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Cultural and Ideological Bias in Pornography Research Ferrel M. Christensen Philosophy of the Social Sciences 1990 20: 351 DOI: 10.1177/004839319002000304 The online version of this article can be found at: http://pos.sagepub.com/content/20/3/351

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Discussion

Cultural and Ideological Bias in Pornography Research FERREL M. CHRISTENSEN

University of Alberta For all the familiar reasons, bias in research is a continuing problem for the social sciences. The purpose of this discussion is to argue that it is a serious one in the case of pornography research. In one sense, this charge is not as condemnatory as it may sound. For the ultimate origin of the bias I allege is an inherited mindset that is pervasive in our culture; as the aphorism has it, the last creature to discover water would be a deep-sea fish. It is easy to be unduly influenced by societal attitudes in spite of the best intentions to be intellectually honest. On the other hand, it is precisely because this type of influence is so hard to recognize that it is an insidious threat to scientific objectivity. Whatever its actual sources, it must be recognized before it can be neutralized. It is often asked these days whether science really ought to be value-neutral. In one sense, the answer is clearly negative. The kinds of scientific knowledge that we value most are those perceived as having important consequences for our lives. The social sciences deserve taxpayer money because of their potential to help society, by aiding it in changing things for the better or warning it against changing for the worse. All the same, held values should not be allowed to compromise objectivity through such mechanisms as wishful thinking. Indeed, it is precisely because perceiving the truth is essential to promoting the good that the values that one holds at a given time must not be allowed to obscure that perception. Note well, then, that objectivity is not the same thing as neutrality’ In fact, Philosophy of the Social Saences, Vol 20 No. 3, September 1990 351-375 0 1990 York Uruversity, Toronto, and Contributors. 351


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neutrality is often anything but objective, and can be just another way to avoid facing unpleasant facts. It is not the having of moral values that is bad for science and hence for society; it is allowing them to have adverse impacts on one’s reasoning, on one’s perception of the facts (including facts about values), or on one’s presentation of the facts to others. Serious cases of all three sorts of bias will be outlined here. In a word, the source of the threat to objectivity which I am alleging is antisexualism: an attitude that (among other things) sexual desire is somehow less noble than other human needs and feelings-which leads easily to the assumption that it is singularly dangerous. We have all been indoctrinated and conditioned, to varying degrees, with this uneasy feeling from our earliest years; the partial respite of the &dquo;sexual revolution&dquo; notwithstanding, it is endemic in Western culture. Moreover, antisexual beliefs are reinforced by a second powerful cultural influence, a special protectiveness toward women. Liberals and conservatives are constantly vying to prove who is really most concerned for women’s welfare. Given the particular conviction (mistaken, I would argue) that valuing sex for its own sake is contrary to women’s welfare, a balanced perspective on the subject is even more difficult to maintain. Obviously, these global claims cannot be defended in one short discussion.’ I can only hope that the particular cases discussed here will trigger awareness of the general problem from the reader’s background knowledge. But for one quick illustration of the influence of our sex-negative tradition, reflect on the frequent remark that it would be unethical for researchers to expose children to sexual scenes (but not to violent scenes). In many mentally healthy cultures, historically, such an attitude would have been considered perverse; our continuing efforts to shield children from sex would have been regarded as child abuse. For another instance, consider the positions on pornography surveyed by three researchers in the recent book The Question of Pornography: that it is degrading to women and so should be banned, that it is indecent and so should be banned, and that it may indeed be these things but the benefits of protecting free speech outweigh the harms.3 It is as if the authors could not even conceive a fourth position, that sexual entertainment per se is in no sense evil. In any case, I hope that it is clear how cultural values might cloud scientists’ judgment. For the sake of any who think that is not a bad thing, let me remind the reader that not so long ago, racism was the majority view in this society. (It is a &dquo;traditional value.&dquo;) In fact, sex


353

not the only thing once banned by censors: so was any sort of personal relationship between men and women of different races. As this fact reveals, the views of an entire society can be not only completely mistaken but grossly immoral. It is very easy to forget

Hollywood

was

lessons of

history like this one, and suppose that only totally horrid

racists-hence to take offense at the idea that other one’s own beliefs subjects might be equally perverted by is the overwhelming power of socialization over prejudice. But such in all of us. As in so many scientific disputes, there certainly are cases of bias on both sides of the emotional pornography issue. But my claim is that the pervasive nature of this particular source of bias means that it deserves special discussion. In the hope of persuading the reader that the problem really is widespread, I will list many illustrations, aiming for breadth rather than depth; the latter can be supplied another time.

people

are or ever were on

BIAS IN EXPLANATION Let me begin with the category of bias in explaining or interpreting research data, using as an example the findings of an experiment in which subjects are asked to assign an appropriate prison sentence to a rapist. About half of those who have conducted this test have reported that lower sentences, on average, were suggested by subjects who had first been exposed to large amounts of pornography in the laboratory. Much can be said about these studies, but the point I wish to make here concerns the conclusions drawn from that result. This shows, it has been claimed, that pornography use leads to a &dquo;loss of compassion&dquo; for or &dquo;callousness&dquo; toward rape victims. As I have pointed out elsewhere, however, there are other plausible explanations for the result-much more plausible, I would say, though that is not essential to my point here.’ I suggest that the reason why the alternatives were originally overlooked (and still are being ignored) is the antisexual or at least antipornography attitude of the researchers. Let us see to what extent the details of this and similar cases bear out my hypothesis about these theorists. One of the other explanations rests on the experimental result that students shown erotic films tend to become more sexually tolerant; similarly, such movies are commonly used in sex therapy settings to reduce anxieties on the subject. It also points to the fact that crimes


