Researching Pornography

Anti porn campaigners have been cataloguing porn titles on Pornhub, XVideos and xHamster and claim that one in eight have titles describing sexually violent acts. Their use of the term 'sexually violent' is a little bizarre though, and inevitably has been redefined to include non-violent material that the authors deem to be violent totally at odds with normal people's use of the English language.

The campaigners analysed 131,738 titles of videos that appeared on the front page of the tube websites (without specifically searching for anything nor allowing the site to build up a profile of preferences).

The campaigners claimed that

• 8,421 (6.4%) titles included terms for family relationships and 5,785 (4.4%) titles described sexual activity between family members - the most common category of 'sexually violent' material identified in the survey
• 5,389 (4.1%) titles referred to physical aggression or the depiction of forced sexual activity (acknowledging that performers had likely consented
• 2,966 (2.2%) titles described image-based sexual abuse, including hidden cams and upskirting
• 2,698 (1.7%) titles described as coercion and exploitation

The campaigners excluded BDSM material as they seemed to have gotten confused about whether the term 'violence' applies to the genre that seems to be higher more PC than other genres.

Pornhub's owner Mindgeek recently removed millions of videos that had been uploaded by users who had not been verified after claims of hosting illegal content. But it commented on the clips it has allowed to remain online:

Consenting adults are entitled to their own sexual preferences, as long as they are legal and consensual, and all kinks that meet these criteria are welcome on Pornhub.

Academic Clare McGlynn who co-authored the survey, said:

It's shocking that this is the material that the porn companies themselves are choosing to showcase to first-time users.

Collegue Fiona Vera-Gray and co-author of the survey, said:

Sexually violent material eroticised non-consent and distorted the boundary between sexual pleasure and sexual violence.

The survey, titled Sexual violence as a sexual script in mainstream online pornography, is published in the latest issue of The British Journal of Criminology. with its abstract reading:

This article examines the ways in which mainstream pornography positions sexual violence as a normative sexual script by analysing the video titles found on the landing pages of the three most popular pornography websites in the United Kingdom. The study draws on the largest research sample of online pornographic content to date and is unique in its focus on the content immediately advertised to a new user. We found that one in eight titles shown to first-time users on the first page of mainstream porn sites describe sexual activity that constitutes sexual violence. Our findings raise serious questions about the extent of criminal material easily and freely available on mainstream pornography websites and the efficacy of current regulatory mechanisms.

Offsite Comment: Academic Click Bate: The War On Porn Continues

7th April 2021. See article from reprobatepress.com by David Flint

The study makes big claims that were inevitably picked up and repeated uncritically by media outlets like the BBC. But even a cursory glance at the evidence and the conclusions might make a more open-minded person raise their eyebrows. If ever there was a study that set out in search of evidence to back up a belief already held, this is it.

See article from reprobatepress.com

Offsite Comment: British Journal of Criminology Study on Violence in Porn

10th April 2021. See article from avn.com

If you only read headlines about a new study from the British Journal of Criminology you might think that large quantities of criminal videos of sexual violence on tube sites are warping most children's minds, turning them into sexual violators.

But this isn't even close to true. The coverage of the study is misleading and exaggerated. But the study itself is extremely flawed.

First, the researchers included everything from stepmom to ploughed in the category of sexual violence. Defined that broadly, it's shocking the study found only one in eight videos depicted sexual violence.

See full article from avn.com

Pornography and Sexual Aggression: Can Meta-Analysis Find a Link?

By Christopher J. Ferguson, Richard D. Hartley

First Published July 21, 2020

Abstract

Whether pornography contributes to sexual aggression in real life has been the subject of dozens of studies over multiple decades. Nevertheless, scholars have not come to a consensus about whether effects are real.

The current meta-analysis examined experimental, correlational, and population studies of the pornography/sexual aggression link dating back from the 1970s to the current time. Methodological weaknesses were very common in this field of research. Nonetheless, evidence did not suggest that nonviolent pornography was associated with sexual aggression. Evidence was particularly weak for longitudinal studies, suggesting an absence of long-term effects. Violent pornography was weakly correlated with sexual aggression, although the current evidence was unable to distinguish between a selection effect as compared to a socialization effect. Studies that employed more best practices tended to provide less evidence for relationships whereas studies with citation bias, an indication of researcher expectancy effects, tended to have higher effect sizes.

Population studies suggested that increased availability of pornography is associated with reduced sexual aggression at the population level. More studies with improved practices and preregistration would be welcome.

YouTube of porn: longitudinal measurement, analysis, and characterization of a large porn streaming service

A University of Auckland study by Cameron Wong, Yo-Der Song & Aniket Mahanti.

Abstract

Video content on user-generated content services has redefined entertainment and business on the Internet. Adult video streaming services have embraced this evolution to form YouTube style porn sites which combine the features of video hosting websites and online social media services.

This paper presents a comprehensive measurement study of one of the most popular new-age porn websites with social networking features, xHamster. Using active measurements, we have obtained metadata on almost 4 million unique videos that span the lifetime of xHamster from 2007 to 2018.

