Violence
Pornography and Men’s Violence Against Women and Children: From Production to Consumption.
Open Access: Yes.
Abstract
The average age of first viewing mainstream pornography for boys is around ten to twelve years old. The pornography they encounter is largely from “tube sites,” named after YouTube, which are popular because they require no registration, no payment, and no subscription. For the most part, an adolescent only needs access to a digital device to view hundreds of thousands of free videos. As we discuss in this article, the weight of the scientific evidence shows that viewing pornography is associated with multiple social, emotional, sexual, and cognitive harms. However, none of these studies provide a detailed analysis of the content, and we have learned from numerous presentations and workshops that much of the public is unaware of the cruelty and violence in pornography that are perpetrated against women by men. By focusing both on the content and effects, our goal is to expand and deepen the contemporary understanding of pornography as a cultural text and narrative that has normalized, glamorized, and cemented the ideological and material reality of women and girls as a debased sex-class.
Relevance
“Our data demonstrate that pornographic violence is pervasive and overwhelmingly shows men mistreating, hurting, and debasing women. As a result, we argue, the overarching lesson taught by pornography to young people is that women are less deserving of sexual dignity and autonomy than men, and that men have the right and duty to dominate women and abuse their bodies.”
“Many large tube sites post a page that lists all their official or recognized tags and/or keywords. In early November 2025, we examined the tags listed by one of the top global free pornography platforms. There were approximately 2,000 tags. Almost half of the tags referred to outright violence and degradation. This is an important point. The tags prove that the pornography industry recognizes, endorses, and encourages sexual violence.”
“We visited each of the four tube sites on five random days between November 2025 and January 2026. On each visit, all the titles were read on anywhere from the first five or six to as many as ten consecutive pages. Each page contained dozens of titles. The analysis also included all the titles listed as the “Best of November 2025” on one platform. In all, we examined 6,363 titles…75% of the titles indicated violence and/or degradation. This percentage is far greater than reported by any of the published studies cited above. Many of the title terms were viciously misogynistic.” The categories included titles conveying: denigration of women, sexualized violence against women, incest and family violence, underage, and coercion.
We also watched 474 videos and determined that 95% displayed at least one act of violence and degradation – and typically many more. This is a much larger percentage than published in any previous study. In tabulating the 2,310 aggressive or demeaning incidents, we counted each action only the first time it occurred in a video, even though many actions repeated several times. This was especially true when multiple men were abusing one woman. Even so, each video displayed, on average, at least 5 distinct categories of violence or degradation.
Our analysis also ‘scraped’ metadata from 73,901 videos, using a machine learning algorithm. The most-viewed single-word category was “teen,” which garnered over 77 billion views across the dataset. Over 50% of the videos were in our “teen” category, accumulating 103 billion views. Around 60% of all the videos, according to the machine analysis, promoted physical and sexual aggression. 67% of the videos referred to “explicitly degrading” acts. Almost 25% featured incest themes.
We also calculated that 35,000 women appeared in these videos.
“It is clear from both our content analysis of pornography websites and the enormous amount of research in the social sciences that men’s sexual violence against women and children is woven into today’s mainstream pornography. From production through to consumption, sexual violence against women is not some aberrance or unfortunate byproduct of pornography. Rather, it is the defining product of the industry’s business model. It is the essential element of the content and a consequence of its consumption. The pornography industry does not celebrate sexuality; it peddles sexualized violence. Pornography seeks to seduce and groom minors into thinking that violence and degradation are what sex is supposed to be. In so doing, the pornography industry diminishes the desires, agency, and safety of everybody, especially women and young people.”
Citation
Dines, G., & Sanchez, M. (2026). Pornography and Men’s Violence Against Women and Children: From Production to Consumption. Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence, 11(3), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.23860/dignity.2026.11.03.01
