Sexual Media Research Articles

Impersonal Sex and Pornography: Potential Confounding, Moderation, and Implications for Public Health

ABSTRACT Following the recent exhortations of health communication scholars to continue the study of pornography and its potential impact on health-related behaviors, the present study investigated associations between the frequency of pornography use and six indicators of impersonal sex among a national probability sample of US adults. Impersonal sex has been linked to a variety of important public health outcomes, including STD risk and sexual aggression perpetration. In this study, pornography use was positively correlated with the likelihood of engaging in group sex, having sex with a casual partner, having sex without emotional intimacy, experiencing heightened sexual pleasure during non-relational sex, relational infidelity, and perceiving the receipt of sexual pleasure from others as the best thing about sex. No evidence emerged that these associations were spuriously due to high sex drive individuals being both more likely to consume pornography and engage in impersonal sex. But several were conditional on age. Most importantly, countering the conventional wisdom that sexual media are most likely to affect the sexual behavior of young audiences, the strength of the positive association between pornography use and the likelihood of engaging in group sex and casual dyadic sex was larger among older adults and weaker among younger adults.

Patterns of Heterosexual Sex in Popular Netflix Series: A Content Analysis of Age, Race, Face Attractiveness, and Body Type

AbstractThe portrayal of diverse ages, races, face attractiveness, and body types in sexual media content might impact societal perceptions of sexuality, delineating which individuals are deemed sexually appealing and whose sexuality is normalized. Despite extensive research on demographics within pornography, the representation within mainstream media, particularly on streaming platforms like Netflix, remains underexplored. The current study addresses this gap by employing quantitative content analysis to examine the diversity of characters in sexual contexts within seven highly popular Netflix series. We coded the age, race, face attractiveness, and body type of 91 characters (45 female characters) that appeared in mixed-gender sexual encounters (i.e., sexual encounters between a woman and a man). The study reveals a predominant adherence to stereotypical demographics and conventional beauty standards. The sexual scenes presented mostly younger individuals and revealed a notable underrepresentation of individuals aged 40 +. Racial diversity among characters was more evident. Female characters were predominantly depicted as conventionally attractive and were almost exclusively portrayed with skinny body types, while male characters exhibited a wider range of physical appearances. This study highlights a gap in the media’s inclusivity efforts and suggests a need for more comprehensive representation to reflect a broader spectrum of age and beauty ideals in the portrayals of human sexuality. While our study is limited to analyzing media representations, future research should include longitudinal experimental studies to evaluate their impact on people’s sexualities.

Introduction

When, in 2019, I started planning a conference that would take place in September 2020 at the University of Exeter, my aim was to bring together a wide variety of scholars to reflect on the viral modes of contemporary masculinities. The conference was being planned in the context of an Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellows grant I had been awarded, thanks to which I had been researching contemporary gay “pig” sex subcultures. That is, a kind of contemporary gay male subculture anchored in the eroticization of bodily fluid exchanges and of the corruption of the whole, self-contained, and impermeable male body hegemonically idealized in modern European thought. In a biopolitical context in which HIV infection had become something one can self-manage through highly active antiretroviral therapies, or otherwise avoid with pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) drug regimens, I contended that the twenty-first-century erotic investment in bodily fluids and transgression of the boundaries of the idealized bourgeois body makes gay “pig” subcultures a rich field of practice that can help us think about new and hopefully more capacious ways of relating to the other that no longer require identification and recognition as preconditions. Emerging at the intersection of twenty-first-century sex media, pharmacotechnologies, and sex practices, gay “pigs” are porous creatures that can simultaneously point toward new kinds of relating, of sociability, of ethics, while at the same time still often manifesting and reinforcing some of the traits that have historically defined modern European masculinities (Florêncio 2020). In short, the literal opening up of their masculinity, which I saw—and continue to see—as ethically and politically promising, still often remained dependent on a strengthening of other traits coded as masculine: endurance, athleticism, resilience, heroism, and so on; as if masculinities weren't a static monolith but indeed a fleshy psychosexual reality that manages to survive precisely because it is plastic, adaptable, receptive to change. Diversity ensures the survival of any species, I guess.

Dick pics and the shifty meanings of porn

ABSTRACT Dick pics are ubiquitous objects in social media shared for the purposes of harassment, flirtation, suggestion, amusement, and titillation alike. Starting with the question of how dick pics are, or are not classifiable as porn, this article opens up lines of inquiry on the possibilities and limitations of porn as a genre marker, content classifier, and reference point in and for understanding sexual content distributed through networked means. In the contemporary moment when sexual content continues to multiply online even as most social media platforms vigilantly moderate and remove it, scholarly vocabularies risk either lagging behind or posing normative categorisation on the things published and shared, from dick pics to webcam shows and OnlyFans content. This article calls for contextual care in how the notion of porn becomes applied to networked sexual media, the shapes of continue to morph, as well as in how dick pics are made sense of as communication devices and cultural symbols.

