The People's Porn is the first history of American handmade and homemade pornography, which offers the back story to the explosion of amateur pornography on the Internet. In doing so, it is a much-needed counterweight to the ahistorical and ideological arguments that dominate most discussions about pornography. Critics focus on mass-produced materials and make claims about pornography as plasticized or commodified. In contrast, this book looks at what people made rather than what they bought, revealing how people thought about sexuality for themselves. Whalers and craftsmen, prisoners and activists, African Americans and feminists, all made their own pornography. The People's Porn challenges preconceptions as it tells a new and fascinating story about American sexual history.