Young people’s perspectives of the ‘male gaze’ and matters of representation in online pornography

The ‘male gaze’ has become a particularly powerful concept used to identify and challenge objectifying and often sexualised media representations of women, but its place within pornography scholarship remains relatively unscrutinised. Some scholarship has suggested that its place in porn studies is inapposite because of the different forms, functions, and identificatory viewing relations in pornography compared with its original theorisations in the contexts of traditional narrative film. Despite this, 11 young adults introduced the ‘male gaze’ term unprompted in focus groups and interviews exploring their experiences and understandings of online pornography, and we use this as an opportunity to consider the multiplicity and utility of the term. The findings suggest that the participants conceptualised online pornography within the terms of the male gaze. The participants found ‘male gaze’ pornography problematic and we chart how this drove them to explore different pornographies and identificatory relations. The results thus suggest that pornography needs to be more democratic, and this necessitates de-emphasising the ‘male gaze’ and proliferating alternative hedonic pornographies.