Abstract
‘Sex sells. Our world has been pornified. Culture is sexualized and it’s making our children grow up too quickly. Porn is everywhere. Porn changes your brain. There is an epidemic of porn addiction … Sexting is a growing problem’ (p. 1). Feona Attwood starts her book on sex media with these ‘sensationalist claims’ to make a point about how such claims are often used in public discourse ‘as a focus for discussing a range of other questions – what access we should have to the Internet, what it means to be sexually healthy, how men and women differ in their relation to erotic and intimate life, what the relations between media, fantasy and sexual practice are’ (p. 1). The focus of her book is on sex media, defined as ‘those media forms in which sex is the primary focus of representation’ (p. 1). She argues for a more critical approach to the study of sex media, which does not view developments in black and white terms. Attwood explains that sex media are worthy of study because ‘they are a good starting point for thinking about sexuality and gender, the body, fantasy and representation’ as well as about policy and regulation, culture, the distinction between public and private life and so on (p. 1). The book is split into five substantive chapters. Chapter 1, ‘Sex, Gender and Sexuality’, interrogates the three terms and explores a range of critical approaches to their study from lesbian and gay studies, queer theory, sexuality and gender studies. Chapter 2, ‘Regulating Sex Media’, provides an overview of the regulation of sex media, in particular in the United Kingdom and the United States. Attwood questions the main principles of regulation and argues that there has been a recent ‘process of juridification – an expansion and intensification of regulation as part of a broader move towards the surveillance of communication’, which ‘increasingly involves an interest in regulating people’s creative and fantasy worlds’ (p. 3). Chapter 3, ‘Sexualization’, then casts a critical eye on the approaches adopted in a range of reports published on the topic of sexualisation, which in Attwood’s view are focused ‘on an abstract figure of the child’, thus oversimplifying young people’s relationships with media. Chapter 4, ‘Forms of Sex Media’, explores a wide range of sex media – from art to gonzo porn, amateur porn, sex comedy and erotic thriller. Chapter 5, ‘Sex Media, Culture and Society’, discusses the wider social context and the role of sex media in that broader context, including in relation to leisure and work, health, ethics, education and what Attwood labels as ‘sexual citizenship’ (p. 5). The book is targeted at students interested in the topic of sex media, and it does a very good job of introducing the main debates in the field in a critical, yet accessible way.