Teenage girls and the entanglement with online porn: a new feminist materialist perspective

Abstract

abstract Who knows what sexually explicit materials (SEM)/ porn could mean to teenage girls if we were encouraged to see it as an assemblage, full of intensities, rather than negative effects, and the breakdown of innocence? We answer this question by taking on the dominant narrative repeated in public that seeks to place young female sexuality ‘under erasure’ through the common denominator of sexual danger. Instead by drawing on new feminist materialist perspectives and through conversation with girls, we address what they can do by examining their experiences with SEM/ porn as they navigate an assemblage that seeks to silence their sexual becomings. We argue that girls’ sexual network connectivity and exploration of SEM/ porn through human and more-than-human elements, rather than based on sexual muteness speaks to the entanglement of their desire for knowing and learning ‘sexually’ while resisting gender oppressive structures. We destabilise the current danger narrative circulating in South Africa through a radical interpretation of what is possible to know about girls as they generate insights into their critical capacities even if these insights trouble our assumptions about what girls’ sexual agency should look like. In conclusion, we argue that new feminist material perspectives allow for understanding the entangled relations that are ignited when teenage girls are given the opportunity to discuss their online sexual explorations and the implications for addressing teenage girls as fully agentive sexual beings.