Watching Porn, (Un)Doing Gender? Young People’s Experiences and Understandings of Online Porn

Abstract

The social construction of gender and pleasure is a dominant discourse that is historically entrenched within New Zealand society. Like elsewhere, New Zealanders have seen an exponential rise in the availability and accessibility of online porn in the past few decades, yet a gap in the literature remains around how young people perform gender while engaging with porn. Drawing on qualitative small friendship group interviews with 106 cis gender young people in three New Zealand schools, I explore the ways in which young people “do” gender while watching and talking about porn. I found that the young people both conformed and diverged from traditional constructions of gendered pleasure and sexual expressions. It was clear through an analysis of these data that the structural context and dominant discourses impacted the meanings young people attached to their experiences with porn and interactions with peers about porn.