• nemesis@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    I think most communists agree that the porn industry itself is deeply exploitative, but I’ve read many studies that suggest that porn consumption has negative impacts on the consumer as well. I’ve picked out a few to consider below. Note that most of these studies are focused exclusively on cishet relationships and the most commonly consumed types of porn (i.e. mainstream porn). Meaning that queer porn and ethical porn are not considered here.

    Porn use can be bad for your health

    • Adolescent porn use contributes to spread of sexual misinformation (Source)
    • Porn users, compared to non-users, reported greater depressive symptoms, poorer quality of life, more mental‐ and physical‐health diminished days, and lower health status (Source)
    • Frequent porn use in het women correlates with insecurities in appearance and less sexual enjoyment (Source)
    • With fMRI, porn has been observed to be addictive in ways similar to gambling and substance addictions (Source)
    • Other evidence that porn can be addictive (1) (2) (3) (4)

    Porn use has negative impacts on relationships

    • Porn consumption is correlated to sexual dysfunction in both men and women (1) (2)
    • Regardless of marital status, porn use was either associated neutrally or negatively associated with nearly all relationship outcomes, with virtually no positive associations (Source)
    • Separation is more than twice as likely for married Americans that viewed porn as those who did not, even after marital happiness, sexual satisfaction and sociodemographic controls (Source)
    • Porn users are more likely to experience loneliness (Source)

    Porn promotes sexual aggression and violence

    • Porn use linked to increased frequency of sexual choking (Source)
    • Frequent porn consumption is linked to predatory sexual behavior in high school males (Source)
    • Frequent porn consumption associated with adolescent male willingness to forward sexts (Source)
    • 1 in 12 people in the US have been the victim of revenge porn. Women are more likely to be the victim, men the perpetrator (Source)
    • Exposure to pornography and perceiving it as realistic associated with increases sexual aggression risk (Source)
    • From a sample of 4009 heterosexual videos on Pornhub, 45% contain some form of physical aggression. 97% of the targets of aggression were women who were portrayed to have positive or neutral response (Source)
    • Porn consumption is correlated with sexual aggressive behavior, both as aggressors and targets. Women and men who have sex with men have higher report rates of being targets (Source)
    • Association between porn use and sexual aggression are significant; meta-analysis (Source)

    Porn can be dehumanizing:

    • Men with frequent porn use are more likely to engage in mechanistic and animalistic dehumanization of woman (Source)
    • Incel and pornography languages are strikingly similar (Source)
    • Most porn consumers do not care about performer mistreatment (Source)
    • Porn perpetuates racist stereotypes (Source)

    Will all the negative consequences of porn dissipate with the abolition of porn as an industry in a socialist society that continues to permit porn? Instant access to near limitless porn is unprecedented. We are only now scratching the surface on research as to the consequences. I think this is something that will need to be studied and monitored even after transition into socialism. Addiction possibilities and strong links to sexual aggression are especially worrisome to me, and I have concerns that porn may continue to reinforce stereotypes and set unrealistic expectations even within a socialist state.

    • Rondomi🏳️‍⚧️@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      Under socialism, we would hopefully have much better sex education (and general education) than we do now. Perhaps that would help mitigate the negative effects or equip people to recognize the lack of realism in porn and the misogynistic and racist stereotypes it perpetuates? Assuming such things persist even as conditions change.