Pornography, Rough Sex and Gendered Harm: Just Sex on Screen? By SamanthaKeene, London: Routledge, 2025, 204 pp., £145.00

Abstract

In Pornography, Rough Sex and Gendered Harm: Just Sex on Screen?, Samantha Keene draws on interviews conducted with 24 heterosexual adults from Aotearoa New Zealand in order to explore the complex – and at times contradictory – ways in which men and women make use, and make sense, of pornography in their everyday lives. Engaging with participants’ personal narratives in a manner that is marked throughout by candour, compassion, and clarity, Keene exposes the ways in which pornography can be a site for both pleasure and pain, with gendered dynamics infusing its modes of representation, consumption, and effects. The ways in which pornography can ‘normalise and reiterate wider societal (mis)understandings about sex, power, gender, and consent, thereby contributing to the cultural conditions of possibility for sexual violence’ (p. 3) are never far from view in Keene's account. However, analysis throughout the book is also driven by a commitment to attend to ‘how mainstream pornography can be experienced as both pleasurable and harmful, sometimes at the same time’, with the power to influence people's everyday experiences of sex, consent, and intimacy in ‘intricate, complex and nuanced ways’ (p. 8). This is important but challenging work, for participants and researchers alike. In this respect, Keene's candid reflections on her own positionality are particularly welcome. Situating the book from the outset in relation to her own exposure to, and engagement with, pornography, Keene explores how embarking on academic research on this topic requires undertaking a form of ‘dirty work’1 that brings its own personal and professional stigma. As a response, or at least an interruption, to the potentially negative effects of this, Keene encourages those of us working on sex and sexuality to publish ‘brave accounts of research journeys’ (p. 16). These can ‘provide stories of survival’ (p. 16) that will not only support and motivate peers but challenge conventional knowledge hierarchies and ill-fitting institutional processes. Across the unfolding chapters of Pornography, Rough Sex and Gendered Harm, Keene offers new and valuable insights into the personal, interpersonal, and societal impacts of mainstream pornography in contemporary society. Chapter 2 situates her fieldwork in the wider (and often fraught) context of feminist debates over pornography. Here, Keene considers the influence that pornography has had, and continues to have, on (hetero)sexual scripts, and reflects on existing evidence regarding its relationship to material experiences of gendered harms, particularly in an era marked by pornography's ready availability. Noting, however, that the ‘polarisation of debates about pornography has left little room for exploring the “grey” areas’ (p. 29), Chapters 3 and 4 turn to the accounts provided by Keene's female participants. Here, she discusses in detail the diverse ways in which they reported using or engaging with pornography, and the extent to which this provoked within them complex and conflicting responses. Keene explores participants’ accounts of arousal, which can be tempered by feelings of shame, stigma, confusion, and anxiety regarding the normative presentation of gender roles. Chapter 4 looks at this specifically in the context of so-called ‘rough sex’, which – despite being a ‘label that is poorly defined and lacking in conceptual boundaries’ (p. 74) – has ‘emerged as an umbrella term to capture a range of aggressive behaviours that take place within the context of sexual activity’ (p. 36). ‘Rough sex’, Keene suggests, is ‘experiencing a cultural moment’ (p. 74), in that it has not only become prevalent (and popular) in mainstream pornography, but has also emerged as increasingly common practice among young adults. Throughout this discussion, Keene takes care to ensure that she does not speak on behalf of her participants, instead using lengthy extracts from women's own accounts to mark an intervention on terrain where the perspectives and experiences of female users of pornography have rarely been charted. At the same time, however, this is not an exercise in uncritical description. In particular, across Chapters 3 and 4, Keene also explores the female participants’ accounts through the lens of post-feminism, which she suggests ‘celebrates women's sexual agency and positions their active engagement in the sexualisation of culture as a necessary component of achieving sexual empowerment’ (p. 54). Thus, Keene tentatively raises the prospect that, while some women who view pornography or are interested in ‘rough sex’ may do so ‘purely because it is pleasurable to experience’ (p. 178), the appeal of this may also come from ‘the pressures of being an “up for it” and sexually adventurous woman living in a postfeminist landscape’ (p. 178). In Chapter 5, Keene turns attention to the accounts provided by the study's male participants, exposing how the meaning and impacts of their engagement with mainstream pornography are also often complex, and in need of nuanced navigation. She positions her participants here as ‘more than uncritical consumers of sexually explicit consent’ (p. 118), highlighting in particular those participants whose contributions suggested that they had thought – sometimes at length – about the existence and depiction of consent in the production of the pornography that they consumed. Keene highlights that her male participants often denounced images reflecting aggression as problematic, though thresholds for its recognition varied, and responses to its occurrence tended more towards deliberate avoidance than proactive reporting or challenge. Moreover, while pornography functioned in the men's lives as a source of sexual education, she charts how it also caused them insecurity regarding their bodies and sexual performance. Chapter 6 of the book moves