Introduction²¹

Post-critical theories have brought significant changes to the fields of education and curriculum, mainly due to the problematization and expansion of the concepts that constitute these fields. Education is no longer understood as strictly linked to the processes triggered in and by the school or in formal or institutionalized educational spaces. In turn, the curriculum is not understood only as a set of academic or school subjects or a program instituted to form a group of students.

Inspired by Michel Foucault, the concept of education begins to contemplate varied practices “[...] in which people’s experiences of themselves are produced or transformed” (^{Larrossa, 1994}, p. 35). Thus, by observing these practices, “[...] the important thing is not that one learns something ‘external’, a body of knowledge, but that one elaborates or re-elaborates some form of reflective relationship of the ‘educated’ with oneself” (^{Larrossa, 1994}, p. 34, emphasis added). In other words, the concept of education becomes imbricated with the Foucauldian perspective of the processes of subjectivation, that is, with the various ways individuals become subjects. Education is, therefore, a discursive practice with the aim of “[...] producing and mediating certain ‘forms of subjectivization’” (^{Larrossa, 1994}, p. 51, emphasis added).

Similarly, considering these aspects, the concept of the curriculum “[...] comes to be seen in its relationship with culture” (^{Paraíso, 2010}, p. 33). The curriculum is thus understood as a “[...] cultural practice that disseminates and produces meanings about the world and the things of the world” (^{Paraíso, 2010}, p. 33). These meanings constitute knowledge to be taught that focus on the manufacture of subjects. Therefore, the curriculum is not only seen in the school and classrooms but also materializes in “[...] libraries, museums, pedagogical-political proposals, different formations, educational research, the internet, games, play, the media, cinema, music, culture, everyday life” (^{Paraíso, 2010}, p. 37).

Expanding the concepts of education and curriculum also expanded the possibilities of research in the curricular field, creating different tessituras. Several studies have been conducted from the understandings then undertaken²². In this sense, we seek to analyze in the research the operation of the bareback curriculum to which this article is linked. Therefore, understanding that the dissemination of sayings related to the sexual practice of bareback in cyberspace by embodying specific narratives producing meanings constitutes a discourse that struggles to produce truths and knowledge and seeks to teach and demand subjects of certain types. Thus, we consider as curriculum the sayings, discursivities, power-knowledge relations, and truth regimes located in cyberspace, specifically in the blog blogbarebackbr.blogspot.com and three Twitter profiles: @bare_putaria, @baredeprep, and @bareback3²³, concerning the games of incitement to sexual practices without preservatives, which we call ‘bareback curriculum’. We understand that the way it works in cyberspace refers to the modes of action of a curriculum that, as highlighted by ^{Paraíso (2007}, p. 24), produces “[...] senses, practices, and subjects of certain types”.

The set of these sayings becomes, in the post-critical perspective, “[...] a discursive practice that produces knowledge, meanings, and cultures” (^{Paraíso, 2010}, p. 42). These discursive practices can be read as a curriculum that disseminates ways of life and that participates in the game of producing truths about sexual practices without preservatives among men. These aspects show its “[…] fundamental importance in contemporary politics and cultural struggles” (^{Paraíso, 2010}, p. 43). The ‘bareback curriculum’ and other cultural curricula can “[...] add or dispute space with other systems, other practices, and other discourses” (^{Paraíso, 2010}, p. 43).

The understanding of the curriculum that subsidized this research also implied a methodological effort to consolidate an epistemological field of how to operate when analyzing the functioning of a non-school cultural curriculum. In other words, how to create, locate, show, organize, and analyze a non-school cultural curriculum. In this effort, we share what we learned from Meyer, that “[...] theory and method are inseparable and that our methodological options must make sense within the theoretical framework in which we inscribe them” (^{Meyer, 2012}, p. 48). Therefore, when discussing a methodological effort or methodology, we also address the theories inscribed in this methodology. Within the scope of these theories, let us consider methodology in this research as “[...] a certain way of asking, interrogating, formulating questions, and constructing research problems articulated to a set of information collection procedures” (^{Meyer & Paraíso, 2012}, p. 16). Therefore, the methodology is “[...] constructed in the research process” (^{Meyer & Paraíso, 2012}, p. 15).

Thus, we also consider the place of operation of the ‘bareback curriculum’. Its functioning and other non-school cultural curricula take place “[...] in the tangle of the network” (^{Pelúcio, Pait, & Sabatine, 2015}, p. 6). The network is cyberspace, where one produces “[...] content that can be replicated by webs of links, constituting this immense network in which technology and effects are woven challenging us methodologically” (^{Pelúcio et al., 2015}, p. 7).

