Although internet pornography is frequently criticized for depicting gender inequality, surprisingly little research has examined the actual gendered content of online porn.
Moreover, what little research does exist in this area has focused largely on still images and erotic stories, which means that we know even less about the gendered content of the most widely consumed form of online porn: videos.
A new study just published in the Journal of Sex Research offers a rare look into how gender is represented in pornographic videos from the internet today.
In this study, researchers were guided by the following four research questions:
1.) To what extent are men and women objectified in Internet pornography?
2.) How is power distributed between men and women in Internet pornography?
3.) To what extent does Internet pornography depict violence against men and women?
4.) How does amateur Internet pornography differ from professional Internet pornography in its depiction of gender (in)equality?
In order to address these questions, researchers performed a content analysis on the 100 most-viewed videos in February 2013 from four of the world’s most popular porn sites: Pornhub, RedTube, YouPorn, and xHamster (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — I don’t quite get the appeal of a porn site named after a rodent).
In total, there were 400 videos, but only the first sex scene that appeared in each video was analyzed. On average, each sex scene lasted 16.17 minutes, yielding almost 108 hours worth of porn to be analyzed! Four coders independently viewed the entire set of videos and coded the content for objectification, power, and violence for each gender.
Before describing the results, it is important to note that this set of videos did not include any gay or transgender pornography. Consequently, the results below only speak to heterosexual porn.
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100hours of porn? You would think these people would spend more than a week on a study.