How do youth, parents, and educators use discursive sexual scripts to make sense of youth engagement with internet pornography?
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Date
2022-12
Open Access Location
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor and Francis Group
Rights
(c) 2022 The Author/s
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Abstract
In this article, we explore how culturally available sexual scripts are drawn on to make meaning of young people’s engagement with internet pornography (IP). We draw on a version of sexual scripting theory developed by feminist discursive scholars to perform a critical thematic analysis of 24 interviews with parents, educators, and young people. We identify three main scripts commonly drawn on by participants to make sense of youth engagement with IP, namely: a script of harm, a heterosexual script, and a developmentalist script. These scripts, often interweaving with one another, were deployed in various ways, firstly, as ‘risk talk’ and, secondly, as ‘resistant talk’. While both adults and youth engaged with dominant (‘risk’) and alternative (‘resistant’) talk, adults primarily positioned youth within ‘risk talk’. We show how alternative ‘resistant talk’ disrupts common, scripted ways of accounting for youth engagement with IP in a way that demonstrates more nuanced sexual subjectivities – particularly among youth – than the traditional media effects paradigm acknowledges. Importantly, our findings show how, within discursive restraints, essentialized gender constructions can be resisted to position youth as agentic sexual subjects.
Description
Keywords
pornography, youth, agency, parents, teachers, online media, New Zealand, qualitative
Citation
Healy-Cullen S, Morison T, Ross K, Taylor JE. (2022). How do youth, parents, and educators use discursive sexual scripts to make sense of youth engagement with internet pornography?. Porn Studies. 9. 4. (pp. 445-463).