https://www.bbc.com/news/health-40814082


The age at which a male first sees pornography is associated with certain sexist attitudes later in life, according to a team of researchers from the University of Nebraska.

Their survey revealed the younger the first viewing occurred, the more likely a male was to want power over women.

While if they were older, they were more likely to be sexually promiscuous.

Of the 330 undergraduates surveyed, with a median age of 20, the average age they first saw pornography was 13.

The youngest was only five, while the oldest was 26.

The unpublished findings were presented at a convention in Washington.

Lead researcher Alyssa Bischmann and her team asked the men, the vast majority of whom were heterosexual and white, when they first saw porn and whether it was intentional, accidental or forced.

They were then asked 46 questions which measured how they conformed to one of two behavioural traits - seeking power over women or sexually promiscuous behaviour and living a playboy lifestyle.

They found those who saw porn young were most likely to agree with statements that asserted male dominance, such as "things tend to be better when men are in charge".

The researchers were surprised to find that seeing porn later in life was associated with a playboy lifestyle, such as preferring to frequently change sexual partners.

Researcher Christina Richardson said this could be because those who were exposed to porn early often did not enjoy sex in real life.

"These men often have a lot of performance anxiety with women in real life. Sexual experiences don't go as planned or the way they do in pornography," she said.

Alternatively "those who see porn later, enjoy sex in real life more and therefore might be more likely to live a playboy lifestyle".

The research, which was presented at the American Psychological Association's annual convention, did not take into account how much porn the men watched, the type of porn or other demographic factors, such as their socio-economic background.

It could also have been other personality traits that determined when the males were exposed to porn.

Peter Saddington, sex therapist at relationship support provider Relate, said: "Pornography can and does have an impact on many young men's attitudes to sex.

"The result can be that young men develop sexist attitudes and are essentially sexually deskilled."

Either way, Ms Richardson says porn "is not the healthiest thing for men".

She added that young men needed "better role models to develop more healthy beliefs about masculinity".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2019 08:10AM by anybody.

Correlations and the direction of the relationship:


Earlier porn viewing causes sexist attitudes.

Versus

Those with more sexist attitudes view porn at a younger age.


My money is on the second direction. Porn viewing at younger ages is probably a symptom rather than the cause of sexism.

SWK made a similar error in his book, "It Will Be a Miracle if You are Ever Forgiven" (officially known as "The Miracle of Forgiveness"). Not realizing that being a homosexual results in some behaviors (e.g. fantasizing about the same sex), he thought that the behaviors caused people to be gay.

Well said. This was my first thought, that correlation is not causation.

We learned if you got rich while attending church, the church caused it.

In this case, if you looked at porn, and end up sexist, the porn caused it.

Decide what you want to believe, then interpret the evidence accordingly.

I'd really like to see the methodology used for this study. My personal sense is that its isolated conclusions are a blip in the understanding of sexual attitudes and the views of men toward women.

I can't imagine viewing porn can shape attitudes toward women, sex, power, etc. as much as other factors such as religious teachings, societal norms, family dynamics, an environment of fear, guilt and shame, sexual abuse, patterns of discipline and more.

Although I have no idea how many men in the tssc obey the directive not to view porn, abstaining seems to do nothing to quell their acceptance of the inherent chauvinism of the power structure of the church.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2019 10:36AM by auntsukey.

It is possible to slant any research toward the end the researcher wishes to attain!!

There are so many variables to control for; making it difficult if not impossible to place a lot of confidence in the results, unless an R-squared was performed.

I think porn is mostly for lonely guys who live in FantasyLand.

I also think now that gals are more economically independent, there are more lonely guys.

IMHO, gals & some guys are more likely to put $ ahead of romance these days, or at least on equal footing.

If u look at the gal ads in the dating sites, U might see / agree with the above, maybe not.

"Their survey revealed the younger the first viewing occurred, the more likely a male was to want power over women."

If a male wants power over a woman - bad.

Yet the war on porn is based on women wanting power over men. By restricting the outlets for men's sexuality, women can demand more benefits in exchange for sex.

Since sex is what men most want, women rule the world, while claiming oppression, in order to gain more benefits of victimhood.

Biggest threat to women's power is the sex robots that will continue to become more life-like. Feminists are already claiming they demean women, etc. You would think they would be glad that more men will ignore women so they won't suffer so much oppression and abuse.

But again, it is about power, or loss of power.

Free Man Wrote:
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> Since sex is what men most want, women rule the
> world, while claiming oppression, in order to gain
> more benefits of victimhood.

Total, complete, nonsense.

You have no idea what you are talking about here.

Anyone who reads this should try an experiment. Substitute the word "white" for "male" and "black" for "woman." Then see how it reads.