An analysis of this corpus allowed us to characterize the service and gain insights into the key players of the website including the website owners, video uploaders, and the viewers. By studying the characteristics of videos such as views, duration, the number of uploads, tags, ratings and comments, we give an overview of xHamster's current state, compare it to traditional and adult streaming services, and find the niche that xHamster occupies as an amateur content focused service.

We find that there are significant differences between adult streaming services and traditional streaming services. The injection rate of new videos is lower but the website does not need a large number of new uploads as long as the front page is constantly refreshed. The length of an average adult video is shorter than that of the average video on traditional streaming services, and we find that there is minimal engagement with ratings and comments. Video tags are actively used to organize and filter through content, and we observe that the more tags a video has, the more views it is likely to obtain.

The porn trade magazine AVN comments further about the research:

YouTube, according to the internet data site Alexa.com , is the second-most trafficked website in the world. The porn tube site xHamster ranks 111th . But content creators looking for engagement are much better off uploading porn to xHamster than posting a mainstream video on YouTube.

The study found that xHamster contains only a small fraction of the number of videos on YouTube -- about four million compared to YouTube's five billion videos. In addition, while xHamster users uploaded an average of 2,000 videos per 24-hour period, YouTube receives 500 hours of video uploads every minute.

But xHamster can get by with much less content, because viewers are hungrier for porn than they are for the variety of offerings on YouTube. According to the University of Auckland findings, an average YouTube video will be viewed 5,500 times. But an xHamster video receives an average of 68,000 views.

The study also showed that despite attempts around the world to ban it, porn only continues to grow in popularity. According to the study, between 2013 and 2017, the number of videos uploaded to xHamster increased by a factor of three.

Pornography and Sexual Aggression: Can Meta-Analysis Find a Link?

• Christopher J. Ferguson, Department of Psychology, Stetson University
• Richard D. Hartley, Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio

Abstract

Whether pornography contributes to sexual aggression in real life has been the subject of dozens of studies over multiple decades. Nevertheless, scholars have not come to a consensus about whether effects are real.

The current meta-analysis examined experimental, correlational, and population studies of the pornography/sexual aggression link dating back from the 1970s to the current time.

Methodological weaknesses were very common in this field of research. Nonetheless, evidence did not suggest that nonviolent pornography was associated with sexual aggression. Evidence was particularly weak for longitudinal studies, suggesting an absence of long-term effects. Violent pornography was weakly correlated with sexual aggression, although the current evidence was unable to distinguish between a selection effect as compared to a socialization effect.

Studies that employed more best practices tended to provide less evidence for relationships whereas studies with citation bias, an indication of researcher expectancy effects, tended to have higher effect sizes. Population studies suggested that increased availability of pornography is associated with reduced sexual aggression at the population level.

The most immediately interesting point is that the BBFC has elected not to promote the research that they commissioned and not to publish it on their website. Maybe this simply reflects that the BBFC no longer has the job of internet porn censor. The job looks set to be handed over to Ofcom as part of the government's upcoming online harms bill.

The study by Revealing Reality combined a statistically representative survey of secondary school-age children with in-depth interviews and focus groups with parents. It found that adult material was a prominent feature in British childhood. Almost half of teenagers aged 16 and 17 said they had recently seen pornography, with the researchers believing this figure is substantially lower than the true figure because of respondents' awkwardness when faced with the question.

While 75% of parents did not believe their children would have watched pornography, the majority of these parents' children told the researchers that they had viewed adult material.

The report also found that while parents thought their sons would watch pornography for sexual pleasure, many erroneously believed their daughters would primarily see pornography by accident. It said: This is contrary to the qualitative research findings showing that many girls were also using pornography for sexual pleasure.

The researchers said that one side effect of early exposure to online pornography is that gay, lesbian or bisexual respondents often understood their sexuality at a younger age. It was common for these respondents to start by watching heterosexual pornography, only to realise that they did not find this sexually gratifying and then gradually move to homosexual pornography.

The research very much affirms the government campaign to seek restrictions on porn access for children and notes that such measures as age verification requirements are unsurprisingly supported by parents.

However the research includes a very interesting section on the thoughts of 16 and 17 year olds who have passed the age of consent and unsurprisingly use porn on just about the same way as adults who have nominally passed the official, but not the biological and hormonal, age of maturity.

The report uses the term 'young people' to mean 16 - 18 year olds (included in the survey as speaking about their views and experiences as 16 and 17 year olds). The report notes:

While recognising the benefits of preventing younger children accessing pornography, young people had some concerns about age-verification restrictions. For example, some young people were worried that, in the absence of other adequate sources of sex education, they would struggle to find ways to learn about sex without pornography.

This was felt particularly strongly by LGB respondents in the qualitative research, who believed that pornography had helped them to understand their sexuality and learn about different types of sexual behaviours that they weren't taught in school.

Some young people also felt that the difference in the age of consent for having sex20416204and the age at which age-verification is targeted20418204was contradictory. They also struggled to understand why, for instance, they could serve in the armed forces and have a family and yet be blocked from watching pornography.

Young people also seemed well versed in knowing methods of working around age verification and website blocking:

The majority of parents and young people (aged 16 to 18) interviewed in the qualitative research felt that older children would be able to circumvent age-verification by a range of potential online workarounds. Additionally, many 16- to 18-year-olds interviewed in the qualitative work who could not identify a workaround at present felt they would be able to find a potential method for circumventing age-verification if required.

