Porn and Sexual Violence: 7 Important Facts

Does watching porn correlate with sexual violence? Yes, it does. Does it cause sexual violence? That depends.

Decades of research testify to the close connection between pornography and sexual violence. And though the porn defenders adamantly insist there’s no causation, study after study points the finger at porn as a factor in sexual violence.

Does this mean that everyone who watches porn is sexually violent? Absolutely not. But it does mean the things we watch influence us, both on an individual level and on a broader scale in society.

Let’s take a look at this important body of research that goes back decades and traces the close link between pornography and sexual violence. These seven facts demonstrate, even if pornography is not the direct cause of sexual violence, that it contributes to sexual violence.

1. Mainstream Pornography Is Violent

In 2020, researchers from Indiana University conducted a survey of over 4000 pornographic videos from two popular porn sites. On one site, nearly half of the videos (45%) had at least one act of physical aggression. The other site had fewer instances of violence—about one-third.

“Spanking, gagging, slapping, hair pulling, and choking were the five most common forms of physical aggression. Women were the target of the aggression in 97% of the scenes, and their response to aggression was either neutral or positive and rarely negative. Men were the perpetrators of aggression against women in 76% of scenes.”¹

The researchers concluded, “This study suggests aggression is common against women in online pornography, while repercussions to this aggression are rarely portrayed.”

In 2021, researchers from Durham University published a similar study and took the implications further, suggesting that violent trends in pornography are shaping the way that society thinks about sex:

“Our study provides clear evidence that sexual violence is a normative sexual script in mainstream online pornography, with significant implications at a social level for understandings of the difference between sexual pleasure and sexual harm.”²

It’s an important claim because it means that pornography is making our society more violent, or at least more tolerant of violence. Porn defenders contend that porn provides an outlet for people’s repressed fantasies, actually making them less likely to carry out acts of sexual violence. But is this true?

Let’s examine the evidence further and see whether this holds up.

2. Watching Porn Can Change Our Emotional Responses—Even if We Don’t Realize It

It goes without saying that people feel differently about pornography. Responses to porn can range from indifference, to enthusiasm, to disgust and horror. What’s less obvious is that using porn can change how we feel—without our realizing it.

This is what researchers from Australia and Austria concluded in a 2017 paper published in Applied Sciences. “Increased pornography use appears to have an influence on the brain’s non-conscious responses to emotion-inducing stimuli which was not shown by explicit self-report.”³

Brain scan technology indicated that pornography had changed the subjects’ emotional responses—even when they weren’t aware of it. In particular, they noted the reactions of people who were exposed to violent and erotic images.

While this study alone doesn’t tell us whether watching porn can make you more violent, it’s an important piece of the puzzle. Many people who watch porn deny it affects them. But porn can unconsciously change the way we feel—which becomes even clearer in the next study.  

3. People Who Consume Pornography Have a Higher Tolerance for Sexual Violence

For decades now, researchers have been studying the ways that pornography shapes feelings and beliefs about sex. And what they find again and again is that pornography desensitizes people to sexual violence, particularly violence toward women.

According to a meta-analysis of 46 different studies published in 2000, if you watch pornography you have a 31% increased risk of accepting rape myths—that is, believing things that would reduce your empathy for a rape victim or lead you to blame a rape victim for being assaulted.⁴

In 2007, Canadian criminologist Philipe Bensimon concluded that “Many researchers agree on one thing: Long-term exposure to pornographic material is bound to disinhibit the individual… long-term exposure to pornography has an addictive effect and leads offenders to minimize the violence in the acts they commit.”⁵

Supporters of the porn industry challenged these findings and the studies included. Seeking to improve on past research, researchers from the University of California conducted another meta-analysis in 2010. Like earlier studies, they found that “the current results showed an overall significant positive association between pornography use and attitudes supporting violence against women in nonexperimental studies.”⁶

Dr. John Foubert is an expert on the relationship between porn and sexual violence. In 2016, he and his colleagues examined whether pornography makes a difference in someone’s willingness to intervene in a sexual assault. They found that violent and degrading pornography “may contribute to a culture of acceptance of violence against women.”⁷

So then, a substantial body of evidence testifies that pornography shapes people’s thoughts and feelings about sexual violence. But does this translate into different sexual behavior?