Therefore, the ‘bareback curriculum’ operates in this network. Thus, a first understanding that we consider important to make explicit is that videos, in research, are not isolated from a specific context. On the contrary, they are located to meet a specific objective and address the operation of something concerning what is around them. When taking these videos as an object of research, we looked at their dispositions and how their composition was given with the other elements, such as the titles and subtitles that grouped them in a certain way. The forms of seeing and analyzing these videos are linked to a research question, which in turn is inscribed in a theoretical and methodological perspective that directs the problematizations we can make about them. We will detail the paths we have been treading through the network tangle until we describe the effective work with the videos. Next, we present the theoretical and methodological steps: how we ‘combine elements of netnography and Foucault-inspired discourse analysis’ to produce the information and analysis of the videos that make up the ‘bareback curriculum’.

Methodology: initial definitions, procedures for information production, and analysis of the ‘bareback curriculum’

For the research, methodologically, we articulated elements and procedures of netnography - a methodology derived from ethnography to investigate cyberspace - (^{Sales, 2010}) and Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis - a methodology for information production and analysis of discursive practices. Netnography was used to analyze cyberculture and research how the imbrication of bareback culture occurs ²⁴with the culture of cyberspace. Articulated to the Foucault-inspired discourse analysis, it was possible to select the blog and profiles that were part of the research to produce the information and analysis in the curricular perspective.

Netnography is constituted from the assumptions of ethnography but attributing to them new meanings and significance “[...] applied to the cyberspace universe [...]” and for “[...] analysis of cyberculture” (^{Sales, 2010}, p. 43). In other words, netnography is used to study “[...] online groups and cultures” (^{Noveli, 2010}, p. 115). Therefore, research with netnography presents an understanding “[...] of the internet as a culture and cultural artifact [...]”, considering “[...] the insertion of technology in everyday life and its cultural meanings in different contexts” (^{Prado, 2015}, p. 181). This is equivalent to verifying that “[...] digital technologies are cultural artifacts of intense fusion with the production of ways of life, desires, longings, and pleasures” (^{Silva, 2018}, p. 39).

As cultures, they produce specific meanings that focus on varied experiences, even instituting a ‘new economy of desire’ (^{Miskolci, 2017}). ^{Miskolci (2017}, p. 281) argues that this new desire economy corresponds to digital desires, which involve “[...] gender regulations that intertwine mediatically/commercially spread cultural fantasies and the desire to literalize them²⁵, to embody them”. Thus, we believe the bareback practice, as an organized culture disseminated in articulation with cyberculture, composes this new economy of desire. We researched the bareback curriculum based on cyberculture since “[...] much of the bareback speech occurs online, where virtual communities merge around the exchange of words, images, and fantasies” (^{Dean, 2008}, p. 84). We did a Foucault-inspired discourse analysis combined with elements of netnography.

The latter arises in research as a form of analyzing “[...] how a specific discourse is established, what are its emergency conditions or its production conditions” (^{Fischer, 2001}, p. 216). Therefore, let us consider that when operating as discourse, the ‘bareback curriculum’ is an invention of this world and emerges as an effect of specific power relations since it is the power that “[...] produces things, induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse” (^{Foucault, 2014B}, p. 22).

The discourses were considered “[...] practices that systematically form the objects they speak of” (^{Foucault, 2008}, p. 55). Discourses are more than signs used to designate things. In the analyses undertaken here, this ‘more’ was investigated, making it appear to describe its operation, what are its emergency conditions, tactics, and techniques to form, constitute what is being talked about. This further required a thorough and detailed description of the constituent practices since discourse is a “[...] productive practice that manufactures truths, knowledge, senses, subjectivities” (^{Sales, 2010}, p.123). When undertaking discourse analysis with Foucault as a reference, we also seek to understand how “[...] truth effects are produced within discourses that are, by themselves, neither true nor false” (^{Foucault, 2014b}, p. 21). Therefore, acting with discourse analysis in this perspective is meaningless if only the great scientific truths and their formations are described. In this sense, the objective was to map, locate, and detail the increasingly local practices that also constitute the subjects. Thus, discourse analysis was useful in investigating the operation of the ‘bareback curriculum’.

Discourse analysis, inspired by Foucault, refers to “[...] relationship, coexistence, dispersion, clipping, accumulation, selection of material elements” (^{Foucault, 1996}, p. 57). Thus, in conjunction with netnography, we produce the necessary information through materials available in the Twitter profiles @ bare_putaria, @baredeprep, and @bareback3 and the blog blogbarebackbr.blogspot.com. We sought to gather sets of heterogeneous sayings regarding the bareback practice without intending to be exhaustive, thus moving us away from the objective of reaching the totality of the sayings. The selection criteria sought to cover the variety of forms of disseminating the practice and the disputes that compose it, among them pornographic videos. As a whole, the words consist of the bareback discourse understood here as a curriculum. Thus, throughout the analytical work, we considered that the bareback discourse is dispersed, requiring the process of “[...] constituting units from this dispersion [...]”, showing how certain discourses “[...] appear and [...] are distributed within a specific set” (^{Fischer, 2001}, p. 206).

