Bori goes to Holland

I apologize for the inadequate pun(s) in the title, but it is kind of representative of how I felt throughout these last 5 months. Anytime I started talking about my thesis, jokes start flying around. Funnier ones, and less funnier ones. And people start asking and talking and talking and asking... This blogpost is dedicated not only tomy actual Master thesis defense that took place last week, but also to all the other less formal or informal oral exams I had encountered.

Since the writing of a master thesis takes at least 3-4 months, it is natural that you end up talking about it from time to time, in different settings with different people. This happens to anyone who writes a thesis. So, why is writing about porn special? The nature of this topic makes discussions much more unpredictable and exhausting, because everyone can relate to porn. If you write a thesis on artificial intelligence, you will probably mostly have silent, respectful glances and nodding heads, or professional arguments with geeks. This is why researching porn becomes a special experience, and this is of course what legitimates its research in the first place: that everybody watches it! Everybody knows some forms of pornography, and therefore has experiences, ideas, and questions about it, and in informal settings, they all seem to come up and result in a conversation that may have started out as your thesis, but eventually becomes anything else related to porn that is of interest to your discussion partner.

So, who are these people that will challenge you to organize your thoughts more or less appriopriately about a topic that is generally considered inappropriate? Below I provide general list of the major settings and contexts which each need different mindsets and preparation. A useful guide for any future porn researcher.

1. Your supervisor.

The ultimate winner of this list is your supervisor. Starting from the very beginning, where you have to 'justify your interest', meaning that you have to provide clear and solid scientific arguments for wanting to watch porn for your thesis. Once this is done, and you actually start reading and writing things, it becomes much easier: the vague and scary 'PORN' label disappears from your mind and you will start to think in academic contexts. This of course changes again when you actually start dealing with the data. Luckily, you don't have to talk about what you see to your supervisor: you just write your observations down, and then the meetings will be just abstract discussions on the findings and the theoretical background of your thesis. Video titles like Hot latina sucks cock or Busty babe takes it from behind are just data identifiers, and will never be spoken out loud during the meetings of your supervisor. Jokes are inevitable, but if your supervisor is cool (like mine was luckily) then you have a good chance of avoiding awkward moments.

2. Your friends.

After the academic context, you will have to make a big switch to the informal world of your friends. Each of your friends has a different background and openness, therefore they all take on different approaches. Some of them, mostly guys, get really enthusiastic, and try to sell their brilliant idea on porn innovation to you, not realizing that the topic they brought up is just as far from your actual thesis as if they were talking about aerodynamics of watercrafts. I don't blame them: the taboo of porn makes an umbrella-term out of it, and if the term eventually comes up, it covers every sexually explicit phenomenon ever created. Trying to explain your discussion partners that you are only researching a very narrow slice of the oh-so-big porn-world, which is not really comparable to all the other parts, is rather unnecessary. So just let them have their fun and try not to get too involved.
Others are skeptical and will make a joke out of it: 'What kind of school is that, stripper academy? I didn't know you could write a thesis on porn'. Well, yeah, again: don't let it get to you. Most people do not realize that pornography is just as much of a cultural product like talent shows, and are equally (if not even more) valid research topics for several study programmes within the field of media, sociology, etc.

3. Acquantainces

Personally I find this category the most annoying. Friends of friends, who randomly slip into the topic by unconcerned follow-up questions on your studies. (How are you? --> What do you do? --> What study? --> What topic?)  These conversations can be pleasantly short and uninteresting, but can also end up to be a real pain in the ass. Friends of friends generally do not consider that when they ask you to explain your topic, you need to summarize the work of 5 months in two sentences that is digestable for them, which means people that you have met probably only 5 minutes ago. Also, you might not be actually too fond of talking about your thesis at 10pm on Saturday evening - but I have to admit here that it really does end up very interestingly sometimes. But in most of the cases they say two sentences about something from their life which is related to porn, which has yet again nothing to do with your thesis, but frankly, noone really cares. It is at this point that your research becomes equal to Dutch weather: it has been degraded to small-talk.

4. Strangers

This category is similar to the previous one, the only risk here is that you really do not know anything about the person you are talking to. It could be a priest just as well as a prostitute - a factor that makes it intriguing to bring up the magical word (yes, I am referring to porn). Since it is a stranger, you don't have anything to lose, but that doesn't mean that you can always win something by it either. When I talked to two guys in their 30s in a pub after 4 beers, I was bored by the jokes whether such a study requires 'field work' or not, but after 5 minutes we reached a pleasent discussion about gender stereotypes. So, you never know if you don't try.

5. Future employers

Apart from academia, this is the only other formal setting where it might come up. Especially if you are a fresh graduate, and they want to know what you have been doing lately. It is much harder than the academic environment, as the whole issue becomes much more sensitive due to the job that is at stake for you. Trying to guess whether that company would appreciate your interest or would be less flattered, is quite tough. Therefore, the best solution is to have an abstract in your head in a CV-compatible format. Exchange each explicit or risky word to a more academic or formal one, which will add up to an intriguing result. Like for example in the case of my master thesis: Gender ideologies on adult video-sharing websites. When they ask me what it was about, I answer something like 'I researched how these web 2.0 platforms are representative of their underlying gender ideologies.' which is definitely true, in manages to grasp the essence without mentioning the P word. In general I would say, avoid the term porn or pornography if possible - that word is too risky and might trigger too many thoughts, questions, etc.

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Well, I have attempted to cover the main settings I have experienced that required me to formulate verbal thoughts on my otherwise written thesis. Actually, if I had to sum up, the major areas where you should be aware of having different approaches is the vocabulary and the jokes. If you manage those, then not too much can go wrong. AND,  the best part is yet to come: after going through all these oral exams for 5 months, you arrive at the master thesis defense. When I'm saying best part, I am serious: after having all those semi-serious conversations about topics that are hardly related to your thesis, the defense is heaven itself. Having two professors sit in front of you, who have read every word of your thesis and actually know your research, is an extreme relief. YES! THANK YOU! It gives you a sense of recognition: it did make sense! It was worth it! I did a proper research! It's science! It's important! It's useful! In my case, the recognition was extreme, as I got a 9 for my thesis, which is an unbelievably high grade in the Dutch grading system. I even quote wikipedia here, just to make sure that I am not talking bullshit