Porn Statistics and Research

Porn research which refutes quite nicely the awful pro-porny propaganda bandied about so cheerfully on message boards. Feel free to cut and paste to your heart’s content, as reputable peer-reviewed research is the only thing which makes misogynists cry.

This section is occasionally updated and refined. Not to mention it’s permanently archived on a free site, so it won’t ever change it’s address or disappear. Bookmark for your convenience! More links containing additional peer-reviewed studies are listed at the bottom.

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1. SEXUAL OBJECTIFICATION. This experiment confirmed McKenzie-Mohr and Zanna’s hypothesis that exposure to NON-violent pornography causes masculine sex-typed males, in contrast to androgynous males, to view and treat a woman as a sex object.

As the myth that women enjoy rape is widely held, the argument that consumers of pornography realize that such portrayals are false, is totally unconvincing (Brownmiller, 1975; Burt, 1980; Russell, 1975). Indeed, several studies have shown that portrayals of women enjoying rape and other kinds of sexual violence can lead to increased acceptance of rape myths in both males and females. In an experiment conducted by Neil Malamuth and James Check, for example, one group of college students saw a pornographic depiction in which a woman was portrayed as sexually aroused by sexual violence, and a second group was exposed to control materials. Subsequently, all subjects were shown a second rape portrayal. The students who had been exposed to the pornographic depiction of rape were significantly more likely than the students in the control group (1) to perceive the second rape victim as suffering less trauma; (2) to believe that she actually enjoyed it; and (3) to believe that women in general enjoy rape and forced sexual acts (Check and Malamuth, 1985, p. 419).

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2. RAPE SUPPORTIVE BELIEFS . In Maxwell and Check’s 1992 study of 247 high school students described above, they found very high rates of what they called “rape supportive beliefs”, that is, acceptance of rape myths and violence against women. The boys who were the most frequent consumers of pornography and/or who reported learning a lot from it, were more accepting of rape supportive beliefs than their peers who were less frequent consumers and/or who said they had not learned as much from it.

Malamuth and Check (1981) conducted an experiment of particular interest because the movies shown were part of the regular campus film program. Students were randomly assigned to view either a feature-length film that portrayed violence against women as being justifiable and having positive consequences (“Swept Away”, “The Getaway”) or a film without sexual violence. The experiment showed that exposure to the sexually violent movies increased the male subjects’ acceptance of interpersonal violence against women. (This outcome did not occur with the female subjects.) These effects were measured several days after the films had been seen.

Malamuth suggests several processes by which sexual violence in the media “might lead to attitudes that are more accepting of violence against women” (1986, p. 4). Some of these processes also probably facilitate the undermining of pornography consumers’ internal inhibitions against acting out rape desires.

• Labelling sexual violence more as as sexual rather than a violent act.
• Adding to perceptions that sexual aggression is normative and culturally acceptable.
• Changing attributions of responsibility to place more blame on the victim.
• Elevating the positive value of sexual aggression by associating it with sexual pleasure and a sense of conquest.
• Reducing negative emotional reactions to sexually aggressive acts (1986, p. 5).
  (4) Trivializing rape. According to Donnerstein, in most studies on the effects of pornography, “subjects have been exposed to only a few minutes of pornographic material” (1985, p. 341). In contrast, Zillman and Bryant examined the impact on male subjects of what they refer to as “massive exposure” to non-violent pornography (4 hours and 48 minutes per week over a period of six weeks; for further details about the experimental design, see page 27). After three weeks the subjects were told that they were participating in an American Bar Association study that required them to evaluate a trial in which a man was prosecuted for the rape of a female hitchhiker. At the end of this mock trial various measures were taken of the subjects’ opinions about the trial and about rape in general. For example, they were asked to recommend the prison term they thought most fair.

Zillmann and Bryant found that the male subjects who were exposed to the massive amounts of pornography considered rape a less serious crime than they did before they were exposed to it; they thought that prison sentences for rape should be shorter; and they perceived sexual aggression and abuse as causing less suffering for the victims, even in the case of an adult male having sexual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl (1984, p. 132). They concluded that “heavy exposure to common non-violent pornography trivialized rape as a criminal offense” (1984, p. 117).

(5) Callous attitudes toward female sexuality. In the same experiment on massive exposure, Zillmann and Bryant also reported that, “males’ sexual callousness toward women was significantly enhanced” (1984, p. 117). Male subjects, for example, became increasingly accepting of statements such as “A woman doesn’t mean ‘no’ until she slaps you”; “A man should find them, fool them, fuck them, and forget them”; and “If they are old enough to bleed, they are old enough to butcher.” However, judging by these items, it is difficult to distinguish sexual callousness from a general hostility to women.