“The Only Thing I Want is for People to Stop Seeing Me Naked”: Consent, Contracts, and Sexual Media

AbstractIn pornography, standard modeling contracts often require a performer to surrender rights over their public image and sexual media in perpetuity and across media. Under these contracts, performers are unable to determine who accesses, for what duration, and under what conditions, their sexual media. As a result, pornography has been described by some performers as a “life sentence”—a phrase which, if true, violates some strong intuitions we share about the importance of autonomy in sexual activity. Using the framework of “affirmative consent,” I argue that these contracts violate performers’ rights to sexual autonomy, and ought therefore to be considered objectionable. Overall, I argue that the legal regimes we create have a strong impact on people's lives, and more important than legislating individual outcomes, the type of infrastructure we build around people's decisions has the potential to radically empower—or disempower—those engaged in sex work.

Criminal law and sexting as a form of adolescent online violence in Croatia: normative and empirical findings

ABSTRACT This paper addresses sexting from an interdisciplinary perspective through a normative analysis of the new criminal offense of the misuse of recordings of sexually explicit content (Art. 144a, CC) introduced in 2021 in the Croatian Criminal Code. Based on the legislative framework and empirical study analysis, we provide conclusions on the adequacy of the existing criminal provisions with implications for future research, and present empirical findings from a 2020 online survey on sexting experiences and risky sexual behaviour with 724 adolescents (Ngirls = 534, 73,8%) aged 14–22. Older adolescents reported significantly higher sexting perpetration. Lower school achievers reported higher sexting victimization. Non-heterosexual participants reported more sexting perpetration. Participants with more sexual partners scored higher for both sexting perpetration and victimization. Sexting perpetration correlated to the group of older adolescents with lower school attainment and academic achievement who reported less family relationships satisfaction. Sexters reported more risky behaviour, higher media use intensity and more sexual knowledge, but less sexual media content exposure. Sexting positively correlated to the number of sexual partners and the relationship duration. Male gender, older age, risky behaviour, higher media use intensity, better general sexual knowledge and the number of sexual partners represented significant predictors of sexting perpetration.

Re-envisioning Youth Sexual Health Care: Supporting Sex Positivity in a Digital World

BackgroundYouth in a digital world face challenges to healthy development of their sexuality from exposure to sexting, pornography, and other sexually explicit media. School-based sexual health education does not cover digital sexual content and the impact on sexuality and sexual relationships. Youth often avoid discussing sexual health with parents or other trusted adults, thus often relying on peers, making them ill-prepared to navigate the complexities (e.g., socially, emotionally, and romantically) of sexually explicit content. MethodsA review of emerging evidence for application into clinical practice. Clinical ImplicationsThis paper provides nurse practitioners (NPs) with resources and information to incorporate this re-envisioned approach to sexual healthcare into practice, to provide current, timely, and holistic youth sexual healthcare. ConclusionYouth sexual healthcare must be re-envisioned. NPs can improve youth sexual health by incorporating pornography and sexual media literacy, safe sexting, and concepts of consent into care using a sex-positive lens.

Factors Influencing Teacher Efficacy: The Impact of Awareness of Sexual Media Literacy and Communication Competence among Health Teachers

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the factors influencing teacher efficacy, awareness of sexual media literacy, and communication competence among health teachers.Methods: A descriptive study design was used. Participants included 102 health teachers in K-do. The data were collected from November 5 to 12, 2022. The collected data were analyzed using t-tests, one-way ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and multiple regression through the SPSS 29.0 program.Results: The influential factor for teacher efficacy was communication competence (β= 0.34, <i>p</i>< 0.001). This factor accounted for 22.5% of the teacher efficacy among health teachers.Conclusions: To develop a program that increases teacher efficacy among health teachers, it is necessary to prepare a plan to improve communication competence.

“I wouldn’t want you talking to my kids!”: the politics of age when conducting research about porn with young people

ABSTRACT Much research has been conducted on young people as a population rather than with them. Traditionally, porn research has focused on effects – on the assumption that people, especially young people, are impacted by the sexual media they consume, which leads to negative outcomes such as violence and addiction. In this sense, porn is framed as risky and children and young people become especially ‘at risk’. Sex, sexuality and sexual media are then portrayed as a threat from which young people should be protected. Nevertheless, for many young people watching porn is a normal activity and engaging with porn online is a part of everyday life for some teenagers. Scholars have indicated that many young people perceive porn as ubiquitous, as part of society, and difficult to avoid. In this reflexive article I will interrogate the need for such research, even if it is considered as a form of ‘dirty work’, within an alarmist and sensationalist media-driven culture. By examining my experiences of the ethics review process, access to participants, and the fieldwork itself, I hope to demonstrate moments of texture and detail throughout the process which future sex, sexuality and porn researchers can draw upon.

