While looking at data from the General Social Survey, which collects demographic and social information from United States residents every few years, one question caught the eye of two researchers from the University of Maryland sociology department.
It asked whether people would support laws allowing for censorship of pornography.
“It was an interesting topic from a gender theory perspective,” said Lucia Lykke, a doctoral student in the sociology department, “and we decided to pursue the question about how attitudes about pornography have changed over time and the difference in that change between men and women.”
Lykke, along with sociology professor Philip Cohen, found that the gender gap between men and women is widening when it comes to opposition to pornography. Their findings were published online in the Social Currents journal last month.
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“The attitude that there should be laws against porn has decreased, which makes sense because it’s been becoming more prevalent in our culture and more and more accessible,” Cohen said. “But this change has been more true for men than women.”
By using the General Social Survey data, Cohen said, they were able to track shifting attitudes on the topic from 1975 to 2012. During that time period, pornography changed significantly in terms of accessibility and content, he said, which is important to consider as well.
Even though people are saying less and less that there should be laws against or limiting the distribution of pornography, there is still a pretty large portion — 26 percent of men and 38 percent of women in 2012 — who think those laws should exist, Lykke said. In the late 1970s, about a third of men supported such laws, compared to about half of women, according to the General Social Survey; the trend of responses shows the gap between men’s and women’s opinions has widened.
“It was surprising that there still is fairly strong opposition from a good chunk of the population,” she said.
And it’s not just political or religious conservatives in opposition, as might be expected, Cohen said.
Lykke said she was not surprised that they found men becoming more accepting of pornography over the years, but she was not sure what to expect when looking at the trends for women.
“Pornography is increasingly accessible on the Internet, and men are generally more of the consumers, so it was not surprising that they would be more accepting of it over time,” Lykke said. “But women, I thought, might be caught between competing forces.”
Research shows that pornography has become more violent and degrading toward women over time, Lykke said, so it might make sense that women are not as accepting of it. On the other hand, if general attitudes about sexuality and pornography in pop culture are becoming more accepting, women might have been inclined to follow that trend, she said.
Nicole Bedera, a sociology graduate student who was not involved with this research, said she is excited to see research being done on sexual inequality between men and women.
“[Lykke and Cohen] are on to something in that, for a lot of women, the reason they’re not interested in porn is because it’s violent or not made for them,” she said.
Though many people seem to find it objectionable, according to their research, Cohen said pornography is still protected by the First Amendment.
“Even though this is something that is pretty common in our culture now, attitudes are very different and are, in fact, getting more different and diverging even more,” Cohen said. “This speaks to the kind of continued importance of this difference between men and women in terms of sexuality. Porn is not going anywhere … and [this research] raises questions about what would we do if we really thought there was a problem?”