Sex Education: Politics of Age in Porn Research with Young People PDF

# Sex Education: "I wouldn't want you talking to my kids!": the politics of age when conducting research about porn with young people ## Author: Claire Meehan ## Abstract Much research has been conducted on young people as a population rather than with them. Traditionally, porn research has focu...

# Sex Education: "I wouldn't want you talking to my kids!": the politics of age when conducting research about porn with young people ## Author: Claire Meehan ## Abstract Much research has been conducted on young people as a population rather than with them. Traditionally, porn research has focused on effects with the assumption that young people are impacted by the sexual media they consume. This often leads to negative outcomes such as violence and addiction. In this sense, porn is framed as risky and young people are portrayed as being at risk. Sex, sexuality, and sexual media are portrayed as a threat from which young people should be protected. However, many young people perceive porn as ubiquitous – as part of society and difficult to avoid. This reflexive article interrogates the need for this kind of research, even if it is considered as a form of “dirty work” within an alarmist and sensationalist media-driven culture. This article examines the author's experience of the ethics review process, access to participants, and the fieldwork, to illustrate the moments of texture and detail throughout the process that future sex, sexuality, and porn researchers can draw upon. ## Introduction Scholars have noted the challenges that sex, sexuality and porn researchers face in the field. This article builds upon these existing foundations to explore the additional challenges that arise when the research involves young people and explores the “children at risk” discourse. This paper discusses the notion of sex research as dirty work with young people before providing a reflexive account of doing this “dirty work” with them. By examining the author’s experience designing and conducting a youth-centered study to gain insights into young people's digital and sexual lives and relationships, this article considers the positionality of the researcher and the ethics review process. The article discusses recruitment of participants and the fieldwork itself before presenting reflections and questioning whether young people are really unwilling to engage in research of this nature or whether adults seek to deny young people’s agency. ## Children at risk Concern about children and sex are enduring and long-standing. Fear of paedophiles and child sexual abuse prevail in the digital age. This anxiety can be traced back to the late 19th Century with the rise of the “social hygiene” movement of the early 20th century, and the existence of child-rearing manuals of the 1930s and 1940s. The mid-1980s was a period when the media showcased child abuse, with numerous televised dramas carrying storylines of this nature. The 1990s saw an eruption of news media coverage of paedophilia which cemented the relationship between dangerousness and risk. The early 2000s saw a shift towards the sexualization of children where the idea of the child as a sexual subject becomes disconcerting. This idea can be traced back to the rise of the media’s coverage of sexual violence and abuse of children. This overt concern seeks to distinguish protection from more latent concerns relating to the sexuality of children. The assumption that fear of children's protection from abuse by adults is the public face of sex panic discourses is problematic because it conceals deep seated panic about the effects of child sexual subjectivity and agency. These discourses have been criticised for their tendency to overgeneralise or treat young people as a homogenous group. The authority of experts from psychology and medicine have encouraged the surveillance and regulation of children’s sexual instincts. These debates reflect a unique ambivalence about childhood sexuality, it is both denied while simultaneously viewed as a potentially unrelenting force once it is released by external sexualizing forces. ## The role of gender The authors of this study believe it is remiss to contextualise the role of age without its intersections with gender. Gendered cultural scripts about sexual desire assume that men have strong sexual desire, and women have a naturally weaker desire for sex. This discourse has created cultural contexts in which discussion about young people's sexual desire has remained absent or vilified. This is especially true for women, who have endured longstanding negative responses for what is perceived to be “excessive” or “overt” sexual activity. Women are routinely held responsible for their sexual choices. Western society has clear ideas about childhood innocence combined with women’s passivity when it comes to sex or sexual expression. These ideas can be directly in conflict with young people’s experiences, understandings, and lived realities. The concept of risk is intertwined with predetermined notions about innocence, control, and development, as well as an assumption that young people, especially women, are active, agentic and capable subjects. This is necessary even if it proves challenging given the persistence of accepted assumptions about what is right and healthy for young people. ## “Exposure to porn” Porn has traditionally been a source of public fascination and discomfort, especially when the consumers are teenage young people. Fears about young people's sexuality and expression are long-standing and enduring. Porn is the epitome of sexually explicit material and has generated cultural anxieties which have resulted in the rise and endurance of protectionist policies and education aimed at protecting young people from its influence. Porn research has traditionally centred around “effects”, suggesting that young people are negatively impacted by the porn they consume, leading to undesirable outcomes such as violence and addiction. Porn has increasingly been constructed as a risk to young people’s sexual, emotional, and mental wellbeing, and development. In this sense, porn is a danger from which young people should be protected. ## The influence of gender on engagement with porn It’s important to consider the influence of gender as a variable in how young people engage with porn. Most sex research has assumed that women are not aroused by porn. The