(6) Acceptance of male dominance in intimate relationships. A marked increase in males’ acceptance of male dominance in intimate relationships was yet another result of this massive exposure to pornography (Zillmann and Bryant, 1984, p. 121). The notion that women are, or ought to be, equal in intimate relationships was more likely to be abandoned by these male subjects (1984, p. 122). Finally, their support of the women’s liberation movement also declined sharply (1984, p. 134).

These findings demonstrate that pornography increases the acceptability of sexism. As Van White points out, “by using pornography, by looking at other human beings as a lower form of life, they [the pornographers] are perpetuating the same kind of hatred that brings racism to society” (1984).

The greater trivializing of rape by males, the increase in their callous attitudes toward female sexuality, and their greater acceptance of male domination, are all likely to contribute to undermining some males’ inhibitions against acting out their desires to rape.

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3. CALLOUSNESS AND INDIFFERENCE TOWARDS VICTIMS

(7) Desensitizing males to rape. In an experiment specifically designed to study desensitization, Linz, Donnerstein, and Penrod showed ten hours of R-rated or X-rated movies over a period of five days to male subjects (Donnerstein and Linz, 1985, p. 34A). Some students saw X-rated movies depicting sexual assault; others saw X-rated movies depicting only consenting sex; and a third group saw R-rated sexually violent movies–for example, “I Spit on Your Grave,” “Toolbox Murders,” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Donnerstein (1983) describes “Toolbox Murders” as follows: There is an erotic bathtub scene in which a woman massages herself. A beautiful song is played. Then a psychotic killer enters with a nail gun. The music stops. He chases the woman around the room, then shoots her through the stomach with the nail gun. She falls across a chair. The song comes back on as he puts the nail gun to her forehead and blows her brains out. According to Donnerstein, many young males become sexually aroused by this movie (1983, p. 10).

Donnerstein and Linz point out that, “It has always been suggested by critics of media violence research that only those who are already predisposed toward violence are influenced by exposure to media violence” (1985, p. 34F). These experimenters, however, actually preselected their subjects to ensure that they were not psychotic, hostile, or anxious.

Donnerstein and Linz described the impact of the R-rated movies on their subjects as follows:

Initially, after the first day of viewing, the men rated themselves as significantly above the norm for depression, anxiety, and annoyance on a mood adjective checklist. After each subsequent day of viewing, these scores dropped until, on the fourth day of viewing, the males’ levels of anxiety, depression, and annoyance were indistinguishable from baseline norms (1985, p. 34F).

By the fifth day, the subjects rated the movies as less graphic and less gory and estimated fewer violent or offensive scenes than after the first day of viewing. They also rated the films as significantly less debasing and degrading to women, more humorous, and more enjoyable, and reported a greater willingness to see this type of film again (1985, p. 34F). However, their sexual arousal by this material did not decrease over this five-day period (Donnerstein, 1983, p. 10).

On the last day, the subjects went to a law school where they saw a documentary re-enactment of a real rape trial. A control group of subjects who had never seen the films also participated in this part of the experiment. Subjects who had seen the R-rated movies: (1) rated the victim as significantly more worthless, (2) rated her injury as significantly less severe, and (3) assigned greater blame to her for being raped than did the subjects who had not seen the film. In contrast, these effects were not observed for the X-rated non-violent films [7]. However, the results were much the same for the violent X-rated films, despite the fact that the R-rated material was “much more graphically violent” (Donnerstein, 1985, pp. 12-13).

http://www.dianarussell.com/pornsrole2.html

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4. CONDITIONED OR LEARNED BEHAVIOR

A simple application of the laws of social learning suggests that viewers of pornography can develop arousal responses to depictions of rape, murder, child sexual abuse, or other assaultive behavior. Researcher S. Rachman of the Institute of Psychiatry, Maudsley Hospital, London, has demonstrated that male subjects can learn to become sexually aroused by seeing a picture of a woman’s boot after repeatedly seeing women’s boots in association with sexually arousing slides of nude females (Rachman and Hodgson, 1968). The laws of learning that operated in the acquisition of the boot fetish can also teach males who were not previously aroused by depictions of rape to become so. All it may take is the repeated association of rape with arousing portrayals of female nudity (or clothed females in provocative poses).

