Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
This article makes a case for sex-positive research and pedagogy that acknowledges and hence reflects on the researcher’s use of a “pornographic mirror,” a critical and consensual engagement with erotic and pornographic (self-)imagery that opens up bodily sensations and analysis in the public sphere. The article will do so by means of examples of research in which scholars were able to successfully test out such corporeal-driven scholarship and use of porn images. In the first example, the author interviewed an older generation of sex educators in San Francisco, who in the 1960s/1970s pioneered the idea that students could perform and analyze their own sexual behaviors by acting in, and reflecting on, sexually explicit movies, an idea which has also been incorporated into contemporary feminist and queer pornography. This historical moment in radical pedagogy is extended into a contemporary example of sex-positive research about online dating, in which the author comments on her use of sex chat and sexual self-imagery to dissect the online dating site adultfriendfinder.com.