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Article published In:
Who’s really normal? Language and sexuality in public space
Edited by Mie Hiramoto
[Journal of Language and Sexuality 4:2] 2015
► pp. 254–271

The subversive potential of queer pornography

A systemic-functional analysis of a written online text

| Lancaster University, United Kingdom
This paper addresses the question of what potential queer pornography has to subvert hegemonic discourses of gender and sexuality. In particular, it engages in the analysis of transitivity and metaphor in an example of queer written online pornography and links this textual analysis to a discussion of the role of text distribution and consumption in realising any subversive potential. The analysis shows that in terms of participant representation, the text reinforces rather than challenges hegemonic discourses of gender and sexuality: Although the main protagonists are both ambiguously sexed, patterns of transitivity and use of metaphor construct largely binary gender identities for them, allocating sexual activity to the first-person narrator while casting the Other as passively desiring. In terms of its distribution and consumption, however, the text maintains its subversive potential as it sexualises a public online space and can turn offline public space into a sexual place.
Keywords: transitivity, written pornography, space/place, systemic-functional linguistics, queer discourse studies, online discourse
Published online: 18 September 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.4.2.04kol
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