Pornographication: exploring the ‘porn’ in ‘inspiration porn’

Ryan Thorneycroft

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

This article brings aspects of disability and pornography studies together by exploring the phenomenon of ‘inspiration porn’. Inspiration porn broadly refers to problematic and ableist representations of disabled people, and it has been suggested within disability studies that this term has resonance given its objectifying and dehumanizing qualities. Engaging more critically with porn studies, however, I interrogate the resonances between inspiration porn and pornography, and question what is at stake in the construction of non-pornographic material with the descriptive suffix ‘porn’. Building and extending Hester’s work in Beyond Explicit, I find that inspiration porn likewise contains attributes associated with pornography, namely prurience, the real, authenticity, intensity, and transgression. The findings suggest that there are significant overlaps between inspiration porn and pornography, and ones that go beyond reductive notions of objectification and dehumanization. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings, particularly in relation to the displacement of sex within conventional understandings of pornography and broader pornographication trends.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages14
JournalPorn Studies
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

Keywords

  • porn studies
  • Pornographication
  • disability representation
  • inspiration porn
  • disability studies

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