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Walking on the Wild Side: Shemale Internet Pornography

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International Exposure
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Walking on the Wild Side255Walking on the Wild SideSHEMALE INTERNET PORNOGRAPHYXJOHN PHILLIPSAcademic interest in representations ofsex in film, television, and print media now has a relatively long history and, in-deed, has attained a measure of respectability that it may not have possessed asrecently as the early 1990s. Numerous studies have been published to date, manyby gay and feminist scholars, on the nature and effects of such representations,particularly in so-called pornography. Very little attention, however, has been fo-cused by scholars on the Internet, perhaps because it is still a relatively new me-dium but, above all, I think, because, in spite of the recent expansion of culturalstudies in universities and the readiness of researchers in that area to analyze anyand all social and cultural objects, including those from popular culture, the Internetremains an unordered and chaotic space, Internet material defying definition, chal-lenging conventional categories of authorship, genre, and form. Such a space canappear daunting, its contents lacking the specificity required for critical investi-gation. Internet sites have increasingly appeared in the bibliographies of our stu-dents, despite warnings that most of their content is unauthoritative and unreliable.It is understandable, then, that many in the academic community would seek toavoid any contact with the Internet, even as an object of study in itself. The viewis often heard expressed among colleagues—and in many respects it is a legiti-mate one—that Internet material is unoriginal and unexciting in both form andcontent and thus unworthy of critical interest. What little attention has been de-voted to Internet pornography concentrates on images of men and/or women whocan, broadly speaking, be described as “straight” or gay, engaged in activities as-sociated with these binary sexual identities. The few who have turned their criti-cal gaze to Internet porn have shown little if any interest in Internet sitesrepresenting transsexuals.1As far as I know, the only critic to date to have devotedany serious effort to the subject of transgender in pornography is Laura Kipnis,255
© 2020 Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick

Walking on the Wild Side255Walking on the Wild SideSHEMALE INTERNET PORNOGRAPHYXJOHN PHILLIPSAcademic interest in representations ofsex in film, television, and print media now has a relatively long history and, in-deed, has attained a measure of respectability that it may not have possessed asrecently as the early 1990s. Numerous studies have been published to date, manyby gay and feminist scholars, on the nature and effects of such representations,particularly in so-called pornography. Very little attention, however, has been fo-cused by scholars on the Internet, perhaps because it is still a relatively new me-dium but, above all, I think, because, in spite of the recent expansion of culturalstudies in universities and the readiness of researchers in that area to analyze anyand all social and cultural objects, including those from popular culture, the Internetremains an unordered and chaotic space, Internet material defying definition, chal-lenging conventional categories of authorship, genre, and form. Such a space canappear daunting, its contents lacking the specificity required for critical investi-gation. Internet sites have increasingly appeared in the bibliographies of our stu-dents, despite warnings that most of their content is unauthoritative and unreliable.It is understandable, then, that many in the academic community would seek toavoid any contact with the Internet, even as an object of study in itself. The viewis often heard expressed among colleagues—and in many respects it is a legiti-mate one—that Internet material is unoriginal and unexciting in both form andcontent and thus unworthy of critical interest. What little attention has been de-voted to Internet pornography concentrates on images of men and/or women whocan, broadly speaking, be described as “straight” or gay, engaged in activities as-sociated with these binary sexual identities. The few who have turned their criti-cal gaze to Internet porn have shown little if any interest in Internet sitesrepresenting transsexuals.1As far as I know, the only critic to date to have devotedany serious effort to the subject of transgender in pornography is Laura Kipnis,255
© 2020 Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. Introduction: Issues and Problems in the History of Pornography 1
  5. Wanderers, Entertainers, and Seducers: Making Sense of Obscenity Law in the German States, 1830–1851 27
  6. Censorship in Republican Times: Censorship and Pornographic Novels Located in L’Enfer de la Bibliothèque Nationale, 1800–1900 48
  7. Anti-Abolition Writes Obscenity: The English Vice, Transatlantic Slavery, and England’s Obscene Print Culture 67
  8. The Rise of the Overly Affectionate Family: Incestuous Pornography and Displaced Desire among the Edwardian Middle Class 100
  9. Old Wine in New Bottles? Literary Pornography in Twentieth-Century France 125
  10. A Perfectly British Business: Stagnation, Continuities, and Change on the Top Shelf 146
  11. Global Traffic in Pornography: The Hungarian Example 173
  12. Ideologies of the Second Coming in the Ukrainian Postcolonial Playground 205
  13. Stripping the Nation Bare: Russian Pornography and the Insistence on Meaning 232
  14. Walking on the Wild Side: Shemale Internet Pornography 255
  15. Contributors 275
  16. Index 279
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https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813541044-012

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. Introduction: Issues and Problems in the History of Pornography 1
  5. Wanderers, Entertainers, and Seducers: Making Sense of Obscenity Law in the German States, 1830–1851 27
  6. Censorship in Republican Times: Censorship and Pornographic Novels Located in L’Enfer de la Bibliothèque Nationale, 1800–1900 48
  7. Anti-Abolition Writes Obscenity: The English Vice, Transatlantic Slavery, and England’s Obscene Print Culture 67
  8. The Rise of the Overly Affectionate Family: Incestuous Pornography and Displaced Desire among the Edwardian Middle Class 100
  9. Old Wine in New Bottles? Literary Pornography in Twentieth-Century France 125
  10. A Perfectly British Business: Stagnation, Continuities, and Change on the Top Shelf 146
  11. Global Traffic in Pornography: The Hungarian Example 173
  12. Ideologies of the Second Coming in the Ukrainian Postcolonial Playground 205
  13. Stripping the Nation Bare: Russian Pornography and the Insistence on Meaning 232
  14. Walking on the Wild Side: Shemale Internet Pornography 255
  15. Contributors 275
  16. Index 279
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