Young People and Pornography Critical Studies in Gender Sexuality and Culture

What is "normal" sexuality for young people? How do they engage with the pornography that saturates popular culture? Are the panics that swirl around young people's access to pornified culture justified? "Young People and Pornography", Mulholland explores young people's own perspectives on the pornification of their world. The book brings the overlooked voices of young people into the debates over sexuality and the role of explicit sexual content in their lives. In the process she concludes that the explicit now occupies a position in public spaces in ways that construct a new normal. However, countering the claims of panic-fuelled public discourses worrying that "anything goes," she reveals how young people use humor, parody, and the spectacular to negotiate pornography in ways that maintain a distance. In addition, Mulholland reveals how young people create meanings about pornified culture remarkably consistent with historical norms of privacy, respectability, and sexuality.