In this process, we try to focus the analysis on the “[...] things said [...]” (^{Foucault, 1996}, p. 22), in what the Twitter profiles and blog offered as material to and for analysis. Thus, we explore “[..] the struggles surrounding the impositions of meaning” (^{Fischer, 2007}, p. 56). This was done by seeking to “[...] admit a complex and unstable game of which discourse can be, at the same time, instrument and effect of power, and obstacle, anchor, point of resistance, and starting point of an opposite strategy” (^{Foucault, 2014a}, p. 110). In addition to considering bareback speech in its materiality, that is, in its sayings, we also sought to establish “[...] relationships between the things said in the discourse investigated with other things said in other moments and spaces [...]” (^{Paraíso, 2007}, p. 62) since such articulation allows “[...] identifying in what way the things said exist, what are their relationships with other things that are said, and what is meant by the fact that they have manifested” (^{Paraíso, 2007}, p. 64). Thus, we explored to the maximum what was being made available by the research field, starting from the understanding that this is given as a historical, cultural construction since analyzing discourses, in this perspective, means “[...] to give an account of historical relationships, of very concrete practices, which are ‘alive’ in the discourses” (^{Fischer, 2013}, p. 151, emphasis added).

^{Foucault (2003}, p. 11) also understands discourse as “[...] a set of strategies that are part of social practices”. Thus, when speaking of this contemporary time, we emphasize that these practices are closely related to cyberculture (^{Sales, 2010}; ^{Pelúcio et al., 2015}; ^{Miskolci, 2017}). This implies investigating the discursive practices of cyberculture. The posts, shares, likes, and comments expressed in cyberculture concerning forms of performing sexual practices and narratives of specific experiences are not only configured as a composition of texts, images, and videos in a social network. Still, they are understood, in this article, as “[...] strategic games, of action and reaction, question and answer, domination and evasion, and struggle” (^{Foucault, 2003}, p. 9). Games, in turn, that focus on the constitution of specific subjects, their relationships with the most varied themes of society, and the forms we relate to in this time. Considering this type of analysis, we turn our attention to cyberspace to analyze how certain discourses “[...] configure amid power relations [...]” (^{Maknamara & Paraíso, 2013}, p. 47), which also means “[...] questioning the conditions of possibility and the regularities from which certain discourses compete for the exercise of power and the production of subject positions” (^{Maknamara & Paraíso, 2013}, p. 47).

By mapping the operation of the ‘bareback curriculum’ and of the materials produced for the appreciation from netnography in articulation with the discourse analysis proposed here, we analyzed how certain knowledge was constituted from discursive practices, how they engendered knowledge, and how each discursive formation constructed the objects of which they spoke.

In this sense, we turned our gaze specifically to them, given the abundant availability of pornographic videos constituting the ‘bareback curriculum’. Therefore, this view was made with the lens of Foucauldian discourse analysis in articulation with elements of netnography to undertake the observation of the videos since we understand that this material constituted a language of this curriculum to instruct, teach, authorize, and demand specific conducts. Composing the operation of the curriculum under review.

Notes on ethical research positions

Concerning the ethical positioning of research, we reinforce the understanding that internet research faces many challenges arising from the complexities and ethical and aesthetic dilemmas that seem further to entangle this complex and unordered composition of cyberculture. One challenge in this research was identifying the blog and profiles searched, even if it is publicly available material. We, therefore, chose to follow the ethical guidelines of the Association of Internet Researchers (^{Franzke, Bechmann, Zimmer, Ess, & Association of Internet Researchers, 2020}). It is a collaborative document written internationally by researchers, students, and technical developers who face ethical issues in their research.

Whereas “[...] the issues raised by Internet research are ethical problems precisely because they evoke more than one ethically defensible response to a specific dilemma or problem” (^{Franzke et al., 2020}, p. 6), we chose to give importance to some reflections that seemed to apply to the context of this research. This document indicates that ‘Special care should be taken when collecting data from social media sites in order to ensure the privacy and dignity of the subjects” (^{Franzke et al., 2020}, p. 12). Additional considerations were suggested, “[...] including specific attention to minorities, LGBT individuals and/or communities” (^{Franzke et al., 2020}, p. 17) so that it is recommended that “[...] the greater the vulnerability of our subjects, the greater our responsibility and obligation to protect them from possible harm” (^{Franzke et al., 2020}, p. 18).

