Taking Control of Sex?

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that gender is a key category in pornography, yet the relation of the latter to contemporary masculinities remains relatively obscure. Although there is a substantial critical literature on the positioning and treatment of women in pornography, the connection between the consumption of pornographic images and the social construction of hegemonic masculinity has been more often presumed than examined. This lacuna becomes more apparent when juxtaposed with the profusion and proliferation of Internet porn in recent years. Rather than enter into existing antiporn or proporn debates, this article seeks to pose a different set of questions about the relationship between masculinity, technology, and pornography. It suggests that the Internet produces a qualitative change in the way in which viewers are affected by pornography and that this has implications for contemporary gender relations. Beyond men’s control over women’s bodies, Internet porn participates in the larger drama of a technological confrontation between men and nature—one in which control and the meaning of masculinity is perpetually at stake.