Sexual Violence in Mainstream Online

Dr Fiona Vera-Gray and Professor Clare McGlynn

New research reveals that 1 in 8 titles shown to first-time viewers of the most popular pornography

websites in the UK describe sexual activity that constitutes .

Over a six-month period, the home pages of the top three The free and easy access to sexually violent pornography pornography websites in the UK were analysed, resulting is a form of cultural harm: it risks normalising sexual in the largest ever research sample of online pornographic violence, sustaining a culture in which violence against content. women is eroticised and minimised.

The study provides strong evidence that content describing Serious questions are raised about the extent of criminal criminal acts such as , upskirting and are material freely advertised on mainstream pornography regularly being presented on the landing pages of the websites, the accountability of porn companies and the major pornography platforms. efficacy of current regulatory measures.

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SASS Research Briefing no. 1 Department of Sociology Durham Law School .X

access the data. We developed a web-crawler and parser What did we do? code, running on a provisioned virtual server. This enabled us to access the sites regularly without them being able to

Over a six-month period, we collected the largest ever adapt to our behaviour. The code took a ‘snapshot’ of the sample of online pornographic content, gathering over landing page for each site, every hour for six months. Over 150,000 titles from the landing pages of the UK’s this data collection period, a total of total data corpus of three most popular, mainstream pornography 151,546 unique titles were collected. websites. To analyse the data we used the World Health With the aim of developing a new empirical basis for Organisation (2003) definition of sexual violence. We understanding the content advertised to a first-time developed a set of keywords connected with four broad viewer of pornography, we set out to use this data to contexts that fell under this definition: sexual activity answer three key research questions: between family members; aggression and assault; image- (1) Is pornography describing criminal acts of sexual based ; and coercive and exploitative sexual violence advertised to a first-time user of mainstream activity. The keywords were run against the entire data online pornography? corpus and results were then manually coded to ensure (2) How common is the sexual script of sexual relevance. The final list of relevant titles was then inputted violence in the content advertised to first-time users? into NVIVO for word frequency analysis. (3) How is the boundary between consensual and criminal sexual practices communicated to a first-time Why are titles important? user? The titles of pornography videos play a key role in the ‘story’ being told to viewers about what they are watching. Methods Titles provide the framework for how the user is invited to The three most accessed pornographic websites in make sense of what they are seeing. Therefore, they are the UK were identified through Alexa Internet, a web particularly important in trying to understand more about traffic analysis tool. At the time of data collection these the social function of pornography; that is, what were Pornhub.com, Xhamster.com and Xvideos.com. messages it gives about what is, and is not, normative All sites gave written consent to sexual practice.

What did we find? Is this material Warning: Explicit Overall finding harmful? language In total, we found that 12% The short answer is yes. Porn In what follows, we give [n=15,839] of the total has “seized the narrative” on examples of some of the material analysable sample after data what counts as normal and including uncensored examples cleaning [n=131,738] acceptable sex. It provides the of the titles. described sexual activity that dominant framework for the constitutes sexual violence. development of sexual norms While these titles are explicit and

and understandings. may be disturbing, we include Most common word? them here because it is ‘Teen’ was the most In this context, the ready important not to hide the reality of frequently occurring word availability of sexually violent what is being advertised to first- across the entire dataset. It content in mainstream online time users on these popular porn was slightly more common in pornography sustains a culture in websites. sexually violent content. which sexual violence is not taken seriously.

