The relationship between consumption of pornography and consensual sexual practice: Results of a mixed method systematic review

Abstract

This article reports on the findings of a systematic review of literature on pornography use and sexual consent published between January 2000 and December 2017. The review found that there exists little research explicitly addressing consent. There exists an extensive literature on the relationship between the consumption of pornography and sexual aggression/violence; however, this work fails to distinguish between consensual (kink, spanking, BDSM) and nonconsensual acts (sexual harassment and rape). Our thematic analysis found that there is no agreement in the literature reviewed as to whether consumption of pornography is correlated with better or worse understandings or practices of sexual consent. The majority of articles that identified correlations between aspects of sexual health and pornography consumption incorrectly assigned causality to pornography consumption.