Some of the most commonly known workarounds that older children thought may potentially negate
age-verification included:

• Using a VPN to appear as if you are accessing adult content from elsewhere in the world
• Torrenting files by downloading the data in chunks
• Using Tor (the ‘onion’ router) to disguise the user’s location
• By accessing the dark web
• By using proxy websites

Maybe the missed another obvious workaround, sharing porn amongst themselves via internet messaging or memory sticks.

Researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) have written an editorial in the American Journal of Public Health special February issue arguing against the claim that pornography is a public health crisis, and explaining why such a claim actually endangers the health of the public.

The movement to declare pornography a public health crisis is rooted in an ideology that is antithetical to many core values of public health promotion and is a political stunt, not reflective of best available evidence, write Dr. Kimberly M. Nelson and Dr. Emily F. Rothman, both faculty in the Department of Community Health Sciences at BUSPH.

While 17 U.S. states have introduced nonbinding resolutions declaring pornography a public health crisis, the authors write that pornography does not fulfill the public health field's definition of one. Pornography use has increased steadily over time rather than spiking or reaching a tipping point; it does not directly or imminently lead to death, disease, property destruction, or population displacement; and it does not overwhelm local health systems.

Instead, Nelson and Rothman write, the existing evidence suggests that there may be negative health consequences for some people who use pornography, no substantial consequences for the majority, and even positive effects for some (for example, through safer sexual behaviors such as solo masturbation). Motivating people to use less extreme pornography, and less frequently, are reasonable harm reduction goals, the authors write, instead of trying to end all use. Increasing pornography literacy would also be useful, they write; Dr. Rothman and colleagues outline their pornography literacy program for Boston area adolescents in a paper in the same journal issue.

What is the harm of calling pornography a public health crisis? Nelson and Rothman argue that this mischaracterization can lead to unwarranted policy or funding shifts, rather than saving the power to mobilize the public health workforce for real crises. Moreover, pathologizing any form of sexual behavior, including pornography use, has the potential to restrict sexual freedom and to stigmatize, which is antithetical to public health, they write.

In 2007, the pornography website Pornhub averaged 1 million visits per day. By 2018 this had increased to 92 million visits per day -- or 33.5 billion views over the course of a year.

As an interdisciplinary group of sexademics, we're interested in porn's cultural role and impact. A common question we hear is whether this growth in porn consumption is good or bad for society.

Of course, the honest-but-unsatisfying answer is: It depends. But sometimes studying various aspects of porn consumption can change the way we think about it.

You might have heard, for example, that porn fuels misogynistic attitudes and sexual violence.

If this were the case, you would think that people who consumed a lot of porn would hold particularly negative views towards women.

So we decided to study a group of men whom we've dubbed porn superfans -- those who are so enthusiastic about porn that they'll attend the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. We wanted to compare their attitudes about gender equality to those of everyday Americans. Profiling the superfans

Our study was inspired, in part, by the journalists and politicians who have said that porn consumption is at epidemic levels -- so much so that it constitutes a public health crisis. They write and speak of the perils of porn addiction and objectification, how porn encourages hatred of women and sexual toxicity.

Would this play out in the results of our study?

The 294 expo attendees we surveyed certainly differed from the general population in a number of ways.

Their average age was 44 years old. Almost half -- 47.3% -- indicated that they watched porn less than once a day, but more than once a week. Over one-third -- 36.1% - indicated they watch porn every day. In other words, over 80% of the attendees in our sample watched porn multiple times a week. Only 34.1% of them were married, but they were highly educated: 60.5% had a college degree or higher. A scene from the 2017 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Paul Maginn, Author provided

We compared these results to the results from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative survey conducted every couple of years that charts social trends.

This survey only asks whether people have seen an X-rated movie in the last year, and 37.6% of the men indicated that they had. Just over half of the men in the General Social Survey sample were married, while just 28.7% of them had a college degree or higher. Misogyny unmasked?

But we were most interested in comparing the gender attitudes of each group. So we asked the expo attendees the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with four statements from the General Social Survey:

• A working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work.

• Most men are better suited emotionally for politics than are most women.

• It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.

• Because of past discrimination, employers should make special efforts to hire and promote qualified women.

After parsing the results, we discovered that male porn superfans actually expressed more progressive attitudes towards gender equality on two of the questions. For two others, they indicated just as progressive -- or, said another way, just as sexist -- attitudes as the general population.

Over 90% of porn superfans -- compared to just over 70% of the GSS sample -- agreed that working mothers can have just as warm and secure relationships with their children than non-working mothers.

For the statement that men and women should hold traditional gender roles within a family, 80% of porn superfans disagreed. Nationally, 73% percent of respondents disagree with this statement.

A similar proportion -- 80% -- of AVN Expo attendees and General Social Survey respondents disagreed with the statement that men, rather than women, were more emotionally suited for politics.

Although a majority of porn superfans and General Social Survey respondents -- 72.4% and 74.5%, respectively -- agreed that women, due to past discrimination, should get special preference in the workplace, this was the least supported statement we tested. Notably, however, this level of support is higher than a recent national poll indicating that 65% of Americans support affirmative action for women. Porn crisis or moral panic?

