Porn makes sexist men even more sexist

Danish research suggests consumption of porn can fuel misogyny in straight men.

Quantifying the affect pornography has on attitudes towards women is a tricky one, not least because very few people are open and honest about their consumption of xxx-rated material, but also because recreating the right conditions in a lab must be a bit challenging.

Nonetheless, researchers in Copenhagen have found that for some men at least, watching porn does make them more sexist.

I could have probably told you this based on my experiences at school, but it’s good to have the science to back it up.

The study, of 200 Danish adults aged between 18 and 30, suggested that men who were ‘less agreeable’, ie antagonistic, hostile and self-interested, or as I like to call it, hyper-masculine, were more likely to display sexist attitudes after exposure to hardcore pornography.

Basically, if you’re a dick already, watching porn is going to make you an even bigger dick.

Researchers asked 100 men and 100 women about their pornography consumption habits and assessed their personality types before subjecting half to a selection of hardcore video clips. The other half presumably had to watch something which would to generate zero arousal – Time Team perhaps?

The men who were probably best acquainted with the delete-browser-history function, ie those who watched a lot of porn, were also more likely to harbour sexist attitudes in the first place.

So we see it it a self-fulfilling circle of sexism; sexist men watch more (possibly mainstream but almost definitely sexist) porn, and watching it makes them even more sexist.

It’s a bit of a no-brainer really.

Neil Malamuth, one of the researchers behind the study, said “What we’ve concluded is not that porn creates these attitudes but that it accentuates them.

“If these men already have these kinds of beliefs, but they are more dormant, porn appears to prompt these [tendencies] in their conscious minds.

“These men already have these tendencies; porn adds fuel to the fire.”

The report’s lead author, Gert Martin Hald, of the University of Copenhagen, added: “The study is important because it may help nuance the view of effects of porn and enable us to better understand for whom adverse effects of porn are most likely and the mechanisms by which such effects occur.”

For me however, it’s still a bit chicken-and-egg; pornography is helping to fuel sexist attitudes because it is inherently sexist, and it’s sexist because it’s predominately made for men, by men, who still view women as a means to an end, ie their own sexual satisfaction. But where do they get that notion from?

Interestingly, attitudes of the study’s female participants were unaffected by pornography.

Denmark is well know as an egalitarian nation and boasts an impressive record on gender equality, so in some ways the results are surprising.

If the female-friendly Danes are affected by porn in this way, what hope do British men have?

Denmark however was the first country in the world to legalise porn, and gender equality is not something that is high on the list of priorities of your average porn filmmaker, even in Denmark.

Figures released earlier this year suggest British web users access legal adult content more than they do social networking sites, which must be quite a lot.

The government may be looking into ways to safeguard children from online porn, but unfortunately there is no way of stopping those hyper-masculine, already sexist men accessing material that will just make them even less agreeable. If that is possible.