Abstract
For decades, scholars and public health officials have been concerned with the depictions of sexual aggression in pornography, especially when acts of aggression are depicted with no consequences. Social cognitive theory suggests behaviors that are rewarded are more likely to be learned by consumers while those punished are less likely to be learned. To date, however, there has not been a large-scale content analysis to provide researchers with the baseline knowledge of the amount of sexual aggression in online pornography nor have previous content analyses examined the reactions of the targets of sexual aggression. This study of 4009 heterosexual scenes from two major free pornographic tube sites (Pornhub and Xvideos) sought to provide this baseline. Overall, 45% of Pornhub scenes included at least one act of physical aggression, while 35% of scenes from Xvideos contained aggression. Spanking, gagging, slapping, hair pulling, and choking were the five most common forms of physical aggression. Women were the target of the aggression in 97% of the scenes, and their response to aggression was either neutral or positive and rarely negative. Men were the perpetrators of aggression against women in 76% of scenes. Finally, examining the 10 most populous categories, the Amateur and Teen categories in Xvideos and the Amateur category in Pornhub had significantly less aggression, while the Xvideos Hardcore category had significantly more physical aggression against women. This study suggests aggression is common against women in online pornography, while repercussions to this aggression are rarely portrayed.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A scene was operationalized as a person or partners undertaking a sexual experience in the same place. Coders were instructed not to count introductions or product advertisements as a separate scene. Complete changes in actors and/or place with new sexual behavior was considered a new scene.
References
Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. (1986). Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, Final Report. US Department of Justice. Retrieved from https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000824987.
Aubrey, J. S., & Frisby, C. M. (2011). Sexual objectification in music videos: A content analysis comparing gender and genre. Mass Communication and Society, 14(4), 475–501.
Baer, J. L., Kohut, T., & Fisher, W. A. (2015). Is pornography use associated with anti-woman sexual aggression? Re-examining the confluence model with third variable considerations. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 24(2), 160–173.
Ballonoff Suleiman, A., Lin, J. S., & Constantine, N. A. (2016). Readability of educational materials to support parent sexual communication with their children and adolescents. Journal of Health Communication, 21(5), 534–543.
Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 1–26.
Barron, M., & Kimmel, M. (2000). Sexual violence in three pornographic media: Toward a sociological explanation. Journal of Sex Research, 37(2), 161–168.
Bell, M. E., Turchik, J. A., & Karpenko, J. A. (2014). Impact of gender on reactions to military sexual assault and harassment. Health and Social Work, 39(1), 25–33.
Bridges, A. J., Wosnitzer, R., Scharrer, E., Sun, C., & Liberman, R. (2010). Aggression and sexual behavior in best-selling pornography videos: A content analysis update. Violence Against Women, 16(10), 1065–1085.
Bronstein, C. (2011). Battling pornography: The American feminist anti-pornography movement, 1976–1986. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Check, J. V., & Malamuth, N. M. (1986). Pornography and sexual aggression: A social learning theory analysis. Communication Yearbook, 9, 181–213.
Cogin, J., & Fish, A. (2009). Sexual harassment: A touchy subject for nurses. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 23(4), 442–462.
del Carmen Herrera, M., Herrera, A., & Expósito, F. (2017). To confront versus not to confront: Women’s perception of sexual harassment. European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context, 10(1), 1–7.
Diamond, M., Jozifkova, E., & Weiss, P. (2011). Pornography and sex crimes in the Czech Republic. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40(5), 1037–1043.
Dillman Carpentier, F. R., Stevens, E. M., Wu, L., & Seely, N. (2017). Sex, love, and risk-n responsibility: A content analysis of entertainment television. Mass Communication and Society, 20(5), 686–709.
Donnerstein, E. (1984). Pornography: Its effect on violence against women. In N. M. Malamuth & E. Donnerstein (Eds.), Pornography and sexual aggression (pp. 53–81). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Dworkin, A. (1981). Men possessing women. New York, NY: Perigee Books.
Evans, W. D., Davis, K. C., Ashley, O. S., & Khan, M. (2012). Effects of media messages on parent–child sexual communication. Journal of Health Communication, 17(5), 498–514.
Ferguson, C. J., & Hartley, R. D. (2009). The pleasure is momentary…the expense damnable? The influence of pornography on rape and sexual assault. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 14(5), 323–329.
Fisher, D. A., Hill, D. L., Grube, J. W., Bersamin, M. M., Walker, S., & Gruber, E. L. (2009). Televised sexual content and parental mediation: Influences on adolescent sexuality. Media Psychology, 12(2), 121–147.
Fox, J., & Tang, W. Y. (2017). Women’s experiences with general and sexual harassment in online video games: Rumination, organizational responsiveness, withdrawal, and coping strategies. New Media & Society, 19(8), 1290–1307.
Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. A. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21(2), 173–206.
Fritz, N., & Paul, B. (2017). From orgasms to spanking: A content analysis of the agentic and objectifying sexual scripts in feminist, for women, and mainstream pornography. Sex Roles, 77(9–10), 639–652.
Gorman, S., Monk-Turner, E., & Fish, J. N. (2010). Free adult Internet web sites: How prevalent are degrading acts? Gender Issues, 27(3–4), 131–145.
Hald, G. M., Malamuth, N. N., & Lange, T. (2013). Pornography and sexist attitudes among heterosexuals. Journal of Communication, 63(4), 638–660.
Hald, G. M., Malamuth, N. M., & Yuen, C. (2010). Pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women: Revisiting the relationship in nonexperimental studies. Aggressive Behavior, 36(1), 14–20.
Hust, S. J., Brown, J. D., & L’Engle, K. L. (2008). Boys will be boys and girls better be prepared: An analysis of the rare sexual health messages in young adolescents’ media. Mass Communication & Society, 11(1), 3–23.
