by Неизвестный
PORNOGRAPHY AND ATTITUDES TOWARD SEXUAL VIOLENCE
The rape myth is a set of beliefs that women are responsible for rape, like to be raped, want to be raped, and suffer few negative outcomes because of it. A number of studies have looked at the acceptance of the rape myth after exposing the subjects to sexual imagery, both violent and non-violent, and one study also asked subjects about their typical pornography use.
Males shown imagery of a woman aroused by sexual violence, and then shown pornography that involved rape, were more likely than those who hadn’t to say that the rape victim suffered less, that she enjoyed it, and that women in general enjoy rape.3 Japanese males exposed to a depiction of rape in which the woman enjoyed the rape were more likely to believe that women in general enjoy rape and that they make false accusations of rape when compared with males exposed to a depiction in which the women showed pain.4
Males who viewed sexual violence obtained higher scores on scales measuring acceptance of both interpersonal violence and the rape myth when compared with males who viewed either a physically violent or a neutral film.5 The increase in attitudes supporting sexual violence following exposure to pornography is greater if the pornography is violent than if it is non-violent.6
A similar effect is seen even when the pornography is not violent. Males who were shown non-violent scenes that sexually objectified and degraded women and were then exposed to material that depicted rape were more likely to indicate that the rape victim experienced pleasure and “got what she wanted.”7 Even women who were exposed to pornography as a child had a greater acceptance of the rape myth than those who were not exposed as children.8 Both males and females who were exposed to pornography recommended a sentence for a rapist that was half that recommended by those who had been shown non-pornographic imagery. These subjects appear to have trivialized the crime of rape.9
One study not only exposed subjects to pornographic imagery but also asked them about their typical pornography use.10 High pornography users were higher than low pornography users on scales measuring acceptance of the rape myth, acceptance of violence against women, adversarial sex beliefs, reported likelihood of committing rape and forced sex acts, and sexual callousness. High pornography users who were shown non-violent dehumanizing pornography show higher scores in reported likelihood of committing rape, sexual callousness, and sexually aggressive behaviors than high pornography users who weren’t shown pornography.
These studies indicate that the use of pornography, even that which does not include sexual violence, changes beliefs about rape and sexual violence. If women like to be raped and deserve to be raped, there isn’t any need for sexual restraint or frustration of sexual desire. Rape pornography teaches men that when a woman says no, the man does not need to stop. So a man may learn that there isn’t any need to pay attention to a woman who is resisting, crying, screaming, struggling, or saying no, because ultimately she wants it and will enjoy it. He can conclude that her resistance is a sham and is part of a sex dance that leads to orgasm. He may assume that even her resistance is sexy and sexually arousing because it is part of the sexual template.
In other words, pornography makes violence sexy.11
PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE BEHAVIORS
Attitudes supporting sexual violence lead to an increased likelihood of sexually violent behavior. Some studies have looked at likelihood of future behavior measures, while other studies have looked at actual (self-reported) past behaviors.
Pornography can start to cross the line between thought and behavior in the kinds of fantasies that can produce an erection. One study exposed males to an arousing rape or non-rape presentation. Afterwards, they asked the males to try to reach as high a level of sexual arousal as they could without any direct stimulation of the penis. In doing so, those who had been exposed to the rape presentation were more likely to create sexually violent fantasies in order to arouse themselves than those exposed to the non-rape presentation. So for some of these males, rape fantasies were now part of their sexual template and were arousing.12
Another study examined measures of the likelihood of future sexually violent behavior as well as past actual sexually violent behaviors. It found that all types of pornography (soft-core, hard-core, violent, and rape) are correlated with using verbal coercion, drugs, and alcohol to sexually coerce women. The future likelihood of raping a woman was correlated with the use of all types of pornography, including soft-core pornography. All types of pornography other than soft-core were correlated with actual rape. Those reporting higher past exposure to violent pornography were six times more likely to report having raped than those reporting low past exposure.13
Similarly, men who engaged in date rape reported that they “very frequently” read Playboy, Penthouse, Chic, Club, Forum, Gallery, Genesis, Oui, or Hustler.14 The correlation between rape rates and circulation rates for eight pornographic magazines (the same magazines minus Hustler) indicated that states with higher circulation rates had higher rape rates.15
Adolescent boys who read pornographic material were more likely to be involved in active sexual violence.16 Juvenile sex offenders (juvenile rapists and child molesters) were more likely to have been exposed to pornography (42% had been exposed) than juveniles who were not sex offenders (29%), and also to have been exposed at an early age (five to eight years old), while juvenile child molesters had been more frequently exposed to pornography than those who did not molest children.17 Another study reported that twenty-nine of the thirty juvenile offenders studied had been exposed to X-rated magazines or videos, and the average age of first exposure was about 7.5 years.18 Only 11% of juvenile sex offenders said that they did not use sexually explicit material.19 Ironically, given these figures, exposing adults to pornography decreases the number of adults who believe that pornography needs to be restricted from children.20 Having been exposed to pornography, they normalize the use of pornography not only for adults but for children as well.