Sexual activity between Image-based sexual Why does this family members abuse

This was the most frequent form of This category includes all forms of matter? sexual violence. Perhaps non-consensual creation and/or The material we found plays a surprisingly, we found that distribution of sexual images key role in creating the climate in representations of step including material commonly which coercion and assault are relationships were less common known as ‘’ and normalised, deemed acceptable than blood relationships. ‘upskirting’, as well as voyeurism and where women’s non-consent Examples of the titles available including hidden cameras and is eroticised. This is a form of advertised to a first-time user ‘spy cams.’ These videos cultural harm. include: contribute to a context where the This is not a causal argument taking and sharing of private o Brother Fucks Sister In The about direct behavioural effects. sexual videos is seen as a Ass Outdoors Nor are we claiming that the titles legitimate sexual practice, rather o When Mom's Mad, Dad Goes are referring to real acts of than a form of sexual violence. To His Daughter violence, though some may be. Titles included: o Daddy keeps fucking daughter Instead of looking at the effects of o Beach Spy Change Room Two till she likes it pornography on the individual, Girls we are focused on its o Pharmacy Store Bathroom Physical aggression and consequences for social Hidden cam understandings about sex and assault o Upskirted While Putting also about what counts as sexual This was the second most common Groceries In The Car violence. category, even though we excluded Our findings show that verbal aggression such as “dumb Coercion and slut gets fucked” and BDSM mainstream online porn is exploitation material that was identified as such. contributing to a culture in which the boundary between sex and Notably, the word ‘black’ was This category was designed to sexual violence is blurred, and among the most frequently used capture coercive forms of sexual the harms of sexual violence are terms in this category, suggesting activity that met the WHO minimised and mocked. connections between physical definition but did not include aggression, and explicit physical violence or non- These videos were not hidden in racialised descriptions of black consent. We found that words the deep recesses of the sites. performers. describing young women were They were freely and Examples here include: particularly common, with the top immediately advertised on the three words being schoolgirl, girl landing page for a first-time user: o Crying blonde bitch takes and teen. Examples include: their ‘shop window’ for the young rough cunt drilling and new to the world of online o again and again forced o Chubby Spanish Teen Needs porn. o Rhianna fucked while she’s The Cash” asleep! o Dopefiend HATES CUM in her mouth LOL”.

but also the algorithms Improve What can we do? determining what appears on Properly resourced and expert- these landing pages are not set to Hold pornography companies led sex education is urgently exclude such content. to account required in all schools. In an age- Government regulation appropriate way, young people These titles are in contravention of need education about sex the porn companies own Terms & Governments worldwide are including sexual pleasure, sexual Conditions, yet we found them grappling with how to regulate violence and pornography. through simple key word searches. social media and porn Governments should fund the This is a stark failure in the duty of companies. Far more active steps specialist violence against care of these companies towards must be taken by regulators to women and girls sector to their users: not only can someone hold these companies to account; develop and design training easily and accidentally see material to ensure swift removal of programmes and resources to the sites themselves deem unlawful content; and to require support teachers in delivering this inappropriate in their T&C, compliance with their own terms work. and conditions.

About the research

Full reference to the research

Vera-Gray, F, McGlynn, C, Kureshi, I., Butterby, K. (2021) Sexual violence as a sexual script in mainstream online pornography, British Journal of Criminology, http://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azab035

Free to download at http://academic.oup.com/bjc/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/bjc/azab035

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Stephen Burrell, Fiona McKay and Jo Wilson for their valuable research assistance. Fiona Vera-

Gray also acknowledges the support of the Leverhulme Trust which generously provided funding for this work through an early career fellowship grant ECF-2015-428.

Authors and Contact Dr Vera-Gray and Professor Clare McGlynn have a long track record of research and policy work on pornography. In

2014-15 they worked together with Rape Crisis South London, the End Coalition and Professor Erika Rackley, to campaign to make the possession of rape pornography a criminal offence. This reform was successfully introduced in 2015.

Dr Fiona Vera-Gray is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Durham University. She is the author of The Right Amount of Panic (2018) and Men’s Intrusions, Women’s Embodiment (2016). @VeraGrayF [email protected]

Professor Clare McGlynn QC (Hon) is Professor of Law at Durham University with over twenty years’ experience influencing criminal law reform relating to sexual violence, image-based sexual abuse and extreme pornography. She is the co-author of Cyberflashing: recognising harms, reforming laws (2021) and co-author of Image-Based Sexual Abuse: a study on the causes and consequences of non-consensual sexual imagery (2021). [email protected] @McGlynnClare www.ClareMcGlynn.com

Support services Rape Crisis (women and girls) www.rapecrisis.org.uk The Revenge Porn Helpline www.revengepornhelpline.org.uk Women’s Aid www.womensaid.org

Survivors UK (men and boys) www.survivorsuk.org