Thus, the preliminary version of the dissertation presented in the qualification exam identified the analyzed pages. However, we removed it based on discussions with researchers from the examination board for the qualification and analysis with the research group. This shows that, just as we are forced to review it throughout the research project, “[...] we are likewise confronted with the need to revisit our initial ethical assumptions and designs” (^{Franzke et al., 2020}, p. 4). We find support for the decision taken at that time in this document.

Even if ethical issues have been considered a priority in the research, as something that refers to the methodology, it is necessary to emphasize that they also guide all the choices made, the form to ask, the form to produce, record, and disseminate the data, and how to analyze them, respectfully. Thus, we suggest reading the analytical texts and how the ethical and political positions constitute the analyses.

Video research and analysis procedures

There were 96 videos available in the research period in the analyzed blog alone. The videos varied in length, with the shortest being six seconds and the longest with 98 minutes and 26 seconds. For the analysis, we considered the videos posted until March 2020 in the curriculum investigated (the period initially designated to perform the netnography, between August 2019 and March 2020). As it is a dynamic field that is constantly updated, it was necessary to define a step under penalty of involving ourselves in endless work.

The first work with the videos consisted of watching all of them. It is an exhaustive work since there are many hours of material, with repeated images. As it is pornographic material, the work moves with our emotions and imaginations and sometimes involves us somehow. Therefore, some breaks were taken in addition to the days of analysis. However, the relationship with videos changes over time since the form you perceive them becomes predominantly marked by search interest. Sexual sensations and emotions seem to give way to this interest.

How we look at, perceive, and analyze our objects at the initial moment of research establishes how they are constituted explicitly for us. Thus, this mode is sometimes restricted and prevents us from expanding the analysis possibilities. What can broaden our perspectives is the very constitutive process of research that requires us to study various theoretical texts and other research already produced systematically. In the case of the research that subsidizes this article, we add a procedure that constitutes our research group: the collective orientation. In addition, we submitted the first results to the critical analysis of another important research, education, and extension group. Below, we detail these methodological steps and how they were decisive for constructing the video analyses.

When we report above how pornographic material stirs our emotions and imaginations, we refer to the question of how we reach the field of research linked to some truths about our object. In this first contact with porn videos, the prominent truth we assumed was that porn videos constitute something exciting or masturbatory. How do we problematize this regime of truth that circumscribes and forges the use of videos for this purpose? Would it be possible to escape it and multiply the truths about porn videos?

Power relations are also at work in the research process since there are a series of disputes surrounding the production of meanings about our object, which also expresses the constitution of subjectivity-researcher. Therefore, it is necessary to problematize, distrust, be on the lookout, see, review, take a step back in the entire research process to perceive in another way, multiply the perspectives of analysis, make problematic something that seems common to us (^{Meyer & Paraíso, 2012}). As in this specific case, it was necessary to make a problem of the truth that seemed common to us concerning videos as simply something exciting or masturbatory. Thus, our pleasure and excitement in watching the videos had to go through a certain tension as we asked ourselves: What is possible beyond that?

A first challenge arose. We sought to find theoretical/conceptual texts regarding porn videos or pornography that somehow dialogue with the post-critical perspective. Among the National texts, we find the article Hardcore para um sonho: poética e política das performances pós-pornôs (^{Oliveira, 2013}). The author brought important questions that helped us consider our object, such as: “Can pornography say something else about sexual bodies and about itself?”(^{Oliveira, 2013}, p. 235). In other words, apart from material with scenes of naked bodies, sex, and enjoyment, what else could we consider? In the article, ^{Oliveira (2013)} already gave us an important clue: stating that we were in a sexopolitical regime and that “[... pornography evidently cannot help but sound like a heteronormative regulation of sexual practices, feelings, loves, bodies, identity processes...]” constituting a “[...] significant part of an entire process of normalizing sexuality in the bed of life” (^{Oliveira, 2013}, p. 236). Pornography produces and disputes meanings about sex, sexuality, and subjectivity.

We were also inspired by another national text that, analyzing pornography, shows that “[...] the pedagogies of sexuality present in pornoculture, which constitute different bodies, practices, pleasures, and desiring subjects” (^{Zago & Atolini, 2020}, p. 93). The authors go so far as to show that, in pornoculture, “[...] there are no barriers to discussing, learning, and teaching about the desires and pleasures that the body can enjoy” (^{Zago & Atolini, 2020}, p. 93).