4. Pornography Consumption Affects Sexual Behaviors

It seems likely that attitudes about sex that pornography would likewise influence sexual behaviors. But do they? Different approaches in methodology, some vagueness in definitions of terms, as well as ethical concerns all make it difficult to answer this question.

However, there seems to be a connection. Researchers from Indiana University found in 2020:

“After adjusting for age, age at first porn exposure, and current relationship status, the associations between pornography use and sexual behaviors was statistically significant.”⁸

The more porn people watched, the more they imitated the kind of violence that is mainstream in pornography—as we’ll see confirmed in the following research. This is likewise borne out in dozens of anecdotal testimonies. One survey of sex workers found that 86% had been shown pornography by clients to demonstrate what they wanted.  

5. Those Who Consumed Pornography Have a Greater Likelihood to Use Sexual Violence

The most compelling evidence on the connection between porn and sexual violence comes from studies of teens and college students. According to a 2005 college-age study, the prevalence of objectifying images of women in your dorm room or fraternity house significantly correlates to having attitudes that are hostile to rape victims.⁹

In 2016, researchers from the University of Amsterdam published a review of literature examining the effect of pornography on adolescents. The authors felt that there wasn’t consistent enough methodology for the results to determine whether porn caused certain behaviors. However, they stated,

“Pornography use was associated with more permissive sexual attitudes and tended to be linked with stronger gender-stereotypical sexual beliefs. It also seemed to be related to the occurrence of sexual intercourse, greater experience with casual sex behavior, and more sexual aggression, both in terms of perpetration and victimization.”¹⁰

Another meta-analysis from 2017 concluded, “A growing body of literature demonstrates that exposure to sexually explicit media (SEM) and sexually violent media (SVM) may be risk factors for DV [dating violence] and SV [sexual violence].”¹¹

Even more concerning, a 2019 study of 10^th graders found that boys who watched violent pornography were 2-3 times more likely to commit acts of dating violence. Girls exposed to violent porn were 1.5 times more likely to engage in threats of violence than girls who had not been exposed.¹² A 2020 study of men on college campuses likewise found that those who watch aggressive pornography are more likely to act out in sexually aggressive ways.¹³

Other scholars have explored the wider effects of pornography on culture, and argue that even if it doesn’t directly cause sexual violence, it is shaping sexual behaviors.¹⁴

Another study of 320 men found that pornography contributed to dehumanizing attitudes and behaviors toward women.

“Research shows that sexual objectification leads to the expression of aggressive attitudes and behaviors toward women. Based on a survey study of 320 male participants, this study re-conceptualizes sexual objectification in terms of two forms of dehumanization. Evidence suggests men’s pornography use is positively associated with both forms, but mechanistic dehumanization of women is more associated with aggressive attitudes while animalistic dehumanization is more associated with aggressive behaviors.”¹⁵

6. Women Who Consumed Pornography Are More Likely to Be Victims of Sexual Violence

Pornography influences sexual attitudes, preferences, and behaviors, which contributes to sexual violence. That certainly bears out with people who show sexually aggressive attitudes and behaviors. But watching pornography shapes the attitudes and behaviors of the victims as well.

There’s evidence to suggest that exposure to porn also makes women more vulnerable to sexual violence. One study found that “pornography alone increases a woman’s likelihood of being raped 2.7 times compared to women who do not view porn.”¹⁶

7. Even Consuming Non-Violent Pornography Correlates With Violence Toward Women

In 2016, researchers from the University of Indiana and the University of Hawaii conducted a meta-analysis of porn users and acts of sexual aggression. They looked at 22 studies from 7 different countries. They found that violent content may be an exacerbating factor in both verbal and physical sexual aggression.¹⁷

While it stands to reason that violent and degrading forms of pornography might contribute toward sexual violence, what about non-violent porn? An older meta-analysis suggests that even nonviolent sexual content contributes to aggressive behavior. ¹⁸ A 2010 study corroborated these findings. While violent pornography correlated much higher, even nonviolent pornography was associated with violent attitudes towards women.¹⁹

While porn may not directly cause sexual violence, the evidence is clear that it influences both attitudes and behaviors in ways that contribute to sexual violence.

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