A new study out of Brigham Young University finds that men still substantially outpace women in porn consumption. 86.1% of the male respondents said they had viewed porn in the past year, versus 31.0% of the women. Among the men, 21.3% said they viewed porn every day or almost every day, versus just 1.0% of the women. Participants in the study were aged 18-26.
The study, titled “Generation XXX: Pornography Acceptance and Use Among Emerging Adults”, will be published in the January issue of Journal of Adolescent Research. It finds that pornography acceptance and use is associated with increased levels of risky sexual behaviors and binge drinking among college students.
Investigators noted that 51% of women feel that porn is not an acceptable way to express one’s sexuality. Since 86% of men consume porn, this “may create an area of tension when it comes to couple formation”.
See also:
USA Today: “Study: Young adults now find porn more acceptable” (12/12/07)
Children and teenagers are regularly bombarded with X-rated and suggestive images that imply that casual hook-ups are the norm, says Sabrina Weill, editor in chief of MomLogic, a website that helps mothers deal with a variety of parenting problems.
A Review of Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families
Many of Paul’s interview subjects said porn use made them more judgmental of their real-life sex partners. One thrice-divorced 34-year-old subject, who had been watching porn since age 10, said that he would break up with any woman who wouldn’t give him the kind of pleasure he saw men getting in porn films. If the woman takes too long to reach orgasm, or doesn’t enjoy swallowing semen, she’s history. (pp.92-93) Other young men said they wanted their girlfriends to be “slutty” and submissive (p.94)…
Sociologist Michael Kimmel of SUNY-Stony Brook, who has studied pornography for 20 years, sees women’s embrace of porn as a decidedly mixed blessing. On the one hand, it reflects women’s increased comfort with their own sexual desires and agency. On the other hand, those desires have become more jaded and dehumanized since porn became part of women’s lives. “Compared with ten years ago, women’s fantasies are more likely today to include violence, rough sex, strangers, and descriptions of male physical attributes.” (p.113) Kimmel calls this the “masculinization” of women’s sexual imaginations. He worries that women are being taught to internalize the crudest forms of male-dominated sexuality…
The women Paul interviewed, even those who considered themselves sexually experienced and adventurous, frequently reported problems with their partners’ porn use. One woman in her 30s told Paul that she felt cheapened and alienated from her lovers when she noticed them using porn-film moves on her. She could tell when a man was a heavy porn user because he treated her as an object to be viewed, keeping her at an emotional distance. (pp.128-29) Other women said their partners constantly deceived them about how much porn they were watching. Women who made the concession to watch “couples” erotica with their partners felt betrayed and second-rate when they discovered the men were still secretly indulging in hardcore porn. They felt anxious that their men were not sufficiently fulfilled by a relationship with them. (pp.146-47) Just as when a wife discovers her husband’s adultery, these women wondered if it was their fault that the men looked elsewhere for sexual satisfaction. (pp. 170-71) Meanwhile, acceptance of porn was a romantic deal-breaker for many of Paul’s male subjects; they would rather sacrifice a relationship than kick the habit. (pp.134-35) This is a common symptom of addiction.
The Impact of Internet Pornography on Marriage and the Family: A Review of the Research
…pornography consumption is associated with the following six trends, among others:
- Increased marital distress, and risk of separation and divorce,
- Decreased marital intimacy and sexual satisfaction,
- Infidelity
- Increased appetite for more graphic types of pornography and sexual activity associated with abusive, illegal or unsafe practices,
- Devaluation of monogamy, marriage and child rearing,
- An increasing number of people struggling with compulsive and addictive sexual behaviour.
Pornography consumption had a most powerful effect on evaluations of the desirability and viability of marriage. Endorsement of marriage as an essential institution dropped from 60.0% in the control groups to 38.8% in the treatment groups…
The most astonishing effect of prolonged pornography consumption on family values, however, concerns the desire to have children… [E]xposure to pornography reduced the desire to have children, and it did so in a uniform fashion. Male and female respondents, students and nonstudents alike, wanted fewer children on the average. The desire to have male offspring dropped 31%. The desire for female offspring, being lower overall, dropped by about twice that margin: 61%. This reduction proved specific to gender. Male respondents expressed little desire for female offspring altogether. It’s the desire of females for offspring of their own kind that, after consumption of pornography, shrank to one third of its normal strength…
Porn Use Correlates with Infidelity, Prostitution, Aggression, Rape-Supportive Beliefs
In 2005, a survey of 718 Swedish high school students found that “Seventy-one percent of adolescents surveyed believed pornography consumption influenced others’ behavior, and 29 percent believed it affected their own behavior.” Reported in International Journal of STD & AIDS.
On Sale at Capital Video: Use Em’ Abuse Em’ and Lose Em’ #9
“Ride along as we pick up ordinary young women f***’em senseless and dump’em! It’s all good clean fun!”
Now on Sale at Capital Video: Watch Women Eat Their Own Poop (explicit)
Abusive Relationships and Porn: The Similarities (explicit language)
My Boyfriend Loves Porn – What Should I Do?
…You are responding as almost all women do that email me on this subject. Women internalize the man viewing porn as if there was something wrong with them. It is not true. You are fine… You appear wise by not wanting this in your life. I would be highly cautious having a relationship [with] this man if porn has been such a part of his life… You do not want to marry a porn addict and then suffer the consequences for years to come.
Salon: Porn Isolates its Users, Erodes Civility and Love
…whether you approve of porn in theory or not, its effect will be to displace [the mate of the porn addict]. Like crack, it tends to take over, to push out other hungers that tend to nurture the human community by making us dependent on one another. Since we are dependent on each other we must be civil and loving. If we are not dependent on each other then we needn’t be civil and loving. We needn’t have community and family…
Testimony in Minneapolis: Porn and the Death Spiral of a Marriage
…we would have incredible arguments with each other. I would tell him I loved him, I only wanted to love him, I wanted to be a good wife, I wanted our marriage to work, but I didn’t want to be with these other people. It was he I wanted to be with, and no one else. He told me if I loved him I would do this. And that, as I could see from the things that he read me in the magazines initially, a lot of times women didn’t like it, but if I tried it enough I would probably like it, and I would learn to like it. And he would read me stories where women learned to like it.
Young New Yorkers Talk about Porn’s Effect on their Relationships (explicit language)
They have since broken up, and have stopped talking. “He was a lot more innocent when he was younger,” she says. “He was looking for love and companionship. Now he just wants a good lay. I’m sure he’s looking for some huge-breasted, tight-assed bitch…” These days, she feels “very jaded about love and sex,” but every so often, she finds her cynicism dissolving… “I think it will be really rare, and hopefully it will happen, that I can meet a guy who will be happy with only me.”