Voluntary exposure to pornography and men's attitudes toward feminism and rape

Abstract

The effects that pornography have on men's attitudes toward women remains an issue of contention. Most previous researchers who have examined the relationship between pornography and attitudes toward women have used experimental studies or aggregate studies. Instead, I examined a sample of men who voluntarily viewed sexually explicit videos of their choosing in a non‐experimental setting. I examined the relationship between these men's renting of pornographic videos and their attitudes toward feminism and rape. More specifically, the purpose of this research was to determine whether men who rented more X‐rated videos displayed more negative attitudes toward feminism and if they were more likely to condone violence toward women than were men who rented fewer X‐rated videos. In this article, I used cross tabulation to compare 194 men who rented X‐rated videos of their choosing from a single pornography establishment in a large metropolitan county during 1988. The men were compared on their attitudes concerning the Equal Rights Amendment, a law against marital rape, and punishment for date rape and marital rape. No correlations were found between the number of videos a man had rented and his attitudes toward feminism and rape. These findings suggest that calloused attitudes toward women may not be generated by sexually explicit videos but are more deeply ingrained in our society.