354

involving sex are traditionally seen in this culture as more serious than equally harmful ones not involving sex-he result of those same learned anxieties. For example, traditional punishments for rape were very harsh; until the U.S. Supreme Court struck them down, the laws in many states permitted the death penalty. Was the reason for this harshness a concern for the trauma of rape victims? Evidently not-it was more a desire to preserve women’s &dquo;purity&dquo; and male proprietary rights over females. (It is of interest to note that those who assert the &dquo;callousness&dquo; explanation all display the purity concern in their impassioned charges that portrayals of mutually enjoyable sex-for-itsown-sake degrade women; this is discussed later). Given these scientific and societal facts, it is quite possible that the lowered sentences in the experiments are simply a result of the sexual ingredient losing some of its negative impact. That is, the subjects may merely come (at least temporarily) to see the metaphysical loss of &dquo;virtue&dquo; as not such a tragedy after all, hence to perceive rape as more comparable to other crimes of violence rather than coming to feel less compassion for anyone. Whatever may be the correct interpretation of the results in question, it is the obligation of those who would claim a given explanation to give arguments that rule out the others. (Mine could easily be tested by asking the subjects about the seriousness of other types of assault as well.) So far, none of the pornography researchers has so much as raised the issue. Of course, a tandem effect of lowered sexual anxieties might well

be a changed belief concerning the amount of harm suffered by a rape victim. But notice two things about that. First, it is still not the same thing as loss of compassion: A lessened perception of the suffering is different from a decreased amount of caring about it. And whether the new belief is nearer to or farther from the truth concerning the trauma is an independent question. Second, compassion for any victim should be based on correct knowledge of the harm suffered, not on irrational anxieties. One has only to reflect on the suffering which aversions about sex have caused in the past to realize this. Educating people about the real harm of rape, not opposing mutually pleasurable, noncoercive portrayals, would be the only rational response to the possible effect in question. To introduce another alternative interpretation, notice how quickly the loss-of-compassion explanation for the prison sentences translates punitiveness toward the offender into concern for the victim. There is certainly a correlation between the two feelings, especially in these


355

&dquo;law-and-order&dquo; times. But here again, they are not the same thing and must not be confounded together. Some of us bleeding-heart liberals feel sympathy for both victims and victimizers, while others feel little concern for either one. A person who has just watched a movie on poverty in the ghetto or heard a moving sermon on &dquo;there but for the grace of God go I&dquo; is apt to suggest a lower prison term for an armed robber. Similarly, young persons who have recently had their view of sex as a legitimate need enhanced may feel less antipathy for one who, they might suppose, has been driven by desire to take sex by force. Once again, this possibility is not even mentioned by those preferring the &dquo;callousness&dquo; explanation. For further evidence of bias in interpreting these data, we must look to what is, in turn, the standard explanation for the supposed loss of compassion. It is apt to be the result, the claim goes, of a decrease in respect for women in general, which would be a product of the fact that women are commonly portrayed in pornography as highly sexed and uninhibited. To date, attitude measures administered after viewing pornography have found no confirmation of this &dquo;loss of respect&dquo; claim (more on this topic later, and also on the broader question of effects on perception of women in general). On the contrary, once again, young subjects tend to report more liberal attitudes toward the sexual behavior of others, as if the effect were just the reverse. But suppose such negative attitude changes were in fact found. I suggest that only a person who believes that it is bad for a woman to be like that would blame pornography for the result. Let me present the reason by using a racial analogy. Imagine the effect that scenes of blacks and whites enjoying each other’s company might have on racists-as reflected, say, on a &dquo;likelihood-to-lynch&dquo; scale. Those of us who lived through the 1960s do not have to imagine the anger and contempt that might be activated. But shall we say that portrayals of different races together are to blame for the racist response to them? That would be grotesque; it is the original racism that is morally responsible for the effect. Likewise, I submit, it is the preexisting aversion to sexually free women that is at fault, should any such thing result from exposure to pornography that portrays its sexual behavior in a positive way. Notice also that the argument which I am criticizing would have to say the same thing about real women who are sexually uninhibited, and even about those who dress as though they were &dquo;loose&dquo;: that they bring disrespect on all women and are thus partially to blame for rape. Ironically, it is the sexually


356

restrictive attitudes of the proponents of this explanation, not the liberal ones exemplified in common pornography, that ultimately cause hostility toward such women. This is borne out by reflecting on other cultures once again: Consider the attitude toward &dquo;fallen women&dquo; in Middle East countries in contrast to the sex-positive views in, say, Polynesia. Those who preach that women who enjoy sex for its own sake are worthy of contempt are partially responsible for any sex crimes caused by such hostility-and that includes most opponents of pornography

important theoretical point emerges from these considerathat is much more general than the loss-of-respect interpretions, tation itself. Exposure to any sort of cognitive stimulus may activate all sorts of societal stereotypes, proscriptions, and prescriptions, going far beyond the content of the stimulus itself. To speak naively about the latter as &dquo;the cause&dquo; of any subsequent effects is thus to ignore a potential multitude of other etiological factors, some of them far more important. (For one interesting example, there is what we might call societal &dquo;demand&dquo; which produces verbal responses that do not genuinely reflect the subject’s own beliefs: &dquo;I’m feeling X right now,&dquo; he or she thinks, &dquo;so I ought to be feeling Y &dquo;) Yet many of the pornography researchers consistently speak that way. This is not only bad science but a tacit endorsement of the status quo in society. (One or two of them are explicit about the societal origins of the attitude toward &dquo;bad women,&dquo; yet they still blame pornography for the claimed effects.) I hope it is now even more clear why the social cause of the scientific bias which I am claiming is so significant. One special aspect of the loss-of-respect interpretation deserves discussion in its own right. Something that ought to be clear, to anyone familiar with common pornography, is that within its sphere it is quite egalitarian. In all the major aspects of sexuality-desire, responsiveness, initiative-taking, and other behavior--~nen and women are portrayed as being much more alike than is the case in real life (in this culture, that is; such equality is more the norm in sex-positive ones). For that matter, the common claim that pornography contains a lot of A very

one

male dominance over females is not true.’ For this reason, I find it astonishing that the standard charge against pornography is that it degrades women by portraying them as sexually uninhibited; almost never is the claim extended to include men. How could something that treats the two sexes so alike be said to debase only one of them?


357

Similarly, then, it seems paradoxical to blame the portrayals for any loss of respect for women only that might occur: Such an asymmetry would have to arise from the viewer’s side of the screen. (And given the rather relative nature of respect, it will not do to posit its loss toward everyone.) It seems very clear that the source of these charges against pornography is our society’s traditional double standard. And the fact that so many who make these charges do it so un-self-consciously indicates an uncritical acceptance of that attitude. A more cynical view of these standard charges would regard them as rather more tactical, however. After all, it would not advance the pornography foe’s purposes to say it degrades everyone; that has little emotional impact, and is more clearly false. But to charge it with debasing women has a powerful effect, both on those who are sensitive to accusations of sexism and on those with traditionalist feelings of special protectiveness toward women. In sum, the degradation-of-women doctrine is the product, either of different standards for what is degrading to men and to women or of crassly manipulative tactics. Either way, in my perception, it is reprehensible. The significance of societal background in determining what effects a given stimulus will trigger also emerges from a second common explanation of how pornography might lessen the perceived seriousness of rape. Seeing women engage so readily in sex, with such a variety of acts and partners, it is reasoned, could lead to the belief that such women would not mind being raped all that much. The claim is plausible: We all know how breaking one taboo can disinhibit associated ones. But I suggest that, once more, any such effect is the fault of preexisting social attitudes. The problem lies in the fact that various types of pleasurable, consensual behavior have been lumped together with rape in traditional thinking: All of them are &dquo;bad&dquo; in a special sexual sense of the word. Absent that association, I suggest, there would be no special tendency to believe a sexually uninhibited person would also be receptive to &dquo;other bad things.&dquo; That is, there would be no more reason to suppose that such a woman would not object to being raped than that a gourmet who likes a wide variety of foods might not mind being force-fed. Or, for that matter, that someone who enjoys more traditional sexual behavior would not mind

being raped.


