Bringing together scholars working in areas as diverse as philosophy, film and media studies, legal studies, and sociology, this themed issue of gender/sexuality/italy examines pornography as a nexus of practices, knowledges, institutions, and economies primarily concerned with bodily pleasure. It considers pornography as a rich cultural field: a terrain within which an ongoing struggle over the politics of representation, the social legitimacy, and the cultural visibility of desires, bodies and intimacies takes place. In pornography, consumption practices often intersect with participatory spheres of culture production and community-making dynamics. This intersection tests the thin line between social practice, representation and fantasy within which pornography operates as a cultural and media domain.