Expanding our search for theoretical texts, we realized the need to resort to international texts, given the scarcity of analysis on the subject in Brazil. We then found the text of ^{Mowlabocus, Harbottle, and Witzel (2013}, p. 530), which indicates that “[...]Pornography is more than ‘just’ material for masturbation”. The authors come to this conclusion from a lengthy survey with a focus group composed of gay men, in which, concerning pornography, “[...] The most popular understanding was its perceived educational dimension [of pornography], offering instruction on, and experiences of, gay male sexual practices” (^{Mowlabocus et al., 2013}, p. 527). Based on readings like these, we began to observe a notorious pedagogical pretense in disseminating porn videos in the ‘bareback curriculum’. In one of the subtitles for a sequence of videos, one could read the following instruction: “This is how it’s done: A real barebacker loves to CUM INSIDE!”²⁶. But the truth regarding pleasure was still reiterated, as we described above. Thus, the videos released also provoke desire: “Here are some videos to make you feel like it”. In addition, we found in another text (^{Mikos, 2017}) that this combination of teaching how to do and producing the will mobilized through porn videos is not a novelty established in the curriculum investigated in the dissertation that subsidizes this article. This leads us to conclude the importance of deeply understanding the historical production conditions of the truths about the material researched. Thus, we learn that the first porn films of the early twentieth century, named stag films or dirty movies, were broadcast in brothels and prostitution houses not only to excite men but to offer instruction on bodies and sexual practices.

This whole process of tensioning the truths then constructed about the porn videos demanded diverse methodological actions, such as looking for other elements that would help us conceive the videos with this educational characteristic. We found a survey that showed how the pedagogical dimension of porn movies can be verified today by the responses of their consumers. Research conducted between January 2016 and July 2017 by ‘Quantas Pesquisas e Estudos de Mercado’, at the request of the cable channel Sexy Hot questioned: “[...] why the public consumes porn” (^{Muraro, 2018}). Among the top motivators listed by the survey is “[...] see and learn situations and positions” (^{Muraro, 2018}).

These findings helped us agree with the argument that “[...] gay pornography serves a diversity of functions (entertainment, education, validation, identification)” (^{Mowlabocus, 2015}, p. 55). This is how we realized this diversity of functions was also found in the porn videos of the ‘bareback curriculum’. We, therefore, understand that the dissemination of sexual behavior through bareback pornography not only generates documentary evidence of how sexual practices are done. It also creates community ties and shows ways of life with distinct rituals and iconographies, as defended by ^{Dean (2009}). In addition, it resorts to curricular practices to disseminate, teach, and incite about this form of having sexual relations. It is a discursive practice that focuses on the conduct of individuals.

Therefore, considering that the public also watches porn movies for educational purposes, it is necessary to highlight which types have the most audience since their pedagogies can focus more broadly on the conduct of many individuals. When searching for this information, we came to an annual review of the Pornhub site, one of the porn sites that appear on the ‘bareback resume’. This review presents the latest tendencies, terms, and searches. The last review published is from 2019 until the dissertation is written. Among the data presented, we find the item “Most viewed gay category [...]” in which the bareback practice is ranked third in the ranking, having risen one place compared to the previous year (^{Pornhub, 2019 27}).

In any case, the relationship between the spectator and the film is not established linearly. The intended effects are not guaranteed. On the contrary, they are made of tensions and unpredictability. Thus, we do not consider that all individuals who watch porn videos made available in the bareback curriculum will wish to have bareback sex. There can be no assurance that viewers will adopt the conduct these videos disclose and prescribe. This brings us closer to the discussion by Elizabeth ^{Ellsworth (2001}). According to the author, although films and pedagogy operate from the attempt to answer the questions: Who are the individuals? Who do I want them to be?; producing addressing modes “[...] all addressing modes ‘miss’ their audiences in one way or another [...]”, so that “[...] there is no way to guarantee responses to a certain mode of addressing” (^{Ellsworth, 2001}, p.42, emphasis added). Thus, when describing how a curriculum works and the investments, teachings, and incitements expressed in it, we do not take for granted that the learning will be effective or that the desired subject in that curriculum will finally be produced.

In his analyses of bareback pornography, ^{Dean (2009}, p. 118) goes so far as to state that “[...] The assumption that pornography conditions the behavior of its viewers, whether for better or for worse, fails to explain the emergence of bareback subculture, since if gay men had been conditioned by gay porn during the 90’s, then they never would have invented barebacking”. In this sense “[...] The relationship between pornography and its audience’s sexual activities therefore must be considerably more complex than a mimetic or behaviorist model allows” (^{Dean, 2009}, p. 117-118).

