Walking a fine line: Young people negotiate pornified heterosex

Abstract

Heteronormal histories have been shaped by a recurring set of debates about what kinds of explicit sexual expression and representation are publicly allowed, structured by a form of line-drawing that sanctions certain forms of public heterosexual practice in popular culture and representation. While depictions of heterosexual activity in popular cultural representations are tolerated within certain parameters, and while such parameters around what is possible and acceptable have shifted over time in Anglophone discourses of sexuality, overtly pornographic depictions are consistently cast as a non-normative, deviant form of heterosexual expression.Over the past decade, the emergence of 'pornified' culture prompts us to ask new kinds of questions about heterosexual practice, pointing to some interesting transgressive potentials. What happens when a historically non-normative form of public sexual expression attains a measure of social acceptability? Does this challenge the historical signifiers of good heterosex? To explore these questions, this article draws on a study with young people aged 12-16 in South Australian schools who have some interesting things to say about the 'explicit' in public. They describe an alteration to the historical relegation of explicit porn sex to secret private spaces, and articulate how pornified culture works as moments for curious exploration: a fun, fleshy spectacle. However, in making this claim, I (and they) walk a careful line. The extent to which heterosexual porn can be a matter of 'fun' and experimentation is simultaneously moderated by historically persistent signifiers of classed and gendered respectability. While the repertoire for open acknowledgment of certain forms of play and pleasure may be opening up (perhaps disrupting existing orthodoxies of heteronormativity in some key ways), heteronormal conventions simultaneously constrain these possibilities.

Therapists’ and non‐therapists’ constructions of heterosex: A qualitative story completion study

“…She introduced the idea of the 'charmed circle' of sexuality wherein privileged forms of sexuality reside and unprivileged forms occupy the 'outer limits'. The results of this study tentatively suggest a reorganization of Rubin's charmed circle of sexuality and potentially provide further evidence of the mainstreaming of pornography and kink (Barker, 2013a;Mulholland, 2015). Sex acts previously deemed to be in the 'outer limits' of sexuality (manufactured objects, threesomes, etc.)…”

“…Sexualized imagery in advertising and popular media is common place (Gill & Scharff, 2011). Pornography has become readily available online (Attwood, 2006;Mulholland, 2015) and previously marginalized sexual practices such as bondage/discipline, dominance/ submission, and sadism/masochism (BDSM) are more visible in the wider heteronormative culture (Barker, 2013a;Weiss, 2006); a culture that privileges and normalizes heterosexuality and conventional binary gender roles. Thus, people are not only bombarded with messages that they should be willing and able to engage in sex at all times (Barker, 2013a;Kleinplatz, 2012), the Internet is enabling participation in increasingly diverse sexual practices, and sexual products and services are widely available online and offline (Attwood, 2009;Frith, 2013).…”

Same-gender intimate friends in Chinese girls’ romantic adventures in a boarding school context

“…In school-based observations, it is commonly reported that Chinese children would challenge adults’ authority and create strategies to talk about and engage in romantic adventures (Farrer, 2006). In addition, some Chinese adults’ attitudes toward “liking” between boys and girls are changing in recent years because of a reconstruction of the meanings of romance in childhood and recognition of children’s agency and adults’ losing the power of controlling children’s access to sexual knowledge via ‘pornified’ media in the Internet era (Liu et al, 2020; Moore and Reynolds, 2018; Mulholland, 2015). Therefore, some Chinese teachers increasingly reflect on their exclusive reliance on their traditional ways of forbidding and punishing children to control ‘early love’ and recognise the importance of communicating openly with children about sexuality and opposite-gender relationships (Evans, 2007).…”

Policy, politics and porn

“…It is instructive but depressing to see how these reports have seized so much public attention and how they have crowded out any of the research being undertaken in other spaces with various age groups, and which reach more complex conclusions about the significances of sexually explicit material in everyday life (cf. Albury, 2014; Angelides, 2013; Attwood et al, 2018; Curtis and Hunt, 2007; Gregory, 2018; Hillier and Harrison, 2007; McLelland, 2016; Mowlabocus et al., 2013; Mulholland, 2015; Paasonen et al., 2015; Smith et al., 2015).…”