Virtual Reality Pornography; how gender comes to matter when technology crafts the body. A critical interpretation of the contemporary pornographic industry from a feminist posthuman perspective
Pornography first appears in English in a medical dictionary in 1857 as a neutral concept, referring to social and medical texts on the rapidly accelerating phenomenon of prostitution. Pretty soon, it acquires a second morally pejorative definition; in 1861, pornography becomes associated with the explicit depiction of sexual organs and sexual practices with the aim to cause sexual arousal (Webster’s Dictionary). The history of the pornographic industry however could be better narrated through the history of technology. In every stage of technological progress, new inventions have generated diverse types of pornography, each of them having different characteristics. Photography, cinema, video, internet have all contributed to the transformation of the field, providing diverse conditions of production, distribution and consumption of pornographic material. At the same time, the porn industry has always pushed the development of new technological means. The aim of this paper is to explore from a feminist perspective the ways in which the pornographic industry is currently re-constructing itself through the use of virtual reality technology, searching for the particular configurations of this convergence. The theoretical framework of this study derives mainly from the post-human critical theory as it has been elaborated by Rosi Braidotti as an analysis of the conditions under which the human is inserted into a system of commodification (2013). The pivotal question of this paper refers to the emergence of the body as an auto-pornographic economical force and to the re-conceptualization of gender and sexuality within the VR porn industry.
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