Lustar och olustar

Abstract

This article discusses some of the problems with pornography, or more properly why pornography is such a problematic field for feminists. It also focuses on some of the problems to be found in anti-pornography arguments - especially their implicit understanding of female and male sexuality as two distinct areas. By seeing pornography from a media perspective - and therefore including questions of genre and modes of address - one can get a clearer view on how pornography - soft or hard - operates in different media. The expression 'the sexualising of the media', is often used as a way of understanding the fact that sexuality as a thematic mode is widespread nowadays in many different kinds of media outlet. The expression, however, implies that sexuality is an already defined area. It is more accurate, I argue, to see this development as an expression of the 'medialization' of sexuality. In mainstream media there are two different kinds of sexual discourse, which are highly gendered. Male sexuality exists within a pleasure-discourse more concerned with the actual act (how to do it and with whom). The focus is on personal satisfaction which is based in turn upon the idea of male sexuality as "natural" and unproblematic. When women are the media targets the approach is more problematic as female sexuality tends to operate and be discussed in terms of a public problem-discourse (child care, abortion, conceptions, diseases, divorce etc). The question is what is masculine about hardcore pornography and why this is seen as an exclusively male concern. I argue that it is the visual representation per se that gives pornography its gendered status. Pornography for women is both more textually based and more acceptable. Therefore, what genders a sexual material, depends not so much on its content but on its form (images or words) and the effect sought (arousal or a purchase). One of the problems with media output today is, I argue, the failure to define and address the question of female sexuality as a source of personal pleasure. Female sexuality has more of a representational form, whereby women function as erotic public symbols who are there for the pleasure and desire of others. This autoerotic pattern is evident not only in products for men but in the types of media that are aimed at a female audience such as magazines, advertisements etc.