It is often assumed that porn is getting harder. Some people wrongly assume that people who watch porn – more often men than women – are becoming insensitive to porn and need more intense movies to get aroused. Vaak wordt aangenomen dat porno steeds harder wordt. This would be a downwards spiral, in which women that work in the industry are the victims. Recent research that was published in ‘The Journal of Sex Research’, shows however, that porn hasn’t become harder in the last decade.
PornHub
Researchers Eran Shor and Kimberly Seida of the McGill Universiteit in Canada looked at 269 popular porn videos that have been uploaded to PornHub in the last 10 years. For their study, they looked at two things: (1) has the content of the videos become more aggressive and (2) do violent videos get more views or higher rankings?
Shor and Seida concluded that there is no evidence for either assumptions. Even more, the videos on PornHub have become shorter, causing the length of the violence to decrease. More important though, is their finding that videos containing violence get less views and are less likely to be favorized by the viewers. It is clear that videos showing women to get pleasure are more appreciated.
What is aggression?
Of course it is good news that there seem to be less videos containing violence and aggression in porn. The big question however is, what the researchers defined as ‘aggression’. Other research has shown a huge spread in aggression in porn. A study from 2005 showed that 2% of porn contained aggression, whereas a study from 2010 showed that 90% was violent. This huge difference is due to the sample method and also to the definition of ‘violence’. It is shown that watching violence in porn can be seen as a justification to the viewer. Or, to put it in other words, the more often someone watches aggressive porn, the more normal they might think it is that aggression is practiced against women, or to be aggressive towards women.
If there is a relation between violence (against women) in (porn) movies and gender inequality, then it is a good thing to monitor the rise of aggression. However, although that relation is demonstrated in some studies, others show the opposite. Men who watch a lot f porn would be less misogynistic.
For this research, different definitions of aggression have been used, such as references towards aggression in the title (e.g. “Gigantic Cock Rips Skinny Bitch”), aggression without clear consent (e.g. biting, pinching, kicking, pulling hair, hitting in the face or at the body, chocking, sadomasochism and rough acts like pushing). Ejaculating in the mouth and spanking has been seen as acts of humiliation, but in this research it was not seen as aggression (if consensual).
Porn is not getting harder
The findings of this research can be seen as a positive development. It seems that most porn viewers don’t want anything to do with non-consensual aggression in porn. The researchers hope that porn producers will be less inclined to make such films due to the declining demand.
Next to that, the researchers believe it is a good development that porn is becoming less misogynistic. This could be a sign that gender inequality is decreasing. Of course there is still a group of people (men and women) that do get aroused by watching aggression in non-consensual porn. But this research shows that that group is a minority of the viewers. Many porn users resent non-consensual aggression.
To that respect the results show similarities to other research that shows that men who watch porn, don’t like aggression towards women in general. According to this research men prefer to watch porn where it is clear that the women enjoy sex and get pleasure from having it. Even if the pleasure is scripted, the researchers think it is a positive signal that women have pleasure in sex.
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