growth of the Internet and the accessibility of online porn has coincided with a growth in research suggesting that some women find porn arousing. Feminist debates on porn remain highly divisive, with important aspects being a consideration of male consumers, female performers, and female consumers’ sexual agency. For some, porn is an exploitation of performers and the female body, which is argued to be linked to men’s sexual violence against women. The “children at risk” and “women at risk” positions overlap in the discourse about young men’s sexuality, and it is argued that they are not ‘at risk’, but ‘risky’ subjects. Recent porn studies scholarship explores the diverse desires and experiences young people have when it comes to porn, including excitement, nonchalance and resistance. Consumption of porn is intimately entwined with young people’s sense of their sexual circumstances, like pleasure, as well as offering ideas about future relationships. It is important to note that these diverse experiences demonstrate the need for critical scholarship with young people about their experiences with porn, rather than on young people and their exposure on porn. ## “Dirty work” The term dirty work describes a form of labor that is both socially necessary and socially stigmatized. The authors of this study believe that sexuality research can be considered dirty work because of the cultural anxieties related to sexuality and the resulting cognitive and emotional bias which is enacted through practice. Despite the expansion of critical sexual inquiry, academics continue to struggle for legitimacy in doing this type of work, especially scholars of porn studies. The subject position that sex, sexuality, and porn researchers face is exacerbated when working with children and young people. Alongside fears around both young people’s sexuality and of them being sexualized, there has been a repositioning of young people as social agents. They can actively engage with the sociocultural and political domains of their lives. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child identifies children’s rights to education, privacy, and protection. It is widely accepted that adults should meaningfully seek out, engage, and respond to the views of children in all matters that affect them. The UNCRC reinforces the broader conceptualization of children’s experiences and their knowledge about their experiences as being unique and valuable. This repositioning diverges from the image of children and young people as passive, vulnerable and in need of adult protection, as they have been viewed in the “children at risk” discourse. Young people have become more autonomous and capable beings, who are able to make informed decisions about their future. The importance of young people’s voice in research is reflected in the increased importance of young people’s voice in research. However, when young people’s sexuality is focus of research another set of discourses come into play; rendering their sexuality is especially controversial and risky. This article presents a reflexive approach to a recent study with school-aged young people in New Zealand to gain insights into their digital sexual lives and relationships. The author reflects upon their positionality, the research design, and the ethics review process, recruitment, and accessing participants. The article concludes with questioning whether for young people it may actually be “appealing work”. ## The researcher and research The author of this study is a heterosexual cis female researcher in her late 30s, and a naturalized New Zealander. She identifies as a feminist scholar and uses a interactionist/poststructuralist methodological perspective to focus on the meanings constructed by young people (symbolic interactionism) and within the discourses that make particular subject positions available (poststructuralism). The author chose to study the phenomena and the experiences of young people from their own perspectives. This allows them to reconstruct their subjective experiences that give form to representation. The author also acknowledges that the rigid regulatory frame within which people must make choices and the norms that define what kinds of language are appropriate when developing their sexual subjectivities. Dominant discourses receive significant power from their entrenchment within discursive fields, for example, family, law, and education. These discourses legitimate existing power relations and structures by defining what is “normal”, and oppositional subject positions are generally perceived as undesirable. The author of this study aims to untangle young people’s lived experiences, interactions, and their meanings, within the broader context of dominant discourses about gender, childhood, and sex. The focus of this paper is on the first study the author of this study conducted in New Zealand, working with young people to gain insights into their experiences and the contexts, constructions, and discourses which shaped their digital sexual cultures. The author chose to move away from the tradition of effects-based porn research, which assumes that young people are impacted by sexual media they consume. The author instead conducted research with these young people to gain their understandings of sexual media and to explore their lived experiences and social realities. The aim of the study was to give greater power young people's voices. This approach utilizes youth-centered qualitative research with young people. Youth-centered research includes young people as experts to guide the research and researcher. This approach was essential in addressing power differentials in the relationship between the researcher, as an adult female researcher and, the young participants. ## Preparing to do the ‘dirty work’ The author of this study realized the first step in conducting research was to obtain ethical approval. The initial response from the ethics advisor from another faculty at the university was a concern that young people would be reluctant or unwilling to participate or engage due to embarrassment. This highlights how institutions can be conservative and that this construction of risk justifies surveillance and regulation in order to preserve childhood innocence. However, there is a need for progressive research in universities, schools and ethics committees because they serve as gatekeepers to knowledge. They also play a role in the moral