These findings challenge what porn scholars call the negative effects paradigm, which sees porn as an inherently bad thing that cultivates harmful attitudes.

Our survey isn't the only one that upends this way of thinking. A 2016 study based on General Social Survey data found that male porn consumers held more egalitarian views on women in position of power, women working outside the home, and abortion than those who didn't view porn.

And while most porn is produced and consumed by men, a growing number of women -- straight and LGBTQ -- are producing porn and consuming different genres of porn, a trend that's largely been ignored.

For now, it's probably best to pump the brakes on the idea that pornography causes negative attitudes toward women. The evidence just isn't there, and much of today's rhetoric about pornography seems to be more of a moral panic than public health crisis.

In our newly published study that examined a large representative sample of highly watched pornographic videos from a leading online streaming website, we found no evidence for the claim that pornography has become more violent over the last decade.

We also found no evidence for often-heard claims that viewers increasingly prefer aggressive content.

Pornography and sexually explicit materials have long been a matter of intense debate. Since the so-called sex wars of the 1970s, activists and academics have been embroiled in disputes concerning the production conditions, future directions and long-term consequences of pornography.

Opponents argue that porn leads to sexual aggression and misogyny . Others have been more skeptical about the pornography-violence relationship. They argue that pornography can be enjoyed by both men and women without necessarily causing harm .

Since the rise of online porn along with social media, discussions about pornography have taken on a life of their own, largely unhinged from a credible or systematic evidence base.

Debates about aggression in porn

Our interest in the topic of violence and aggression in pornography came out of reading and hearing claims both in the popular media and in academic circles that pornography is becoming "worse and worse."

Part of this argument has been the result of scientifically dubious claims about pornography being addictive and users needing to constantly "up the stakes" in order to be satisfied.

According to this logic, porn viewers -- who are mostly men -- become desensitized to "soft" pornography. This forces producers to increasingly generate videos that are more hard-core, creating a growing demand for and supply of violent and degrading acts against women in mainstream pornographic videos.

However, we found no evidence to support these claims, and most of the existing evidence for the idea that porn is more hard-core than before was anecdotal.

Studies on the presence of aggression in pornographic videos have produced wildly diverging estimates, ranging from about two per cent to 90 per cent . Differences in the way porn is studied can cause this wide gap in results: Researchers who have looked at aggression in porn have looked at different forms of media and have used various methods to both study and choose their samples.

They have even used various definitions of aggression. Aggression can be strictly defined as a purposeful act resulting in harm in which the target of aggression attempts to avoid the harm , or more broadly defined as a purposeful act that results in harm to either the self or another . The choice of definition can have an impact on what is considered aggression, creating the potential to either under- or over-estimate prevalence.

Previous studies have not examined systematically changes in depictions of aggression over time, nor the relationship between aggressive contents and the popularity of videos.

Testing the claims porn is more violent

We set out to test the accepted wisdom of the "harder and harder" argument.

We also tested the assumption that viewers prefer increasingly hard-core pornography by analyzing 269 videos uploaded to PornHub over the past decade.

PornHub is one of the world's top adult websites and, according to Alexa Internet, the 36th most visited site on the Internet as of 2017, with more than 80 million daily visits. PornHub is a freely accessible video-sharing website similar to YouTube.

Most of the videos we analyzed were frequently watched, but we also analyzed a smaller random sample of less frequently watched videos so that we could compare the highly popular videos versus the less popular ones.

We tested two related claims: One, that aggressive content in videos is on the rise and two, that viewers prefer such content. We used both the number of views as well as the rankings ("based on likes") for videos containing aggression to help us assess popularity.

We used multiple definitions and measures of aggression (including visible, verbal, non-verbal and non-consensual aggression). Our results offered no support for either of these two claims. Viewers did not show a preference for violent content.

Visible aggression was present in slightly less than 40 per cent of the videos, non-consensual aggression appeared in about 12 per cent of the videos, and nearly 10 per cent of video titles clearly suggested aggression.

None of these showed an upward trend.

In fact, while in 2008, nearly 13 per cent of the average videos portrayed non-consensual aggression, by 2016, this figure had dropped to less than three per cent. This decline in non-consensual aggression and a similar decline in aggressive video titles suggest that aggression has become less frequent in pornography over the last decade.

We also found that videos containing aggressive acts were both less likely to receive views and less likely to be ranked favourably by viewers, who preferred videos where women clearly demonstrated pleasure.

Whether the women are actually experiencing pleasure is another matter altogether, which our study cannot assess. Nevertheless, videos where women respond with pleasure are more likely to be watched and be "liked" (given a thumb's up by viewers).

These findings clearly challenge the assumption about the popularity of aggression, at least among those viewers who choose to share their preferences.

A shift away from aggression

Our findings positively contribute to the conversation between scholars and activists who write and speak about the pernicious effects of aggression in pornography, such as its potential links to violence against women and an increased acceptance of rape myths .

Indeed, it seems like the majority of mainstream viewers are gradually moving away from depictions of aggression and degradation, particularly non-consensual aggression.

This shift away from non-consensual aggression may signify lower demand and, depending on the responsiveness of producers to the preferences of most consumers, might result in reduced distribution of material featuring non-consensual aggression.

