The Sex Market: The Market Of Pornography

2.1 The Market of Pornography

Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest on studying pornography consumption by many academia and scholars from different disciplines, such as economics, sociology and psychology. According to D’Orlando (2011), sex market is considerably vital for many academia and scholars in comprehending the transformation of contemporary customs (D’Orlando, 2011). For example, the study of pornography market may assist in understanding the evolution of the medium of expression. In order to comprehend the ways in which gender has played a role in constructing pornography today, it is vital to firstly comprehend the transformation of the pornography market.

The birth of early modern pornography can be dated back

According to Sigel (2000), the emergence of photography technology at that time had offered working class people more opportunities to access pornography easily. For example, the pornographic artifacts were produced in forms of ‘postcards, stereoscope images and transparencies’ that were made more working classes ‘friendly’. By emphasising the pornographic postcards in particular, Sigel further claimed that many working-class men and women viewed these postcards as comparatively inexpensive and easy to consume and to communicate via these visual representations of female nude body (Sigel, 2000: 860). Agreeing with Sigel’s findings, Paasonen, Nikunen and Saarenmaa (2007) added that this novel form of visual pornography permitted more working class people to become consumers, rather than merely the objects of representation as they used to be during the eighteen century (Paasonen et al, 2007). With the help of the mass-produced and inexpensive nature of photography technology during the nineteenth century, it can be argued that there was a significant increase of the production and consumption of

Meantime, pornographic artifacts such as videos and pictures are ubiquitous; they can be found in the sex shop, at the newsstands or even at home through the internet. According to Manning (2005)’s study, he revealed that the global revenues generated from the general pornography was fifty-seven billion dollars in 2005, with 2.5 billion dollars revenue came from the internet sector. He further denoted that the pornography market is now generated far more revenues than other markets such as the basket franchise and professional football (Manning, 2005). A more recent data disclosed by Internet Pornography Statistics (2006) demonstrated an increasing trend of pornography consumption. The global revenue of pornography market was increased to ninety-seven billion dollars in 2006, and China with twenty-seven billion dollars was listed as the top in generating most of the pornography revenues (Internet Pornography Statistics, 2006). Under the facilitation of internet nowadays, it enables a vast range of pornographic products (e.g. images; videos) and offers anonymous access for people all over the world to consume