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Drawing on two course experiences in gender and sexuality studies, the piece describes strong, often disabling reactions to the novel’s explicit sex and violence, alongside later evidence of greater receptivity. It argues that pornography’s generic possibilities enable ideational exploration beyond realism, and that teaching shocking texts can unsettle assumptions about sexuality and about teaching practice. Using Leash as a case study, it frames classroom responses to rethink motivations and the role of pornography studies.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-shock-of-learning-literary-pornography-in-the-classroom/576183/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-shock-of-learning-literary-pornography-in-the-classroom/576183.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Jiven","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-21","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":8},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What makes Leash a “shocking” text for the classroom, according to the author?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Leash is designed to be offensive and upsetting, and its explicit transgressions renewed the author’s sense of disturbed impact when presenting it to students.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How did students’ responses differ between the first and second time the author taught Leash?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Initially, many students refused to read it or stopped at points when events became intolerable, and one presentation caused a highly uncomfortable seminar; on the second teaching, students still registered shock but were more receptive and less resistant.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What teaching approach does the author propose for reading Leash?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The author proposes reading the novel as a thought experiment, using pornography’s generic capacities to explore ideas not possible in realism-driven texts, rather than treating the sexual content strictly through the lens of realism.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},576183,1792611577,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":8,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},1099513958607,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/100002390cf8733938c?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1778829742770036399","The Shock of Learning: Literary Pornography in the Classroom  \nGuy Davidson  \nUniversity of Wollongong  \nThis article arises out of the experience of teaching Jane DeLynn’s Leash (2002), a“pornosophical” novel about a sadomasochistic lesbian relationship. I have taught the text twice over the past few years in a third-year level English course on gender and sexuality in literature and film. I initially co-taught this course with a colleague, but the choice of this text was mine. DeLynn, an unprolific and little-studied author, is something of a favorite of mine, and I had previously published on her work (Davidson 89-116). My choice of the text, then, was premisedon my familiarity with it, my investment in it, and, to be frank, a kind of path-of-least resistance reasoning, in which I—and I think I’m not wrong in suggesting, other teachers—sometimes  \nindulge: to wit, if I’ve published on this author, it will be easy to write a lecture on her work and to teach it in seminars.  \nWhen I did sit down to write the lecture, however, thoughts about the path of least resistance and ease of teaching were quickly displaced by the mental refrain,“what was Ithinking?” Leash is a shocking text, and although ruminating about and writing on the text for academic publication had dulled my sense of shock, the thought of presenting it to students renewed my sense of its disturbing impact. That impact was duly registered in the classroom experience, in ways that exceeded my expectations. Several students refused to read it after  \nlearning about its content; other students stated that they stopped reading at certain points when the narrative events became intolerable to them; one student who had nominated to present on it refused to do so; and one student who went ahead with her presentation was obviously deeply upset, making for a very uncomfortable seminar. The course syllabus included a caveat advising that some of the texts studied contained graphic representations of sex and violence and that students likely to be offended by such representation should enroll in another course; yet this warning, it became rapidly clear, did not adequately prepare students for the intensity of the text’s transgressions. (Since I first taught this text I have followed the example of my co-teacher in adopting the further precaution of giving students an amnesty in which they can, within a set time period, change the text they elect to present on at the first seminar if they discover it is not to their liking.)  \nIn the lecture that preceded the seminars on Leash I began with the kind of justificatory preamble that many of us practice when we introduce texts that are in any way “difficult.” I noted that I expected some students would be offended and upset by the book, but that the book is meant to be offensive and upsetting, and that we needed to try and think about the purpose of writing such a text. I proposed that we read the novel as a kind of thought experiment, whereby the generic capacities of pornography enabled DeLynn to explore ideas not possible in texts adhering to the dictates of realism. However, in the seminars, the students were, it seemed to me, fixated on the sexual content; and, despite my entreaties they tended to regard this content precisely through the lens of realism. In my view at that time, it was the students’ reading of Leash in this way that disabled them from appreciating its ideational force. As one would expect  \nin a course of this type, the general attitude of the enrolled cohort was highly accepting of sexual diversity and of sexual representation. But teaching Leash brought home to me that some kinds of textual treatment of sex still have the power to shock. Of course, as I said in the lecture, Leash is supposed to shock; it was the inability or unwillingness of most of the students to get past their shock that, in turn, shocked me.  \nHowever, when I taught Leash for the second time, although students still registered shock, ","cbCaidjfnDyotadp","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaidjfnDyotadp","pdf",207442,22,"English","# The Shock of Learning: Classroom Teaching Experience\n## Student Reactions and Course Precautions\n## Rethinking Pornography Teaching and Ideational Force\n# Leash as a Case Study\n## The Text’s Narrative and Key Scenes","[{\"question\":\"What makes Leash a “shocking” text for the classroom, according to the author?\",\"answer\":\"Leash is designed to be offensive and upsetting, and its explicit transgressions renewed the author’s sense of disturbed impact when presenting it to students.\"},{\"question\":\"How did students’ responses differ between the first and second time the author taught Leash?\",\"answer\":\"Initially, many students refused to read it or stopped at points when events became intolerable, and one presentation caused a highly uncomfortable seminar; on the second teaching, students still registered shock but were more receptive and less resistant.\"},{\"question\":\"What teaching approach does the author propose for reading Leash?\",\"answer\":\"The author proposes reading the novel as a thought experiment, using pornography’s generic capacities to explore ideas not possible in realism-driven texts, rather than treating the sexual content strictly through the lens of realism.\"}]","The Shock of Learning: Literary Pornography in the Classroom | PDF",1792029284,34]