Abstract:
This thesis examines the ways young people understand what they may have learned about
sex, sexuality and/or gender from engaging with online pornography, as well as how
pornography may have shaped their understanding of sexual consent. Based on an
exploratory, narrative enquiry approach, this thesis illuminates the lived experiences of two
young men in Aotearoa New Zealand – Sung-Ho and Billy – and how their engagement with
online pornography shaped their understanding of sexual consent, sex, sexuality, and/or
gender. Questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and journal entries were used to collate
rich empirical evidence. A queer sex-positive feminist theoretical framework was drawn on to
examine how participants thought about and reflected on their learnings and understandings
of sexual consent, sex, sexuality, and/or gender from online pornography. This framework
was supported by two theoretical concepts: Gavey’s (2019) cultural scaffolding and Butler’s
(1990) performativity. The convergence of queer and feminist frameworks and theoretical
concepts enabled me to contextualise participants’ subjective experiences with greater
attention to how they are influenced by, and attempt to resist, notions of hierarchy.
My analysis of participants’ experiences and understanding of pornography revealed
that they did not perceive to have learned ‘anything’ about sexual consent from their
engagements with online pornography. However, participants reflected on how, as teenagers
and young adults, they thought of sexual consent as not requiring conversation or
communication before or during engaging in sexual acts with others. Because online
pornography was where participants received the majority of their sex education, this suggests
that its influence may have been that it reinforced and further normalised pre-existing notions
of consent. In relation to how online pornography may have influenced their
conceptualisations of sex and identity, my conversations with participants illuminated how
they learned that sex was purely physical and that their sexual performance and physical
appearance should reflect that of professional actors. Furthermore, participants situated their
experiences with pornography as complex, nuanced, and gendered.
I concluded that participants’ understandings of sexual consent, sex, sexuality, and
gender seemed to be influenced by online pornography in ways that reinforced and further
normalised already existing cisheteronormative discourses.