My point is that if this profoundly disturbed individual wrote about race the way he does about gender, everyone would immediately recognize him for the creep he is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2019 01:46AM by Lot's Wife.

Unfortunately, there is a wide range of motivations & (psychological) backgrounds out there, so even limited, we shouldn't eliminate 'weird' possibilities.


sex & the desire for it vary widely from individual to individuals, male & female.

That is irrelevant.

Hatred of people based on their innate characteristics is wrong. Period. This bilious nonsense is destructive: motivations and backgrounds are immaterial to anyone except a therapist who is paid generously to interact with such people.

I've read a few of your posts and I'm sorry you hate women so much.

I seriously do not understand why his misogyny is permitted on this website. If we were talking about other groups of people, his rantings would be expunged and persistence would result in his being banned.

Yet for some reason this bully (although he claims victimhood at the hands of his wife and all other women) is allowed to spew his putrid thoughts at will.

He's not a man. He's a crippled little mouse.

It’s definitely disgusting. If he was talking this way about racial groups or gay people, or was saying “all Jews are ____” etc, he’d be banned immediately. I’m really shocked that this level of bigotry and hatred is permitted. And I don’t ever see many men calling him out. Disappointing.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I seriously do not understand why his misogyny is
> permitted on this website. If we were talking
> about other groups of people, his rantings would
> be expunged and persistence would result in his
> being banned.
>
> Yet for some reason this bully (although he claims
> victimhood at the hands of his wife and all other
> women) is allowed to spew his putrid thoughts at
> will.
>
> He's not a man. He's a crippled little mouse.


Amen, Lot's Wife

Tell us, Free Man, what benefits from victimhood are you getting? I ask because every post you make tells us how victimized by women you are.

Free Man Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Since sex is what men most want, women rule the
> world, while claiming oppression, in order to gain
> more benefits of victimhood.

Hey Free Man,

It sounds like you've either had some bad experiences or have been hanging out in incel forums. Either way, you need to understand that you can't generalize your beliefs across the entire population.

I grant that Mormonism messes horribly with the male mind (as it does the female). I too had to get over the belief that women don't really like sex and that it's just a ploy to get love/money/power/etc.

I tell you now that that's not true. Women are different than men in a lot of ways but most women enjoy sex... a lot. In fact, they may enjoy it more than men do. (Multiple orgasms, remember?) Yes, women are more likely to want to feel that their relationship with the man is secure, but I'm willing to bet that you wouldn't mind a stable relationship with the right person either.

Have you had problems finding a sexual partner? Usually that just takes practice, like anything else in life, so you'll need to try and try again. Long term, the chances are on your side. You probably won't be able to land a model or porn star, but those are fairly rare in the dating market, and you probably wouldn't like to be with one long term anyway. (Too shallow, self-obsessed, emotionally unstable.)

One secret that you need to learn is that women love a confident man, and can smell a lack of confidence. If you're unsure about yourself, you're going to have problems. That's one reason dating practice is good: it will help you build that confidence and feel comfortable around women in situations that might prove "fruitful". Do you have any female friends at all? If so, talk to them about what's going on and ask if they can help. Many women love to play with men like they did with their childhood dolls: they'll dress you up, coach you and even try to match you with likely candidates. And women are generally waaaay better at gauging other women's receptivity than men are. Go to a bar or restaurant with some women and have them describe what is going on with the couples around you. I think you'll be shocked at their perception, and you'll learn a lot.

I don't care what you look like, what kind of shape you're in or how much money you have: the world is full of women and some of those women would like to be with you. You'll need to prepare yourself properly, and go find them, but if you want it to happen, it will.

CZ (admin)

(And for the posters who complained that this thread was left up, I don't blame you. Free Man's opinions are incorrect and insulting. However, one of the purposes of this board is to learn from other people. Free Man won't learn if we pull his posts or ban him from the board. Likewise, others wouldn't learn about the kinds of things Free Man is going through. There are large communities of men who have these attitudes [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel ], and some have committed atrocities. I'm a firm believer that engagement is better than banishment. The latter just causes the people with wrong and bigoted ideas to go off on their own and fester in echo-chamber communities. We don't allow all forms of bigotry here, but I think that Free Man's beliefs were largely inculcated by Mormonism, and that he is sincere in his feelings and can be helped. If that turns out to be untrue, the admins will take other action.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2019 12:35PM by Concrete Zipper.

That's fine, CZ.

But one of the purposes of RfM, as I understand it, is to ensure that newcomers feel comfortable here. When it comes to race, the site has fairly firm rules and removes posts that might make people from a different ethnic group uncomfortable participating. The same would probably be true if some misanthrope continually attacked LGBTQ people.

