Just Fantasy? Online Pornography’s Contribution to Experiences of Harm

Abstract

Mainstream pornography is popular, freely accessible, and infused with themes of male dominance, aggression, and female subservience. Through depicting sex in these ways, mainstream pornography has the potential to influence the further development of harmful sexual scripts that condone or endorse violence against women and girls. These concerns warrant the adoption of a harms-based perspective in critical examinations of pornography’s influence on sexual experiences. This chapter reports on findings from interviews with 24 heterosexual emerging adults living in Aotearoa/New Zealand about how pornography has impacted their lives. Despite a shared awareness among participants of mainstream pornography’smisogynistic tendencies, and the potential for harm from those displays, men’s and women’s experiences were profoundly gendered. Men’s reported experiences were often associated with concerns about their own sexual behaviors, performances, and/or abilities. Conversely, women’s experiences were often shaped by how pornography had affected the way that men related to them sexually. Their experiences included instances of sexual coercion and assault which were not reported by the men. These findings signal the need for a gendered lens, situated within a broader harms-based perspective, in examinations of pornography’s influence.