It’s wild to think that back in the day before porn streaming sites were a thing, the first interaction many people had with porn would have been from sneaking a copy of their Dad’s Playboy magazine.
Those were the days when a glimpse of boob and a hairy beaver was X-rated content – The days before we became desensitised to the graphic and explicit imagery of current day pornography.
Anna Brownfield, a scholar in film, television and animation at Deakin University, grew up in the 70s and she remembers the time her friend brought a copy of Playboy over to her house. She recalls the first time she ever saw a porn film.
“I was about 16 and someone put on a VHS. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is exciting.’”
After VHS and pornography in print, the internet exploded onto the scene, or shall we say ‘porn exploded onto the internet’.
Pornography researcher, Prof Alan McKee, who is the head of the University of Sydney’s school of art, communication and English, decide to gather a team researchers to thumb through 50 years of papers on what we know about porn on an intellectual level.
The results of his findings are described in a new book, titled ‘What Do We Know About the Effects of Pornography after Fifty Years of Academic Research?’ Find out more about this research through the Guardian article, what-have-
Some of his discoveries have been rather eye-opening, such as the link between porn consumption and mental health issues, as well as gender stereotypes, unrealistic expectations, poor relationships, bodily shame, sexual coercion, sexual aggression, and sexual objectification.
McKee and his team’s main conclusion after examining the vast quantity of material, however, was that the study on pornography is conflicting, lacking, and frequently prejudiced. McKee says:
“The effect of porn is a really big issue for a lot of people, for our society, for politicians, for policymakers, journalists, parents. What bothered us is that, when you look at the academic research, it’s basically contradictory. Porn is so much more diverse”
You might use the example of violence against women to highlight these contradictions. According to McKee, some studies suggest porn has negative impacts, while others highlight its significant contribution to women’s sexual liberation, or as a haven for the LGBTQ+ community who wish to explore their identities.
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People can’t even seem to agree on the definition of porn. Anna Brownfield says:
“The late 90s and early 2000s was the cowboy era of pornography. There was this extreme stuff that was violent … people were getting away with doing whatever they wanted.”
There was a noticeable shift in the porn industry when pornography started becoming widely available on the internet.
Skip to the era of content sharing and subscription sites and you have what Brownfield describes as a
a “democratisation” of the industry. While some scholars have concentrated on the mistreatment of women, others have noticed a wider shift to “ethical” porn, which doesn’t abuse performers and promotes healthy sex between consenting adults.
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Brownfield, a feminist scholar and pornographer, says:
“A lot of things that started within feminist porn, like ethics, and giving people agency and respect … has now moved into the mainstream industry.”
McKee discusses the modern era of porn:
“There’s feminist porn, queer porn, ethical porn, body diverse porn, amateur porn … It’s so much more diverse. That was not the case in the past, and a lot of academic research does not take that into account.”
When confronted with the matter of young people being exposed to sexual content, McKee had this to say:
“We hypothesise that young people, when they reach puberty, might go looking online because neither their parents or the schools are telling them what they want to know. You don’t want pornography to be your child’s only source of information about sex. Not because it’s harmful per se, but there are things it does well and things it doesn’t. And what it doesn’t do well is talk about consent. If you leave the sexual education to a pornographer, that’s like letting them learn how to drive by watching the Fast and the Furious.”
Brownfield agreed that far too many young people “look to porn for sex education but it’s not. It’s entertainment.” Brownfield’s aim is to move sex education away from the fears about pregnancy and STIs, and start broadening the discussion. She says:
“We’re still, in 2022, focused on a sex-negative education. It’s this heteronormative, Christian idea that sex is only for procreation.”
Many people believe that vanilla sex between monogamous heterosexual couples is the norm. McKee notes that very little research has been done on the impact that porn has on consent or pleasure.
McKee goes on to highlight how gendered our society’s standards of sexual satisfaction are by referring to the ‘Orgasm gap’. According to research, the climax occurs in roughly 85% of sexual interactions for both homosexual and heterosexual men.
It occurs around 75% of the time when women have intercourse with other women, and just 63% for women who have intercourse with men. McKee says:
“Heterosexuality is essentially broken. The starting point for sex education should be, ‘What are we going to do to fix that?’”
Mckee says that society needs to focus on providing better sex education for young people that focuses on consent, pleasure, respect and equality. In his words, it’s time to
“Smash the patriarchy.”
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