How Pornography Promotes
Sexual Violence
Researchers have found that 88.2% of porn scenes contained physical violence or aggression while 48.7% contained verbal aggression. Only 10% contain no physical or verbal aggression.
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Another study estimated that nearly 40% of videos analysed on Pornhub contained visible aggression or violence, while 25% contained verbal aggression.
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Yet another study suggested that 45.1% of Pornhub videos and 35.0% of videos on XVideos depicted violence or aggression.
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Each of these studies showed that women were almost always the targets of violence and aggression and further research confirms that women are the targets of aggression or violence in porn about 97% of the time.
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This is backed up by a further study that showed 70% of the perpetrators of aggression were male, and in 87% of scenes, the aggression was aimed at women.
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While the quantity of violence shown in porn is deeply concerning, what is perhaps even more disturbing is the portrayed reactions to that violence. One study found that 95% of the targets of violence or aggression in porn appeared either neutral or appeared to respond with pleasure.
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In other words, porn is promoting the idea that sexual violence is just a normal part of sexual pleasure.
In 2016, research was undertaken in relation to the connection between porn and sexual violence, which concluded that the research left “little doubt that, on average, individuals who consume pornography more frequently are more likely to hold attitudes conducive to sexual aggression and engage in actual acts of sexual aggression.”
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Research also suggests that increased pornography consumption is associated with the enjoyment of degrading, uncommon, or aggressive sexual behaviours.
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“While my overt task at hand was to make sure that the girls got naked, my true responsibility as the director was to make sure the girls got punished. Scenes that stuck out, and hence made more money, were those in which the female ‘targets’ were verbally degraded and sometimes physically humiliated.”
Sam Benjamin, Confessions of an Ivy League Pornographer
According to a UK survey of over 22,000 adult women, 16% reported having been forced or coerced to perform sex acts the other person had seen in porn.
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Disturbingly, the word ‘teen’ is the most frequent word to appear in porn titles, featuring in 7.7% of all clips, and 8.5% of those which depict sexual violence.
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3 (Bridges et al., 2010
4 (Shor & Seida, 2018)
5 (Fritz et al., 2020, #)
6 (Fritz et al., 2020)
7 (Bridges et al., 2010)
8 (Bridges et al., 2010)
9 (Wright et al., 2015)
10 (Ezzell et al., 2020)
11 (Taylor & Shrive, 2021)
12 (Bridges et al., 2010)