Similarly, adult sex offenders showed a high rate of using hard-core pornography: child molesters (67%), incest offenders (53%), and rapists (83%) were significantly higher in use than non-offenders (29%). Child molesters (37%) and rapists (35%) were more likely to use pornography as an instigator to offending than were incest offenders (13%).21 It is an interesting finding that while these offenders used rape and child pornography to instigate their offenses, they did not exclusively do so; they often used adult and consensual pornography. Even adult consensual pornography can be used to instigate these offenses.
Pornography’s effect depends upon not just what you are exposed to, but also how often. The more frequently men used pornography and the more violent the pornography they used, the more likely they were to coerce others into sex, including to use physical coercion (i.e., rape).22
Pornography’s effect also depends upon individuals’ characteristics as well as how often they use pornography. Males who were high in hostile masculinity and sexual promiscuity and who used pornography frequently were significantly more likely to be physically and sexually aggressive than males who were low in these three factors.23 However, this study was unable to determine if those individual charac- teristics of hostile masculinity and promiscuity might have been produced by pornography use at an earlier point in life.
Much of the research has focused on the males who perpetrate the behaviors. However, there are studies that have focused on the female victims. One study questioned 100 women who presented to a rape crisis center. Twenty-eight percent said that their abuser used pornography. Of those whose abuser used pornography, 40% said the pornography was part of the abuse, being used either during the abuse or just prior to it, and 43% said that it affected the nature of the abuse. None of them thought it decreased the frequency of the abuse, but 21% thought it increased the frequency and 14% believed it increased the level of violence. In fact, 18% thought their abuser became more sadistic with the use of pornography. Of the total, 12% said the abuser imitated the por
nography, and 14% said someone had tried to force them to do something he had seen in pornography.24
Another study found that 24% of women surveyed indicated that they had been upset by someone trying to get them to do something they had seen in pornography. Those who said this were more likely to have been victims of threatened or actual sexual assault.25
A meta-analysis of thirty-three studies (meta-analyses examine findings across a large number of studies) revealed that exposure to either violent or non-violent pornography increases behavioral aggression.26 These studies taken as a whole indicate that many types of pornography and frequent use of pornography are connected to negative behaviors—both violent fantasies or actual violent assaults—with violent pornography having the strongest negative effect. These patterns are seen in adults and in minors, and are found in studies focused on perpetrators and victims.
PEDOPHILIA, SEXUAL HARASSMENT, AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Being charged with a child pornography offense is a good predictor of who might get the diagnosis of pedophilia. It appears to be a better predictor of pedophilia than actually having raped a child. Individuals who have been charged with a child pornography offense, whether or not they have committed a sexual offense against children, are more likely to be pedophiles than are individuals who have offended against children but do not use child pornography. Fantasy may be a more accurate predictor than behavior because individuals have more options and more control of their options in fantasies than in behaviors that depend upon the availability of others.27
Forms of sexual violence perpetrated against women other than rape are affected by the use of pornography. Many women will be sexually harassed on their jobs and elsewhere. The likelihood of sexually harassing another is significantly correlated with the volume of past exposure to sexually explicit materials.28
Domestic violence is another form of violence against women. The violence may typically be physical and emotional, but these are often combined with sexual violence. Battered women experienced significantly more sexual violence than women who were not battered.29 For example, 39% of the battered women said that their partners had tried to get them to act out pornographic scenes they had been shown, compared with 3% of other women.30
The batterer’s use of pornography and alcohol significantly increases a battered woman’s odds of being sexually abused. Pornography alone increases the odds of sexual violence by a factor of almost two, and the combination of pornography and alcohol increases the odds of sexual violence by a factor of three.31
Forty percent of abused women indicated that their partner used violent pornography. Of those whose partners used pornography, 53% said that they had been asked or forced to enact scenes they had been shown, and 26% had been reminded of pornography by an abuser during the abuse. Of the 40% who had been raped, 73% stated that their partners had used pornography.
These studies may not indicate that pornography causes battering, but they do suggest that battering may be expanded to include sexual violence when pornography is involved.
PROSTITUTION, PARTNERS, AND DEVIANCE
Men who go to prostitutes are twice as likely to have watched a pornographic movie over the last year (66%) than a national sample (33%). Men who go to prostitutes frequently are more likely to have seen a pornographic movie (74%) than those who have gone to a prostitute only once (53%). The same pattern is seen with the use of pornographic magazines; men who go to prostitutes frequently are more likely to have seen a pornographic magazine in the last year (75%) than men who have gone to a prostitute only once (56%).32
Exposure to pornography leads men to rate their female partners as less attractive than they would have had they not been exposed.33 They are less satisfied with their partners’ attractiveness, sexual performance, and level of affection. They expressed a greater desire for sex without emotional involvement.34 Undergraduate men who regularly viewed pornography spontaneously generated more sexual terms to describe the construct “women” than did those who viewed pornography less regularly.35
Paraphilias are psychiatric disorders of sexuality as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. Paraphilia used to be called sexual perversion or sexual deviance. These are behaviors in which the object of the sexual desire is abnormal (e.g., an animal), or the behavior itself is sexually abnormal (e.g., sadomasochism). Some paraphilias can be engaged in alone (e.g., fetishism), and some involve people who do not consent (e.g., exhibitionism).