Porn videos may be mobilized in the ‘bareback curriculum’ to compose a narrative in dispute for producing the truth about pleasure, the body, sex, sexualities, and gender. Here, it is necessary to affirm that this perspective is used in the research, forged from the theoretical framework mobilized. In other words, how the researcher analyzes the videos and their methodology depends and is articulated with the theories they use.

These propositions also guided our methodology since we began from the assumption that “[...] theory and method are inseparable and that our methodological options must make sense within the theoretical framework in which [we] subscribe” (^{Meyer, 2012}, p. 48). Also considering Foucault’s thought that no method “[...] would apply in the same way to different domains [...]” (^{Foucault, 2003}, p. 229), we can affirm that a research method is forged according to the question formulated about a problem. Our research problem was based on a specific field of research: the curricular field sought to understand the modes of operation of the curriculum investigated. In this sense, we approach the central question in the curricular field - what should be taught? (^{Corazza & Tadeu, 2003}) - to analyze this operation.

From these considerations, we understand it possible to think that pornography is triggered as a means of “[...] Learning new sexual techniques, validating a sense of self, finding an alternative to conventional sexual practices or a method for supporting existing social and sexual relationships” (^{Mowlabocus et al., 2013}, p. 530). It can teach and instigate the production of another relationship of pleasure, distinct from the prevalent standard constituted by power relations. Considering that this curriculum can only be understood from a historical perspective of the present, it is likewise understood that pornography, like other expressions of sexuality, must be put in its context and seen through cultural, social, political, and economic filters.

If, when analyzing a pornographic production, Dean stated that it works as “[...] Function as sexological testimony about one barebacker’s desires, fantasies, and pleasures” (^{Dean, 2009}, p. 126), more than that, in the curriculum analyzed, we understand that the mobilized productions function as pedagogies that teach which desires, fantasies, and pleasures constitute the bareback, instructing on what can and should be done as a barebacker. They help make visible which truths constitute the sexual practice object of this research.

In this sense, we reiterate that it is necessary to use methodological and analytical strategies that help us produce our argument cohesively and coherently throughout the analysis process. These actions are grounded, created, and elaborated from our theoretical frameworks. But the references do not speak for themselves. The analytical process requires creativity, such as when naming pedagogies and choosing forms to work out topics in the analyzed text. We named the topics in this part of the dissertation take since it concerned videos. We use the cinema board - clapboard - to formulate the introductions. However, all this is still insufficient to construct consistent, dense analyses of theoretical quality. Academic partnerships are fundamental for a research process that strengthens, encourages, and inspires us to perform a work of excellence but also multiplies the meanings we produce with and about our research object.

Since we enter into the struggle to produce truths about our object with our investigations, it is important to recognize that they are not absolute truths, the only truth. Thus, it is essential to multiply the possible meanings and broaden the analytical perspectives. Therefore, all the work of research construction was developed with the collaboration of other researchers in the formation process through biweekly meetings of collective orientation. They are attended by undergraduate and graduate students who develop research under the guidance of the professor responsible for coordinating the meetings. All the group’s productions, from projects to research reports (monographs, theses, and dissertations), are analyzed and discussed together. The results of the surveys are permanently evaluated in a tireless process of numerous revisions. The writing of materials is permanently reflected and improved. This methodology is configured as an intense work of reflection, elaboration, and re-elaboration of the analyses. These meetings work to complexify our understandings and multiply the meanings constructed, in addition to verifying the assertiveness of decisions, theoretical-methodological choices, and the analytical argumentation developed.

The methodology we have developed to achieve this in our group is the regular reading of the productions and the in-depth discussion between all components. Thus, all members critically read each other's texts. They analyze, elaborate opinions, suggest reformulations, present other ways of perceiving the elaborations, and point out gaps and possibilities for further development. The whole process is developed in a dynamic of collective commitment to the group’s production in a responsible, supportive, affectionate, and highly respectful way. Thus, we are making compositions between how we perceive our object and how the other perceives it. Building, deconstructing, reconstructing, and multiplying perceptions.

It is necessary to record how this methodology contributes to the construction of academic partnerships and affectionate ties between the research group members. There is a process of engagement with the colleague’s work, breaking with the loneliness, sometimes characteristic of the process of formation of researchers. This produces more confidence in the assertiveness of the work developed and prepares the group on how to question scientific productions and elaborate answers to the most diverse questions. Another significant effect is consistent learning about the procedures needed to analyze a research project or report and how to prepare an analytical opinion. Finally, this methodology teaches how to guide students in the research training process. This is crucial learning, especially for graduate students, future coordinators, and research advisors.

