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1. What is the most important lesson of pornography in terms of gender, power and authority?
2. Why is it important to recognize the lessons of gender characteristics in pornography?
Answer should be at least 215 words total. Use only information found in the video below and paragraphs below and in the file I have uploaded to you.
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Pornography
Pornography occupies a much larger place in the media environment than it would appear to on first glance. On any given day, a gateway website, chaturbate.com, which links viewers to live pornographic depictions, will appear among the top 20 or so most-visited websites in the U.S. To illustrate its popularity, on the day this paragraph was written, Aug. 17, 2020, chaturbate.com was visited more frequently than cnn.com, walmart.com, twitter.com and linkedin.com.
Most of the visitors to the site are men. Most view the site from home.
According to the web analytics website alexa.com, the average visitor to pornhub.com spent nearly 12 minutes on the site and viewed more than eight pages while there.
And this is just one pornographic website, one of many portals to an entire universe of other sites.
But there is little public discussion about the amount of pornography that is consumed. The fact of pornographic viewing is a point of brief, often humorous social conversation. Deep discussions about what is seen and the underlying ideologies are rare. Most pornography is consumed by heterosexual men while they are alone.
So pornography tends to have a significant impact on the world view of its consumers. Socialization takes place as people “test” their ideas in their day-to-day interactions with others. People get feedback from other people and learn – quickly – whether a behavior or an idea gets them praise or criticism, social approval or rejection. Since pornography is not the subject of deep discussion, the ideas and ideologies within those texts are not put to the “test ” of real- world feedback. Pornography is a text that is consumed privately, and the lessons contained within are internalized without further analysis.
Pornography is not simply images of people having sex. Upon closer study, pornography tells a story about power and authority. Pornography is a world where heterosexual men get what they want from women, and enforce their demands with physical and verbal aggression.
Physical aggression, obviously, is depicted in images, and as discussed above, violent images travel well; they need not be translated into other languages, and they are comprehensible to a wide range of consumers in every society. In addition, when men act aggressively in this world, they are rewarded with sex.
Pornography depicts a world where men are powerful and authoritative and women do what they are told to do by men, or are willing to do what men want them to do without being told.
The critical element of the narrative of pornography is the “nature,” or characteristics, of each gender. In this world, men are powerful and women are not. And as discussed before, what audiences learn through cultivation are the characteristics associated with groups of people.
The lessons about the characteristics of men and women in pornography are carried over by the watchers of pornography into their views on the characteristics of women and men outside of the world of pornography. Based on what is learned from watching pornography, people learn that men have the characteristics to be leaders. They are decisive, powerful and authoritative. They get what they want. The lessons of pornography have far more important implications than merely interpersonal or romantic relationships. Those lessons tell us which sex/gender should be our political leaders, our corporate managers, our judges, those who run the culture.
In other words, if you owned a business and were looking for a manager, and all you knew about the characteristics of men and women were what you learned from the world of pornography, would you EVER hire a woman for a managerial position?
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Please read “Porn and Violence” below and be able to describe the lessons of gender, power
and authority – and how they are told and reinforced – as they are depicted in popular
pornography.
Aggression And Sexual Behavior In Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A Content Analysis
Update.
– Bridges AJ, Wosnitzer R, Scharrer E, Sun C, Liberman R., University of Arkansas,
Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA. [email protected]
This current study analyzes the content of popular pornographic videos, with the objectives of
updating depictions of aggression, degradation, and sexual practices and comparing the
study’s results to previous content analysis studies. Findings indicate high levels of
aggression in pornography in both verbal and physical forms. Of the 304 scenes analyzed,
88.2% contained physical aggression, principally spanking, gagging, and slapping, while
48.7% of scenes contained verbal aggression, primarily name-calling. Perpetrators of
aggression were usually male, whereas targets of aggression were overwhelmingly female.
Targets most often showed pleasure or responded neutrally to the aggression.