That said, surveys and interviews with porn viewers are needed to further explore preferences for aggression-free pornography.

Our research suggests that those making the "harder and harder" argument may be confusing supply (what a substantial portion of mainstream porn still looks like) and demand (what most viewers actually want to watch.)

Abstract

By Eran Shor and Kimberly Seida of Montreal's McGill University

It is a common notion among many scholars and pundits that the pornography industry becomes harder and harder with every passing year. Some have suggested that porn viewers, who are mostly men, become desensitized to soft pornography, and producers are happy to generate videos that are more hard core, resulting in a growing demand for and supply of violent and degrading acts against women in mainstream pornographic videos.

We examined this accepted wisdom by utilizing a sample of 269 popular videos uploaded to PornHub over the past decade. More specifically, we tested two related claims, reflected in both the number of views and the rankings for videos containing aggression:

(1) aggressive content in videos is on the rise and

(2) viewers prefer such content,

Our results offer no support for these contentions. First, we did not find any consistent uptick in aggressive content over the past decade; in fact, the average video today contains shorter segments showing aggression. Second, videos containing aggressive acts are both less likely to receive views and less likely to be ranked favorably by viewers, who prefer videos where women clearly perform pleasure.

avn.com added a few further details:

Unlike many previous studies claiming to quantify aggressive behavior in porn, the McGill researchers defined several different categories of aggressive behavior in porn scenes. The researchers counted acts which simply appear intended to cause harm, pain or discomfort, and created a separate category for video which depicted those acts as clearly non-consensual, as determined by verbal or visual cues.

Conversely, anti-porn groups that claim excessive violence in porn usually count such acts as playful slaps on the ass, a hand on the throat, and the use of such terms as bitch or slut, no matter in what context, as violent acts.

While they found that depictions of visible aggression fluctuate but show no steady upward or downward trend, with between 30 and 50 percent all videos uploaded each year depicting some visible aggression, the duration of aggressive scenes has shown a sharp drop over the past decade.

In 2008, nearly 13% of the average video portrayed visible aggression, the researchers write. But in 2016, the average video contained aggressive content lasting only three percent of the total video running time.

Researchers Sophie Daniels and Dr Simon Duff from the University of Nottingham are presenting a paper to annual conference of the British Psychological Society's Division of Forensic Psychology. The researchers claim that:

Frequent viewers of soft-core pornography, such as photographs of naked and semi-naked female models, are unlikely to think positively about women and are likely to have become desensitised to soft-core pornography common in newspapers, advertising and the media.

Daniels and Duff examined the relationship between frequency of exposure to soft-core pornographic images of women and attitudes towards women, rape myths and level of sensitivity or desensitisation to the images.

The results indicated that people who frequently viewed soft-core pornographic images were less likely to describe these as pornographic than people who had low levels of exposure to these images. People who were desensitised to these images were more likely than others to endorse rape myths. Furthermore, people who frequently viewed these images were less likely to have positive attitudes to women.

The researchers claim that an argument could be made for greater media regulation and censorship of soft-core pornographic images of women.

[Melon Farmers have been doing their own bleedin' obvious research, and have found that people who frequently viewed feminist writings are less likely to describe them as politically correct feminist gobbledygook than people who had low levels of exposure to such nonsense].

A Meta-Analysis of Pornography Consumption and Actual Acts of Sexual Aggression in General Population Studies

Paul J. Wright, Robert S. Tokunaga, Ashley Kraus

First published: 29 December 2015

Abstract

Whether pornography consumption is a reliable correlate of sexually aggressive behavior continues to be debated. Meta-analyses of experimental studies have found effects on aggressive behavior and attitudes. That pornography consumption correlates with aggressive attitudes in naturalistic studies has also been found. Yet, no meta-analysis has addressed the question motivating this body of work: Is pornography consumption correlated with committing actual acts of sexual aggression? 22 studies from 7 different countries were analyzed. Consumption was associated with sexual aggression in the United States and internationally, among males and females, and in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Associations were stronger for verbal than physical sexual aggression, although both were significant. The general pattern of results suggested that violent content may be an exacerbating factor.

The average porn user may have more egalitarian views towards women than non-users, a contentious new study has suggested.

Researchers at Western University in Canada have even argued that many pornography fans might be useful allies in women's struggles for equality in the workplace and in public office.

Taylor Kohut, the study leader and a post-doctoral fellow in psychology, analysed data from 35 years of the General Social Survey, a US government-funded project that interviews around 24,000 men and women a year about a variety of issues.

They reported in the Journal of Sex Research that the 23% of people who said they had watched an X-rated film during the previous year were no more or less likely to identify as feminists than those who did not watch porn.

They also found that, on average, porn-watchers expressed more positive attitudes towards women in positions of power, as well as less negative attitudes towards abortion and women in the workforce.

Kohut said: I'd rather not live in a culture where our government decide to regulate [or] outlaw behaviour or material because they assume it's harmful. I'd rather they demonstrate it is, first.

Supporting the study Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Texas A&M International University, said that gauges of male aggression such as rape and domestic violence have actually been decreasing throughout the Internet era, the National Post reported. Dr Ferguson said:

I think if porn were going to ruin society, it's already had 20 years to do it ... And it's not happened.

