There has always been a stigma when it comes to watching porn, especially with regard to how we perceive women. The belief that porn leads to negative attitudes towards women has helped shape obscenity laws and censorship attempts, but a recent study published in The Journal of Sex Research suggests the average porn user holds more egalitarian views toward women than previously thought.

The study abstract reads: "According to radical feminist theory, pornography serves to further the subordination of women by training its users, males and females alike, to view women as little more than sex objects over whom men should have complete control.” However, Taylor Kohut, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow in psychology at London’s Western University, argues porn users could actually become “useful allies” in women’s struggles for equality in work, income, and public office.

To challenge what Kohut calls “radical feminist theory,” him and his colleagues analyzed data collected between 1975 and 2010 for the General Social Survey, a government-funded U.S. project that interviews about 24,000 men and women a year on a wide range of social issues and personal views. Both men and women responded to at least one of the following sets of measures: feminist identification; attitudes toward women in positions of power, attitudes toward women working outside the home, attitudes toward abortion, and attitudes toward the traditional family. The majority of the participants were married, politically moderate, Protestant, and had an average age of 45.

The findings revealed 23 percent of participants who reported having watched an “X-rated” movie in the previous year, were no more or less likely than non-users to identify as feminists or show support for traditional family roles. Porn users, on average, expressed more positive attitudes toward women in positions of power and less negative attitudes about abortion and the workforce compared to their counterparts. Moreover, female pornography consumers were just as egalitarian as others, suggesting porn doesn’t always lead women to accept submission.

“Taken together, the results of this study fail to support the view that pornography is an efficient deliverer of 'women-hating ideology,'” the study authors concluded. "While unexpected from the perspective of radical feminist theory, these results are consistent with a small number of empirical studies that have also reported positive associations between pornography use and egalitarian attitudes.”

The authors caution they're not making any “cause-and-effect” claims about porn, but rather that they are simply interpreting the data as it challenges the way pornography is viewed in society today. “I’d rather not live in a culture where our government lawmakers decide to regulate, outlaw behavior or material because they assume it’s harmful,” said Kohut. “I’d rather they demonstrate it is, first.”

This study doesn’t suggest all men who watch porn are learning to become more feminist from it. A 2013 study published in the Journal of Communication found men’s views on sex are negatively influenced by high porn consumption. Among these men, watching porn was associated with less egalitarian attitudes toward women and more hostile sexism.

So, it seems there exists a grey area when it comes to the effects of porn on the perception of women. Not all porn users have non-egalitarian attitudes towards women, yet not all of them are feminists either.

Sources: Kohut T, Baer JL, Watts B. s Pornography Really about “Making Hate to Women”? Pornography Users Hold More Gender Egalitarian Attitudes Than Nonusers in a Representative American Sample. The Journal of Sex Research. 2015.

Hald GM, Malamuth NN, and Lange T. Pornography and Sexist Attitudes Among Heterosexuals. Journal of Communication. 2013.