Netporn: DIY Web Culture and Sexual Politics

Basing her commentary on digital media theory and interviews with pornography producers and consumers, Jacobs (new media, City U. of Hong Kong) examines how creating home-made pornography for public consumption has changed ideas about gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. As she describes how Internet users present themselves and their sexual preferences online, and how consumers understand why they are consumers, Jacobs expands on standard definitions of pornography to include considerations of it as artistry and as thereby a target for unreasonable surveillance and censorship. She describes the practice of making and watching such material, the new definitions of "amateur" in porn, arousal and gender morphing in participants, and cross-cultural and hard-core virtual experiences. Jacobs closes with a case study of Hong Kong and The People's Republic of China. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Katrien Jacobs is assistant professor in new media at City University of Hong Kong. She has lectured widely on gender, sexuality, new media art, globalization, and censorship. She is the author of Libi_doc: Journeys in the Performance of Sex Art.