Even for males who are not sexually excited during movie portrayals of rape, masturbation subsequent to the movie reinforces the association. This constitutes what R.J. McGuire, J.M. Carlisle and B.G. Young refer to as “masturbatory conditioning” (Cline, 1974, p. 210). The pleasurable experience of orgasm–an expected and planned–for activity in many pornography parlors–is an exceptionally potent reinforcer. The fact that pornography is widely used by males as ejaculation material is a major factor that differentiates it from other mass media, intensifying the lessons that male consumers learn from it.

Self-reported sexual arousal during the fantasy period indicated that those students who had been exposed to the rape version of the first slide-audio presentation, created more violent sexual fantasies than those exposed to the mutually consenting version irrespective of whether they had been classified as force-oriented or non-force-oriented (1981a, p. 33).

Finally, boys who were frequent consumers of pornography and/or reported learning a lot from pornography were also more likely to say that is was “OK” to hold a girl down and force her to have intercourse (abstract).

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5. WATCHING RAPE VIDEOS INCREASES RAPE

Canadian psychologists James Check and Ted Guloien (1989) conducted an experiment in which they distinguished between degrading non-violent pornography and erotica, and compared their effects. Their experiment is rare not only for making this distinction, but also for including non-students as subjects; 436 Toronto residents and college students were exposed to one of three types of sexual material over three viewing sessions, or to no material. The sexual materials were constructed from existing commercially available videos and validated by measuring subject’s perceptions of them. The contents of the sexual materials shown to the three groups of subjects were as follows:

The sexual violence material portrayed scenes of sexual intercourse involving a woman strapped to a table and being penetrated by a large plastic penis.

The sexually explicit dehumanizing but non-violent material portrayed scenes of sexual activity that included a man sitting on top of a woman and masturbating into her face.

The sexually explicit non-degrading material portrayed sexual activities leading up to heterosexual intercourse (Check and Guloien, 1989).

Check and Guloien’s experiment revealed that the viewing of both the non-violent dehumanizing materials as well as the violent materials resulted in male subjects reporting a significantly greater likelihood of engaging in rape or other coercive sex acts than the control group.

http://www.dianarussell.com/pornsrole.html

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6. ATTITUDE PRECEDES ACTION

Recent research on boys’ attitudes to sexual violence shows a disturbingly high support for the acceptability of forcing a girl into sex in certain situations. In a Brisbane study of Year Nine boys, nearly one in three believed that it is “okay for a boy to hold a girl down and force her to have sexual intercourse” if she has “led him on”, while one in five boys were unsure. One quarter of the boys thought that it was acceptable to force a girl to have sex if she gets him sexually excited, and another fifth were unsure [Domestic Violence Resource Centre, 1992]. In a 1997 survey by Family Planning Australia, nearly a third of the 15×25 year old males interviewed agreed that it was “okay for a male to force a female to have sex” in one or more of a range of situations [Family Planning Australia, 1997].

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7. RAPE IS FUN

“Riding the Bull at Gilley’s”: Convicted Rapists Describe the Rewards of Rape
Diana Scully, Joseph Marolla
Social Problems, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Feb., 1985)
Our data come from interviews with 114 convicted, incarcerated rapists. Looking at rape from the perspective of rapists, we attempt to discover the function of sexual violence in their lives; what their behavior gained for them in a society seeming prone to rape. Our analysis reveals that a number of rapists used sexual violence as a method of revenge and/or punishment while others used it as a means of gaining access to unwilling or unavailable women. In some cases, rape was just a bonus added to burglary or robbery. Rape was also a recreational activity and described as an “adventure” and an “exciting” form of impersonal sex which gained the offender power over his victim(s).

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8. LESS RESPECT FOR WOMEN MEANS MORE RAPE

Descriptive studies show that compared to their less aggressive peers, sexually aggressive men typically view relationships with women as hostile and adversarial, have a more promiscuous and impersonal orientation toward sex (Malamuth, Linz, Heavy, & Acker, 1995), and show greater arousal to depictions of forced intercourse (Bernat, 1997; Lohr, Adams, & Davis, 1997). Social information processing and judgments of sexual interactions are further influenced by aggressive men’s rape supportive cognitions (e.g., Bernat, Wilson, & Calhoun, 1997).

