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Rates of pornography consumption in the U.S. are high and increasing. With exploratory aims, this study addresses the questions: What is the association between pornography consumption and liking of sexual behaviors commonly depicted in pornography, and is enjoyment moderated by gender? Sexual scripts theory suggests that increased pornography consumption is associated with increased engagement in pornographic sex acts, but it does not speak to enjoyment of the acts when engaged. The current study seeks to fill that gap. Based on data collected from a larger sample of 1,883 heterosexual men and women (predominantly, 86.6%, college or university students) in the U.S., and comparing correlations between pornography consumption (frequency of use) and reported enjoyment of a range of sexual behaviors by gender using Fisher's z transformations (α value set at <.0025), analysis revealed that pornography consumption, overall, was not significantly correlated with increased enjoyment of the sexual acts that comprise the pornographic sexual script. However, gender was a significant moderating factor in the enjoyment, specifically, of degrading and/or uncommon acts. Male respondents were significantly more likely to report enjoying these acts than their female counterparts. These findings have possible implications for consumers, educators, and mental health professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pornographic media characterized by discordant images of sexual pleasure and aggression are increasingly formulating young heterosexual women's sexual scripts. Yet there has been little work done on the downstream role of pornography consumption; how does pornography use relate to heterosexual women's thoughts and feelings during sexual experiences with a partner? Methods: We surveyed 706 heterosexual women (18–29 years of age) in the United States, associating consumption of pornography with sexual preferences, experiences, and concerns. Results: Although most heterosexual women have seen pornography (83%), a little less than half (43.5%) use it for masturbation, half of whom use it one time per month or less. Among female consumers who were sexually active, higher rates of consumption for masturbation were associated with increased mental activation of the pornographic script during sex—heightened recall of pornographic images during sex with a partner, heightened reliance on pornography for achieving and maintaining arousal, and a preference for pornography consumption over sex with a partner. Furthermore, higher activation of the pornographic script during sex, rather than simply viewing pornographic material, was also associated with higher rates of insecurities about their appearance and diminished enjoyment of intimate acts such as kissing or caressing during sex with a partner. Conclusion: These findings suggest that pornography consumption may relate to female consumers' sexual experiences indirectly and indicate that pornographic thoughts during dyadic sexual encounters may not improve heterosexual women's sexual experiences with a partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we contend that turning a sharp dramaturgical lens on the dynamics of fieldwork clarifies a number of longstanding ethical challenges in ethnography—challenges that have shifted and deepened in the new technological landscape in which ethnographers work. We encourage fieldworkers to adopt an intentional approach to what we call methodological impression management to navigate the research process more strategically. Drawing on our experiences conducting fieldwork in settings where some of our research participants had power over others (a women’s shelter and a substance abuse treatment program), we delineate the strategies we found useful for successful methodological impression management in complex settings and point to the dramaturgical underpinnings of their effectiveness. By bringing dramaturgical theory into direct conversation with the literature on ethnographic methods, we hope to illuminate a path through which ethnographers might make more deliberative methodological decisions and thoughtfully balance ethical responsibilities to their participants with their commitment to analytic rigor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the rhetoric that high-level administrators used to justify control over a campus women's center's mission statement and programming related to reproductive rights. Appealing to valued cultural abstractions ("both sides," "tolerance") and the conventional reification of "The Law," administrators' rhetorical moves obscured their power, legitimated their decisions, and positioned themselves as magnanimous. We also highlight the ideological codes-what "everyone knows"-that administrators relied on to shape the terms of debate and to bend to right-wing pressures without appearing to do so. We conclude with recommendations for challenging the seemingly benign cast of "both sides." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the sport of women's rugby, examining how female athletes manage their identities as heterosexuals and as women on a women's rugby team at a U.S. college. The author provides a situated analysis that describes the process of gender identity management in a sexist and homophobic context. The article analyzes what the author terms defensive othering wherein subordinates distance themselves from other subordinates and reinforce the legitimacy of a devalued identity. Also discussed is "heterosexy-fit," the author's term for a contradictory identity that simultaneously is tough, physically fit, heterosexual, and feminine.

Using survey data from heterosexual adult men in the U.S., the present study has two objectives. The first objective is to provide an additional data point on the overall, bivariate association between frequency of pornography consumption and condom use. The second objective is to test the theoretical proposition that the association between using pornography more frequently and using condoms less frequently will be stronger when pornography is seen as functionally important and weaker when pornography is not seen as functionally important. At the bivariate level, more frequent pornography consumption was associated with using condoms less consistently. At the level of contingency, pornography use predicted condom nonuse only when men perceived that pornography was a primary source of information about sex. When men did not perceive that pornography was a primary source of sexual information, their rate of condom use was unrelated to how much or how little they consumed pornography. Collectively, these results are consistent with the public health position that pornography can be a risk-factor for condomless sex and the theoretical position that the socializing impact of sexual media depends on the pedagogical value attributed to that media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal pornography viewing has been associated with lower sexual satisfaction in both experimental and observational research. The language used to hypothesize this relationship typically suggests that it is frequent viewing, rather than infrequent or only occasional viewing, that is responsible for any adverse effects. When the nature of the relationship between a predictor and a criterion depends on the levels of the predictor, a curvilinear relationship is indicated. Nevertheless, studies have assumed linearity in their analytical approach. Curvilinear relationships will go undetected unless they are specifically tested. This article presents results from a survey of approximately 1,500 U.S. adults. Quadratic analyses indicated a curvilinear relationship between personal pornography viewing and sexual satisfaction in the form of a predominately negative, concave downward curve. The nature of the curvilinearity did not differ as a function of participants' gender, relationship status, or religiosity. But the negative acceleration was slightly more pronounced for men than for women, for people not in a relationship than for people in a relationship, and for religious people than for nonreligious people. For all groups, negative simple slopes were present when viewing reached once a month or more. These results are correlational only. However, if an effects perspective were adopted, it would suggest that consuming pornography less than once a month has little or no impact on satisfaction, that reductions in satisfaction tend to initiate once viewing reaches once a month, and that additional increases in the frequency of viewing lead to disproportionately larger decrements in satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pornography has become a primary source of sexual education. At the same time, mainstream commercial pornography has coalesced around a relatively homogenous script involving violence and female degradation. Yet, little work has been done exploring the associations between pornography and dyadic sexual encounters: What role does pornography play inside real-world sexual encounters between a man and a woman? Cognitive script theory argues media scripts create a readily accessible heuristic model for decision-making. The more a user watches a particular media script, the more embedded those codes of behavior become in their worldview and the more likely they are to use those scripts to act upon real life experiences. We argue pornography creates a sexual script that then guides sexual experiences. To test this, we surveyed 487 college men (ages 18-29 years) in the United States to compare their rate of pornography use with sexual preferences and concerns. Results showed the more pornography a man watches, the more likely he was to use it during sex, request particular pornographic sex acts of his partner, deliberately conjure images of pornography during sex to maintain arousal, and have concerns over his own sexual performance and body image. Further, higher pornography use was negatively associated with enjoying sexually intimate behaviors with a partner. We conclude that pornography provides a powerful heuristic model which is implicated in men's expectations and behaviors during sexual encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction to the article "Pornography and the Male Sexual Script: An Analysis of Consumption and Sexual Relations" that was published in the March 29, 2016 is presented.