Le ragazze del porno. Women doing porn in an italian case study

Porn is an “extreme product of the mass culture” (Regazzoni, 2010) and one of the main and least investigated media consumption in Italy. Even if academies give it the brush-off (Stella, 2011) and classic feminism condemns it (MacKinnon, 1993), porn is the driving force of technological progress – from the domestic use of VHS to the Web (Adamo, 2014) – and a crucial field for the experimentation of new communicative practices. Today we talk about neoporn due to the Web users’ protagonism in creating content and about post-porn, namely the productions designed by and for women, that go beyond the traditional patriarchal characterization of porn. Even though experiences such as the French X Femmes, the Swedish Dirty Diaries and Erika Lust’s work in Spain show that a different porn is possible, the Italian situation is different. In a comparison with other realities, the article investigates the possibilities of reforming porn in a hostile political and cultural environment like the Italian one, bringing to light particular elements we found in the case study of Le ragazze del porno.