panic around youth and risk and anxieties that have become more pronounced as modern societies become more uncertain about their future. These anxieties are linked to the idea of “governmentality” where subtle ways of control become regulatory and self-policing. Because people are empowered to make their own choices, they are simultaneously being responsibilised for the consequences of those choices. This can be especially true for children and young people where adults such as teachers and parents exercise this choice and responsibility on behalf of children themselves. This can deny a young person’s right to be heard or to make decisions for themselves, which goes against the grain of the research approach of this study that prioritizes and validates young people’s agency and competency. The stigma associated with sex-based research, the institutional barriers that impede efforts to conduct research as dirty work, can ultimately serve to constrain the production of sexual knowledge across various levels, including research, policy, education, and practice. The author of this study found that young participants demonstrated great interest in participating in the research and in discussing the subject. While many adults, such as colleagues and teachers, appeared to perceive the study as dirty work, young participants may have described it as “appealing work.” The author strived to prioritize young people and their ideas, considering them to be adept and agentic and good judges at articulating the issues that impact their lives. Young participants were open, honest, and highly engaged, and did not view themselves as vulnerable or in need of adult protection. However, they did express their frustration about being treated like children and their desire for more adult engagement in terms of providing balanced information and treating them as equals. The author found a common criticism among the participants is that they felt they were not trusted by adults and frequently told to abstain from watching porn, without receiving balanced information. This is a direct conflict between how young people construct meanings in the development of their sexual subjectivities and how this is curtailed by prevailing discourses about childhood and sexual expression. The language from policy, schools, and universities around vulnerability and risk denies their agency and strengths. Some subject positions, such as being innocent and asexual, are made available whereas others are marred by stigma and shame. ## “Dirty work or appealing work for young people?” The need to involve young people in decisions regarding their lives, including their sexual expression and sexual experiences, is a common theme in research. Sex education has been repeatedly critiqued for failing to meet the needs and interests of young people. Inadequate sex education can foster disengagement, lack of knowledge, and feelings of disempowerment. This article underlines the unique juxtaposition found in porn studies with young people, where porn is often seen as the epitome of deviance while childhood is constructed as the personification of innocence. There is a need to protect vulnerable innocents from deviance. The idea that adults should meaningfully seek out, engage with and respond to the views of children in all matters that affect them is a foundational principles for research involving children and young people. This is a key aspect of the distinction drawn between childhood and adulthood. Images or thoughts of a child or young person having sexual experiences fundamentally threaten our sense of what children should be. There are two challenges to overcome when calling for research with young people to explore their experiences, insights and understandings of porn research. First, it is essential to respect young people’s agency and expertise. The author of this study advocates for using young people as research partners rather than subjects. Young people’s agency is not something that is mobilized individually. This means that they are constantly being influenced by the discourses of those around them. It is important to acknowledge that young people are not simply subjects of their own making, but the power of discourse makes them subject to practices, people and discourses. We deny young people as sexual subjects and remove their sexual agency by infantilising and asexualising them through lack of engagement. It is important to remember that sexual agency is important for safer sexual practices better decision making, embodied desire, maintaining relationships and navigating broader social expectations, and managing power relations. The author of this study believes that young people are qualified and respect their agency. Second, there is an urgent need to destigmatise the “dirty work” of porn research. Gilbert (2021) critiques this diversion of intent towards sexual health interventions or the physiology of sex. Various sexuality researchers outline the importance of this work in terms of the political significance of being heard, insight, a sense of emotional relief, and feelings of being supported. By sanitising research in this way, we fail to normalise these conversations and the need for them, which feeds into policy, education and practice.. This kind of research gives young people the opportunity to talk about issues that are otherwise not addressed in school, or that are addressed without giving them subjectivity and agency. ## Conclusion Dominant discourses of childhood construct children and young people as innocent and vulnerable. Much research has been conducted on young people as a population rather than with them which is especially true for research deemed “risky”. The conception of sex research as “dirty work” ensures that these necessary investigations remain marginalised – a paradox that is exacerbated when working with children and young people. This article considers the author’s work with young people in New Zealand, to explore their experiences and understandings of sexual media, as well as the contexts which create their digital sexual cultures. The author argues that there is a need to recognize and include young people's expertise. It is important to acknowledge that porn studies with young people is “dirty work” and does young people a disservice rather than offering a productive and meaningful way for youth voices to be heard. ## Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).