Maas, Megan K., and Shannamar Dewey.
SAGE Open 8, no. 2 (2018): 2158244018786640.
Abstract
Pornography use has become more commonplace since the advent of high-speed Internet, yet there is little investigation that is exclusively targeted to women’s use of pornography. Given the paradox of viewing mainstream Internet pornography, which often portrays the objectification of and violence toward women, we compared heterosexual collegiate women (n = 168) who use Internet pornography with women who do not on several different attitudes and behaviors that are central to women’s sexual development and wellbeing. Women who use Internet pornography had a higher endorsement of rape myths, a higher number of sexual partners, and engaged in more body monitoring. However, there were no differences in attitudes toward women between pornography users and nonusers. Results are interpreted through sexual scripting and objectification theories.
Keywords pornography, sexual behavior, objectification theory, body image, women
MORE EXCERPTS
Contrary to our hypotheses, women who used Internet pornography did not differ in their attitudes toward women than women who did not use Internet pornography. However, in the correlation procedure, more Internet pornography use was associated with more negative/traditional attitudes toward women, suggesting that frequency of use might be driving the association.
Consistent with our finding of a higher endorsement of rape myths among women who do use Internet pornography compared with women who do not, meta-analyses show that exposure to sexually explicit material can cause trivialization of sexual aggression in experimental research and that consumption of sexualized material is associated with more positive attitudes toward violence against women in correlational research, with more violent content having a stronger effect (Allen, Emmers, & Gebhardt, 1995; Mundorf, D’Alessio, Allen, & Emmers-Sommer, 2007; Wright et al., 2016). Moreover, college women report that they expect to experience some form of sexual violence just for being female, whereas men do not expect to experience sexual violence (Maas, Shearer, Gillen, & Lefkowitz, 2015). Our results, in conjunction with these other studies, suggest the need for education that can use sexual media examples to teach young people how to be critical of media that sexualizes violence against women and knowledgeable about the reality of sexual violence and rape myths to insure they do not grow up trivializing sexual violence perpetrated against women.
Our finding that participants who used Internet pornography engaged in more body monitoring is similar to other work which found women’s perceptions of their own bodies (in their own or a partner’s eyes) can be negatively affected as a result of using pornography (Albright, 2008). However, our results do not necessarily align with prior work which shows that Internet pornography consumption was associated with more body monitoring, negative body image, as well as anxiety and avoidance in romantic relationships among college men, but not women (Tylka, 2015). However, in that study, self-objectification mediated the association among college women such that women who see themselves as objects and consume pornography engage in more body monitoring, hold a more negative body image, as well as anxiety and avoidance in romantic relationships, than women who do not self-objectify (Tylka, 2015). With prior work demonstrating that adolescents who view sexually explicit media have a higher endorsement of women as sex objects (Peter & Valkenburg, 2007), it is possible that body monitoring is serving more as a proxy self-objectification in our study. Objectification theory posits that one of the consequences of viewing sexual objectification is sexual self-objectification, which is the process of taking the “viewer perspective” on the self and perceiving oneself as a sexual object instead of thinking of oneself as a multidimensional human being (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Thus, future research that tests self-objectification as a mediator of Internet pornography use and other outcomes such as the endorsement of rape myths would be valuable to extend the understanding of these associations and the consequences of Internet pornography use.
Conclusion
Pornography has never been as accessible and popular among young women as it is today (Carroll et al., 2008; Vanden Abeele et al., 2014). The Internet has made pornography use mainstream and commonplace (Cooper et al., 2000), providing a new source of sexual socialization that warrants further investigation into its influence on attitudes about sexuality and women. Results suggest that female college students’ Internet pornography use is relatively common. Given associations between pornography use and sexual behavior, pornography is potentially becoming another way that young women explore their sexual curiosity, in a cultural context that sends them mixed messages about their developing sexual selves (Bordini & Sperb, 2013; Klaassen & Peter, 2015; Tolman & McClelland, 2011). It is unclear the extent to which these women actively choose to consume Internet pornography, as opposed to complying with their partners’ desires for them to consume it. However, given the violence and degradation toward women in popular Internet pornography (Bridges et al., 2010; Klaassen & Peter, 2015) and associations between Internet pornography use and endorsement of the rape myth and body monitoring, it could be that pornography use is contributing to selfobjectification among women. Therefore, future work should consider the content of pornography consumed, participants’ interpretation of what they are viewing, and a wider range of sexual behaviors to fully understand the role of Internet pornography in the sexual lives of women.
;