The study defines aggression in the following manner:
Aggression. Aggressive acts were recorded according to two specific subtypes: verbal and
physical. Physically aggressive acts were (a) pushing or shoving; (b) biting; (c) pinching; (d)
pulling hair; (e) spanking; (f) open-hand slapping; (g) gagging (defined as when an object or
body part, e.g., penis, hand, or sex toy, is inserted into a character’s mouth, visibly obstructing breathing); (h) choking (when one character visibly places his or her hands around
another character’s throat with applied pressure); (i) threatening with weapon; (j) kicking; (k)
closed- fist punching; (l) bondage or confining; (m) using weapons; and (n) torturing,
mutilating, or attempting murder. Verbally aggressive acts were (a) name calling or insulting
and (b) threat- ening physical harm. Coders indicated whether each scene contained verbal
aggression (yes/ no) and physical aggression (yes/no).
Aggression
On the whole, the pornographic scenes analyzed in this study were aggressive; only 10.2% (n
= 31) of scenes did not contain an aggressive act. Across all scenes, a total of 3,375 verbally
and physically aggressive acts were observed (Table 1). Of these, 632 were coded as
instances of verbal aggression and 2,743 were coded as instances of physical aggression.
On average, scenes had 11.52 acts of either verbal or physical aggression (SD = 15.04) and
ranged from none to 128. Physical aggression (M = 9.31, SD = 12.30) was much more
common than verbal aggression (M = 2.13, SD = 4.01), occurring in 88.2% (n = 268) of the
scenes, whereas expressions of verbal aggression occurred in 48.7% (n = 148) of the
scenes. By far, the most common verbally aggressive act was name calling (e.g., “bitch,”
“slut”; n = 614, or 97.2% of all 632 verbally aggressive acts). Spanking (35.7% of physically
aggressive acts; n = 980), gagging (27.7%; n = 759), and open-hand slapping (14.9%; n =
408) were the most frequently observed physically aggressive acts. Other physically
aggressive acts recorded included hair- pulling (10.1%; n = 276), choking (6.7%; n = 184),
and bondage or confinement (1.1%; n = 30).
None of the scenes showed characters who threatened one another with a weapon, hit one
another with a closed fist, or tortured and mutilated each other.
Women were overwhelmingly the targets of aggressive acts (Table 2). Across all acts of
aggression, both physical and verbal, 94.4% (n = 3,191) were directed toward women. Men
were the perpetrators of aggression more than twice as often as women, committing 70.3% (n
= 2,373) of the aggressive acts recorded. In contrast, women were perpetrators of 29.4% (n =
991) of all aggressive acts. Even when women were perpetrators, their targets were
frequently other women (17.7%; n = 598). Men were targets of only 4.2% (n = 143) of
aggressive acts perpetrated by women. Male-to-male aggression was present in only 0.3% (n
= 11) of the recorded instances and was most often verbal (only 4 instances of physical
aggression with a male perpetrator and a male target were recorded).
There were significant differences in the types of aggressive acts males and females
experienced, χ2(13) = 234.51, p < .001. Women were significantly more likely to be spanked,
choked, and gagged than men. Aggregately speaking across the sample spectrum, women
were verbally insulted or referred to in derogatory terms 534 times, whereas men experienced
similar verbal assaults in only 65 instances. Women were spanked on 953 occasions, visibly
gagged 756 times, experienced an open-hand slap 361 times, had their hair pulled or yanked
on 267 separate occasions, and were choked 180 times. Men, however, were spanked only
26 times, experienced an open-hand slap in 47 instances, and for all other aggressive acts,
were aggressed against fewer than 10 times.
When aggressed against, 95.1% (n = 3,206) of targets responded with either expressions of
pleasure (e.g., encouragement, sexual moans) or neutrally (e.g., no change in facial expression or interruption to actions). There was a significant difference between female and male
target responses to aggressive acts, χ2(1) = 51.31, p < .001. Women were significantly more
likely to express pleasure or neutrality when aggressed against (95.9%; n = 3,049) than men
(84.0%; n = 147). In contrast, men were four times more likely to show displeasure when
aggressed against (16.0%, n = 28) compared with women (4.1%; n = 132).
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