Despite a lack of consensus in the field about how best to conceptualize problematic pornography use, psychometric instruments have nonetheless been developed to assess the construct. The present ...systematic review aimed to (i) identify psychometric tools that have been developed to assess problematic pornography use; (ii) summarize key characteristics, psychometric properties, and strengths and limitations of instruments for problematic pornography use; (iii) compare the instruments’ theoretical conceptualizations of problematic pornography use; and (iv) evaluate each instrument on their ability to assess various core components of addiction. In this article, 22 instruments assessing problematic pornography use were reviewed. Results indicated that while the instruments had different conceptualizations of problematic pornography use, addiction still emerged as the most common theoretical framework used by the instruments. Five of the most commonly assessed addiction components across the different instruments were (1) impaired control, (2) salience, (3) mood modification, (4) interpersonal conflict, and (5) general life conflict. Contextual factors that may potentially affect the assessment of problematic pornography use and recommendations for researchers and clinicians are discussed.
Public and academic debate about ‘porn culture’ is proliferating. Ironically, what is often lost in these debates is a sense of what is specific about pornography. By focusing on pornography’s ...mainstream – contemporary commercial products for a heterosexual male audience – Everyday Pornography offers the opportunity to reconsider what it is that makes pornography a specific form of industrial practice and genre of representation.
Everyday Pornography presents original work from scholars from a range of academic disciplines (Media Studies, Law, Sociology, Psychology, Women’s Studies, Political Science), introducing new methodologies and approaches whilst reflecting on the ongoing value of older approaches. Among the topics explored are:
the porn industry’s marketing practices (spam emails, reviews) and online organisation
commercial sex in Second Life
the pornographic narratives of phone sex and amateur videos
the content of best-selling porn videos
how the male consumer is addressed by pornography, represented within the mainstream, understood by academics and contained by legislation.
This collection places a particular emphasis on anti-pornography feminism, a movement which has been experiencing a revival since the mid-2000s. Drawing on the experiences of activists alongside academics, Everyday Pornography offers an opportunity to explore the intellectual and political challenges of anti-pornography feminism and consider its relevance for contemporary academic debate.
Introduction: Everyday pornography, Karen Boyle Part I: Content and context 1. Arresting images: Anti-pornography slideshows, activism and the academy, Gail Dines, Linda Thompson, Rebecca Whisnant, with Karen Boyle 2. Methodological considerations in mapping pornography content, Ana Bridges 3. ‘Now that's pornography’: Violence and domination in Adult Video News , Meagan Tyler 4. Repetition and hyperbole: The gendered choreographies of heteroporn, Susanna Paasonen 5. Cocktail parties: Fetishising semen in pornography beyond bukkake, Lisa Jean Moore & Juliana Weissbein 6. Virtually commercial sex, Sarah Neely Part II: Address, consumption, regulation 7. Pornography is what the end of the world looks like, Robert Jensen 8. From Jekyll to Hyde: The grooming of male pornography consumers, Rebecca Whisnant 9. Porn consumers' public faces: Mainstream media, address and representation, Karen Boyle 10. To catch a curious clicker: A social network analysis of the online pornography industry, Jennifer Johnson 11. Young men using pornography, Michael Flood 12. 'Students study hard porn': Pornography and the popular press, Mark Jones & Gerry Carlin 13. Marginalising feminism: debating extreme pornography laws in public and policy discourse, Clare McGlynn Epilogue: How was it for you? Karen Boyle
Karen Boyle is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, and is a Director of the Women’s Support Project, a feminist anti-violence organisation. She is author of Media & Violence (2005) and has published widely on gendered violence and feminist media studies.
Pornography catapulted to the forefront of the American women's movement in the 1980s. In Battling Pornography, Carolyn Bronstein locates the origins of anti-pornography sentiment in the turbulent ...social and cultural history of the late 1960s and 1970s. Based on extensive original archival research, the book reveals that the seeds of the movement were planted by groups who protested the proliferation of advertisements, Hollywood films and other mainstream media that glorified sexual violence. Over time, feminist leaders redirected the emphasis from violence to pornography to leverage rhetorical power. Battling Pornography presents a fascinating account of the rise and fall of this significant American social movement and documents the contributions of influential activists on both sides of the pornography debate, including some of the best-known American feminists.
This book provides a critical assessment of the problem of internet child pornography and its governance through legal and non-legal means, including a comparative assessment of laws in England and ...Wales, the United States of America and Canada in recognition that governments have a compelling interest to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation. The internet raises novel and complex challenges to existing regulatory regimes. Efforts towards legal harmonization at the European Union, Council of Europe, and United Nations level are examined in this context and the utility of additional and alternative methods of regulation explored. This book argues that effective implementation, enforcement and harmonization of laws could substantially help to reduce the availability and dissemination of child pornography on the internet. At the same time, panic-led policies must be avoided if the wider problems of child sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation are to be meaningfully addressed.
