My "Navigating Pornography" course, like many taught across the nation, takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the erotic "cultural products and services." We examine the history of sexualized imagery in art, exploring the often-murky, frequently false distinction between what was created to arouse and what was designed to inspire worship. We explore the 18th-century origins of modern pornography (lots of time with the Marquis de Sade) and we focus on the history of several centuries of legal sanctions on "obscenity." We look at the development of the modern mainstream porn business (based in the nearby San Fernando Valley), and analyze the way it has adapted and transformed over the four decades since the Supreme Court's ruling in Miller v California (1973) essentially legitimized the adult industry.

My goal isn't just to give my students an historical and cultural overview of pornography. It's to give them tools "to navigate the sexually mediated world we live in," as Long Beach State professor Shira Tarrant puts it. Most of my students were born in the early-to-mid-1990s; they hit puberty under the influence of two conflicting social realities: the widespread availability of broadband and the Bush-era abstinence-only sex education policies. The latter deprived far too many of them of accurate, comprehensive, pleasure-based information about sex; increasing access to the former meant that Internet pornography became the primary and ubiquitous source of information about the birds and the bees. What was designed to arouse and entertain now is expected to educate as well. As Deen put it when he spoke to my students, "It's as if instead of offering driver's ed, we taught you how to operate a car by showing you a James Bond movie."

Part of equipping students to navigate porn means giving them the tools of feminist analysis. Pornography traditionally revolves around the production of images of women for the pleasure of heterosexual men. Feminist critics like Andrea Dworkin, Gail Dines, and Robert Jensen help my students to see the ways in which porn can construct and reinforce misogyny. At the same time, my students examine the limitations of familiar feminist anti-porn critiques. Research suggests that nearly as many young women as men watch (or, if you prefer, "use") porn for masturbation fodder, making it increasingly difficult to characterize porn watching as a primarily male pastime.

Women aren't just swelling the ranks of porn consumers—they're also increasingly directing and producing erotic entertainment that reflects a decidedly feminist vision. Penley and her UCSB colleagues Mireille Miller-Young and Celine Parreñas Shimizu edited the recently published The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure. The book's co-editor was perhaps America's best-known feminist pornographer, Tristan Taormino; the text reflects the growing collaboration between feminists devoted to the academic study of pornography and those working to transform the adult industry from within. Teaching students to navigate pornography means encouraging them to look beyond the handful of free "tube" sites that dominate the X-rated corners of the Internet to find the subversive, playful, erotic work that Taormino and other feminist pornographers are producing.