Keeping it real User-Generated Pornography, Gender Reification, and Visual Pleasure

Recently, some scholars have suggested that new media technologies are opening up spaces for the sexual emancipation of previously marginalized groups. These ‘DIY’ web cultures would facilitate different, more authentic, representations of gender and sexuality than conventionally available in mainstream pornography. This study examines these propositions by analyzing a sample of 100 user-generated ‘amateur’ videos on YouPorn, an adult video-sharing website. It is demonstrated how an adherence to a masculine, heteronormative ‘pornoscript’ structures the possible ways in which sexual pleasure is enacted and visualized in these videos. Simultaneously, their alleged proximity to ‘real life’ works to naturalize these representations, enabling the reification of their gender ideology through a denial of their imaginary dimension. It is concluded that, rather than providing a space for alternative sexual representations, YouPorn manifests itself as a site where pornography, participatory media, and the representation/fetishation of ‘reality’ converge to maintain a politically conservative gender ideology.