Hust, S. J., Marett, E. G., Lei, M., Chang, H., Ren, C., McNab, A. L., & Adams, P. M. (2013). Health promotion messages in entertainment media: Crime drama viewership and intentions to intervene in a sexual assault situation. Journal of Health Communication, 18(1), 105–123.
Jones, R. K., & Biddlecom, A. E. (2011). Is the internet filling the sexual health information gap for teens? An exploratory study. Journal of Health Communication, 16(2), 112–123.
Klaassen, M. J., & Peter, J. (2015). Gender (in) equality in Internet pornography: A content analysis of popular pornographic Internet videos. Journal of Sex Research, 52(7), 721–735.
Krippendorff, K. (2004). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Lerner, J. E., & Hawkins, R. L. (2016). Welfare, liberty, and security for all? US sex education policy and the 1996 Title V Section 510 of the Social Security Act. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45(5), 1027–1038.
Lindberg, L. D., Maddow-Zimet, I., & Boonstra, H. (2016). Changes in adolescents’ receipt of sex education, 2006–2013. Journal of Adolescent Health, 58(6), 621–627.
Linz, D. (1989). Exposure to sexually explicit materials and attitudes toward rape: A comparison of study results. Journal of Sex Research, 26(1), 50–84.
Linz, D., Penrod, S. D., & Donnerstein, E. (1987). The attorney general’s commission on pornography: The gaps between “findings” and facts. Law & Social Inquiry, 12(4), 713–736.
MacKinnon, C. A. (1984). Not a moral issue. Yale Law & Policy Review, 2(2), 321–345.
Malamuth, N. M. (2018). “Adding fuel to the fire”? Does exposure to non-consenting adult or to child pornography increase risk of sexual aggression? Aggression and Violent Behavior, 41, 74–89.
Malik, C., & Wojdynski, B. W. (2014). Boys earn, girls buy: Depictions of materialism on US children’s branded-entertainment websites. Journal of Children and Media, 8(4), 404–422.
McKee, A. (2005). The objectification of women in mainstream pornographic videos in Australia. Journal of Sex Research, 42(4), 277–290.
McKee, A., Byron, P., Litsou, K., & Ingham, R. (2020). An interdisciplinary definition of pornography: Results from a global Delphi panel. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49, 1085–1091.
Monk-Turner, E., & Purcell, H. C. (1999). Sexual violence in pornography: How prevalent is it? Gender Issues, 17(2), 58–67.
Paasonen, S., Nikunen, K., & Saarenmaa, L. (2007). Pornification: Sex and sexuality in media culture. Oxford, England: Berg Publishers.
Paul, P. (2007). Pornified: How pornography is transforming our lives, our relationships, and our families. New York: Times Books.
Peter, J., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2007). Adolescents’ exposure to a sexualized media environment and their notions of women as sex objects. Sex Roles, 56(5–6), 381–395.
Peter, J., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2011). The influence of sexually explicit internet material on sexual risk behavior: A comparison of adolescents and adults. Journal of Health Communication, 16(7), 750–765.
Pornhub Insights. (2019). The 2019 year in review. Retrieved from: https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2019-year-in-review.
Potter, W. J., & Levine-Donnerstein, D. (1999). Rethinking validity and reliability in content analysis. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 27(3), 258–284.
Rothman, E. F., Kaczmarsky, C., Burke, N., Jansen, E., & Baughman, A. (2015). “Without porn…I wouldn’t know half the things I know now”: A qualitative study of pornography use among a sample of urban, low-income, Black and Hispanic youth. Journal of Sex Research, 52(7), 736–746.
Shor, E., & Golriz, G. (2019). Gender, race, and aggression in mainstream pornography. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 48(3), 739–751.
Vandenbosch, L., & Eggermont, S. (2015). The role of mass media in adolescents’ sexual behaviors: Exploring the explanatory value of the three-step self-objectification process. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 44(3), 729–742.
Vandenbosch, L., & van Oosten, J. M. (2017). The relationship between online pornography and the sexual objectification of women: The attenuating role of porn literacy education. Journal of Communication, 67(6), 1015–1036.
Vannier, S. A., Currie, A. B., & O’Sullivan, L. F. (2014). Schoolgirls and soccer moms: A content analysis of free “teen” and “MILF” online pornography. Journal of Sex Research, 51(3), 253–264.
Waugh, I. M. (2010). Examining the sexual harassment experiences of Mexican immigrant farmworking women. Violence Against Women, 16(3), 237–261.
Wright, P. J. (2011). 14 Mass media effects on youth sexual behavior assessing the claim for causality. Communication Yearbook, 35, 343–386.
Wright, P. J., Sun, C., Steffen, N. J., & Tokunaga, R. S. (2015). Pornography, alcohol, and male sexual dominance. Communication Monographs, 82(2), 252–270.
Wright, P. J., & Tokunaga, R. S. (2016). Men’s objectifying media consumption, objectification of women, and attitudes supportive of violence against women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45(4), 955–964.
Wright, P. J., Tokunaga, R. S., & Kraus, A. (2016). A meta-analysis of pornography consumption and actual acts of sexual aggression in general population studies. Journal of Communication, 66(1), 183–205.
Zhou, Y., & Paul, B. (2016). Lotus blossom or dragon lady: A content analysis of “Asian women” online pornography. Sexuality and Culture, 20(4), 1083–1100.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest, financial or otherwise.
Ethical approval
This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B. et al. A Descriptive Analysis of the Types, Targets, and Relative Frequency of Aggression in Mainstream Pornography. Arch Sex Behav 49, 3041–3053 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0