Kohut said that the results may partly be explained by the fact that porn users are more likely to be liberal people, where as non-users are more likely to be conservative or religious.

Watching porn is not an addiction like substance abuse and viewers do not elicit the same neurological responses as other addicts, a study has revealed. Sexual psycho-physiologist and lead researcher Nicole Prause said:

The findings provide clear evidence that porn does not look like other addictions.

Prause and her colleagues examined 122 men and women, 55 of whom reported a porn problem .

The volunteers viewed photos categorised as pleasant, neutral and unpleasant. Half of the pleasant photos were erotic. The team focused on late positive potential (LPP), a common measure for the intensity of the brain's emotional response at a given moment.

They found that porn addicts showed a lower -- and not higher -- late positive potential when viewing sexually explicit images.

Those who said they had experienced major problems with porn usage showed decreased brain reactions when shown the sexual images .

The research was published in the journal Biological Psychology:

Modulation of late positive potentials by sexual images in problem users and controls inconsistent with porn addiction

Abstract

Excessive viewing of visual sexual stimuli (VSS) is the most commonly reported hypersexual behavior problem and is especially amenable to laboratory study. A pattern of enhanced sexual cue responsiveness is expected in this sample if hypersexuality shares features of other addiction models. Participants (N = 122) who either reported or denied problematic VSS use were presented with emotional, including explicit sexual, images while their evoked response potentials were recorded. An interaction of hypersexual problem group and the level of desire for sex with a partner predicted LPP amplitude. Specifically, those reporting problems regulating their VSS use who also reported higher sexual desire had lower LPP in response to VSS. This pattern appears different from substance addiction models. These are the first functional physiological data of persons reporting VSS regulation problems.

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Professor Brian McNair is one of the world's foremost academic experts on pornography.

The subject matter of his work is often seen as peculiar or taboo, yet he believes pornography should be studied in the same way as Hollywood movies and the pop industry. Professor McNair told ABC Brisbane's Spencer Howson that the growing acceptance of pornography had made it a fascinating subject of academia:

Since the 1990s many scholars have taken the topic of pornography seriously and tried to apply to it the same methods that we use for mainstream cinema, advertising and so on, he said. There is a growing acceptance and tolerance of pornography as something ordinary people do or use.

There is no evidence that today's generation of young people are behaving any differently in relation to sex, marriage, pregnancy, children or STDs. Professor Brian Mc Nair. He said the ease and degree of access had led to more people viewing pornographic material:

Children as young as 8, 9 or 10 have access to pornography, hard-core explicit images of a type that could not be purchased legally, or even in sex shops in Sydney, he said.

That is a qualitatively different environment than existed pre-internet, so it creates justified anxieties amongst parents about what their children are watching in their bedrooms at night.

That said, there is no evidence that today's generation of young people are behaving any differently in relation to sex, marriage, pregnancy, children or STDs than previous generations.

The statistics in all of these elements are improving.

He believes parents must take responsibility for policing the media consumption of their children. He said:

Apart from the very clear and unambiguously bad forms of pornography, I do not think it is helpful for the state to intervene and try to censor the internet for everyone

Whether or not you attribute broader social harms to pornography, there is no evidence that increasing access to pornography is somehow generating more sexual abuse or violence ... or the other things that sometimes pornography is accused of.

There is evidence of greater tolerance of gay marriage, reduced tolerance of domestic violence and sexism. All of this has happened despite the face that we have this hugely sexualised culture.

Are Pornography and Marriage Substitutes for Young Men? by Michael Malcolm, George S Naufal (November 2014) forthcoming in: Eastern Economic Journal, 2015

Substitutes for marital sexual gratification may impact the decision to marry. Proliferation of the Internet has made pornography an increasingly low-cost substitute. We investigate the effect of Internet usage, and of pornography consumption specifically, on the marital status of young men. We show that increased Internet usage is negatively associated with marriage formation. Pornography consumption specifically has an even stronger effect. Instrumental variables and a number of robustness checks suggest that the effect is causal.

Research published in the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany claims that the rise of free porn on the internet is both correlated with the decline in the amount of young adult men who are married and might actually play a role in the decline. Researchers surveyed more than 1500 men between 18 and 35, analyzing how they used the internet between 2000 and 2004. The researchers took a look at how many hours each participant spent and how many looked at porn versus religious sites, adjusting for variables like age, income, education, religiosity, and employment. Roberto A. Ferman at Washington Post writes :

Broadly, higher Internet usage was associated with lower marriage rates. But pornography use in particular was more closely linked to those participants who were not married than any other form of Internet use, including regular use of financial websites, news websites, sports websites, and several others. The opposite, for comparison, was true for religious website use, which was positively correlated with marriage.

One of the study's authors, professor at University of West Chester, Pennsylvania Dr. Michael Malcolm explains that the study could point to marriage and sexual gratification. Ferman continues:

If pornography is viewed as a means of alternative sexual gratification, then it could be undercutting the need for marriages to serve this function, at the very least during a younger age. Think of it as a milder form of premarital sex.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin found that a part of the brain which activates when people feel motivated or rewarded is smaller for porn users.