Resuming the specific discussion about the porn videos of the ‘bareback curriculum’, we realized throughout the production of the analytical elaborations, permanently discussed and reflected in the collective orientation meetings, that it was possible to establish at least three significant groupings for the videos. This was done considering that there was already a previous selection and a particular grouping of the videos in the ‘bareback curriculum’ based on the titles and subtitles that, mobilized by this curriculum, designated themes and qualified the films in specific ways. Thus, perhaps many other pedagogies could be named in addition to those we discussed in the final version of the dissertation, from which this article originates. From the theoretical perspective we adopted, also considering that these were the most prominent pedagogies, we understood it to be important to initially analyze three pedagogies in more detail through the scenes that were repeated in several videos: the pedagogy of ‘masculinization’, ‘fetish’, and ‘abjection’). The selection of videos to compose the analytical argumentation was based on the criterion that more explicit elements show the pedagogies analyzed.

Therefore, it was necessary to watch all the videos several times, noting details, considering the scenes more carefully, and carefully observing all the elements in these scenes, the sounds peculiar to them, the cuts, and specific angles. We understood that, in this way, we could describe certain curricular techniques mobilized to teach and authorize specific behaviors. Therefore, we made a highly detailed description of the 14 videos we selected according to the elements that most associated the videos with the bareback practice to produce consistent material for analysis. This description generated a 21-page appendix.

We emphasize that the writing with the detailed description of the scenes was not easy, going through several versions until reaching the final formulation. Initially, we knew that it was necessary to do this but did not know the exact form of how to do it. To adequately address this challenge, we asked friends and researchers in the group to help them watch some scenes and describe them in as much detail as possible. Thus, we analyzed information from one another, observing what each one considered important in the description. This process was conducted attentively and highly reflectively and provided the opportunity to produce fruitful compositions. When watching the videos, each person observes from their perspective, tastes, resourcefulness, dexterity, and experiences. Adding efforts at this time was important to produce the description of the scenes in more detail. Thus, we established a way to record the observed scenes.

To classify and group the videos, first, we chose those posts from the ‘bareback curriculum’ with subtitles that best served the purpose of the research. At this stage, we chose four posts organized into four groups: ‘Punch, punch until you cum! Cumming inside is always better (at least I think so) And you, how do you enjoy cumming?’ (Group 1); ‘Shall we bed the whores? Only in the skin in gangbang fucks! Lots of milk inside!’ (Group 2); ‘Cafuçus fuck hard’ (Group 3); ‘Surubas bareback’ (Group 4). We established this grouping to gather the videos by themes because each post had a set of videos, except the post established as Group 1, which contained only one video.

In addition to categorizing by groups, we tag each video with the following information: reference, date of posting, title, total time, and video identification. This identification referenced the order of dissemination of the videos in each post. Since Group 1 presented only one video, it was identified as Single Video (SV). The videos from Group 2 were named according to the following description: A1, B1, C1, D1. This means that A1 is the first video of Group 2, B1 the second, C1 the third, and D1 the fourth. This same organization was made for the others, changing the numbers in each group. This done, we also established a way to divide the moments of the videos into minutes and seconds, describing the scenes according to the time in which they were occurring. Thus, it would be possible to take the specific time the described scene occurred for the analysis. Therefore, this was another methodological strategy. When constructing the material analysis, we used appropriately named excerpts of the descriptions. These excerpts are mobilized depending on the interest of analysis and, in parentheses, the exact time in which the scenes in question can be found.

As we said, most videos had no dialogues, which required an analytical effort to locate and describe the discursive techniques located in them. These actions were possible because we looked at the videos through the analytical lens of Foucauldian inspiration. Even though there were almost no speeches, the forms in which the images were mobilized disclosed demands for a specific type of subjectivity explicitly linked to gender norms and manufactured bareback sexual practice - as a transgressive practice to the prevalent norm of compulsory use of preservatives.

In this sense, it was necessary to do very specific writing work with the images and sounds of the videos. 1) Describe in detail what appeared in these images; 2) How they appeared; 3) How these images were produced; 4) What the bodies that appeared in these images looked like. These were the methodological procedures used throughout the observations and analysis processes. We will now present some excerpts of what we have located in the videos. We will not dwell on the analysis of these excerpts in detail since this article aims to detail how we methodologically work with videos.

We then observed how the bodies appeared in the videos. We describe the muscular bodies, the movements and gestures of the hands, arms, and gait, and how this mode of display served to conform to what is prescribed for a male body. We realized that there is a particular investment to adapt and adjust to the normative discourse of gender, seeking to stabilize bodies in the male territory, expanding the possibilities for this to be shown. The discourse of masculinity is triggered by expelling any reference to effeminate or delicate traits, demonstrating the physical attributes of a virile male through the bodies in the scene. The regularity with which these characteristics are disclosed in various porn videos in the ‘bareback curriculum’ highlights several requirements that must be met to be considered a barebacker. The ‘pedagogy of masculinization’ adopts what ^{Miskolci (2017}, p. 69) called “[...] generalized, or, more clearly, masculinizing technologies [...]”, making available “[...] regulatory models on how to be, whom to desire, and what to do” through pornography. Thus, a discursive practice of porn videos engenders a specific type of young barebacker.

