AUSTRALIA – A common complaint made against pornography by anti-porn feminists and social conservatives is that it regularly demeans women by depicting them as nothing more than “sex objects.” A recent Australian study on the subject disagrees.According to the study, which will be published in the well-respected and peer-reviewed Journal of Sex Research, women in adult videos are very much in control. Queensland University professor Alan McKee led the researchers in comparing how men and women in 50 top selling adult videos were represented in each title. Of particular note were things such as who initiated sex, whose sexual pleasure received more attention, whether the performers were able to express to one another what they wanted to do or gain from their sexual encounter, and whose perspective the video was shot from.

The results were not what many researchers had expected.

“We were surprised at just how active and in control the women were in these videos,” McKee confessed. In fact, as the head researcher sees it, the study “suggests that mainstream pornography in Australia doesn’t represent women as sex objects, it shows them as active sexual agents.”

The 50 videos, primarily imported from the United States, were watched by 320 research participants who enjoy mainstream pornographic materials. Of those, 20-percent were younger women, 33-percent were married, 63-percent identified as religious, and 93-percent endorsed gender equality. Most of the participants were also members of the anti-porn Liberal/National political parties.

The study was part of a three-year study funded by the Australian government and is the most complete of its kind in the nation’s history. Other information gleaned from the study was released in 2003 and included the fact that some men found exceptionally large breasts frightening and that socially conservative voters prefer explicit magazines and videos with more realistic storylines and plots. In McKee’s opinion, these insights destroy the notion that porn is only enjoyed by “dirty old men in a trench coat.”

A pop culture book about the results of the study is planned once the full details have been released and an executive summary given to the federal government.