Abstract
This chapter builds on previous work that has examined women’s engagement with pornography, and how it relates to their engagement with romance and erotica as media genres (see, e.g., Juffer, At home with pornography: Women, sex & everyday life, New York University Press, 1998; Radway, Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy, and popular literature, University of North Carolina Press, 1984). It explores what this sample of women who consume or produce m/m erotic content see as the primary differences between pornography and erotica. It also looks at the extent to which many of the women I spoke to identify as male when reading, writing, watching or fantasising about m/m sexually explicit content.
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Notes
- 1.
While the terms ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ are rightfully controversial, laden as they are with connotations of power and control (as well as risking conflation with BDSM roles) I use them here and in my survey as they remain the most commonly used terms within m/m SEM fan communities to understand receptive and insertive anal sex partners.
- 2.
Laboratory studies can add to our knowledge of women’s sexual responses, and help us to better understand what turns women on. However, as in all areas of psychology, there is a limit to what lab studies can tell us. The artificial environment of the lab is not analogous to the environments in which people would usually engage with SEM, and the rules and regulations that govern behaviour in the lab mean that participants cannot respond in the ways they might in the real world. For example, in many studies measuring response to SEM participants are not allowed to masturbate (as it would affect the results). This is in direct contrast to the world outside the lab, where pornography and masturbation ‘go together like a BBQ and a beer… [Where, in fact] the main effect of exposure to pornography is masturbation’ (McKee, Albury, & Lumby, 2008, p. 79, emphasis added).
- 3.
See also Leitenberg and Henning’s (1995) meta-analysis of sexual fantasy literature which found very similar results.
- 4.
For further insight, I recommend this easy-to-follow blog post on the sex/gender controversy by Will at Skepchick: http://skepchick.org/2013/10/44379/. (accessed 7 December 2017).
- 5.
I realise the irony of using this term when writing about gender and sex fluidity—I mean, simply, people who self-identify as women during their day-to-day lives.
- 6.
Sedgwick’s claim to ‘be a gay man’ has faced a fair amount of backlash from within the queer community, something I will return to in Chap. 8.
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Neville, L. (2018). ‘Don’t You Know that It’s Different for Girls’. In: Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69134-3_4
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