Violence

Open Access: No.

Abstract

Existing research on aggression in online pornography is almost exclusively based on pornography featuring heterosexual sex. Pornography featuring sex between two men or between two women has received comparatively little scholarly attention, despite its growing industry presence and revenue. To our knowledge, no study has focused on comparing the aggressive content of different-sex and same-sex mainstream online pornography. To address this gap, we utilized a sample of 210 popular videos uploaded to Pornhub over the last decade. This sample consisted of three major categories: “gay” (male/male; n = 70), “lesbian” (female/female; n = 70), and “most-watched of all time” (male/female; n = 70). Our findings show that there are both more displays of aggression and more displays of affection and pleasure in same-sex online pornographic videos, relative to different-sex videos. We discuss the relevance and limits of dominant sexual and gender scripts when analyzing across subgenres of mainstream online pornography.

Relevance

Male/male and female/female videos were more likely to include physical aggression than male/female videos. (They were also more likely to include mutual affection.)

While aggression was more common in the same-sex videos, “humiliating acts” (e.g., ejaculation on the face) “were considerably more common” in male-female videos.

This study challenges the notion that non-heterosexual porn is in some sense a kindler, gentler or empowering alternative to ‘mainstream’ male-female porn.

Culture Reframed note: This study suggests that all porn is violent.

Citation

Seida, K., & Shor, E. (2021). Aggression and Pleasure in Opposite-Sex and Same-Sex Mainstream Online Pornography: A Comparative Content Analysis of Dyadic Scenes. Journal of sex research, 58(3), 292–304. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2019.1696275