358

BIAS IN RECOGNITION OF FACTS

different sort of problem case: the effect of of prejudice perception the data themselves,b and of other facts.’ (Admittedly, the distinction between what is empirically perceived and what is theoretically inferred is not always sharp.) One instance of this, I hold, is the set of claims made by James V. P. Check regarding a much-publicized experiment of his. Men shown standard noncoercive pornography reported a slightly higher average level of belief (still very low) that they might commit coercive sexual acts if they were absolutely guaranteed of not being caught.’ Much can be said about this study, including the failure of others to get similar results. But its own internal details indicate that something went very wrong with the experiment. (The manner in which the subjects were recruited and instructed provides some clues as to what it might have been, namely, societal and experimenter &dquo;demand.&dquo; They were told that the research they were engaged in would help decide government policy on pornography, and were advised: &dquo;This is one of the rare opportunities in which you will have to say something DIRECTLY to the Government of Canada.&dquo; Such instructions might have tapped into conscious or unconscious sexual guilt.) Yet the researcher himself, and others, have given no indication of being aware of the fundamental problems revealed by the data. To begin with, the subjects were already in the habit of viewing fair amounts of video pornography in their personal lives; 1.2 times per month, on average. So it is extremely implausible that an hour and a half more of it would really have changed their attitudes. Indeed, only the highest consumers of pornography showed an increase on the likelihood-to-rape scale, further increasing the implausibility. Even more striking is the fact that among the latter group, those shown the films also reported having already committed significantly more coercive sexual acts than those who were not shown them. But since the acts preceded the experimental viewing, they could hardly have been caused by it. In other words, the test provided no more reason to believe that pornography can induce a tendency toward sexual coercion than to think that it can change the past. Evidently, either a disproportionate number of males who already were (or saw themselves as) sexually more aggressive somehow got assigned to watch the movies or something in the experimental setup affected the accuracy of subjects’ answers about themselves. Either way, the researcher’s Let

us now turn

to

a

on


359

conclusions are vitiated. (A valuable suggestion for the future emerges from this problem, however. Henceforth, every attitude-effects experiment should contain questions about past feelings or behavior as a test for artifacts of this type.) Another manifestation of bias in recognizing facts involves questionnaires that are standardly used for determining sexual attitudes. Though I think many of them are guilty, let me illustrate the point with an example that I have discussed briefly in print elsewhere: Donald Mosher’s test for sexually calloused attitudes toward women. I am prepared to argue that positive answers to a great many of the questions need not indicate unfeeling or exploitative tendencies on the part of respondents. Instead, they reflect various other things, including a positive view of sex for its own sake.’ In our culture, of course, the latter attitude is itself reflexively labeled &dquo;exploitative&dquo; and &dquo;degrading to women,&dquo; regardless of how considerate the associated behavior may actually be in a given case. Certain researchers who allegedly &dquo;demonstrated&dquo; with the questionnaire that pornography causes calloused attitudes toward women have since granted its flaws and agreed to cease using it. But they and other commentators have continued to report that &dquo;effect&dquo; of pornography uncritically&dquo; The bias here does not end with the choice of attitude questions, however; it turns up again in a set of queries about behavior, which were meant to provide external validation for the first set. This time, I would argue that two of the five acts regarded as exploitative by the researcher are not so in the least. To analogize once again, consider whether either of the following actions would be described as taking unfair advantage of another person: a woman taking a man to a romantic movie to get him in the mood for marriage; a woman telling a man, &dquo;If you won’t marry me, leave me.&dquo; No one, I think, would call these things exploitative: The one is too obvious to be considered deceptive, and the other is just making clear what is really important to her so he can decide whether it is worth the price to him. But turn these examples into a man taking a woman to a pomo movie to get her interested in sex and a man saying that he will end the relationship if she is not interested in having sex with him, and you will have what the author of the questions (at least once) saw as proof of exploitative attitudes. A second example of falsely perceived callousness, I would suggest, is found in the debriefing script used by Daniel Linz for the tests reported in his Ph.D. dissertation.&dquo; It contains several objectionable


360

charges, in my perception, including the common sophistry of equating male attraction to female bodies and sex organs with regarding women as being nothing but bodies, devoid of feelings and other attributes. I submit that enjoying such scenes no more treats women as &dquo;sex objects&dquo; (in the latter sense) than enjoying a football game treats men as &dquo;sports objects,&dquo; devoid of other attributes and feelings. Moreover, that type of attraction to the opposite sex is biologically normal for human males (and other primates). Aversion to it is ultimately the product of being conditioned with reactions of shame and disgust toward the body. These things being so, I submit that the shoe is precisely on the other foot: Despising males for having needs which they cannot help, and which are not intrinsically harmful, is as evil as despising people for the color of their skin. Doing so is especially serious in this case, since the youth of the student-subjects makes them more vulnerable to psychological harm from assault on their selfimages. The researcher’s own relative youth is no doubt part of the reason for his susceptibility to this society’s antimale, antisexual teachings. Perhaps his failure to find any negative effects from viewing nonviolent sexual materials will temper the expression of such attitudes in future research. For all the usual reasons of scientific ethics, the debriefing of experimental subjects is morally obligatory. But for those same reasons, such sessions must not be used to indoctrinate subjects with the prejudices of researchers or of university administrators. Let me quickly add that factual distortions of this type are so common that examples are apt to be misleading, singling out only a few researchers from the many who have succumbed to them. But consider two particularly serious cases. In one recent research paper on pornography, the claim is made that sex outside a committed relationship has &dquo;no curtailing rules&dquo; and is &dquo;not a function&dquo; not only of emotional attachment but even &dquo;of kindness, of caring.&dquo;12 In other words, if sex does not proceed by traditional sexual rules, it recognizes none at all; if it does not involve love-bonding, it is also devoid of empathy and compassionate feelings. I suggest that such falsehoods raise serious questions about who is really most lacking in basic morality. Another recent article by social scientists repeatedly decries &dquo;the lies of pornography&dquo; on the grounds that it distorts &dquo;facts about normal patterns of sexuality.&dquo;’3 It is obvious that the sexual patterns portrayed in pornography are not standard in our culture. (Subcultures and other cultures are a different story.) But being different from