The “Psychologization” of Self-Images: Parents Views on the Gendered Dynamics of Sexting and Teen Social Media Cultures

This paper reports on data from interviews conducted with parents of high school-aged teens as part of a study which was aimed at better understanding the gendered dimensions of youth sexting and social media use, and the community responses to it. Here, we outline the findings on parents’ key concerns around digital and social media, their perceptions of the gendered dynamics of youth self-imaging practices, and their attitudes towards sexting and potentially “sexualized” self-images. Echoing other research in this area, parents were not overly concerned about sexting, nor sexual image-sharing or sexual media use among teens. Rather, their key concerns were more generally about the intensities and pressures of constant contact with peers in the digital era. They did, however, articulate key gender differences and socialization processes around youth self-imaging practices. We discuss the gendered cultural “attunements to sexualization” that parents negotiate in relation to social media image-sharing practices and suggest that the perspectives and experiences described can be understood as part of a broader cultural “psychologization”, and often psycho-pathologizing, of youth self-images in digitally networked intimate publics that is particularly intense around the vectors of gender and sexuality.

Longitudinal Relations Between Heterosexual Adolescents’ Perceived Exposure to Sex-Positive Television Messages and Their Supportive Attitudes and Behaviors Toward the LGBTQ+ Community

The literature on heterosexual adolescents’ television viewing and its over-time impact on attitudes and behaviors regarding LGBTQ+ is limited. The current study aims to fill this gap in the literature by using three-wave data from 338 heterosexual adolescents ( Mage = 15.29, SD = 1.48, 68.6% girls). We explored relations between adolescents’ perceived exposure to sex-positive television messages, their respectful approach to different sexual expressions, and their endorsement of supportive behavior regarding LGBTQ+. A Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM) showed that, at a between-person level, perceived exposure to sex-positive television messages was related to the endorsement of supportive behavior regarding LGBTQ+. Yet, results revealed that an increased perceived exposure to sex-positive television messages was not associated with respectful approach to different sexual expressions and endorsement of supportive behavior regarding LGBTQ+ at the individual level. No sex or traditional gender role orientation differences were found. Our findings hopefully encourage sexual media research to further distinguish between-and within-person relations and to consider potential testing effects that mask true within-person change.

Hamming distributions of popular perceptual hashing techniques

Content-based file matching has been widely deployed for decades, largely for the detection of sources of copyright infringement, extremist materials, and abusive sexual media. Perceptual hashes, such as Microsoft’s PhotoDNA, are one automated mechanism for facilitating detection, allowing for machines to approximately match visual features of an image or video in a robust manner. However, there does not appear to be much public evaluation of such approaches, particularly when it comes to how effective they are against content-preserving modifications to media files. In this paper we present a million-image scale evaluation of several perceptual hashing archetypes for popular algorithms (including Facebook’s PDQ, Apple’s Neuralhash, and the popular pHash library) against seven image variants. The focal point is the distribution of Hamming distance scores between both unrelated images and image variants to better understand the problems faced by each approach.

Sexually Explicit Material and Its Relationship with Sociodemographic Variables, Sexual Satisfaction, and Relationship Satisfaction in a Spanish Sample.

Previous research that has examined the use of sexually explicit material (SEM) in the Spanish population and its relationship with sociodemographic variables, sexual satisfaction, and satisfaction with the relationship are practically non-existent. Therefore, the main goal was to analyze the pattern of use of SEM (frequency, format, context, content, and purpose of its use) and its relationship with sociodemographic variables (sex, age, sexual orientation, educational level, religiosity, status of partner, number of sexual partners, and age of first exposure to SEM), sexual satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction. The sample consisted of 221 participants, with an average age equal to 29.88 years (SD = 9.73) and of Spanish nationality. All participants completed a sociodemographic questionnaire, as well as the Spanish adaptations of the Sexual Media Questionnaire, Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction, and Global Measure of Relationship Satisfaction. Based on the results, it was found that men use SEM more frequently than women, that the age of first exposure is 14 years old, the most used pattern of SEM is internet websites with sexual content in which adult men and women appear, and the way to visualize it is alone as private stimulation. In addition, it was shown that a higher frequency of SEM use implies a decrease in sexual satisfaction and vice versa, while there is no association between the frequency of SEM use and satisfaction with the relationship. The importance of considering the use of SEM, both in research on sexual satisfaction and in clinical practice, is discussed.

Conceptual Overview (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Conceptual Overview (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Performer Bodily Appearance (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Performer Bodily Appearance (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Sex Acts (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Sex Acts (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Consent Communication (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Consent Communication (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Relational Context of Sex (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Relational Context of Sex (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Safer Sex Practices (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Safer Sex Practices (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Degradation (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)

Degradation (Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography)