafficked. Ksusha describes the inhumane
conditions she and the other girls were kept in and talks of how she was
rescued. She was then asked by the police to become an undercover spy and
by secretly filming on her mobile phone, managed to expose an internet porn
site. The site, based in St Petersburg, was accessed mainly by men in Britain,
America and Australia and used babies and young girls.

Sue will talk about how this film came to be made and her work with the
International Organisation for Migration in Moscow. They have set up the first
ever Safe House for the rehabilitation of victims of sex trafficking and after
two research trips to Russia, Sue made this film, Ksusha’s Story.

Bio

Sue Sudbury is a documentary filmmaker and Senior Lecturer in the Media

School at Bournemouth University. Before becoming an academic, she worked
for many years as a documentary director in British television. She has
recently registered for a practice-based PhD and is interested in collaborative
research projects on womens’ issues and participatory cinema.

Not A Love Story: Framing the Canadian Sex Crisis

Rebecca Sullivan University of Calgary

In 1981, a documentary from NFB’s feminist Studio D portrayed the silencing

effects of violent pornography on women. The film followed a stripper, Linda
Lee Tracey (aka “Fonda Peters”) on a road of self-discovery, strategically
managed by director Bonnie Sherr Klein, that ultimately results in her shame
at participating in the sex trade. The film was widely criticized for a
seemingly condescending and controlling attitude toward its main
protagonist, as well as a heavy-handed approach to the issue of pornography
while maintaining a narrow focus on representational issues, and ignoring
political economic concerns. This documentary offers a key moment in what
has been termed the “sex crisis” debate which pitted “anti-porn” and “anti-
censorship” feminists against each other. It culminated in 1992 with the
Supreme Court decision R. v. Butler, which found that violent pornography
constituted harm toward women in Canadian society. What happened next
was unexpected and deeply troubling: the new law was used to target
predominantly gay and lesbian communities, most notably Glad Day
Bookshop in Toronto and Little Sisters Bookstore in Vancouver. The purpose of
this paper is to offer some archival and historical response to the roots of
Canadian legislation on obscenity in cultural materials and their framing
within the cultural sector more generally. It sets out to critique a framework
of the porn debate that focused largely on questions of consumption and
representation, rather than political economic concerns of industry, labour,
and regulation.
Bio

Rebecca Sullivan is an Associate Professor specializing in feminist media

studies at the University of Calgary. Her work focuses on the intersections
between sexuality, spirituality and science. She is the author of Visual Habits:
Nuns, Feminism and American Postwar Popular Culture, and the Co-author of
Canadian Television Today (with Bart Beaty) and Making Biocitizens (with Neil
Gerlach, Sheryl Hamilton and Priscilla Walton).

The pornification of popular culture in Australia and the movement

against it

Melinda Tankard Reist Women’s Forum Australia

Young women today are living in a dangerous, sexually brutalised

environment. The media and popular culture are saturated with sexual
messaging. Girls are legitimised as sexual beings at younger ages, pressured
to conform to a ‘thin, hot, sexy’ norm. Clothing, music, magazines and even
the toys marketed to them, tell girls they are merely the sum of their sexual
parts. The effects of prematurely sexualising girls are borne out in their
bodies and minds, with a rise in self-destructive behaviours, self-harm,
excessive dieting, eating disorders, binge drinking, anxiety and depression.
The symbols, icons and imagery of pornography have become embedded and
mainstreamed into the culture, with growing numbers of boys taking their
cues for behaviour with girls from pornographic representations of sexuality.
In this presentation, I will take conference participants on a visual cultural
tour of the images bombarding young people on a daily basis. I will discuss
some small victories in Australia and support a new united strategy for
women and girl advocacy which brings corporations, popular culture and the
sex industry to account for creating this toxic environment.

Bio

Melinda Tankard Reist is an Australian author, advocate and commentator on

issues affecting women. A founding director of Women’s Forum Australia, an
independent women’s think tank, she is editor of WFA’s magazine-style
research paper ‘Faking it: The image of women in young women’s magazines’
and is working on a new book about girls and popular culture to be published
by Spinifex Press.

Child pornography on the internet and policy questions. The Greek

case.

Panayiota Tsatsou Swansee University

An increasingly frequent discussion is taking place these days about the risks
and opportunities for children who use online and networked technologies.
One of the risks that have acquired a particular importance on the public
agenda is that concerning the existence of online child pornographic content.
This paper examines the risk of child pornography on the internet and looks
at questions and challenges arising for policy-makers in Greece. Greece
arguably belongs to the ‘semi-periphery’ paradigm, where late-late
industrialisation and early parliamentarism have emerged, leading to
inconsistent functioning of politics and civil society, as well as to an
extremely slow development of technologies in the country. Although Greece
is a long-standing EU member state with one of the highest national
development rates across the EU today, it has one of the lowest penetration
rates of internet and new technologies, in the general population as well as
among minors (children and teenagers). Also, in Greece there is lack of
national data on children’s use of the internet, and a divergence from other
EU member states with regard to parents’ assessment of online risks for
children and to the relevant rules set within the household. These
particularities, as well as the fact that online child pornography makes
headlines in the Greek media and propagates a rhetoric of moral panic, pose
serious challenges for the ways in which policy and regulation in the field
respond. This paper assesses critically the policy and regulatory frameworks
in Greece, pointing in particular to the reactive character of the former and
the suppressive character of the latter. It also provides a preliminary series of
recommendations with regard to the gaps in public awareness and literacy
which Greek policy and regulation in the field need to address more
efficiently. The paper provides an analytical overview of policy questions
arising in Greece with regard to child pornography online, while more in-
depth and empirically rich research continues to be needed.

Bio

Panayiota Tsatsou is a Lecturer in Media and Communications at Swansea

University. She is involved in the COST Action 298, participating in research
on broadband society and human actors as e-users. She has conducted
research on EU regulation and policy for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises
(SMEs) as part of the EU FP6 project DBE. Also, she has been involved in the
OPAALS, a multi-disciplinary network of research excellence, where she has
examined Community Currencies in Digital Ecosystems. She has been a
member of the thematic network, EU Kids Online, for the EC’s Safe Internet
Plus programme. Previously she was a Tutorial Fellow at the LSE and she
contributed to teaching media and communications at the undergraduate and
postgraduate level of study in Greece and in the UK respectively.

The Medical Authority of Pornography

Meagan Tyler University of Melbourne

The increasing influence of pornography in popular culture, often termed
‘pornification’, is now becoming recognised in a variety of academic
literature. Despite this growing attention, there is very little understanding of
how medicine, and in particular the sub-branches of sexology and sex
therapy, are becoming ‘pornified’. This paper aims to address the gap by
exploring the use of pornography in contemporary sex therapy and sex
advice literature. The recommendation to watch pornography frequently
appears in sexological works which would typically be considered legitimate
and even medically authoritative and a number of respected experts now
encourage couples to directly mimic pornography in their own sex lives.
Suggestions include the adoption of bondage and sadomasochist practices
and heightening sexual arousal through verbal abuse. An examination of this
sex advice literature shows that women are often expected to sacrifice their
emotional and physical comfort to sexually satisfy men, yet it is this model
which is being promoted by therapists as ideal. It is contended that the
promotion of pornography through sexology and sex therapy is affording the
pornography industry an increasing legitimacy which has contributed to
pornography becoming seen as a cultural authority on issues of sexuality.

Bio

Meagan Tyler recently completed her PhD in the School of Social and Political
Sciences at The University of Melbourne, Australia. Her thesis was titled
‘Active Service: The pornographic and sexological construction of women’s
sexuality in the West.’ She has published work in Women’s Studies
International Forum and Women & Therapy.

From Jekyll to Hyde: How the Porn Industry Grooms Male Consumers

Rebecca Whisnant University of Dayton

Recent research has documented the prevalence of violence, humiliation and

aggression against women in contemporary mainstream pornography aimed
at heterosexual men and boys. Since most men and boys are not sociopaths,
it seems likely that some male consumers experience ethical qualms upon
encountering such material. Such qualms could lead consumers to reject
either the particular material in question or pornography as a whole. Thus, in
order to keep profiting from the male consumer, the industry must find ways
to quash whatever ethical concerns they may have: the consumer must be
efficiently and effectively groomed to accept sexual dominance and sadism
against women.

Some such grooming techniques have long been the focus of feminist
analysis: for instance, gradual desensitization and portraying the women in
pornography as craving pain and humiliation. After reviewing these more
familiar points, this presentation will focus primarily not on how pornography
encourages male consumers to see women, but on how it encourages them
to see themselves. Prominent techniques for breaking down and overriding
consumers’ ethical boundaries include male-bonding appeals, humor and
joking, catering to anxious masculinity, and encouraging self-fragmentation.
As a result of such efforts on the part of pornography producers and
distributors, the male porn user becomes both abuser and abused, both
consumer and consumed.

Bio

Rebecca Whisnant is associate professor of philosophy and director of

Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Dayton. She is co-editor
(with Christine Stark) of Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and
Pornography and (with Peggy DesAutels) of Global Feminist Ethics.

Special panel: Complicating the debates about the ‘pornification’ or

‘sexualisation’ of culture

Convenor Rosalind Gill

This symposium brings together papers that seek to pause and reflect – in
different ways – on the assumption that we are seeing a ‘pornification’ or
‘sexualisation’ of culture, and what the implications of any shifts might be.

1.Putting pornification and the sexual commodification of girls on

the UK educational policy ‘Gender Agenda’

Jessica Ringrose, Institute of Education, University of London

This paper focuses on unpacking the contradictions between the fantastical

UK educational policy figure of the high achieving ‘successful girl’ (Ringrose,
2007) who is positioned as a de-sexualized, rational, ideal learner (Youdell,
2006), and the commercial, ‘post-feminist’ regime of ‘hyper-sexualized’ (Gill,
2007, 2008) and ‘pornified’ (Levy, 2005) visual, popular culture, which has
intensified the sexual commodification, objectification and regulation of girls
bodies. To illustrate the normative and dominant ‘pornified’ visual contexts
teens must navigate on a daily basis, I draw on data from a qualitative study
in two schools exploring teens’ (aged 14-16) negotiations of social networking
sites (SNSs), which are increasingly mandatory affective spaces of peer
relationships and intimacy (boyd, 2008).

I explore how girls perform and negotiate gendered/sexualized identities on

the SNS Bebo, and how they discuss their SNSs in interview narratives. My
findings suggest that a contemporary postfeminist, hypersexualized media
culture (Gill, 2007, 2008) is dominant in the visual culture of Bebo, and I
argue SNSs create new spaces for (hetero)sexism, objectification and a
masculinized gaze. Theoretically I will argue girls are ‘interpellated’ and
'subjectified’ (Butler, 1993) via ‘porno-chic’ discourses (McRobbie, 2004) on
SNSs. But I also explore how girls’ appropriate, rework and “resignify” (Hey,
2006) processes of (hetero)hypersexualization, pornification and a
masculinized gaze in complex ways through several case study examples.

I conclude by arguing that issues of increasing pornification and intensified

sexual commodification of girls’ bodies need to be reconstituted as important
gender equity issues by teachers, parents and the wider community. The
‘Gender Equality Duty’, is one policy mandate through which issues of
pornification and ‘cultural harm’ (McGlynn and Rackley, 2009) at work and
school, could be brought forward as a crucial issue for public debate. These
issues need to also be fore-grounded in the DCSF educational policy ‘Gender
Agenda.’ By bringing feminist analyses of power and sexuality back into the
educational policy ‘Gender Agenda’, it may be possible to find new spaces in
school curriculum to broaden the limited scope of sexual, relationship,
‘bullying’, and media literacy in schools today.

2.“Too young to understand”? Children and ‘sexualised’ media

Sara Bragg, Open University

This paper will look at the responses of younger children to ‘sexualised’

media material. Drawing on empirical research with young people, it will
explore how children speak back to the public debates that position them as
the victims of ‘inappropriate’ media images, constructing themselves instead
as competent, self-aware media consumers. The paper will discuss some of
the complexities and contradictions thereby engendered, for young people
themselves, for media literacy and for regulation.

3. altpornification: porn cultures and new online sex media

Feona Attwood, Sheffield Hallam University

The terms ‘pornographication’ or ‘pornification’ have been used to describe

the proliferation of pornographic iconography, style and aesthetics in
mainstream culture (McNair, 1996; Paasonen et al, 2007), part of a
widespread contemporary fascination with sex and the sexually explicit.
Some popular writings have seen this process as a form of cultural
standardization in which sexual imitation and performance come to stand in
for desire and pleasure (Levy, 2006), crowding out more positive forms of
sexual expression and promoting ‘shame, humiliation, solitude, coldness, and
degradation’ (Paul, 2005: 275).

This paper examines some of the new sexually explicit representations that
have emerged online, for example in altporn, subcultural and countercultural
erotica, and contemporary pinup sites. It asks to what extent these can be
seen as forms of pornified mainstream culture, and to what extent they
represent new forms of pornography. How can we understand them in relation
of the traditional divisions between restricted and mainstream forms of
cultural production? How do they complicate our understanding of ‘porn
cultures’ and the processes of cultural sexualization?

4. The Sex Inspectors’: Porn culture and sexual failure

Laura Harvey, Open University

Debates about the sexualisation of culture have picked apart the complex
processes involved in the increasing visibility and ‘mainstreaming’ of
pornography in the popular media (McNair, 1996; Attwood, 2006). Part of this
apparent ‘democratisation’ (McNair, 1996) of sexually explicit culture is the
wider availability and consumption of materials and information about sex.
Sex ‘self help’ is a fast growing industry, in which the ‘science’ of sex (Tyler,
2008) is disseminated to individuals in order to help them construct the ‘best’
sexual selves within a neoliberal discourse of ‘self-improvement and
entrepreneurialism’ (Tyler, 2004).

The Sex Inspectors, which aired three series in the UK on Channel 4,

combined the language of the sex self help genre with the makeover genre to
produce episodes in which the sexual behaviour of a new couple each week
would be observed on camera, echoing the growth of ‘home made’
pornography on multimedia sites such as YouTube.

This paper will examine the role of the expert in normalising discourses of
‘great sex’. Who is entitled to have ‘great sex’? How do power dynamics of
class, ethnicity, disability, gender role, age and sexuality play out in the ‘soft
porn’ of The Sex Inspectors? What does it mean for a sexual subject if they
fail to achieve the perfect, pornified (Levy, 2005) performance for the all-
seeing, all-knowing sexperts?

5. Beyond the ‘sexualisation of culture’ thesis: an intersectional

analysis

Rosalind Gill, Open University

This paper argues that the notion of the 'sexualization of culture' is too
general to be a useful conceptual tool. The article has two main objectives.
First, it seeks to interrogate the notion of 'sexualization' as a way of
understanding the proliferation of sexually explicit imagery within
contemporary advertising. Rather than taking up a position 'for' or 'against'
'sexualization' (in the familiar way), it seeks to open up the notion in order to
explore the diverse practices which are commonly grouped together under
this heading. Using advertising as an example, it argues that 'sexualization'
is far from being a singular or homogenous process, that different people are
'sexualized' in different ways and with different meanings -- and indeed that
many remain excluded from what has been called the 'democratization of
desire' operating in visual culture. Secondly, the paper develops a feminist
intersectional analysis to critically read some of the different ways in which
advertising might be said to be sexualised. It looks at three different and
contrasting, but easily recognizable 'figures' within contemporary advertising:
the good-looking male 'sixpack', the sexually agentic heterosexual 'midriff'
and the 'hot lesbian', usually intertwined with her beautiful double or Other.
The aim is to highlight the point that sexualization does not operate outside
of processes of gendering, racialisation and classing, and works within a
visual economy that remains profoundly ageist and heteronormative. The
paper argues that an attention to differences is crucial to understanding the
phenomena, practices and scopic regimes that are often lumped together
under the heading 'sexualisation of culture'.

Bios

Feona Attwood teaches Media and Communication Studies at Sheffield

Hallam University, UK. Her current work focuses on controversial images and
online sexualities. She is the editor of Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization
of Western Culture (2009) and is currently completing a book about online
pornographies.

Sara Bragg is Research Fellow in Child and Youth Studies, at the Open
University, and co-author with David Buckingham of ‘Young People Sex and
the Media: the facts of life?’ (2004).

Rosalind Gill is Professor of Subjectivity and Cultural Analysis at The Open

University. She previously worked for 10 years at the LSE’s Gender Institute.
She is author of Gender and the Media (Polity, 2007), co-editor with Roisin
Ryan Flood of Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist
Reflections (Routledge, 2009) and is currently writing a book about mediated
intimacy.

Laura Harvey is a doctoral student at the Open University. Her work examines
the relationship between sexual behaviours, attitudes and media
representations.

Jessica Ringrose is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Education and has

written extensively about girls, young people, and sexualised culture.