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9. FAKE RAPE VIDEOS DESENSITIZES MEN TO REAL RAPE

Indirect corroborating evidence for a suspicious schema explanation during sexual decision-making was revealed through the findings of Bernat, Wilson and Calhoun (in press). Employing an innovative decision-latency paradigm (Marx & Gross, 1995), they asked sexually aggressive and nonaggressive college men to listen to an audio tape simulation of a date rape, during which initial sexual contact was consensual and cues of the man’s force and the woman’s nonconsent increased over time. Participants were instructed to press a button if and when they believed that the man in the vignette should refrain from making further sexual advances. To minimize curiosity about the outcome, participants also were instructed that the tape would continue until the interaction was completed. Sexually aggressive men who reported a cognitive style that distrusted women and justified interpersonal violence (i.e., calloused sexual beliefs) took significantly longer to stop the date rape than either sexually aggressive men without this rape supportive cognitive set or nonaggressive men, who did not differ significantly on decision-making. Laboratory judgments also corresponded with naturalistic decisions as the sexually aggressive group was nearly 3 1/2 times more likely than the nonaggressive group to delay stopping the tape until it reached intervals containing verbal threats and forced intercourse within the scenario.

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10. HOLDING MEN ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR VIEWS ON WOMEN PREVENTS RAPE

A) Decision Theory/Outcome Expectancies. Perceived rewards, costs, and low probability of punishment are seen as contributory factors of rape (Bandura, 1973; Ellis,1989; Jenkins-Hall, 1989; O’Donohue, McKay, & Schewe, in press; Scully & Marolla,1985).

Scully and Marolla (1985) used information from the interviewswith 114 incarcerated rapists to suggest that most rapists viewed rape as a rewarding,low risk act. O’Donohue, McKay, and Schewe (in press) in a study of male undergraduates found that both subjects with higher self-reported future likelihood of rape and subjects who reported a greater past history of coercive sexual behavior had lower negative outcome expectancies regarding rape.

Decision theories suggest thatinformation which changes men’s perceptions of rape such that they begin to view it as1) less immediately rewarding than they might expect it to be; 2) less rewarding thanconsensual sex, both short-term and long-term, 3) potentially more costly than consensual sex (i.e., imprisonment, shame, loss of job, etc.), and 4) more likely to lead to negative consequences (i.e. high probability of getting caught, unwanted pregnancies,AIDS) might be beneficial in preventing attempted rapes. ***********[ME: this only makes them not want to get caught, it doesn’t change their desire. Originally I was wondering if rape porn would satisfy this group, but then I re-read all the other studies listed here, and realized that no, porn will always be a slippery slope.]

B) Christopher D. Maxwell, Joel H. Garner, and Jeffrey A. Fagan July 2001 US dept of Justice
The Effects of Arrest on Intimate Partner Violence: New Evidence From the Spouse Assault Replication Program

This Research in Brief examines 4,032 incidents of male assault on female partners and compares the number of repeat offenses when batterers are and are not arrested. The researchers synthesized experiments conducted across five jurisdictions from 1981 to 1991, and the analysis gains statistical power from the pooling of data from the five sites. One key determination was that arresting batterers was consistently related to reduced subsequent aggression against the victim; this finding was consistent across jurisdictions.

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11. CONTRIBUTING FACTORS

A ) In a national study of sexual aggression and victimization among college students, Koss, Gidycz, and Wisniewski (1987) found that 74% of perpetrators and 55% of victims of rape had been drinking alcohol prior to the incident.

B) Attributional research has demonstrated that college men and women attribute less responsibility for sexual aggression to male offenders and more responsibility to female victims when vignette characters are portrayed as drunk (e.g., Richardson & Campbell, 1982)

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12.   MALES  BELIEVE  PORN  ACCURATELY  DEPICTS  AVERAGE  WOMEN

Porn users assume that porn is very similar to real life, and that they can learn useful information about real sex with average women from porn. A survey by the Kinsey Institute found 86 percent of porn users believe porn can be educational. The respondents were 80 percent male.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/etc/surveyres.html

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[It probably is not necessary to include the following, but this is where I got all the info in many of these sections unless specified otherwise: Rape Prevention with College Males: The Roles of Victim Empathy, Rape Myth Acceptance, and Outcome ExpectanciesWilliam O’Donohue, Ph.D.Matthew FanettiPhase I Final ReportA Small Business Technology Transfer Grant from the National Institute of Mental HealthProject #1 R41 MH54874-01

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:X1KxN2nZllkJ:www.northwestmedia.com/research/rape-i.pdf+%22rape+studies%22+%2B+%22college%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3 ]