on to consider the currently under-explored issue of pornography addiction and its effects, while Chapter 7 examines couples’ experiences of viewing pornography together in their relationship as well as the impact of one partner's reliance on pornography on couples’ wider relationship dynamics. In Chapter 8, Keene weaves the threads from across these preceding discussions together to underscore the contested nature of pornography in the lives of both male and female participants and to reflect on the implications of this finding for future research, policy, and practice agendas. In a context in which, as Keene observes, there has been a lot of ‘background noise’ (p. 174) on the topic of pornography and its impacts, this book makes a welcome effort to speak in a different frequency. That is not to diminish the importance of what has gone before, nor to suggest that we should not continue to pay close attention to the ways in which sexual scripts represented in pornography both inform, and are informed by, wider (and often problematic) gendered dynamics. However, it is to say that the opportunity provided in Pornography, Rough Sex and Gendered Harm to hear more from women as users of pornography, and as partners or prospective partners of those who use pornography, is novel and important. Keene's discussion is well grounded in the existing research literature, and alert to the micro and macro implications of participants’ perspectives. The application of this to the issue of ‘rough sex’ – and more specifically to the practice of choking or sexual strangulation – in this contemporary moment is particularly valuable. A few years ago, a study of college students in the United States (US) by Debby Herbenick et al. reported that almost 80 per cent of recently sexually active undergraduates had experienced rough sex, including choking/strangulation.2 Similar prevalence has since been identified among young adults in Australia,3 and most recently in the United Kingdom (UK), where a survey of more than 4,000 people aged 16 to 34 in which I was involved with colleagues at the Institute for Addressing Strangulation (IFAS) found that 71 per cent of those who had been sexually active had either been strangled or had strangled someone else during sex, with it being most common to first do so when aged 18 to 20 years old.4 Of those respondents in the IFAS survey, 70 per cent reported that the last time that they had been strangled during sex, this had been agreed to in advance with their partner, and, in line with Herbenick et al.’s findings in the US – where nearly 85 per cent of respondents reported having liked the experience ‘somewhat’ or ‘very much’ – 60 per cent of those in the UK cohort rated their enjoyment of the experience at a level 4 or 5 out of 5, where 5 meant they ‘enjoyed it a lot’. More troublingly, however, what these responses also demonstrated was that, in a substantial proportion of the experiences reported by young people in the IFAS survey, there had not been such prior agreement. Among this cohort, while feelings of surprise (37 per cent), feeling fine with it (31 per cent), or liking it (28 per cent) were still common responses, 24 per cent reported feeling scared; and this is understandable, since choking by its nature risks significant physical and psychological harm and is a common feature in relationships marked by coercion, control, or violence.5 As Keene underscores, ‘distinguishing between desired, consensual “rough sex” and “violent” expressions of sexual activity is an important task’ (p. 82) – both in pornography and in real life. For the women who Keene spoke with, evidence of consent within the pornographic imagery or context was seen to be critical during these encounters, with choking or other rough practices needing to be ‘wrapped up’ in either relationships of trust and respect, or otherwise clearly agentic expressions of lust or desire. Yet, as Keene also notes, this can ‘present a concerning new challenge for women navigating the world around them’, in which they are presumed to demonstrate post-feminist empowerment by being ‘up for’ adventurous sexual experiences (p. 94). Regardless of whether being strangled had been agreed to in advance with their partner, some 21 per cent of respondents in the IFAS survey reported negative physical or psychological symptoms as a consequence of choking, including pain, dizziness, incontinence, and loss of consciousness, as well as feelings of fear and anxiety during and in the aftermath. Less than half those who had experienced strangulation (43 per cent) considered there to be safe ways to strangle a partner during sex; yet, nonetheless, 18 per cent reported that they considered strangulation to be a ‘normal part of sex’. Of all respondents in the survey, 40 per cent cited pornography as a key source of information about this practice, and half of those stated that exposure to it in pornography would encourage them to try it in their own sex lives. Pornography, Rough Sex and Gendered Harm does not set out to resolve such complexities. Indeed, it is a book that precisely requires us to get comfortable with the discomfort that can arise from pornography's imageries and impacts, and to devise policy and practice from that vantage point. In that spirit, it is telling that Keene's future research will explore ‘how young women come to learn about sexual choking/strangulation, how they feel about their prior experiences of this behaviour, and what knowledge these women have about the potential harms of this risky sexual practice’ (p. 185). This is necessary work in a context where the stakes could barely be higher. In opening up new spaces for listening to, and reflecting on, the impact of pornography's shifting but pervasive presence in popular culture, for both men and women, Pornography, Rough Sex and Gendered Harm is a thought-provoking and important read. It deserves a wide readership across law, sociology, psychology, and gender studies.