Is there a reason why posts that make women feel uncomfortable are different? RfM rejected that troll who kept posting that Mormon women and ex-Mormon women were loose and would perform sexual favors for Mormon men in order to get ahead. These posts say virtually the same thing and, from most women's perspectives, are highly offensive. You can see that from the replies these posts elicit.

I would ask--and I don't need or expect a response--that the mods consider the possibility that the rules should be the same for criticism of any group of people on the basis of their inherent characteristics. Debate, discussion, anger: all fine, all capable of inspiring personal growth. But repeatedly and imperviously posting demeaning and groundless calumnies about a physically unique subset of people is different. It may salve the wounds of the bigot, but it makes RfM a much less comfortable place for the people he purports to describe.

The trouble with the wait and see, and reach out with an olive branch, is that all of those things have been tried ad nauseam with Free Man and he persists with his misogyny. It's been years of it.

This is laughable. If anything, the contemporary porn-filled world is way less sexist than it used to be. Of course, back in the good old days it wasn't sexism, it was just the way men said things should be, usually backed by the deity they created to sanction and reinforce female subjugation.

Whether we consider the cause or the market, I do think infinite computer porn has a lot to do with the current crop of Incels.

Yeah, it's not the idea of porn itself. Porn can be absolutely fine, liberating, and fun in moderation. But with our reliance on technology nowadays, and the extreme content of most porn...I think people would be surprised at how many people basically spend all day watching it. Watch thousands of extreme, degrading gangbangs instead of interacting with normal women (or even having sex with them) and you'll probably see them differently.

I wonder if any of the people passionately defending today's porn have watched what's popular now?

I like sex as much as anybody, but this isn't Playboy. It's not softcore porn or normal sex, or even consensual kink. The most popular commercial porn today is stuff that is objectively dangerous and potentially majorly harmful to women's bodies. Prolapse, burnout, exhaustion, etc., is very common because of what they're expected to do. Most women in today's porn look like they're miserable. And it's fed to kids from a very young age.

We should be able to distinguish the church's very harmful views on porn from saying all porn is fine. There's an in between position here. A lot of today's porn is just downright physically dangerous and degrading. It's like people really just hate women. It almost seems like a circus rather than anything erotic.

I'm all for amateur porn, couples having fun and that sort of thing. Most contemporary porn just isn't that. The problem is, to make the big bucks, big porn companies have to push their performers harder and harder and further and further beyond any normal limits of human sexuality or even what bodies are capable of.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2019 01:00PM by abileneishome.

Plenty of movies have nude or erotic sex scenes but porn just depicts sex acts. Guys who get hooked on porn wind up preferring porn to actual sex with human females and all that goes along with it -- a relationship, dealing with another persons' feelings, and so on. Sex robots are just an extension of this as a way to satiate erotic desires without any entanglements.

I would immediately question the conclusions drawn about all males from a sample of college undergrad males (which this "study" drew from entirely).

Just sayin'.

And the lead researchers are just a couple of grad students who interviewed 320 college kids. This was not a rigorous study, which is presumably why it could reach conclusions so different from those conducted in such places as the European countries that are neutral on the subject.

It's difficult to learn anything from a paper like this one.

If women weren't willing to trade their bodies for money, porn would not exist.

Vahn421 Wrote:
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> If women weren't willing to trade their bodies for
> money, porn would not exist.

So the men in porn movies/photos are all unpaid then?

If people didn’t watch it, people wouldn’t sell it.

Basic supply and demand.

And who are the women in porn sleeping with if not men? Lol!

In any large population of survey size, a few outliers will exist, so this 'might' have some validity; how much is a matter of interpretation.


Kinda like the cargo cult phenom, it does (or Did) exist at one time.

In other news study fails to recognize a forest because they were only looking at a tree.

Seeing as sexism and porn are older than the bible I'm wondering what the control group was.

I fully embrace the idea that porn can warp a person's viewpoint on women and men. I've seen plenty of porn that without context would lead me to believe plenty of things about men and women. It seems to me that the contextual issues with porn would be most impact-full to those who have no context. Like children or basement dwellers like myself.

This is what is usually called a very poorly designed study, with the biased conclusions built into the data acquisition.

Much ado about (next to) Nothing...

The comment made about women being independent and not needing men now is ridiculous. Women will always need and be with men no matter how "independent" you may think they have become. I know zero single women. And if they are single, they broke up with their man yesterday.

logan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The comment made about women being independent and
> not needing men now is ridiculous. Women will
> always need and be with men no matter how
> "independent" you may think they have become. I
> know zero single women. And if they are single,
> they broke up with their man yesterday.

I think you missed the point of that comment.

Not that long ago (and in some places still today), women couldn't get jobs (or ones that paid anything decent), or get full education, etc. So they "needed" someone (a husband, a father, whatever) to support them.