361

reality is the most salient feature of the vast bulk of fiction and fantasy, including sexual fantasy: It is wish fulfillment, not documentary. To focus on one specific charge, pornography no more makes the claim that women in general are like its uninhibited ones than gay porn declares all men to be homosexual or than a romantic movie starring Robert Redford says that all men are like that. Who is really committing the &dquo;fabrication&dquo; here? Note well that the common charge that pornography degrades women in general depends on this erroneous claim: If it does not somehow reflect on other women (and men?), it could at most be degrading only to the particular individuals

portrayed. Returning

to the &dquo;sexual callousness&dquo;

questionnaire mentioned earlier, it illustrates yet another type of misperception, one that commonly results from antisexual prejudice. The questionnaire contains numerous statements that are purely descriptive, not evaluative, yet which are interpreted as evaluative by its author. That is, beliefs about things like other people’s attitudes and behavior are taken as claims about what is good or bad, what ought or ought not to be felt or done. Still other questions put to the subjects indiscriminately mix the two types of claim. To be sure, descriptive and prescriptive beliefs are correlated, and that fact is important to attitude research. But simply confounding the one with the other leaves us not knowing, in a given case, how much of each is being registered. The same error is committed, in my perception, in Martha Burt’s much-used questionnaires: Rape Myth Acceptance, Acceptance of Interpersonal Violence, and Adversarial Sexual Beliefs. Many of the statements, on at least one plausible reading, are simply true. Hence even reasonable beliefs about matters of fact again wind up being lumped together with objectionable moral attitudes.&dquo; For instance, a belief that any rape charges at all are fabricated is counted as &dquo;acceptance of rape-myths.&dquo; Similarly, rejection of the claim that &dquo;a man is never [my emphasis] justified in hitting his wife&dquo; is interpreted as &dquo;acceptance of interpersonal violence,&dquo; even though one can easily imagine situations in which doing so would save her life, or someone else’s. Another case of fact-value confusion in pornography research is found in another study by Zillmann and Bryant. Their subjects revealed an increased tendency to agree with four statements to the effect that there is inequality in female/male relationships, notably in marriage.15 Every one of the four could be answered &dquo;Regrettably, that is so&dquo; as easily as by &dquo;Fortunately, yes.&dquo; Yet the authors repeatedly


362

speak as if the subjects were not only describing behavioral tendencies and their consequences but endorsing them. That is also what they reported to the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography: &dquo;Heavy exposure to pornography led to a general abandonment of the notion that women are or ought to be equals in intimate relationships&dquo; (emphasis added). (&dquo;General abandonment&dquo; is a hyperbolic description of lessened average perception of equality, on a scale that was hardly precise to begin with.) I can think of several plausible explanations for the results of that experiment. (Assuming they are not spurious, that is: Attempts to replicate them have not, to my knowledge, been made, and there is frequent failure to get replication in this area of research.) For example, the contrast effect might have led subjects to see ordinary women, in distinction from the uninhibited ones in pornography, as being more constrained by traditional rules of gender and by fear of losing men’s &dquo;respect&dquo; in particular. Alternatively, seeing scenes of women and men engaging in the type of sex that is more desired by males in this culture might incline them more toward believing that &dquo;it’s a man’s world&dquo; than they had before. (In reality, as anthropologist Donald Symons argued in his 1979 work The Evolution of Human Sexuality, this culture’s official attitudes and structures are much better designed to satisfy female desires for affection and bonding than male desires for sex.) Finally, perhaps seeing men able to get their sexual needs met outside a committed relationship would increase the subjects’ sense that a woman must go more than halfway to keep a man committed to her. Notice that none of these hypotheses involves the subjects’ coming to approve the reported perceptions. Moreover, Zillman and Bryant’s research did not claim that there was observable inequality in the movies shown; the researchers merely reasoned, on grounds of their results, that it must somehow be there (p. 32 of 1985 manuscript). Here again, the cultural prejudices which the subjects bring with them have been totally ignored in discussing &dquo;the effects&dquo; of pornography. Yet another instance of reading value claims into descriptions of reality is associated with some experimental results of James Weaver IIL’6 As others have done, he found that after viewing sexual materials, his students perceived women in general to be a bit more sexually permissive. And one of his two statistical measures (generalized distance scoring) found, for only one of four categories of women (&dquo;nonpermissive peers&dquo;), that male subjects subsequently regarded them as being somewhat less &dquo;assertive.&dquo; (The gauge for being &dquo;as-


363

sertive&dquo; also contained two other items: being forceful and being dominating.) The results from that measure are problematic, since it found trends and statistically significant changes in the direction of both &dquo;promiscuity&dquo; and &dquo;counterpromiscuity,&dquo; both &dquo;sexual submissiveness&dquo; and &dquo;countersubmissiveness.&dquo; And on the other measure, there was not even a trend away from perceived assertiveness; indeed, there was a nonsignificant tendency for the males to see those females as more assertive. There are many other problems facing this particular research, involving both factual assumptions and statistical manipulations. But the point of interest here is the way these few results involving descriptive beliefs were interpreted by the researcher as suggesting evaluative ones. The dissertation’s Discussion says, &dquo;This pattern of perceptual responses is quite consistent with ... the notion that exposure to sexually explicit themes results in a general’loss-of-respect’ for female sexual autonomy and self-determinism.&dquo; Now, the familiar expression &dquo;consistent with&dquo; is a social scientist’s &dquo;fudge&dquo; phrase. The claim that the moon is made of green cheese is consistent with the fact that there is a book on my desk; but the latter is not evidence for the former. Moreover, the inferential leap from the perceptual response to the affective one is left totally unclear. True, attitudes toward women’s autonomy might be affected if they come to be seen as less assertive, forceful, or domineering. But as was revealed in Weaver’s study, the latter did not clearly happen. And even if it had, such a result is equally consistent with there having been no change at all in degree of respect, and even with an increased respect toward the wishes of those seen as less pushy. Since the women in the movies shown were decidedly not submissive in their behavior, the idea that any effects might have resulted from their endorsing female submissiveness can once again be dismissed. On the contrary, perceiving them as less bound by traditional taboos and double standards might well have the opposite effect. Turning from the matter of autonomy to that of respect in general, seeing women as more sexually liberal could conceivably result in loss of respect for them for reasons discussed earlier. But as was also stressed then, the evidence so far is against such a thing happening. In the eyes of certain researchers, an increased perception of sexual disinhibition may equate automatically with loss of respect; but such has not been found in the subjects. And there are strong objections to saying that pornography is the factor that is morally to blame, once again, even if that effect should occur.


364

Changes in evaluative attitudes aside, the alterations in subjects’ descriptive attitudes raise the issue of whether that might be an objectionable effect of sexual materials. Though charges of consciously calculated misrepresentation by such materials are absurd, they might, of course, still influence factual beliefs. Indeed, the fear that they do so has been a major motivator of research on pomography. One such worry is that consumers will get a view of what is normal behavior regarding sex that is more liberal than is in fact the case in this society. The possibility that other societal influences will give the impression of greater conservatism than actually exists is never voiced, making it pretty clear that the factual accuracy of people’s beliefs is not the real concern. Indeed, those who raise the matter are usually quite explicit about their motives: They would much prefer that only their own traditional view of sexuality be celebrated in the media, regardless of the influence on perceptions of fact. And they discuss this &dquo;effect of pornography&dquo; almost as if they did not realize that traditional sexual attitudes are themselves largely the result of massive indoctrination on the other side, including a long history of censorship. Whatever the motives, I suggest that the problem of misperception of reality arising from viewing pornography has been blown all out of proportion. To begin with, it is certainly true that subjects in these experiments tend to see men and women as more sexually adventurous afterwards than they would have before. But which of the two beliefs is closer to the truth is usually not all that clear. Even if they are less accurate afterwards, that is apt to be a matter of chance, given the secrecy in which sexual predilections are still shrouded in our culture. (I find it odd that a change from one wild guess to another should be labeled &dquo;distortion of perception.&dquo;) As the researchers are quite aware, moreover, recent or repeated exposure to virtually any type of portrayal (or to people in real life) will loom large in one’s thinking, influencing beliefs about other people in general. I suggest that massive exposure to fast-food commercials could give individu als an inflated idea about what percentage of the population eats onion rings. To address a more specific concern, pornography is intrinsically no more apt to mislead men about women’s sexual desires than the ubiquitous romance novels are to misinform women about those of men toward love and marriage. Pornography has no special sinister powers to &dquo;distort reality.&dquo; But the public could certainly be led by certain researchers’ one-sided reports to believe that


365

it has

(distortion of perception, notice). As we also know, such effects fade. Real people and other media messages quickly displace the images from any one source. In particular, once more, those conveying very different images of sex, love, and monogamy abound. Finally, if sexual portrayals do have a larger tendency to affect anyone’s factual beliefs, I suggest that it is, once again, because of two features of our culture itself: the wishful thinking generated in some by society’s failure to provide for their biologically programmed need for sex, and the ignorance about sex in which it continues to keep young people. As usual, the blame is not being put where it belongs. While we are at it, the amount of research that has been done in the attempt to find ill effects from pornography is itself quite indicative of preexisting antisexual (and antimale) attitudes. Few efforts have been expended to discover such consequences of other important categories of nonviolent media presentation. If nothing else, certain of the latter need to be examined to put the pornography tests in perspective, to make clear what they really mean if the feared effects should appear. With these things in mind, I hereby challenge the researchers who have been doing the pornography research to show their concern for scientific objectivity and social justice by conducting experiments to discover things like the following (those familiar with pornography research will recognize the parallels): The effects of portrayals of high-status, high-competence males (&dquo; success objects&dquo;) on women’s perceptions and liking of their husbands and boyfriends, and on their satisfaction with those relationships; 2. The effects of seeing men willingly face harm or danger-going to war to defend nation and family, proving their manhood to women, and so on-on subjects’ views of the seriousness of harm to men (e.g., on their sympathy for an assaulted male-see note 19; but since media violence against men has been so thoroughly desensitized already, it may be 1.

hard to get significant

results);

3. The effects of romance novels’ enjoyed-rape scenes on women’s sexual fantasies and on their proclivity to think that they might possibly enjoy being raped or might even do something to invite rape (if you think this would promote a horrid stereotype of women, consider the horrid one of men that has already been promoted by Malamuth and Check); 4. The effects of scenes that exemplify traditional values regarding marriage -something from the Bible, perhaps--on attitudes toward female

submissiveness; 5.

The effects of angry feminist novels and movies, such as The Women’s Room and The Color Purple, or polemics on perceptions of males in general-say, of their likelihood of being rapists or child molesters-


366

and an

for their welfare-----say, over the danger of convicting of such charges (even, perhaps, the effects of these women’s desires to have male children).

on concern

innocent

man

portrayals on All of these

experiments, and others like them, are long past due. BIAS IN VALUE JUDGMENTS

A third

of value-motivated bias involves the expression descriptions or interpretations of observed facts but of the values themselves. In my perception, scientists have not only a right but, in some cases, a moral obligation to speak out on moral issues. However, they also face the same ethical responsibility that anyone has when making claims that are apt to have serious consequences: to be very sure of having good grounds for holding them. Indeed, pontification should have no place at all in science, which stands apart from common thought-structures largely because of its demand that no belief be adopted without adequate justification. It seems to me that these fundamental rules of reason and ethics have frequently been thrown to the winds by researchers, notably in the kind of research under discussion: They make value-claims for which they do not give, and often clearly do not have, any grounds at all. As a rule, they simply assume certain traditional social values---sometimes precisely on the grounds that such values are widely held in the culture. The example of racism given earlier demonstrated that the latter position is morally untenable. Beyond that, it is a repudiation of scientific values: Science did not arise until people began to question critically, rather than blindly accepting received dogma. But whether the origins be societal or personal, there is no excuse for passing off unsupported claims as if they were known to be facts. One example of this sort of claim involves the reporting of the rapistsentence results, especially to the general public: It is standardly said that the subjects came to &dquo;trivialize&dquo; the crime. No justification for this value judgment is ever given; indeed, sometimes only that claim is made, without the data, so that the reader or hearer is denied the chance to make up his or her own mind. But in no case is the question of what an appropriate sentence might be-whether the preexposure or the postexposure sentence is more appropriate- allowed to arise as an issue. Indeed, the implication seems to be that any lowering of the sentence from its control level, no matter what that might have

category

not of


367

been, is bad.&dquo; Yet until these issues are raised and satisfactorily dealt with, I submit, the question of whether this seeming rape-sentencereduction effect is bad----or whether a sermon on compassion for wrongdoers is bad-has not been answered. To be fair, no doubt one reason why some are so uncritical on this point is the realization that in the past, the society and the legal system have often failed to appreciate the trauma of rape. That fact has given rise to strong emotions, as feminists have raised our consciousness on the matter. But such emotions are another influence that can easily cloud judgment, merely leading to a different extreme. In fact, I have grave trepidation about even raising this point. In the current ideological climate, anyone who tries to look dispassionately at the subject will be charged with insensitivity (or worse), with ipso facto trivializing the crime of rape. But certain things must be said. For concreteness, consider the average assigned sentence from the first test of this type: roughly 5.25 years from those shown a lot of sexually explicit movies; the control group’s figure was about 10.5 years. Now, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, even the former figure is still around 30% higher than the average length of time actually served for rape in recent years.&dquo; So although they do not say so, those who consider five years a trivial amount of time to be locked up in prison (where the felon himself will likely be raped many times over) would also insist that the justice system trivializes rape. But the best measure of a crime’s perceived seriousness that is available to scientists would be comparison with other crimes which are (or are described to subjects as being) equally harmful to the victim. And the average incarceration for rape is higher than that for nearly all other brutal crimes, such as the stabbing of a person. (I use that comparison because some see special significance in bodily penetration.) During the years that the researchers in question have been repeating the rapist-sentencing experiment and their trivialization claim they could easily have tested the latter by asking the subjects about other types of crime. The fact that they have not done so is highly revealing. As was mentioned earlier, one reason for the greater abhorrence of sexual assault is traditional attitudes about sex itself. Another reason is that in our culture, harm to a woman has always been considered more serious than equal harm to a man.19 In any case, the question of what prison terms are appropriate for each type of crime is extremely complex and difficult. Opinions on these matters demand careful argumentation, not ex cathedra pronouncements.


368

Another large category of unsupported value claims by researchers is that involving what types of sexual portrayal are degrading. Here, too, the matter is seldom raised as an issue to be debated; it is simply settled by fiat.20 Over and again, commentators gratuitously describe this or that type of scene as debasing, demeaning, even &dquo;dehurnanizing.&dquo; Commonly so described among the researchers are portrayals of sex for its own sake-just for fun or out of sexual need, rather than as a concomitant of love and affection or of a committed relationship. Hence, in particular, sex with a stranger or involving a variety of partners or of acts or simply being too enthusiastic (&dquo;hysterical&dquo;) about it is standardly so labeled. For just one example of many, the article which I have already cited as deploring &dquo;lies&dquo; in pornography excoriates such portrayals as &dquo;antiwoman&dquo; and &dquo;antihuman.&dquo; It even employs guilt by association, lumping them together with the admittedly small category of violent pornography and with sexist portrayals throughout the media. Yet the closest it ever comes to an argument for these claims is the rhetorical question: Is the commitment-free, continuously sexually receptive lifestyle portrayed in the media consistent with anyone’s long-term best interests or values? (Note the question-begging appeal to existing values. And self-interest is not even a moral consideration, much less a test for whether degradation is present.) Even the book The Question of Pornography, which does mention two or three times that what constitutes debasement is a difficult issue, repeatedly and uncritically declares that this type of presentation simply is degrading (an effect of multiple authorship,

perhaps). Yet of all people, social scientists should be aware of how very subjective and arbitrary this concept can be, how much it is affected by blind conditioning. The cross-cultural and transtemporal variability regarding what is considered shameful is immense (societal influence, again). What ought to receive an especially careful and critical appraisal from them, then, usually gets none. We expect the rhetoric and dogma from ordinary ideologues; we have a right to expect something better from scientists. Now, some of these commentators might insist they are using the terminology of debasement not to express their own views but merely to report those of others; not to say that a given act is worthy of shame or disrespect but only that it is commonly so regarded. At the very least, that would be an extremely misleading way to talk. (I do not recall hearing anyone say that having a dark skin used to be shameful but only that it was


369

considered so.) In any case, it is clearly not the intent of most who make the claims of degradation. There is also a further problem in this regard. Even within our society, ideas about what kinds of sexual behavior are worthy of disrespect are highly variable. Indeed, among those convinced that most sexual materials are degrading, there are still large disagreements on the matter. For example, the Attorney General’s Commission did not list &dquo;casual&dquo; sex, as virtually all the pornography researchers do, as being degrading. And the Commission specifically excepted pinups and highly explicit nudity, though some of the researchers include the former and many feminists include both. To feminist Gloria Steinem, for example, clear pictures of genitals are highly objectionable.&dquo; Her vague generalities on the subject of degrading portrayals are often quoted by the researchers, but they always omit specifics like this one, giving a misleading impression of mutual agreement. Indeed, specifics are sorely lacking in all the research reports, as if to say that &dquo;everybody knows just what we’re talking about.&dquo; Distressingly, the different experimenters usually do not even examine each other’s stimulus materials. To cite a concrete example of these problems, Mosher described his films as having had &dquo;more than the usual amount of affection&dquo;; two decades later, Weaver labeled them &dquo;very affectionate,&dquo; while Fisher and Barak classified them as nondegrading &dquo;erotica.&dquo; Yet to many of Mosher’s female subjects, they were loveless and animalistic.22 In spite of all such problems, the researchers confidently categorize highly complex portrayals into just two types, degrading and nondegrading (even, as it sometimes appears in surveys of the research, on the ex post facto grounds of whether or not undesirable changes in attitude occurred in the tests). I submit that, to date, attempts to distinguish the effects of &dquo;degrading&dquo; from those of &dquo;nondegrading&dquo; sexual materials are worthless. It makes no sense to ask about the effects of X on subjects when it is not even clear what X consists in. So far, the operational test for the presence of degradation seems to be whether it gives the particular researcher a feeling of revulsion in the gut: That is not science. &dquo;But there is public demand to know the effects of degrading materials,&dquo; it might be protested, &dquo;so we have to do something in this regard.&dquo; I suggest that the solution is to eschew the terminology of degradation itself and simply look specifically (and separately) at various carefully


370

delimited types of portrayal to which it might be applied by various constituencies. There is a lot more that is unscientific about the treatment of the degradation issue in the research reports under discussion. For one thing, consider the frequent use of name-calling epithets as if they were clear descriptive terms. Words like &dquo;objectifying&dquo; and &dquo;dehumanizing,&dquo; for instance, are like &dquo;creep&dquo; and &dquo;son of a bitch&dquo;: They have strong emotive content, with its biasing influence, but are virtually empty of factual meaning. (And when they are supplied with a clear meaning, the charge generally turns out to be either false or innocuous, as in the example from the Linz debriefing script. Similarly, a little knowledge of actual human tendencies, from other cultures and our own, reveals that what is often labeled dehumanizing is altogether natural and healthy for human beings to find attractive.) The same objection applies to the use of hyperbole and other rhetorical devices (e.g., &dquo;hysterical&dquo;) in describing what are purportedly objective facts. Finally, the failure to distinguish the scientist’s own value judgments from data reports, mixing them freely together, smacks of using the prestige of science to promote personal views. Keeping the editorials out of the news still leaves plenty of opportunity for the former to be aired. As for the question of what types of behavior are genuinely degrading to someone, that subject is rather too complex to broach here. But one important thing can be said. Given that people can be conditioned to feel that virtually anything is shameful-or that nearly anything is not, provided it happens to someone else-the only reasonable test for real degradation is whether the reaction is independent of such conditioning. That is, whether the activity in question tends to cause feelings of shame by its own nature, and by human nature. (Though we all presumably know the difficulties in trying to make a global distinction between &dquo;nature&dquo; and &dquo;nurture,&dquo; we also know that it can often be done quite cleanly in particular cases.) I suggest that is the standard which our society eventually employed in realizing that being black is not degrading but that despising people who are black is degrading to them. And by that standard, I submit, the great bulk of the contents of common pornography is not degrading to anyone. (Poor acting, selfish ignorance, or general stupidity is another matter.) At the very least, once again, those who have been making the charge should produce some intelligent arguments, or else cease making it.


371

SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE BIAS The instances of bias in

pornography research just surveyed are a

matter for serious concern. Even so, they would be of less consequence if it were not for one further problem. The system of checks (replicative tests by others) and balances (the efforts motivated by opposing prejudices) in science often works fairly well to uncover such Even the tendencies to be influenced by societal indoctrination and to pander to current ideologies can be thwarted, to an extent, by the

things.

possibility of intellectual dishonesty being uncovered by peers. Unfortunately, the system is often short-circuited. In spite of knowing the difficulties of interpreting any given results, the frequency with which the data themselves cannot be reproduced, and all the other pitfalls of scientific exploration, certain researchers insist on hurrying their conclusions to the public or to the legal system. But the latter do not possess all the critical skills needed to assess the claims. Later on, when flaws are found, much damage has already been done. Sometimes, of course, circumstances compel haste; when this occurs, the responsible scientist will issue strong warnings of caution. That, however, is not what has been happening. Consider two recent cases involving research already described in this article. Heedless not only of the usual scientific safeguards but of his own indicators of spurious results, James Check rushed to judgment with his conclusions.

They were a crucial factor in a landmark (Regina Wagner, Court of Queen’s Bench, Calgary), one that appears to have influenced subsequent decisions and hence Canadian common law. It was also Check’s claims, together with those of Zillmann and Bryant, that evidently led the Meese Commission to say that it had been &dquo;demonstrated&dquo; that &dquo;degrading&dquo; pornography has harmful results. In the spirit of doing science by press release rather than by peer review, and in spite of having data that were few, mutually conflicting, and without discernible significance for moral issues, James Weaver began disseminating his interpretations of them to the public and to a U.S. congressional committee soon after completion of his dissertation. For example, a 14 September 1987 front-page article in Toronto’s Globe and Mail, titled &dquo;Sex Portrayal Harms View of Women, Study Says,&dquo; presents him as stating flatly that his subjects &dquo;developed a loss of respect for women.&dquo;23 Even if we assume he actually used the extremely misleading &dquo;consistent with&dquo; formula, this appears to be a case of calculated deception.

case

in Canada

v.


372

So the type of bias I have discussed here is not only bad for science but bad for the society that science is supposed to serve. Once again, I freely grant that there is often bias on the other side of the pornography issue. If my own presentation has been slanted, in the admitted sense of presenting an unbalanced list of infractions or any other, that can be rectified by further commentary on the subject by others. In fact, my greatest hope in writing this piece is to initiate frank discussion of matters that are not being disagreed on because they are

generally being ignored. Until such matters are discussed openly, until intellectual dishonesty in oneself and others is challenged forthrightly, science and society will continue to suffer. NOTES 1. This point was somehow missed in a reply to an earlier article of mine on the subject of bias in pornography research, so let me stress it here. Though I repeatedly said that there is nothing wrong with the expressing of values per se, the researchers whom I was criticizing expended a lot of words on the uncontroversial assertions that I, too, had a clear ideological position and that others, too, had a right to appeal to scientific evidence in support of theirs (see the articles by Christensen 1986; Zillmann and Bryant 1986). Also, though they had themselves originally charged strong bias in research on the other side of the pornography issue-not to mention the accusations of degradation and exploitation that they made against people with different views on sexual morality—they were downright offended that their own integrity should be challenged. 2. I go some distance in that direction in Pornography: The other side (Christensen 1990).

3. Donnerstein, Linz, and Penrod, 1987, 142-43. Notice that the authors were not simply using one of the new definitions that put specific evils into the meaning of the word "pornography"; their discussion covered the entire gamut of sexual entertainment available. I myself am deliberately ignoring the special issue of materials that portray sex and violence together; it raises too many further complications. 4. See Zillmann and Bryant, 1982, for the first of these claims. Christensen, 1990, presents my suggested alternative explanation. 5. Palys, 1986. 6. Instances of bias cited in this article have been limited to the area of experimental research. For a blatant example of falsehood and deception involving data of another type, see the footnote on John Court’s claims in Chapter 10 of my book. 7. In my earlier exchange with Zillmann and Bryant (1986,1987), I did not reply to their misstatements about my own views, on the assumption that they were quite obvious. But they make such a striking example of misperception caused by emotion as to provide further illustrations of the point being made here. My admonition that scientists exercise special care in promulgating interpretations to the general public that are apt to cause social harm was read by them as suggesting the suppression of scientific


373

data They accused me of the bizarre "insinuation that researchers necessarily hold the . values that their research supports" (their emphasis). I stated the obvious fact that the harm of rape is mostly emotional, and they projected onto me the belief that only physical damage should matter to the law (see the following on their proclivity to read evaluation into mere description.) I described that emotional pain as being partly the result of metaphysical beliefs about "unchaste" experience in general, and they denounced me for saying that the harm itself was only metaphysical (complete with dark hints about a "self-serving" message that if women will just become more sexually liberal, "we shall not have to violate you anymore!"). I indicated at the outset that anyone might be guilty of bias without realizing it, and they accused me of pretending to be immune to such things. As for their response that I really provided no evidence of bias in their particular case, that I was merely upset that their data opposed my own views, the reader will have to decide. 8. Check, 1985, esp. 32, 71. Others have pointed out the strong and repeated instruction to the subjects to somehow "send a message" through the questionnaires, notably Donnerstein et al. But all have missed the crucial points in the next paragraph. 9. To my knowledge, the complete set of questions is available only from Dr. Mosher. Their original use, together with the claimed validation discussed later, is described in Mosher, 1970a. Parenthetically, the reader should note that I am not simply being naive about face validity. On the contrary, an implicit message of this article is that, in their attempt to be strictly "empirical," some researchers are being naive about theoretical complexities, such as the ways in which different concepts become associated together in the minds of subjects. 10. See Zillmann and Bryant, 1986, and compare the former’s later-written remarks in Zillmann, 1986. Note also Check’s usage of the Mosher questionnaire. 11. Linz, 1985,147-50. 12. Zillmann, 1986, 17. Notice also the highly culture-centric remarks about nonmarital sex, said to "clash so obviously with the family concept." 13. Fisher and Barak, 1989. 14. The scales are presented in Burt, 1980. They were used and cited by both Linz and Check. 15. From Zillmann and Bryant, 1985, also Zillmann, 1985. The questions are: "Do you agree with the statement that women, generally speaking, are sexually dominated by men?"; "Do you agree with the claim that women are more responsive to the sexual needs of men than men are to those of women?"; "Do you agree with the statement that a stable marriage is best achieved by the wife’s yielding in most conflict situations?"; and "Do you agree with the contention that marriage is best served, in the long run, when husband and wife are on equal terms?" Note that the response to the first two could also represent a different contrast effect: a feeling that ordinary women, unlike those shown in pornography, are not being allowed adequate sexual fulfillment. 16. Weaver, 1987. 17. In Weaver’s study, subjects were told that the average sentence for a rapist is thirty-seven years (distorting perceptions of reality?). Strangely, only certain subjects shown pornography assigned prison terms close to that length; the control group suggested sentences nearly twice as long. Given that on their own they would evidently pick a term closer to ten years, one can only wonder what might have produced that

bizarre result. 18. For a more accessible source,

see

Time magazine, 8 August 1988,11.


374

19. This should be obvious to anyone but certain doctrinaire feminists. But to quantify it a bit, I recently gave a sentencing questionnaire of my own to a large sample of students. The victim of a brutal assault and robbery was described in different versions of the questionnaire as being either a female or a slightly-built male of the same age, and m both cases as suffering serious harm and continuing emotional trauma. The average student assigned a punishment that was 75% longer in the case of the female victim. Among women only, the ratio of the sentence lengths was two to one, and among female law students, nearly three to one (all results statistically significant at the .05 level or better). 20. One exception to this rule is Check, who presents a number of arguments for regarding portrayals of sexually free women as degrading (1985, 115-17). Though a thorough critique of them and others is not possible here, I hold that the reasoning at bottom merely assumes that such behavior is bad, in a way that would be transparent in a nonsexual context. For instance, the claim about being "undiscriminating" in regard to sex partners just takes traditional attitudes for granted. The latter make no similar claim regarding (say) friendship: One who has many friends is not considered degraded by this lack of discrimination. Also said to be "dehumanizing" is the depiction of a woman who is "atypical of most real women," on the grounds that she is thereby "robbed of her human-ness." I submit that that attitude is itself degrading to anyone who is different from the norm. And since real women in sex-positive cultures are likewise atypical of most in ours, it would seem to follow that they too are subhuman. (Note that, as usual, the objections only involve portrayal of women.) A more specialized objection is to depictions of women whose initial"no" masks a "yes." But that is a simple fact of life in a culture where they have to fear losing men’s "respect." Surveys find that many of them are even willing to admit having hidden their real desires in that way. Add to these the other bad arguments and the falsehoods projected into such portrayals, and the author’s general claims have little if any value. The specific films which he selected for his experiment certainly have some objectionable features, but to judge from the nonevaluative content of his descriptions, even they are hardly evil. 21. E.g., in Steinem, 1980, 39. Notice the use of guilt by association, juxtaposing "full labial display" with sadomasochistic images, and the imputation of the motive of subjugation to males who find female genitals sexually attractive. 22. Mosher, 1970b, 306. 23. My own requests to the reporter and the editor-in-chief to see a copy of whatever materials Dr. Weaver had sent them and to be allowed to publish a reply were spurned.

REFERENCES Burt, Martha. 1980. Cultural myths and supports for rape. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology 38:217-30. 1985. The effects of violent and non-violent pornography. Manuscript prepared for the Department of Justice, Canada. Summarized in the article by Check and Guloien in Pornography. Research advances and policy considerations, edited by Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989). , Christensen, F. M 1986 Sexual callousness re-examined. Journal of Communication

Check, James V. P.

Winter, 174-84.


375

—.

1987. Effects of

pornography: The debate continues. Journal of Communication,

Winter, 186-87. —. 1990.

. New York: Praeger. Pornography: The other side of pornography. New York:

Donnerstein, E., D. Linz, and S. Penrod. 1987. The question Free Press.

Fisher, William, and Azy Barak. 1989. Sex education as a corrective: Immunizing against

possible effects of pornography. In Pornography: Research advances and policy considerations, edited by Dolf Zillman and Jennings Bryant. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Linz, Daniel. 1985. Sexual violence in the media: Effects on male viewers and implications for society. Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison. Mosher, Donald L. 1970a. Psychological reactions to pornographic films. In Technical report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, vol. 8. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1970b. Sex callousness toward women. In Technical report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, vol. 9. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Palys, T. E. 1986. Testing the common wisdom: The social content of video pornography. Canadian Psychology 27:22-35. Steinem, Gloria. 1980. Erotica and pornography: A clear and present difference. In Take back the night, edited by Laura Lederer. New York: Morrow. Symons, Donald. 1979. The evolution of human sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press. Weaver, James III. 1987. Effects of portrayals of female sexuality and violence against women on perceptions of women. Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, Bloomington. Zillmann, Dolf. 1985. Testimony of Dolf Zillmann to the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. Unpublished manuscript. —. 1986. Effects of prolonged consumption of pornography. Paper presented at the Surgeon General’s Workshop on Pornography and Public Health, Arlington, VA, 22-24 June. Published with minor changes and additions in Zillmann and Bryant,

—.

eds., 1989. Zillmann, Dolf, and Jennings Bryant. 1982. Pornography, sexual callousness, and the trivialization of rape. Journal of Communication, Fall, 10-21. 1985. Effects of pornography consumption on family values. Manuscript submitted to the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. Later published in

.

Journal of Family Issues 9 (1988): 518-44. 1986. A response. Journal , of Communication Winter, 184-88. —. 1987. A reply. Journal of Communication , Winter, 187-88. —.

Ferrel M. Christensen is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta. He received his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from Indiana University, after having originally earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and done graduate work in that field. He has published on the philosophy of space and time in such journals as Philosophy of Science, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Erkenntnis and Philosophical Quarterly. In recent years, he has worked to become conversant in the behavioral and biological sciences and in ethics. One major result of the latter studies is his recent book Pornography: The Other Side (Praeger, 1990).