Concerning the sounds of the videos, we considered the proposition of ^{Galvão (2017}), which argues that the sound plane is important in porn videos. These videos present as “[...] iconotexts [...]” that “[...] closely associate images, videos, sounds, and texts” (^{Galvão, 2017}, p. 39). As in the porn films observed by Galvão (2017), the sounds of the films made available in the ‘bareback curriculum’ consist predominantly of groans, interjections, and words of encouragement. Linked to gender studies, we observe that sounds are also mobilized to highlight the activation of a ‘pedagogy of masculinization’ in the porn videos of the investigated curriculum. Thus, the voices and moans heard in these movies are deep and thick voices, as you can see in the excerpts of porn videos highlighted below:

You hear many groans, like ‘ah!’, prolonged and with a very low male voice (Video A1). The man who is standing asks his partner to perform oral sex on him (‘suck that, come on, suck it!'), the man who receives the orders moans in a low voice, demonstrating pleasure through long and very sonorous moans (something like ‘hum’) and the way he insatiably sucks the cock of his partner, who does not use a preservative (A3, 00 A 29 seconds). There are several moans now (‘ah!’ combined with ‘yeah!’, repeatedly). One of the components announces that he will cum inside his partner without a preservative and begins to moan loud and low (A3,6 minutes and 12 seconds).

In addition to the sonority being something that marks the production of the videos and, therefore, must be observed in analytical work, we add the understanding that the voice is a demarcator of gender. With distinctive features, a voice is assigned masculine or feminine values. Inscribed by gender standards, a softer and thinner voice is considered feminine, while a lower and thicker voice represents a male voice. In other words, it is possible to state that “[...] the voices are organized from the gendered matrices [...]”, thus used to characterize “[...] what would be the voice of a woman and the voice of a man” (^{Camozzato, 2020}, p. 253). Thus, in addition to observing the uses of clothing, accessories, and display of muscular bodies, mobilized by the techniques of characterization of men on the scene and the display of thin and ‘burly’ bodies, we consider that the tone of voice is something that also constitutes masculinity (^{Daniel & Filipe, 2010}; ^{Ribeiro, 2018}; ^{Silva & Tilio, 2018}). Thus, we conceive voices and deep and thick moans as sound discursive elements²⁸ in operation in the porn videos that collaborate in the performance of the pedagogy of masculinization in the ‘bareback curriculum’.

Referenced by the contributions of post-critical theories and analysis on non-school cultural curricula, we sought to problematize curricular practices and, when analyzing the videos, we showed how established dialogues, places where the scenes are filmed, the objects arranged in these scenes, clothes used, bodies and voices of the characters, the prominent absence of affection and feeling, resources used, and form of scene presentation constitute techniques²⁹ that teach how individuals should conduct themselves in sexual relationships. Therefore, all the methodological procedures recorded here were built according to the research problem and based on the theoretical framework.

Final remarks

We describe how we conducted research, in which part of the analytical work involved investigating videos released in a non-school cultural curriculum, which we named ‘bareback curriculum’. This topic is still emerging in the educational and curricular field. The way we do our research is linked to particular and inventive ways, which requires abandoning determined prescriptions and ways decided a priori concerning how we will work from the beginning to the end of the methodological path. This route is winding, full of traps and forks that require us to be very attentive, look for new finds, and question our choices permanently. Thus, the description of how we operate with videos can be an inspiration so that ideas, ways, and modes of doing research with and from videos multiply.

Specifically, the greatest challenge in this research was even operating with porn videos, mostly with no dialogues. This led us to look for new strategies to not simply abandon the idea of including videos. As we have said, they were abundant in our analytical corpus and could not be disregarded. The description of the images, of what appeared in the sound plane, of the elements present in the videos, of what was repeated, of the angles, and the prioritized sequences was decisive for constructing the understanding of the analyzed curriculum. The collective work, supported by a research group committed to carefully analyzing the developed works, is a methodological strategy that expands, densifies, and improves scientific research. However, these are not the only possible ways for analytical work with videos since these ideas can be pluralized, depending on the research question and the theoretical framework in which the research is subsidized. This combination of factors always demands from the researcher a methodological, creative, inventive, and theoretically grounded effort to expand the possibilities of how we do and can research curricula and education.