The Role of Pornography Consumption in the Sexual Victimization Experiences Among Women: Oversimplification or Not?

Abstract

One of the most serious consequences of mainstream pornography consumption is its tendency to condition women to take on a submissive role during sexual encounters (Sun et al., 2017). This can be explained in part by the sexual scripts theory, which posits that pornography provides individuals with sexual scripts, sexual norms that go on to be applied in one’s behavior and attitudes (Wright, 2011). The literature has identified women’s pornography consumption and resulting submissiveness as a risk factor for sexual victimization, which can be defined as experiencing non-consensual sexual activity. However, to say that pornography is the source of violence against women may be an oversimplification as there are external psycho-social factors that put women at risk that are found outside of pornography.

Thus, the present study examined the relationship between pornography consumption and sexual victimization while controlling for vulnerability-enhancing attitudes and behaviors like traditional gender roles, self-objectification, and sexual assertiveness using hierarchical regression analyses. The predictor was the frequency of pornography consumption whereas the outcome was sexual victimization experiences. The latter was measured using the Sexual Experiences Survey (Koss et al., 2007), which has a Cronbach’s α of .92 and instructed participants to identify how many times, if any, they have experienced unwanted sexual acts. Self-objectification was measured with the Surveillance subscale of the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale (McKinley & Hyde, 1996) as well as the Public Body Consciousness subscale of the Body Consciousness Questionnaire (Miller et al., 1981). These measures have a test-retest reliability measure of .79 and .73, respectively. The Refusal subscale of the Sexual Assertiveness Scale for Women (Morokoff et al., 1997) was utilized to measure sexual assertiveness, which has a Cronbach’s α of .74.

Details

Session 2

1:30pm – 2:45pm

Del Norte Hall

Room C: 1535