However the researchers don't know whether this is a correlation or causal link. Dr Simone Kuhn said:

It's not clear, for example, whether watching porn leads to brain changes or whether people born with certain brain types watch more porn.

The abstract for the paper is as follows:

Brain Structure and Functional Connectivity Associated With Pornography Consumption

By Simone Kuhn, Jurgen Gallinat

Importance Since pornography appeared on the Internet, the accessibility, affordability, and anonymity of consuming visual sexual stimuli have increased and attracted millions of users. Based on the assumption that pornography consumption bears resemblance with reward-seeking behavior, novelty-seeking behavior, and addictive behavior, we hypothesized alterations of the frontostriatal network in frequent users.

Objective To determine whether frequent pornography consumption is associated with the frontostriatal network.

Design, Setting, and Participants Sixty-four healthy male adults with a broad range of pornography consumption at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, reported hours of pornography consumption per week. Pornography consumption was associated with neural structure, task-related activation, and functional resting-state connectivity.

Main Outcomes and Measures Gray matter volume of the brain was measured by voxel-based morphometry and resting state functional connectivity was measured on 3-T magnetic resonance imaging scans.

Results We found a significant negative association between reported pornography hours per week and gray matter volume in the right caudate (P < .001, corrected for multiple comparisons) as well as with functional activity during a sexual cue--reactivity paradigm in the left putamen (P < .001). Functional connectivity of the right caudate to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was negatively associated with hours of pornography consumption.

Conclusions and Relevance The negative association of self-reported pornography consumption with the right striatum (caudate) volume, left striatum (putamen) activation during cue reactivity, and lower functional connectivity of the right caudate to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex could reflect change in neural plasticity as a consequence of an intense stimulation of the reward system, together with a lower top-down modulation of prefrontal cortical areas. Alternatively, it could be a precondition that makes pornography consumption more rewarding.

Abstract

It has been an assumption of most anti-pornography discourse that porn damages women (and children) in a variety of ways. In Porno? Chic!, the author interrogated this assumption by examining the correlation between the incidence of sexual violence and other indicators of misogyny, and the availability and accessibility of pornography within a number of societies. This article develops that work with a specific focus on the regulatory environment as it relates to pornography and sexual representation. Does a liberal regulatory regime in sexual culture correlate with a relatively advanced state of sexual politics in a given country? Conversely, does an illiberal regime, where pornography and other forms of sexual culture are banned or severely restricted, correlate with relatively strong patriarchal structures? A comparative cross-country analysis seeks to explain the correlations identified, and to assess the extent to which the availability of porn can be viewed as a causal or a consequential characteristic of those societies where feminism has achieved significant advances.

Brian McNaira. Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Published online: 21 Mar 2014.

Feona Attwood and Clarissa Smith introduce their Porn Studies journal as follows:

This journal has been more than two years in its planning, followed by the exciting, though time-intense and anxiety-making, work of bringing together the content for a launch issue. Porn Studies has been a labour of love. Our interests in bringing the journal to fruition were born out of our personal and professional fascinations with the ways in which pornography matters and is discussed. Clearly pornography is a significant topic across a whole range of academic, public and policy domains, and yet the spaces in which it is discussed and debated are not always conducive to the sharing of research and the development of meaningful dialogue. Just as there are specialist journals, conferences, book series and collections enabling consideration of other areas of media and cultural production, so pornography needs a dedicated space for research and debate.

Researching pornography can be particularly complicated and challenging. Newspaper articles examine the proliferations of sexually explicit materials as evidence of changing mores, of other peoples' weaknesses and excesses; pornography as an industry is characterized as a big business whose sheer size means it ought to be condemned. It (and pornography is almost always characterized as singular) is portrayed as an industry that succeeds by pandering to ever-more extreme interests and one that pulls everything, even the most innocent of people, into its orbit so that anything which hints at sexuality -- dress, topographies of body hair, musical tastes, dancing, and so on -- is marked by and marks pornography's influence . With such 'overhead noise' about pornography, uncovering the histories and contemporary forms of sexually explicit representation, their production and consumption, their circulation and distribution, their importance and insignificances can be daunting.

Yet it is too easy to focus on the problems of researching pornography, and we also ought to be able to celebrate successes. Research on pornography has found a home in journals and a presence at seminars and conferences across various disciplines. However, as important as these have been, they have not provided the dedicated space that allows for the development of a research tradition and for discussions about the kinds of approaches and methods which will produce good research. We need a dedicated space to explore the complexities and potentials of research into pornography. This is the right time for a journal for porn studies. We need to develop our methods and theories, and to talk about the importance of different technologies, their particular employment as platforms for distribution, and the contributions these make to the kinds of pornographies that are available. We need to be able to engage with and examine the variety of legislative moves against pornography and how those might be tied to concerns about the spread and accessibility of other forms of information, and we need to recognize where regulation is being lessened or loosened and why this is so.

Abstract

The addiction model is rarely used to describe high-frequency use of visual sexual stimuli (VSS) in research, yet common in media and clinical practice.

The theory and research behind pornography addiction is hindered by poor experimental designs, limited methodological rigor, and lack of model specification.

