Academic Journal ‘About Gender’ Releases a Special Issue on Pornography

GENOA, Italy – An Italian-based academic journal, About Gender (AG), has published a special issue on pornography, marking the first time an Italian academic journal is dedicating an entire issue to the subject.

The special issue is available free of charge to everyone right here. After entering the site, users may choose their preferred language on the upper right, register, then log in.

This issue of About Gender reflects a growing interest among researchers worldwide in taking pornography and its impact on social and economic life seriously.

The issue opens with the article “From Amateur Aesthetics to Intelligible Orgasms: Pornographic Authenticity and Precarious Labour in the Gig Economy,” written by porn star and legal scholar Zahra Zsuzsanna Stardust, a teaching fellow in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Drawing upon interviews with Australian porn producers and performers, Stardust explores the challenges for performers to meet the expectations of producers seeking authenticity.

“In my article, I wanted people to really understand the gendered and sexual labour of porn performance. We exist in a world where consumers and companies are demanding greater access to our intimate lives. Everyone wants authentic realness and free content, and I wanted to show what that actually means for sex workers trying to pay our bills,” Stardust said.

The issue also examines how the changing porn landscape is impacting trans performers. In the article “From Porn Performer to Porntropreneur: Online Entrepreneurship, Social Media Branding, and Selfhood in Contemporary Trans Pornography,” anthropologist Sophie Pezzutto, a researcher at the Australian National University, draws on ten months of research in Los Angeles and Las Vegas to reflect on how trans performers are navigating the various economic, technological, and social changes confronting the industry today. This includes discussing how they harness social media to earn income from a diverse range of erotic and sexual services that are based on carefully crafted personal brands.

Performer and activist jessica drake is also interviewed in the issue, in which she reflects on her career and the ever-changing landscape of the adult industry and its impact on society.

Other articles include:

“Subscription Intimacy: Amateurism, Authenticity and Emotional Labour in Direct-to-Consumer Gay Pornography,” by David Laurin, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto.

“Between Sexual Objectification and Sexual Agency: The Most Watched Porn Videos in the Czech Republic,” by Michaela Lebedikova, a researcher at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic.

“Playboys and the Cosmo Girls: Models of Femininity in Italian Men’s and Women’s Magazines and the Popularization of Feminist Knowledge,” by Dalila Missero, a researcher at Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom.

For more information visit Riviste.unige.it/aboutgender/

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