NEW YORK – I remember it like it was yesterday: Sitting in a college lecture hall, I listened with mild confusion as a professor of sociology denigrated the value of his own chosen profession.
“Listen up, because this is important,” he said, wildly waving his pointer to make sure he got our attention. “Someone needs to tell you there are two kinds of science in this world: hard science and soft science. Hard science is stuff like physics or astronomy. Sure, they deal with ‘theories’ sometimes, just like we do in sociology all the time, but they also have rules and laws, things which are set in stone, and they come to actual conclusions which are provable. Right now, you are sitting in a room where we discuss soft science, period. Just about nothing will ever be proven in a room like this, and anybody who tells you otherwise is lying to you.”
As I heard this spiel some 25 years ago, I’m sure I’ve misquoted somewhat my dearly departed professor, but not by much. I remember it so clearly because his remarks stood out to me as a moment of academic candor I truly appreciated. The professor also gave me an important caveat to keep in mind any time I read about a soft science study which claims to “prove” anything.
In fairness to the authors of “Pornography and the Male Sexual Script: An Analysis of Consumption and Sexual Relations,” published in the November issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, they don’t appear to be asserting their research is incontrovertible proof of anything. In looking at some of their conclusions, though, the words of my long-ago sociology professor blared in my ears.
“Pornography has become a primary source of sexual education,” reads the first line of the study’s abstract, immediately yielding a statement very much in need of a citation. Who says pornography has become a “primary source of sexual education?” Is this the authors’ assertion? If so, on what information is it based?
(Abstracts generally don’t include footnotes, so I’ll give the authors a pass on the assumption the statement is supported in the text of the full study itself – which, like every other quasi-journalist writing about this study, I am not going to shell out $40 to read)
“At the same time, mainstream commercial pornography has coalesced around a relatively homogenous script involving violence and female degradation,” the abstract continues, suggesting perhaps the authors have spent more time on tube sites than on sites like X-Art or any gay porn site, among other things.
The primary concern of the study appears to be answering the question “What role does pornography play inside real-world sexual encounters between a man and a woman?”
It’s a good question and one worth asking, given how culturally relevant porn has become. It’s also a question I’m not sure anyone can answer by conducting a survey of 487 college students.
Among other things, to distill the effects of porn viewing on such men, you first must account for the attitudes and sexual behaviors they displayed before they began to consume porn (assuming, of course, they had any sexual encounters prior to viewing porn). After all, you can’t very well assign causality if the observed effects precede the putative cause.
The study also states “the more pornography a man watches, the more likely he was to use it during sex, request particular pornographic sex acts of his partner, deliberately conjure images of pornography during sex to maintain arousal, and have concerns over his own sexual performance and body image.”
This doesn’t sound entirely unreasonable as a possibility on its face, but again – if you’re conducting a survey among men whose porn-viewing habits presumably vary from one individual to the next, how do you eliminate the possibility men with concerns about their sexual performance and body image aren’t predisposed to watch porn more than men who don’t have such concerns? This strikes me as a very reasonable possibility, and it’s not clear to me whether the authors of this study even considered it as a factor in coming to their conclusions.
Another aspect that stands out about this study: Among its sources, you’ll find the work of several passionate anti-porn activists. Academics they may be, but their orientation toward the subject of pornography is anything but neutral, objective, scientific inquiry.
These sources include Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography by Wendy and Larry Martz (sex and relationship therapists who earn their coin helping people overcome their porn “addictions”) and Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families by Pamela Paul.
Again, to be fair, I’m not certain how these sources were used or which portions of the works were cited, but I find it troubling an academic research project involving porn would rely on these works in any way. In Pamela Paul’s book, for example, she offers exclusively anecdotal evidence followed by broad, sweeping conclusions based on said anecdotal evidence. That’s not even soft science. It’s just bare assertion, backed by analogy and pathos.
One thing I won’t quibble with is the notion porn has become far more visible and a much bigger part of day-to-day life in the Internet Age than it was in prior epochs. As such, it’s no surprise to see porn receiving more attention from academics, researchers, scientists, activists, counselors, divorce attorneys, self-help industry profiteers, charlatans and members of Congress.
As an industry, adult entertainment shouldn’t be closed to scientific and academic research about porn, even if the results don’t paint a pretty picture of the products. There’s a difference, however, between being open to hearing derogatory data about porn’s impact and being eager to find such wherever one looks.
Honestly, I’m not certain whether the authors of “Pornography and the Male Sexual Script: An Analysis of Consumption and Sexual Relations” are in search of answers, or just in search of information which tends to support a conclusion they reached before surveying even a single college boy. Unfortunately, where soft science is concerned, this is often what we get: conclusions in search of evidence.
Does the evidence exist to prove porn creates a “male sexual script” men are helpless to avoid? Perhaps…but you’re not going to find it in this study.
