The Sex Tech

In a world where most people have sex drives and need to respond to it with some kind of stimuli just to function in a healthy manner, porn has become a matter of serious debate. Is it exploitation? Does it hurt the viewer? Does it hurt the participants? Is there some other reason why it is innately wrong? This is a topic that will certainly extend over many posts, so let me first provide a few facts related to how porn is defined and correlates between porn and violence.

First, I think it is important to establish what pornography is. Pornography itself is actually very ambiguously defined. While the word "erotica" refers to sexually oriented material that is acceptable to the general populace, "pornography" refers to sexually oriented material that is objectionable to the general populace. This is a concept that is even more confusing when data seems to indicate that a significant portion of the population watches what we often refer to as porn. Thus, while objecting to it amongst each other, most people wait until they are someplace private and hidden where nobody can verify what they are doing to watch porn. So, as the case currently seems to be, you can object to sexually oriented media in public and not object in private and it still becomes pornography ... but, I digress. Hard-core pornography is porn that explicitly depicts sex acts.

All that being said, here are some things that we know:

1) Studies on exposure to non-violent porn has shown no indication that it has caused more negative attitudes towards women, led to more sex crimes or even altered the attitudes towards sex crimes (Smith and Hand, 1987). In fact, there has been some indication that societies which have more readily available non-violent porn tend to have fewer instances of sexual violence towards women.

2) Studies on violent porn, however, have had different results. A study by Donnerstein (1984) indicated that there was a risk of increased aggression towards women after an individual was exposed to violent pornography where a woman was the victim of aggression where the participants were given options to interact with a woman afterwards. However, a study later done by Fisher and Grenier (1994) eliminated the problem of forcing some interaction and found that most men opted to avoid the interaction, which would entirely prevent any aggression being acted on towards the woman. While a causal link between violent porn and violence towards others has not been established, a study done by Abel et. al. (1977) long ago showed that individuals prone to sexual violence were more likely to be aroused by sexually violent porn than those who had not been convicted of a sexually violent act.

3) While the correlations above may be disturbing, the evidence of these studies make it seem that the prevalance of violence in pornography would cause some places to have a very high instance of violence towards their partners. However, it is the case that many societies in which violent porn is accepted there is not a higher instance of violence than comparable societies. These cultures often have other controls in place, such as a culture that fosters a feeling of guilt when an individual conducts themselves poorly. These other cultural influences may be enough to counteract the effects of violence in porn.

In conclusion, there has yet to be a study that establishes that violent porn will actually lead to violence. That being said, this does not eliminate the problem of violent porn being degrading to the victim. If individuals who consent to participation in producing degrading porn should or should not be allowed is another debate altogether, though, and so it will have to be reserved for another post in the future.