Internet Pornography in the Lives of Millennials

• In Event: 4264 - Sexualities II: New Horizons in Sexualities Scholarship

Abstract

One of the more hypocritical and damaging ironies of Western culture in 2019 is that people constantly see hypersexualization, but we still don’t talk well about sex. When adults are too squeamish or puritanical to engage in educational conversations about basic anatomy and sexual pleasure with young people, adolescents turn to internet pornography to answer their questions. Drawing on content analysis and audio-taped interviews, this manuscript explores representations of sexuality in internet porn, and the consequences of these images in the lives of millennials. Here, I outline four major problems in internet pornography: it is too easy for children to access, the content is unrealistic and sexist, it pushes the envelope of mainstream programming, and we lack the conversational tools to make sense of it with one another. Internet pornography is problematic not because it is sexy but because it is sexist. The analysis of pornography I advance in this manuscript is not a condemnation of sexual behavior or sexual images, but instead a critique of oppressive representations and a rallying cry for more conversations about sexual pleasure.

Author

• Bernadette Barton, Morehead State University