Sexpertise

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.