Pornography has been increasingly theorized by gender and cultural scholars over the past two decades, with the publication of such collections as Linda Williams' Porn Studies (2004) and The Feminist Porn Book (2013), as well as Routledge's recent Porn Studies journal. While the theoretical discourse on pornography has been plentiful, there has been limited empirical inquiry into porn—and existing research within rhetoric and composition focuses on the rhetoric and backlash surrounding porn ("the porn wars"), rather examining pornographic media itself as an innately rhetorical artifact. Pornographic videos and communities remain a largely untouched site of research within rhetoric and composition, and even within the humanities writ large, in spite of their influential role in the creation of cultural and sexual scripts.In this thesis, the author articulates the results of a study that examines the differences between videos posted in two porn communities on the social network reddit, r/PornVids and r/Chickflixxx. Both subreddits provide links to free, open-access porn videos, although Chickflixxx describes itself as a board "for women, by women." Using multi-modal coding methods (Blythe, 2007), the author has collected quantitative and qualitative data on the visual (Who is pictured, and what do their bodies look like? What sex acts are taking place, and for how long?) and aural (What is being said by performers? What words are being used?) rhetorics of the videos of both these communities. By grounding this data in existing feminist and cultural rhetorical theory, the author delineates and quantifies the differences between mainstream and "woman-friendly" porn as demonstrated by real rhetorical artifacts, instead of ethical debate. The author concludes by offering future directions for porn studies methodology and reflexive feminist research that takes into account the investigator's intersecting identities and subject positions.
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