The history and limitations of addiction models are reviewed, including how VSS fails to meet standards of addiction. These include how VSS use can reduce health-risk behaviors. Proposed negative effects, including erectile problems, difficulty regulating sexual feelings, and neuroadaptations are discussed as non-pathological evidence of learning.

Individuals reporting addictive use of VSS could be better conceptualized by considering issues such as gender, sexual orientation, libido, desire for sensation, with internal and external conflicts influenced by religiosity and desire discrepancy.

Since a large, lucrative industry has promised treatments for pornography addiction despite this poor evidence, scientific psychologists are called to declare the emperor (treatment industry) has no clothes (supporting evidence). When faced with such complaints, clinicians are encouraged to address behaviors without conjuring addiction labels.

Nerve reports further

Dr. David Ley, author of a new study in the Current Sexual Health Reports, says that slapping the label of porn addict on net smut enthusiasts is not only missing the point, but ignoring the benefits of watching porn. Ley contends that fewer than two in every five research articles about high frequency sexual behavior describe it as being an addiction, and furthermore, a limiting 27 percent of articles on porn addiction actually contain any empirical data. In fact, in studies, there's been no evidence of any of the commonly hyped life-crushing negative effects of porn addiction, like erectile dysfunction and brain rewiring.

When we pathologize common sexual behaviors, even if they seem compulsive, we're also stigmatizing them. Frequently watching porn, even up to five hours a week, maybe could cause a mean case of carpal tunnel and near-sightedness, but it also increases positive attitudes towards sex, increases frequency of sex, decreases rates of sex crimes, and fosters open dialogues of sexuality between couples.

Statistically, people most likely to hop on the porn addict train are usually male, have a non-heterosexual orientation, have high libidos, and have religious values that conflict with their compulsions. Meaning: we like to diagnose things that run counter to our carefully constructed social and family values, when maybe, masturbating frequently is perfectly normal. Watching porn isn't accepted in every circle, so it became quite easy to call the behaviors of everyone --- from the helpless, to the hyper horny, to the completely ordinary --- an illness.

Porn addiction is also a business. The highly profitable conversation surrounding porn addiction is worrisome to Dr. Ley, who claims, we need better methods to help people who struggle with the high frequency use of visual sexual stimuli, without pathologizing them or their use thereof...Rather than helping patients who may struggle to control viewing images of a sexual nature, the 'porn addiction' concept instead seems to feed an industry with secondary gain from the acceptance of the idea.

Should women receive preferential treatment in the workplace? Newly published research suggests attitudes toward this issue may correlate in part to whether people are porn viewers.

Writing in the Psychology of Women Quarterly , Indiana University researchers Paul Wright and Michelle Funk report people who admitted to watching pornography were less likely to support affirmative action for women in a subsequent interview.

That equation held true once a variety of factors that could shape one's view of the issue (including political ideology and religiosity) were removed from the equation. Furthermore, it applied to women as well as men.

The researchers claim: these results suggest that pornography may be a social influence that undermines support for affirmative action programs for women. ( But on the other hand it may just mean that if feminists were a little less strident in wanting to ban adult entertainment, they may get a little more support in more fundamental issues).

In interviews in 2008, nearly 24% of the men and 13% of the women said they had watched a pornographic film during the previous year. Two years later, as part of a follow-up session, the same people were asked, Are you for or against preferential hiring and promotion of women?

The results: Prior pornographic viewing predicted subsequent opposition to affirmative action for women. While women in the study (like those in previous research) were more supportive of such programs than men, they, too, were less likely to express approval if they had watched porn.

According to the researchers, this suggests sexual media activate abstract social scripts, which may then be used to inform opinions about social issues ---particularly issues dealing with gender equality. But really it just means that porn viewers aren't awfully keen on those who want to take their fun away.

From Pacific Center for Sex and Society, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii, 1960 East-West Road, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA. diamond@hawaii.edu

Abstract

By Diamond M, Jozifkova E, Weiss P.

Pornography continues to be a contentious matter with those on the one side arguing it detrimental to society while others argue it is pleasurable to many and a feature of free speech. The advent of the Internet with the ready availability of sexually explicit materials thereon particularly has seemed to raise questions of its influence. Following the effects of a new law in the Czech Republic that allowed pornography to a society previously having forbidden it allowed us to monitor the change in sex related crime that followed the change.

As found in all other countries in which the phenomenon has been studied, rape and other sex crimes did not increase. Of particular note is that this country, like Denmark and Japan, had a prolonged interval during which possession of child pornography was not illegal and, like those other countries, showed a significant decrease in the incidence of child sex abuse.

Fifty Shades of Grey , the best-selling tale of erotic romance, perpetuates the problem of violence against women, according to a new genderist study.

Reporting in the Journal of Women's Health , Dr Amy Bonomi concluded that emotional and sexual abuse is pervasive in the novel, with the main female character, Anastasia, suffering harm as a result:

This book is perpetuating dangerous abuse standards and yet it's being cast as this romantic, erotic book for women. The erotic content could have been accomplished without the theme of abuse.

The researchers, at Ohio State University, conducted an analysis of the novel and found patterns consistent with Centres for Disease Control and Prevention definitions of intimate partner violence, and associated reactions known to occur in abused women.