‘We hid porn magazines in the nearby woods’: Memory-work and pornography consumption in Finland

Abstract

This article presents the key findings of a Finnish memory-work project conducted in 2012 on consumer experiences and associations related to pornography. The memorywork material points to a high degree of reflexivity in definitions of pornographic preference as well as to drastic shifts in the ubiquity of pornography from the pre-1990s 'age of scarcity' to the current 'age of plenty.' At the same time, contributors' narratives of childhood experiences of finding and collecting pornography complicate public concerns on early access to porn as specific to digital media. By drawing on original research, the article considers the possibilities of memory-work as a method for exploring the connections between personal everyday encounters with pornography, technological developments, and transformations in media regulation across decades.

Sexually progressive and proficient: Pornographic syntax and postfeminist fantasies

“…More recently, a study of young women and men in Sweden found that while pornography use was normalized as an easily accessed sexual arousal tool and reference point for evaluating body ideals and sexual acts, it was also a source of ambivalence (Lo¨fgren-Ma˚rtenson and Ma˚nsson, 2010). A memory-work project on early porn exposure with Finnish women and men described porn as predominantly facilitating self-reflexive discovery, fantasy and exploration of sexual practices and identities (Paasonen et al, 2015). Relatedly, the preliminary report from an ongoing mixed-methods project on online porn use among over 5000 individuals (Smith et al, 2013) found that key reasons for engaging with porn included: intensifying sexual pleasure; expanding sexual expression and consolidating sexual identity; enhancing partnered sex; replacing unavailable sexual opportunities; and aesthetic and erotic exploration.…”

Glimmers of the forbidden fruit: Reminiscing pornography, conceptualizing the archive

“…In particular, the respondents repeatedly recounted their childhood and teen encounters with porn with nostalgic tenderness and wry amusement (see also Paasonen et al, 2015). The process of writing and staging one's memories involved both affective and temporal investment.…”

“…For a more extensive discussion on the affordances of memory work as a method in porn research, see Paasonen et al (2015). 2.…”

Constructing a crisis: porn panics and public health

“…Sophisticated qualitative methods for understanding how youth negotiate their media viewing and integrate it with their sexual becoming is easily accessible but still poorly integrated even by public health scholars who contest the anti-porn arguments. Research on sexting (Burkett 2015 (Attwood 2005;McKee 2007;Smith 2007;Paasonen et al 2015) that assemble multifaceted analytical frameworks serves to locate pornography within a complex matrix of sexual media production, distribution, and consumption. Furthermore, it provides opportunities to integrate sexual media into debates on media literacy and digital citizenship as something other than a risky behaviour to avoid (Keller and Brown 2002;Jones and Mitchell 2016).…”