By Susanne V. Knudsen and Anette Dina Sørensen
From newspaper articles, anthologies and a handful of recent individual studies, in which young people are allowed to voice their own opinions, we know that teenagers of both sexes watch pornography, their motives being partly curious, partly sexual and partly connected with their need for information about sexuality (e.g., Mossige 2001, Håvold and Moen 2003, Søndergaard 2002). On the other hand, we have no concrete knowledge about the way that increasing exposure affects children and young people, about their attitudes to what they are watching, and the way that this relates to their perceptions of sexuality and gender and to their own sexual experiences. The few Nordic researchers who have studied this problem disagree about whether exposure to hard-core pornography has any effect upon well-balanced children and young people and, if it does, what kind of effect we are dealing with.
In many ways this research project is unique. It focuses on an area in constant development and in which the new media play an important role. The access that children and young people have to cable and satellite television and the internet as well as their consumption of products of mass culture have increased their chances of exposure to pornographic material – both regular pornography and mainstreamed, fragmented references to the pornographic universe. Exposure is not always voluntary. As an element of aggressive promotion by producers of pornography, the internet has become an important medium for exposure through SPAM mails, banner advertising and pop-up windows.
This research project is also unique in the sense that it directly involves young people between the ages of fourteen and eighteen: in quantitative and qualitative surveys they will be asked about their attitudes to pornography. Teenagers of today may perceive pornography differently and have a less critical approach to pornography than their parents’ generation did.
Mainstreaming of pornography
The launching of this research project is to be seen in the light of the historical processes of change witnessed by the Nordic countries and by most of the Western world. The cultural status of pornography has changed drastically over the last ten years as a result of developments within information and communication technology. These developments have reduced the costs of producing pornographic material and have simplified distribution. As a result, the supply of pornography has increased; it has become more easily accessible to the individual consumer, and consumption has become potentially anonymous by means of mobile phones and the internet.
The change in cultural status, however, is also closely related to the mainstreaming of pornography – the so-called porn chic trend (McNair 2002). This concept describes the current cultural process in which pornography slips into our everyday lives as an evermore universally accepted, often idealised, cultural element. Mainstreaming of pornography manifests itself particularly clearly within youth culture: from teenage television and lifestyle magazines to music videos and commercials targeted at the young.
This trend emphasises the need for a discussion of what defines pornography. Originally the word pornography meant ’pictures of or writing about harlots’ (from ’porne’ = harlot + ’graphi’ = writing or picture). Today there are almost as many definitions of pornography as there are researchers within the field. However, it is possible to outline three basic definitions: (1) An explicit depiction of sexuality, which serves to arouse the spectator sexually and stimulate sexual fantasies, initiating or followed by masturbation. (2) Obscene or offensive descriptions. (3) Degrading and grossly exploitative presentations, usually of women and children (McNair 2002, 40, 211). Furthermore, it is open to debate whether depictions of genitals constitute pornography, or whether the depictions must include exposure of genital contact and/or penetration in order for us to define them in this way.
Power and gender
Power and gender are central elements in pornography. Regardless of the pornographic genre we are dealing with, power and gender serve as the driving forces behind the relations and sexual activities portrayed. Researchers disagree, however, about the way these representations of power and gender in pornography are to be interpreted. A radical-feminist approach is to see pornography as being underpinned by a ‘phallic imperative’ (Stoltenberg 1991). Staging male dominance and female oppression, pornography is not simply to be seen as a symbol of male dominance but as a crucial element in the social oppression of women, according to Stoltenberg. In opposition to this view, Lynne Segal maintains that men, too, are victims of pornography. With its focus on the size of the penis, on technique and the capacity to perform endlessly, pornography contributes to performance anxiety which itself helps foster pornography by facing men with impossible demands. Instead of satisfying men, pornography, according to Lynne Segal, in fact exploits male sexual frustrations, and, by focusing on male sexuality, helps create for men a phallic reign of terror (Segal 1990).
Pornography versus sexuality
Regardless of the way we interpret the representations of power and gender in pornography, these representations seriously deviate from the norms and values that for the last thirty years have dominated the Nordic countries, with their concern for welfare and gender equality, and which have found expression in literature on sex guidance since the end of the 1950s. Central to these norms and values are aspects such as reciprocity, equality, willingness, emotions and – if not actually neutrality of power – at least power that ‘floats’ between the parties irrespective of gender.
This discrepancy between the fiction of pornography and contemporary social norms and values also applies on a more overall level to depictions showing the nature of sexuality. Though sexual preferences may vary according to the pornographic genre (homo, animal, S/M, violence, faeces, etc.), pornography mainly depicts sex between anonymous people, who are complete strangers. The identity of these people is deemed irrelevant; the fantasy depicts a brief, non-binding encounter between two or more strangers, an encounter that does not subsequently result in a more permanent relationship.
