Between the Screens : Brain Imaging , Pornography , and Sex Research

This essay focuses on the use of brain imaging technologies to understand sexual arousal and orgasm and the issues that this practice raises for feminist theories of embodiment, visuality, and gender. In the first section, the paper examines the use of brain imaging technologies to measure the brain’s role during sexual arousal and orgasm and its circulation in popular culture, with a particular focus on fMRI and PET technology. The second section examines the interplay between brain imaging technologies as the means of measurement and film pornography as the means of arousal, bringing together scholarship on pornography studies, visual studies, and science and technology studies. By interrogating the technology behind research into the neurology of sexual response and critically examining the use of one representation of sexuality to produce another, the paper investigates how gendered difference is manifested in this research and how the body is produced as a site of intervention. 2 Ward Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 4(1) Rapid developments in brain imaging technologies since the 1980s have provided researchers a new means to pursue sexual response research, as well as tap into a larger fixation on the brain as the newest frontier of scientific research. Brain imaging technologies can be considered part of what Sawchuk (2000) terms “biotourism,” or “the fantasy that one can voyage into the interior space of the body without intervening in its life processes, with silent footsteps, without leaving a trace" (p. 21). The availability of technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) have allowed researchers unprecedented access to the "living" brain. Efforts to understand sexuality and sexual response, in particular, have increasingly focused on understanding the neurological components of sexuality through the use of these technologies. How sexual response is measured and with what reveals not just changes in how sexual response itself is understood and who lays claims to this understanding but also how the body more generally is articulated and produced as a site of intervention. Debates regarding the most effective measurement devices for gauging sexual response are central to the history of sex research. Brain images in particular require a nuanced understanding of visuality and the circulation of images in order to understand effectively their role in scientific knowledge production. Feminist and queer studies scholars have elucidated the limitations and dangers of brain imaging studies purportedly establishing neurological differences based on gender and sexuality. These studies have included critiques of the study of emotion (Bluhm, 2013), sexual orientation (Jordan-Young, 2010), moral cognition (Vidal, 2012), and generated a special issue of Neuroethics focusing on studies of sex/gender and two critical anthologies Neurofeminism (Ed. Jacobson, 2012) and Gendered Neurocultures (Eds. Schmitz & Höppner, 2014). Much of this scholarship draws attention to the bias at work in the assumptions driving research on sex/gender difference, the limitations and flaws in research design, and the questionable leaps in data interpretation. Feminist and queer scholarly concerns are particularly 3 Ward Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 4(1) pronounced in the cases of brain imaging studies purporting to discover neurological differences that seem to confirm already pervasive and harmful stereotypes of marginalized groups. As scholars researching the dissemination of medical images have aptly noted, the visualization of “difference” is highly persuasive. As scientific research filters out into mainstream publications intended for non-specialist audiences, the complexity of these images is often radically simplified. The image, rather than an interpretation of a set of data, becomes literal ─ the brightly colored images of a PET scan, for example, are presented as pure reflection. As Anne Beaulieu (2000) argues, brain scans "are presented as though they were photographs, transparently rendering the brain's activity" (p. 46). The image is viewed as faithfully representing what the brain looks like or what it is doing, as if areas of our brain really do light up bright purple when we engage in complex memory or motor tasks, or, in the case of sex research, become sexually aroused. The images “function as visual arguments, serving as powerful proof of the interpretations made" (Beaulieu, 2000, p. 43). Sex research using brain imaging technologies often perpetuate troubling discourses of gender and sexuality, particularly as the research spreads out beyond specialized scholarly circles and into mainstream discourse. Imaging technologies in sex research have the power to affect people’s lives profoundly, given their potential influence on medical and legal discourses, but their use also raises critical questions regarding embodiment and visuality. Given the rapid advancements in sex research, particularly the contemporary use of brain imaging technologies and pharmaceutical interventions, it is critical to consider what the future holds and what direction science and technology might take us in the near future in the realm of sex. This essay outlines the contemporary focus on the brain as a site of understanding of sexual arousal and orgasm through brain imaging technology, the reliance on film pornography as the arousal stimulant in sex research, and the issues this practice raises for theories of embodiment, visuality, and gender. In the first section, I examine the use of brain imaging technologies to measure 4 Ward Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 4(1) the brain’s role during sexual arousal and orgasm and how this research circulates in popular culture, with a particular focus on fMRI and PET technology. While some brain imaging studies of sexual response rely on direct stimulation as the means of arousal by either the subject or a partner, a significant number of studies rely upon film pornography to elicit arousal in research subjects. The second section examines this interplay between brain imaging technologies as the means of measurement and film pornography as the means of arousal, bringing together scholarship on pornography studies, visual studies, and science and technology studies. By interrogating the technology behind research into the neurology of sexual response and critically examining the use of one representation of sexuality to produce another, I demonstrate how gendered difference is manifested in this research and how the body is produced as a site of intervention. “Much of Her Brain Went Silent”: Brain Imaging and the Production of Difference Not surprisingly, physiological measurements of sexual arousal began with men. The externality of male genitalia seemed to offer a relatively simple avenue for early sex researchers to measure, record, and interpret male sexual arousal. The desire for physiological measurements grew from mistrust of self-report ─ particularly self-reporting in stigmatized areas of sexuality that subjects would be likely to report falsely such as pedophilia, and most notably, sexual orientation. The desire to find an accurate means of measuring female sexual arousal followed quickly on the heels of research on men but proved far more difficult for researchers. Erection and ejaculation are viewed as reliable indices of male sexual arousal and orgasm whereas female sexual response lacks such universally accepted indicators. While women exhibit certain physiological responses such as increased blood pressure and heart rate during sexual arousal, these indicators are not specific to a sexual context; women may experience increased blood pressure and heart rate in response to fear, non-sexual physical exertion, and anxiety. 5 Ward Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 4(1) Researchers needed a physiological measurement that functions as a clear indicator of sexual response, creating what Dussauge (2013) calls an "epistemological anxiety of specificity" (p. 134) in sexual response research. Most of the initial developments around the measurement of female sexual arousal mapped the male model of arousal onto women through a focus on vaginal blood flow. Just as erection (a result of increased blood flow) is viewed as the primary indicator of male arousal, vaginal blood flow is a commonly used barometer of female sexual arousal (Mulhall, 2004). Part of this focus is a direct result of the development of erectile dysfunction (ED) medications for men; researchers and pharmaceutical companies were eager to determine how vaginal blood flow relates to sexual arousal in women and determine whether these drugs could be an effective treatment for female sexual dysfunction. However, researchers hoping to demonstrate the effectiveness of interventions for women modeled on the vascular approach have encountered outright failure as well as contradictory data in which the “objective” data fails to match the subjective reports of female research subjects. The brain, while a longstanding interest of some sex researchers, became a veritable obsession for researchers hoping to overcome the obstacles outlined above, particularly as ED drugs proved ineffective with women. Advancements in brain imaging technologies, particularly fMRI and PET, have dramatically influenced sex researchers hoping to overcome the limitations of other devices, particularly as they seem to allow us to understand the cognitive dimensions of sexual response and enable direct comparison between men and women. Both fMRI and PET are used to capture data on the brain in action, detecting levels of cerebral blood oxygenation in the case of fMRI and using radioactive tracers to measure regional cerebral blood flow in PET. Both technologies offer "a solution to the problem of how to obtain useful information about biochemical processes taking place in rel