Temple University now offers a porn-studies course. In the class, students talk about things they 'don't even discuss with their closest friends.'

• Temple University started its first porn-studies course this semester.
• The professor, Jennifer Pollitt, says she uses porn as a jumping-off point to discuss larger issues.

This semester, Temple University introduced its first porn-studies course, where undergraduate and graduate students discuss sexuality, intimacy, and power dynamics. It's called "Social Perspectives and Digital Pornography: The Other Sex Ed."

Professor Jennifer Pollitt, the assistant director of gender, sexuality, and women's studies at Temple University, teaches the class, which garnered a lot of attention from students. Before the class even began, the student cap rose from 25 to 40 because of the demand.

"I just kept having a longer wait list, which signaled to me that there is an absolute need for a course like this and that students really, really want to talk about this," Pollitt told Insider.

Pollitt says it's a unique time to talk about porn and use it as a jumping-off point for larger issues

Pollitt pointed to several TV shows focusing on the sex lives of younger people, especially those in high school and college. For example, Mindy Kaling's "The Sex Lives of College Girls" and Netflix's "Sex Education" are popular shows.

All that content, Pollitt said, comes at a time when the country is in the thick of culture wars and a resurgence of moral panic.

She said her goal in creating the course was to use digital pornography as a jumping-off point to talk about race, ability, and the patriarchy. Pollitt added that she wanted to teach students how to get away from binary thinking: viewing porn as simply right versus wrong, good versus bad.

The class often has deep discussions about sensitive material that students "sometimes don't even discuss with their closest friends," Pollitt said.

Evelyn Andromeda, a third-year undergraduate student at Temple University, said she went into this class not really knowing what to expect.

"We've talked about how porn focuses on different minority groups — whether that's racialized porn, disability porn, gay porn, trans porn," Andromeda told Insider, "and how porn can build narratives around these identities that can be both liberating and crushing at the same time."

Andromeda said the class' countless conversations included the history of porn and how the invention of photography led to the modern porn industry.

Beyond classroom discussions, students can further reflect on porn and its effects on society by writing in digital journals. They also watch TED Talks, and even Netflix's documentary "Money Shot: The Pornhub Story" made it into the curriculum.

Pollitt says she hopes this course helps her students better understand themselves and their partners

For digital natives and young people, Pollitt said digital pornography may be filling in the gaps in terms of sexual education — especially in the absence of comprehensive sex education, which is not federally mandated.

She said porn "may be their only real access to knowledge or info about how sex and sexuality work."

Pollitt said she hoped this course would create better and more intimate relationships for her students — both sexually and romantically.

Many people, she said, think that the study of porn is frivolous or ridiculous to teach, but Pollitt begs to differ.

"I hope my students leave recognizing how valuable it is to research and to study pornography across all disciplines and to figure out what we can learn," she said.

Andromeda said she got exactly that out of the course.

"This class truly feels like I've been introduced to a new frontier of study," Andromeda said.