Now they don't "need" a man to support them. They can independently support themselves. There's still the pay gap, and discrimination, etc. -- but for the most part, women can support themselves financially.

That doesn't mean they don't like men, or don't want to share a life with one. But now they don't "need" to have a man to make a living and support them. Get it?

I'll just add that your small known group of non-single women isn't a representative sample set of the entire population...

Everyone NEEDS someone.

Men need women, or men and women need men, or women.

So you’re agreeing in part with the resident misogynist?

"There's still the pay gap, and discrimination, etc. -- but for the most part, women can support themselves financially."

Thought I had covered the myth of the gender wage gap, but apparently some missed it. I just want our site to have more credibility than the morg.

Anyway, those interested in truth can google, "gender wage gap myth".

Turns out that overall, women make less because they choose easier jobs, or safer jobs, or because they work fewer hours to do the family thing.

If you compare men and women doing the same job, working the same hours, often women actually make more. But like the morg, have to conceal certain information to perpetuate the fraud.

Google "gender wage gap myth."

And you think that will produce objective research? Talk about skewing your results to fit a predetermined conclusion. . .

Dude, do you just think about how much you hate women ALL DAY?

My advice is to date men, or leave women very much alone, if you despise them this much. Jeez. Or at the very least, seek therapy.

The Presidents Study on Obscenity and Pornography - the one Richard Nixon ordered destroyed - was leaked and it said basically "no problem".

Who puts up the dollars for the study here?
How well was it done?

Maybe playing "Doctor" as kids is responsible for Sexism as they discover they are not the same?

When I first discovered porn it made me realise something that I didn't understand from my TBM upbringing.

That sex was not something that women had done to them by a man that sex was equally enjoyable by women, too!

I was savvy enough to realise that the sex was probably faked, but the lesson I learned actually stopped me from being sexist.

Maybe you could tell this to Free Man, lol.

Ok, I hope I do not offend anyone. If I do, it's not intentional.

I do not pretend to understand the study referenced, and I have not reviewed the data. I only have my own experience, and I recognize that is a weak approach to a problem. However, I found that it is useful to me.

My attitude toward women in general and my wife specifically is much more healthy and kind when I stay away from pornography. When I stay away from it, I do not immediately imagine what women look like unclothed, etc. My relationship with my wife is much more fulfilling and rewarding in most respects with I stay away from it, and it tends to get strained in many respects if I don't. I don't know why this is the case, but that is how it works for me. I am not a prude, and I am not talking down about people who disagree or take a different approach.

That being said, I was first exposed to porn by a fellow seventh grader in the locker room. I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I knew instinctively that I was supposed to be impressed.

I am of the opinion that having been exposed to it go me interested and that by the time I joined the church, it made me more tolerant of the terrible bishops interviews. I may not have had a problem, but the bishop seemed to assume that I did. It would have been better (at least for this one case) if I had not viewed it earlier.

It really bothers me that the church position seems to align with mine on this issue, but even a broken watch is right twice a day.

I personally think it's all about moderation. Porn is all about being extreme, usually- the women in particular are usually highly unrealistic, not just because they're attractive but because most of them have gone to extreme expenses to get entire makeovers. Even very beautiful "everyday" women have a hard time living up to the completely-waxed, never-on-their-period, fake-orgasming, plastic surgeried-from-head-to-toe women in porn, which would be OK if some men didn't start getting disappointed when they see "regular" women in comparison, but some do. Not all, of course, but some.

And so much of porn doesn't involve any foreplay, because it's happened offscreen beforehand or because it's just a job people are doing so it doesn't matter if the women actually enjoy it or not. I would imagine some men start demanding things like anal and rimming or thinking gangbangs/threesomes are normal, or thinking women don't actually need any time to ease into sex to get turned on, because of the inundation of images like that in porn. Also, porn stars take long breaks in between shoots to rest their bodies because what they do is so extreme. It's not realistic to expect what porn stars do from your wife/girlfriend (or boyfriend/husband) three times a week.

It's not that it's wrong to desire beautiful women or sexy men. It's that porn is not sex. It's porn, it's a job/business/meant to sell the most extreme side of sexuality (which is not problematic except that most people aren't actually going to have sex lives like that or look like that unless they quit their jobs and commit to doing so). When you start getting a "high" from that, or consuming too much junk food, it can be hard to go back to everyday meat and potatoes. Is it bad to get a super-expensive steak, a huge piece of cake, or a supersize meal at McDonald's once in a while? Of course not, but you can't make that your regular diet. I don't think that's necessarily "sexism," but certainly, porn can be harmful if taken too seriously or consumed too often--it's just common sense.

Just my two cents.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2019 02:31PM by abileneishome.