Vocabulary

What does pornography mean?

The word pornography is derived from the Greek words porni (“prostitute”) and graphein (“to write”). It originally encompassed any writing or art works that depicted the lives of prostituted persons.

Since its inception, pornography’s meaning and grasp have expanded to include videography and photography, wherein people are documented engaging in sexual acts for the gratification of voyeurs, primarily as a facilitator for masturbation, though there is extensive evidence that pornography is also used by abusers as a training manual for both women and children to reenact the abusers’ favorite scenes.

Pornography videos, once an underground market with organized crime affiliations as recent as the mid-20th century, has become a legal and massively successful global industry. Its normalization in mainstream society is affiliated with helping to shape, reinforce, and popularize a masculine / male-dominated view of sexuality, in which women are seen as sexual objects for male consumption.

A radical feminist perspective maintains that pornography has meaning as a manifestation of misogyny, its confirmation of a sexist system that socially, politically, and economically sees women as lesser than men. Based solely on various content analyses of pornography, which regularly and disproportionately depict acts of violence against women, the feminist perspective is accurate.

Stats, Violence

Is pornography consumption directly linked to violence against women?

Yes. The consumption of pornography has been demonstrably linked to violence against women. Firstly, pornography constructs and reinforces males as masculine (dominant) and females as feminine (submissive), an ideology that maintains male entitlement to sex, normalizes male violence, and coerces women to be subservient to men and both deserving and desiring of violence perpetrated against them; secondly, pornography consumption lowers inhibitions towards violence against women and increases sympathy for perpetrators of sexualized violence; thirdly, pornography serves as a how-to guide that directly trains men how to perpetrate violence against women for and during sex.

It is important to verify that pornography itself is violent. In a content analysis of the 50 best-selling and best-renting pornographic videos, Psychologist Ana J. Bridges, Robert Wosnitzer, Erica Scharrer, Chyng Sun, and Rachel Liberman found that each scene had, on average, 11.52 aggressive acts, including both verbal and physical abuse. Of the 304 scenes observed in this study, 3,376 instances of violence were reported, of which 88% were physical and 48% were verbal. 72% of the aggressive acts were perpetrated by men, with over 94% of the abuse targeted against the women in the scenes. In other words, pornography is very violent; the vast majority of it containing depictions of violence, particularly against women.

In a study conducted by Dr. Dolf Zillman and Dr. Jennings Bryant on the effects of continuous exposure to pornography, their findings proved that increased exposure to pornography made subjects more tolerant of sexual violence, less supportive of the rights of women, and more lenient towards the punishment of rapists.

Psychologist Edward Donnerstein found in his study of sexual aggression perpetrated against college women, 39% of the sex offenders had been influenced by pornography. In Diana E.H. Russell’s studies, she found that perpetrators of sexual violence against children frequently used pornography as a grooming method to provoke sexual curiosity, legitimize, normalize, and desensitize them to sexual violence, and silence them by making them feel guilty and thus complicit in their own abuse. In Professor Janet Hinson Shope’s studies, she found that among women who were in sexually abusive relationships, pornography had played a direct role in the abuse 58% of the time. A comparable study found that 25% of abusive men forced their partners to either watch or reenact scenes from pornography; this study also found that the most abusive abusers were those who watched pornography.

In each of these studies, and many more conducted over the course of the last several decades, the through line is that pornography has not only shaped attitudes towards violence against women but has played a direct role in conditioning men to be perpetrators of sexual violence and conditioning women and children to accept sexualized violence.

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Stats, United States, Violence, Women's Rights

Does pornography consumption shape the way consumers perceive rapists and rape victims?

Yes. Consumers who have viewed a significant amount of pornography have demonstrably been proven to perceive rapists with more compassion and rape victims with less.

In a study conducted in 1982, Dr. Dolf Zillman of Indiana University and Dr. Jennings Bryant of the University of Alabama questioned whether continuous exposure to pornography impacted an individual’s sexual beliefs and attitudes. 80 college-age male and 80 female participants were divided into three groups of pornography exposure (massive exposure, intermediate exposure, and no exposure).

The results found that men who actively consumed porn recommended on average a 50 month prison sentence to convicted rapists, while men who were not consuming porn recommend a 95 month prison sentence. Women who consumed porn recommended 77 month prison sentences, while women who did not consume porn recommend 143 months.

In this same study, men who were consuming porn were three times less likely to support any expansion of women’s rights.

It’s worth noting that at the time of study, the massive exposure group was shown only 4 hours of 48 minutes of non-violent pornography over six weeks. Today, the average US porn consumer watches around 10 minutes a day, or 7 hours over six weeks, of which is violent 88% of the time.

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