The paucity of the anti-pornography literature

The anti-porn literature is full of weak, misleading and/or mendacious claims.

A Medium article, 3 Reasons Why Watching Porn Is Harmful (And Research Is Proving It) by Fight the New Drug makes many extravagant, mostly vague claims about pornography, but it does not source any of its claims (at least on the article itself)

But many of their claims are contradicted by actual research.

1) "In a 2012 survey of 1,500 guys, 56% said their tastes in porn had become “increasingly extreme or deviant.”"

Since this was a very specific claim, I tried looking for its source. Not surprisingly, I was led to Fight The New Drug, where it turned out that the source for this claim was... reddit.

Specifically, the subreddit /r/NoFap. The post (/r/NoFap Survey Data - Complete Datasets : NoFap) has since been removed, but consider that /r/NoFap describes itself thus:

"We host rebooting challenges in which participants ("Fapstronauts") abstain from pornography and masturbation for a period of time. Whether your goal is casual participation in a monthly challenge as a test of self-control, or whether excessive masturbation or pornography has become a problem in your life and you want to quit for a longer period of time, you will find a supportive community and plenty of resources here."

Casual reflection would make one realise that there is extreme selection bias here. If you ask people who think pornography is bad whether they think pornography is bad... chances are, they will say it is.

Similar methodology could involve, say, going to an ex-Christian forum and asking the participants whether they thought Christianity was healthy for their self-esteem. One would likely find that a majority thought Christianity hurt their self-esteem. One could then trumpet a claim that a "survey" found that Christianity was bad for self-esteem.

In contrast, real research done finds that,

“Harder and Harder”? Is Mainstream Pornography Becoming Increasingly Violent and Do Viewers Prefer Violent Content?: The Journal of Sex Research: Vol 56, No 1

"we tested two related claims: (1) aggressive content in videos is on the rise and (2) viewers prefer such content, reflected in both the number of views and the rankings for videos containing aggression. Our results offer no support for these contentions. First, we did not find any consistent uptick in aggressive content over the past decade; in fact, the average video today contains shorter segments showing aggression. Second, videos containing aggressive acts are both less likely to receive views and less likely to be ranked favorably by viewers, who prefer videos where women clearly perform pleasure."

Similarly,

Do People Who Watch Porn Seek More Extreme Content Over Time?

"Two studies have emerged finding that there really isn’t any support for the idea of a porn “tolerance” effect. The first, published in 2017, involved a sample of over 2,000 adults who were asked to rate how arousing they found 27 different categories of porn to be, ranging from the more vanilla end of the spectrum to the kinkier end.

Those who were aroused by kinkier stuff were actually aroused by pretty much all porn categories, which is inconsistent with the idea that porn exposure leads to a “satiation” effect that requires more extreme content for arousal...

The other study, published in 2019, was a longitudinal study of about 250 high school students who were surveyed about their porn habits five times, each separated by about six months.

It turned out that porn viewing practices remained pretty stable over time and, further, there was actually a decrease in preferences for extreme content over the course of the study—which, again, is inconsistent with the content progression thesis...

what the available data suggests is that, at least at the aggregate level, porn users don’t develop more extreme tastes over time. Rather, the more plausible explanation appears to be that people who tend to be into kinkier or more “extreme” porn just have more diverse tastes and enjoy more variety in the porn they watch."

The second study, being a longitudinal survey, is perfect to test the claim that pornography users seek out more and more extreme content, since it looks at consumption throughout the period.

So instead of looking at preferences at one period of time and making conclusions about that (the problems with glibly concluding that people look for more and more extreme stuff are noted in the extract), one can explicitly test the claim - and find that it is false.

2) "PORN RUINS YOUR SEX LIFE"

This claim is extremely vague and the supporting statements are full of general statements that are hard to fact check.

But this is also contradicted by the literature, which finds that,

Effects of Pornography Use and Demographic Parameters on Sexual Response during Masturbation and Partnered Sex in Women

"On average, women using pornography were younger, and reported more interest in sex... During masturbation, more frequent pornography use predicted lower arousal difficulty and orgasmic difficulty, greater pleasure, and a higher percentage of masturbatory events leading to orgasm. Frequency of pornography use predicted only lower arousal difficulty and longer orgasmic latencies during partnered sex, having no effect on the other outcome variables. Pornography use frequency did not predict overall relationship satisfaction or sexual relationship satisfaction. Overall, more frequent pornography use was generally associated with more favorable sexual response outcomes during masturbation, while not affecting most partnered sex parameters. Several demographic and relationship covariates appear to more consistently and strongly predict orgasmic problems during partnered sexual activity than pornography use."

So pornography *improves* women's sex lives, and if one wants to look at factors affecting one's sex life, porngraphy use is a relatively minor one.

Meanwhile, in men,

Pornography, preference for porn‐like sex, masturbation, and men's sexual and relationship satisfaction

"The data did not support the notion that pornography negatively impacts sexual or relationship satisfaction via preference for porn‐like sex. In fact, it may bolster sexual satisfaction by promoting sexual variety. The data were consistent with a model in which pornography negatively, indirectly affects sexual and relationship satisfaction via masturbation frequency. Pornography use may have multiple opposing influences on sexual satisfaction"

So the effect seems to be due to masturbation, not pornography.

3) "people that regularly watch porn are more likely than others to feel poorly about how they look"

Actually,

Self-perceived effects of Internet pornography use, genital appearance satisfaction, and sexual self-esteem among young Scandinavian adults

"A hypothesized relationship between self-perceived positive effects of pornography use and a higher level of sexual self-esteem was found for men but not for women. This result was partially due to higher satisfaction with genital appearance among the men who mainly watched mainstream pornography. Genital appearance satisfaction was linked to higher sexual self-esteem for women, but it was not related to the self-perceived effect of pornography use. The results indicate that pornography may expand personal sexual scripts for both men and women, and may have a positive, although modest, influence on the sexual self-esteem of young male adults."

Impacts of Pornography Acceptance and Use on Self-esteem, Sexual Satisfaction, and Overall Relationship Satisfaction

"frequency of pornography use resulted in increased self-esteem for men and not for women... acceptance of pornography use positively predicted sexual satisfaction for both men and women. Self-esteem as impacted by pornography was found to have no significant relationship with relationship satisfaction although sexual satisfaction was positively related to relationship satisfaction"

Internet Pornography Use, Body Ideals, and Sexual Self-Esteem in Norwegian Gay and Bisexual Men

"viewing Internet pornography in longer sessions... made a unique contribution to higher self-esteem as a sexual partner. Preferring to watch pornographic actors with ideal bodies was not related to sexual self-esteem."


In general, a big problem with anti-porn claims is the issue of causality. Even if one finds that people who consume more pornography are more sexually dissatisfied, say, it doesn't mean that the pornography consumption caused the sexual dissatisfaction. For example, it could be that people who are more sexually dissatisfied are more likely to consume pornography as a way of coping with their sexual dissatisfaction.

Even if one is not convinced by studies showing that pornography has positive or neutral effects, one must acknowledge that anti-porn crusaders make misleading claims that research shows that pornography is an unequivocally bad thing.

In any event, even if pornography has negative effects, it doesn't mean that shutting it down is justified. Fast food, alcohol and tobacco have negative effects too, but they are still accepted in polite society.