Pornography use and attitudes towards pornography and the opposite gender.
Miodrag Popovic.

SUMMARY

Objectives: To examine pornography use and differences between (primarily male) pornography non-users and users in terms of sexual activities and attitudes towards pornography, the opposite gender and rape.

Design: The study presents one component of a larger quantitative, cross-sectional study.

Location: Several educational (local universities, college, further education for unemployed) and work (local health trust, education welfare and college, social work, small firms) environments in North West England.

Participants: As per selection/inclusion criteria, all participants were of working age and taken from a non-clinical population. The main participant group consisted of 164 male adults (age range = 18-64 years, mean age = 36.87, SD = 12.386). They were composed of two groups, pornography users – those who self-categorised themselves as using pornography (121, 74%) and pornography non-users - those who self- categorised themselves as “never” using it (43, 26%). Another non-clinical participant group consisting of 66 female adults (age range = 19-59, mean age = 35.62, SD = 11.477) was utilised. In this group, 23 (35%) used and forty-three (65%) did not use pornography. Out of the total 310 sets of research questionnaires distributed, 233 sets were returned; three responses were invalid and thus excluded, which gives a total return of 230 (74%) valid responses.

Main measurements: The data was collected by the purposefully designed, non-standardised questionnaire, consisting of 13 multi-choice items. The participants were classified as users or non-users of pornography through their self-reporting in this questionnaire. Various estimations were carried out (e.g., concerning background information, sexual activities, pornography media and type), with the main attention being given to the calculations of differences between pornography users and non- users with regard to their sexual activities, attitudes towards pornography, its usefulness, legal status and their participants’ consent, and the opposite sex and rape. The data were mainly analysed using chi-square test for goodness of fit and chi-square.

Results: The results illustrate that there are no significant differences between the two male pornography groups in terms of attitudes towards gender equality [χ2 (1, n = 164) = 1.124, p <.289], rape [χ2 (1, n = 163) = 1.335, p <.248] and pornography participants’ consent [χ2 (1, n = 153) = .368, p <.544]. A majority of participants from both gender groups find pornography useful and want it to remain legal but there is a significant difference between the male pornography users and non-users with regard to the perception of pornography’s usefulness [χ2 (2, n = 154) = 28.475, p <.0005] and legal status [χ2 (1, n = 156) = 13.934, p <.0005]; the users finds pornography more useful and are more supportive of its legal status than their counter- parts.

Conclusions: The results confirm the high use of visual pornography among men and that such activities are not associated with either negative views of the opposite gender or with a readiness to commit sexual offences/rape.

KEY WORDS

Pornography, views on pornography, gender equality, rape.