London: People usually get hysterical about watching porn, but the question is: does pornography really degrade women? Turns out it doesn't.
A new Western University study found that those who watch (legal, consensual, human, adult) porn are more likely to treat women as equals and are more likely to identify as feminists than those who don't, the Daily Mail reported.
The research used data from a large-scale study, which interviewed more than 24,000 randomly selected people across the US between 1975 and 2010.
Interestingly, when it came to men, the biggest differences between users and non-users were in their views of women in power and abortion, with those who used pornography showing more positive attitudes.
The same was true of women in the study as they showed more positive views than non-users, followed by their more positive attitude towards abortion.
The authors explained that in contrast to radical feminist theory concerning the impact of pornography on gender inequality, the current study found no support for the proposition that pornography is associated with holding attitudes supportive of gender non-egalitarianism.
The study is published in the Journal of Sex Research.