Moreover, hard-core pornography is usually characterised by a very limited definition of sexuality. Its main function is to arouse the viewer sexually; this is achieved through a detailed depiction of the sexual act, limited to exposure of the genitals, genital contact and penetration: vaginal, anal and/or oral penetration. The culmination of the sexual act is usually defined by the ejaculation of the male actor/actors, also known as the ‘cumshot’. That there may be more to sexuality is a point not normally made in hard-core pornography. Thus the concepts of ‘foreplay’ and ‘post coital relaxation’, which within the culture of sexuality are considered norms of ‘good sex’, are toned down or non-existent in hard-core pornography.
The three approaches
The few Nordic researchers to have dealt with these problems disagree about whether exposure to hard-core pornography has any effect at all on well-balanced children and young people, and – if it has – what that effect might be: whether the effect is psychological or whether it affects their attitudes or their actions. It is for this reason that we have launched this research project in the Nordic countries. This research project comprises three subsidiary projects with opportunities for cross-referencing. All three subsidiary projects will concentrate on young people between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.
One of the subsidiary projects will be an internet-based inquiry using questionnaires. It will be conducted in each Nordic country using websites frequently visited by young people. Such an inquiry has the advantage of allowing complete anonymity. The response rate is usually high and easy to utilise. In addition, this type of inquiry will enable us to compare the results country by country. The aim of the inquiry is to gain an insight into patterns of consumption, the situations in which this consumption takes place, as well as attitudes and sexual experiences.
Another more comprehensive subsidiary project consists of a series of qualitative studies of the way in which young people perceive, view and respond to ‘pornification’. The project is based on interviews with teenagers in focus groups and/or in-depth interviews. These interviews will be semi-structured and with predetermined themes. The interviews will be analysed as texts in which the researcher will look for processes employed in the accounts of each person interviewed – including both verbal and non-verbal statements – as well as noting shared matter and the unique aspects of individual accounts (Knudsen 2001). Furthermore, in the qualitative studies some of the researchers make use of the ‘memorywork’ method, employing a kind of ‘stream of consciousness’ or non-stop writing on a given topic.
In the third subsidiary project researchers will conduct different media analyses. One media analysis will focus on youth television in Finland as transmitted on the national channel, on local channels, and on Nordic and global channels. The study comprises a content analysis, interviews with heads of programmes within public service television, and policy studies investigating the rules governing the media regarding material they are permitted to broadcast to children and young people. In Sweden and Norway researchers will analyse the sexualised self-portraits teenagers have uploaded onto frequently visited Nordic internet sites. The point of departure will be a picture analysis comparing the uploaded pictures of young men and women, focusing on the kind of sexual codes and references they use and the kind of sexual gender structures they produce. This visual self-presentation will be seen in the context of a week’s media supply of docusoap plus internet activity and reality television targeted at young people.
Notes
Cawood, Sarah Højgaard and Sørensen, Anette Dina, eds. (2002): ”Ej blot til lyst – pornografi i et ligestillingsperspektiv”,
København: Videnscenter for ligestilling. [Not just for fun – pornography in a gender equality perspective. Copenhagen: Knowledge
Centre on Gender Equality.]
Håvold, Berit and Moen, Vigdis (2003): ”Sex og media – Hvorvidt får ungdom sin seksuelle informasjon fra media?”, eksamensopgave
i sexologisk rådgivning, Høgskolen i Agder. [Sex and media – whether young people gain their sexual information from the media.
Examination assignment in sexological counselling. Folk High School, Agder.]
McNair, Brian (2002): “Striptease Culture – sex, media and the democratisation of desire”, London, Routledge Knudsen, Susanne
V. (2001): “Kan græsset blive for grønt? – metodologiske overvejelser i forbindelse med forskning med/i kvalitative data og
køn”. I Kønsblik – på bacheloruddannelser, red. Kirsten Reisby. København: Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitet. [Can the grass
become too green? –methodological considerations in connection with research in qualitative data and gender.] In Kønsblik
- på bacheloruddannelser [Gender perspectives – in the bachelor programme, ed. Kirsten Reisby. Copenhagen: The Danish University
of Education] Mossige, Svein (2001): ”Ungdoms holdninger til seksuelle krenkelser og overgrep”, Oslo, NOVA, rapport 16/01.
[The attitudes of the young to sexual offences. Oslo, NOVA, report 16/01.]
Segal, Lynne (1990) “Slow Motion. Changing Masculinities, Changing Men”, London:Virago
Stoltenberg, John (1991) “Pornography and Freedom”, pp. 60-71 in Kimmel, Michael S. (ed.) Men confront pornography, New York:
Penguin.
Søndergaard, Per Straarup (2002): ”Ung i en pornotid”, Århus, CDR-Forlag. [Young people in a porno age. Århus, the CDR Publishers.]
Sørensen, Anette Dina (2003): “Pornchic – køn og pornografi i massekulturen”, I Perspektiver på ungdom og krop, red. Bibi
Hølge-Hazelton, Roskilde, Roskilde Universitetsforlag. [Porn chic: gender and pornography in mass culture.] In Perspektiver
på ungdom og krop [Perspectives on youth and body], ed. Bibi Hølge-Hazelton, Roskilde, Roskilde Universitetsforlag. [Roskilde
University Publishers.]