However, for the proposed research, a working model of rape prevention will be drawn from both Finkelhor’s (1986)four preconditions model of the etiology of rape and cognitive-behavioral accounts of aggression and sexual offending (Bandura, 1977; Burt, 1980; Hildebran & Pithers, 1992;Murphy, 1990; Scully & Marolla, 1984; Segal & Stermac, 1990). In Finkelhor’s model, sexual offending is the outcome of four individually necessaryand conjointly sufficient set of factors: (1) factors that enhance motivation to sexually abuse (e.g., deviant sexual arousal); (2) factors that reduce internal inhibitions (e.g., rape myth acceptance); (3) factors that reduce external inhibitions (e.g., date location); and (4)factors that reduce victim resistance (e.g., poor self-defense strategies).

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Another point of convergence for many models of rape is that cognitive variables play an important role. Bandura’s (1978) social-learning account of aggression emphasizes aggressive behavior as the product of cognitions that: (1) make reprehensible conduct socially and ethically acceptable (e.g., rape myths); (2) misconstrue the consequences ofthe behavior (i.e., “We will both enjoy this and I will experience no negative consequences”–problematic victim empathy and outcome expectancies; and (3)devalues or attributes blame to the victim (e.g., poor victim empathy).

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McFall (1990, p.318) has stated in his information processing model of rape:”This evidence paints the following portrait of sexually aggressive men. They enter heterosexual relationships holding distorted cognitive schemata that predispose them to sexual misunderstandings and misguided actions. It is as though these men were ‘primed’ by their schemata to read positive sexual connotations into women’s neutral or negative messages; to believe that women secretly wish to be victims of sexual coercion; to misinterpret women’s refusals of sexual advances merely as coquettish acceptances; to dismiss women’s physical resistance as a primeval sexual ritual; to misperceive women’s cries of pain as squeals of pleasure; and to redefine any attempted rebuffs as proof that women are ‘teases’ who deserve whatever they get.”

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Studies have shown that incarcerated rapists hold more rape supportive attitudes than non-rapists (Burt, 1980). Furthermore, subjects who hold more rape supportive attitudes report a more extensive history of sexual aggression, indicate more likelihood of future sexual aggression if assured of not getting caught, and display a more deviant pattern of sexual arousal than those subjects who hold less rape supportive attitudes (Koss & Dinero, 1989; Malamuth, Haber, & Feshbach, 1980;Malamuth, 1986; Schewe & O’Donohue, in press).

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In a cognitive model nonconsenting offenses are not discrete events that “just happen” but rather are the culmination of a series or chain of cognitive and behavioral events. Unfortunately some of these factors are poor targets for rape prevention programming since they are not easily changed (e.g., psychopathy, paraphilic arousal) and therefore will not be further discussed here. However, there is evidence that an educative orientation aimed at modifying cognitions can produce change in relatively short periods of time (Hollon & Beck, 1986). Thus, problematic cognitions such as myths about rape, woman and sexuality, myths about the experience of the victim of rape, and irrational outcome expectancies may be good candidates to be targeted in rape prevention.

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Schewe & O’Donohue (1993)found that a 45 minute videotaped presentation which was modeled after Lee’s empathy workshop had a larger effect on rape-related variables than a 45 minute rape facts videotape (modeled after Jones & Muehlenhard, 1990; and Gilbert, Heesacker, &Gannon, 1991) for subjects who were initially judged to be at “high risk” (as measured bytheir self-reported likelihood to commit a sexual offense) for committing sexual abuse

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Gail Dines full presentation at Wheelock anti-pornography conference Google video, simply amazing.

http://geekette.mysite.orange.co.uk/More porn research

MotherJones domestic violence sheet

“Honor” killings have nothing to do with honor

50% of Norwegian men believe flirtatious women cause rape. Gah, if women have the power to cause rape, then how come we don’t have the power to get men to stop raping?  Oh, sorry I forgot, “rape doesn’t exist and all women are liars”. Strangely enough, it appears that most men are lying scum but god forbid we should point out the bloody obvious.

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Feel proud that you have the courage to speak up, you are worth it!! If you think men are going to stop this shit on their own, without your getting involved, think again. Most men do not fight to give us respect and dignity, but most men will fight with a cheerful smile to keep these things from us. If you want respect, dignity and bodily autonomy, then ya gotta fight for it!

People who attempt to keep your inherent rights away from you do not deserve your sympathy, respect or goodwill. These MEN SUCK, so to hell with them.