Sexual deviance can be learned. Some men may initially look at deviant pornography out of curiosity. Some may move up to harder kinds because softer material no longer arouses them. Either way they may learn deviant beliefs and behavior from it. Things that used to lead to disgust now seem less unusual and more common and even normal, and over time, come to seem sexy. Through pornography males who never would have considered sex that involves feces (coprophilia), urine (urophilia), and animals (bestiality) may now learn about, get aroused by, and engage in these very things.
Individuals who already suffer from these deviances significantly prefer pornography that portrays their own deviance, but they also like other deviant pornography, especially sadomasochistic pornography, though to a lesser extent.36 Those who were exposed to pornography were more likely to believe that unusual and pathological sexual behaviors were more common and more normal. Their belief in how often others engaged in sex with animals, sex in groups, and sex with violence was double in those exposed to pornography when compared with those who were not.37 These beliefs are permission-giving beliefs and become releasers of behavior.
RELATIONSHIPS, WOMEN’S LIBERATION, AND RISKY BEHAVIOR
The use of pornography has several other negative effects. One is a changed understanding of relationships. For males, more pornography use was associated with greater acceptance of sex outside of marriage for married individuals, greater acceptance of sex before marriage, and less child-centeredness during marriage.38 The reduced desire for children is especially pronounced in a reduced desire for female children.39
Those who were shown pornography reduced their support for the women’s liberation movement. This is true for both men and women.40
For males, more pornography use is correlated with more alcohol use and more binge-drinking.41
Pornography also encourages physically risky behavior. In pornography no one is shown contracting and dying from AIDS, and there aren’t any negative consequences ever shown for having deviant kinds of sex.
Yet deviant kinds of sexual behavior carry a number of physical risks. The most obvious one is acquiring sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. These can lead to other diseases and disorders (e.g., cervical cancer and infertility). Sexual behavior involving feces and urine can lead to influenza, pneumonia, hepatitis A, hepatitis C, and intestinal parasites. Anal sex can cause ripping of the anal tissue, anal fissures, and puncturing of internal organs. The tearing of anal tissue makes it easier for the HIV virus to enter the body.
Pornography portrays sex with as many strangers as possible as normal, desirable, and without consequences, and those who use pornography do have more sex partners than do other people.42 The factor most associated with HIV transmission is increased number of partners.
SUMMARY
The large body of research on pornography reveals that it functions as a teacher of, a permission-giver for, and a trigger of many negative behaviors and attitudes that can severely damage not only the users but many others, including strangers. The damage is seen in men, women, and children, and in both married and single adults. It involves pathological behaviors, illegal behaviors, and some behaviors that are both illegal and pathological. Pornography is a widely influential and very toxic teacher.
THE IMPACT OF PORNOGRAPHY ON WOMEN: SOCIAL SCIENCE FINDINGS AND CLINICAL OBSERVATIONS
Jill C. Manning
On a recent business trip, I encountered a teenage young woman wearing a pink tank top that read “Futu
re Porn Star” across the chest. This three-word aspiration naturally caught my attention due to my clinical work with individuals, couples, and families who are grappling with the impact of pornography and sexually compulsive behavior. Various questions crossed my mind: What motivates a young woman to advertise such a statement? What does it mean? Who is she hoping it will offend, attract, or . . . arouse? Who is profiting from this kind of merchandise? If it is a joke, how and when did working in the sex industry become funny, as opposed to desperate or oppressive? And of course, What’s next?
Pornography has long since left the seedy back alley of the pre–Hugh Hefner era to take a socially and economically legitimized place in mainstream popular culture and the global economy.1 The pink tank top symbolically underscored that the impact of pornography in today’s social milieu, and on women in particular, is complex, multifaceted, and unprecedented. Women no longer can be categorically described as the objectified, the victimized, or the consumed, as today they are also the objectifiers, the producers, and the consumers. Pornography, it could be argued, is altering the cultural Zeitgeist and the lived reality of women in ways we may not come to identify or fully appreciate until society has paid significant social costs.
This paper will attempt to summarize pornography’s impact upon women through social science findings, cultural trends, and clinical observations.
A SEXUALIZED SOCIAL CONTEXT
Although a female born into today’s American society will benefit from conveniences, opportunities, and advances that women before her never knew, she will also be introduced into a society that is arguably more sexually coarse, explicit, and risky than that of past eras. While she will have greater access to information, laws, and resources with which to foster sexual health and expression, modern trends in technology and media combine to make her world more sexually complex than ever before. She is also facing these social complexities earlier in her development than ever before.