Since its establishment in 1949, the People's Republic of China has upheld a nationwide ban on pornography, imposing harsh punishments on those caught purchasing, producing, or distributing materials ...deemed a violation of public morality. A provocative contribution to Chinese media studies by a well-known international media researcher, People's Pornography offers a wide-ranging overview of the political controversies surrounding the ban, as well as a fascinating glimpse into the many distinct media subcultures that have gained widespread popularity on the Chinese Internet as a result. Rounding out this exploration of the many new tendencies in digital citizenship, pornography, and activist media cultures in the greater China region are thought-provoking interviews with individuals involved. A timely contribution to the existing literature on sexuality, Chinese media, and Internet culture, People's Pornography provides a unique angle on the robust voices involved in the debate over about pornography's globalization.
Although pornography viewing is widespread among Internet users, no scales for measuring pornography use motivations (PUM) have been developed and psychometrically tested for use in general ...populations. The present work aimed to construct a measure that could reliably assess a wide range of PUM in nonspecific populations. Self-report data of 3 separate samples (N1 = 772 51% women, N2 = 792 6% women, N3 = 1,082 50% women) were collected and analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, measurement invariance testing, and structural equation modeling (SEM). The most common PUM were identified based on a literature review and qualitative analysis (N1): sexual pleasure, sexual curiosity, emotional distraction or suppression, stress reduction, fantasy, boredom avoidance, lack of sexual satisfaction, and self-exploration. Items were constructed, and confirmatory factor analyses (N2 and N3) yielded strong psychometric properties. Further corroborating the structural validity of the Pornography Use Motivations Scale (PUMS), gender-based measurement invariance was tested, and associations of the frequency of pornography use (FPU), problematic pornography use (PPU), and PUM were examined. Men-compared to women-demonstrated higher scores on all motivations except for sexual curiosity and self-exploration. Based on the results of SEM, we found that sexual pleasure, boredom avoidance, and stress reduction motivations showed positive, weak-to-moderate associations with FPU. Motivations relating to stress reduction, emotional distraction or suppression, boredom avoidance, fantasy, and sexual pleasure had positive, weak-to-moderate associations with PPU. The PUMS is a reliable scale to assess the most common PUM in general populations.
An exploration of the modalities, affective intensities, and disturbing qualities of online pornography.
Digital production tools and online networks have dramatically increased the general ...visibility, accessibility, and diversity of pornography. Porn can be accessed for free, anonymously, and in a seemingly endless range of niches, styles, and formats. In Carnal Resonance, Susanna Paasonen moves beyond the usual debates over the legal, political, and moral aspects of pornography to address online porn in a media historical framework, investigating its modalities, its affect, and its visceral and disturbing qualities. Countering theorizations of pornography as emotionless, affectless, detached, and cold, Paasonen addresses experiences of porn largely through the notion of affect as gut reactions, intensities of experience, bodily sensations, resonances, and ambiguous feelings. She links these investigations to considerations of methodology (ways of theorizing and analyzing online porn and affect), questions of materiality (bodies, technologies, and inscriptions), and the evolution of online pornography.
Paasonen dicusses the development of online porn, focusing on the figure of the porn consumer, and considers user-generated content and amateur porn. She maps out the modality of online porn as hyperbolic, excessive, stylized, and repetitive, arguing that literal readings of the genre misunderstand its dynamics and appeal. And she analyzes viral videos and extreme and shock pornogaphy, arguing for the centrality of disgust and shame in the affective dynamics of porn. Paasonen's analysis makes clear the crucial role of media technologies—digital production tools and networked communications in particular—in the forms that porn takes, the resonances it stirs, and the experiences it makes possible.
Background and Aims
Moral incongruence involves disapproval of a behavior in which people engage despite their moral beliefs. Although considerable research has been conducted on how moral ...incongruence relates to pornography use, potential roles for moral incongruence in other putative behavioral addictions have not been investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of moral incongruence in self‐perceived addiction to: (i) pornography; (ii) internet addiction; (iii) social networking; and (iv) online gaming.
Design
A cross‐sectional, preregistered, online survey using multivariable regression.
Setting
Online study conducted in Poland.
Participants
1036 Polish adults aged between 18 and 69 years.
Measurements
Measures included self‐perceived behavioral addiction to pornography, internet use, social networking and online gaming and their hypothesized determinants (moral incongruence, frequency of use, time of use, religiosity, age and gender).
Findings
Higher moral incongruence (β = 0.20, P < 0.001) and higher religiosity (β = 0.08, P < 0.05) were independently associated with higher self‐perceived addiction to pornography. Additionally, frequency of pornography use was the strongest of the analyzed predictors (β = 0.43, P < 0.001). A similar, positive relationship between high moral incongruence and self‐perceived addiction was also present for internet (β = 0.16, P < 0.001), social networking (β = 0.18, P < 0.001) and gaming addictions (β = 0.16, P < 0.001). Religiosity was uniquely, although weakly, connected to pornography addiction, but not to other types of addictive behaviors.
Conclusions
Moral incongruence may be positively associated with self‐perception of behavioral addictions including not only pornography viewing, but also internet use, social networking and online gaming.
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