The University of Maine DigitalCommons@UMaine Honors College Spring 5-2018 Behind Closed Doors: Unpacking College Students’ Complex Relationships With Pornography Consumption Samantha K. Saucier University of Maine Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors Part of the Sociology Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Saucier, Samantha K., "Behind Closed Doors: Unpacking College Students’ Complex Relationships With Pornography Consumption" (2018). Honors College. 357. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/honors/357 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors College by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: UNPACKING COLLEGE STUDENTS’ COMPLEX RELATIONSHIPS WITH PORNOGRAPHY CONSUMPTION by Samantha K. Saucier A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for a Degree with Honors (Sociology, Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies) The Honors College University of Maine April 2018 Advisory Committee: Jennie Woodard, Adjunct Professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, Honors College Amy Blackstone, Professor of Sociology Jordan LaBouff, Associate Professor of Psychology, Honors College Heather Lakey, Adjunct Professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Rebecca White, Adjunct Professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies © 2018 Samantha Saucier All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT This thesis is a quantitative and qualitative study of University of Maine students attitudes and consumption habits of pornography. It contains a literature review of anti-pornography feminism from the Second Wave, as well as an overview of sex- positive and sex-critical theories of pornography from more recent years. The goal of the thesis is to understand how sex-negative and/or sex-positive ideas have or have not permeated college student’s understanding of pornography. Over 800 students were surveyed about pornography consumption through the Psychology Department’s Fall prescreen. 4 students from the survey, who all happened to be women, were interviewed about their relationships with sex and pornography. The findings of this study suggest that young adults (18+) have nuanced and multifaceted relationships with pornography. Men reported watching pornography at a higher frequency than women, but men and women both reported that they do not believe pornography is similar to real life sex. The interviews suggest a significant level of porn literacy and gender consciousness among consumers. It was found that participants were more likely to have sex-positive ideas about their own consumption habits than others’. Additionally, this research is significant because it serves as a pilot study for future sex-positive models in pornography research. The study also provides a lens through which feminism can be more inclusive of sex workers’ rights. For Lori: friend, partner, life coach, Pisces. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Literature Review 7 Methods (Survey) 34 Results (Survey) 35 Discussion (Survey) 39 Interviews 41 Methods (Interviews) 43 Results (Interviews) 44 Discussion (Interviews) 69 Conclusion 84 Works Cited 91 APPENDIX A: Survey Questions 94 APPENDIX B: Interview Guide 97 APPENDIX C: IRB Approval 98 APPENDIX D: Full Interview Transcriptions 100 Author’s biography 150 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 32 Figure 2 35 Figure 3 36 Figure 4 37 vi INTRODUCTION On December 8th, 2017, feminist icon Gloria Steinem led a protest against a Pornhub pop-up shop in New York City. Pornhub, the most popular Internet source for pornography in the world, opened the shop for a few weeks with the hopes of establishing a more permanent business in the future. The store sold sex toys and branded merchandise with the Pornhub logo and also offered a space where people could make their own porn and stream directly to the website’s homepage. Steinem, alongside a dozen or so other activists from the National Organization for Women (NOW), protested outside the shop with signs that read “Pornhub sells incest” and “Pornhub has no place in NYC.” Their main concern was that Pornhub encourages violence against women. Steinem claimed that Pornhub was “the source of the poison that is in our system.”1 The protest itself was small, but organized. Steinem’s famous face does not require overwhelming numbers to support her message. Her own presence, alongside the well- placed podium and easily garnered media attention, are enough to made headlines. And they did.2 In the shop, Steinem reportedly asked a worker why they were selling handcuffs, and what did those handcuffs have to do with free will and democracy?3 Handcuffs are perhaps the most visible and accessible element of BDSM. It is common knowledge that handcuffs and other sex props are comparatively popular items in the bedroom. The sex 1 Samantha Grasso, “Gloria Steinem says Pornhub pop-up shop promotes sexual violence,” The Daily Dot, 12/9/17. https://www.dailydot.com/irl/pornhub-pop-up-gloria-steinem/ 2 CBS, New York Daily News, and Huffington Post were among just some of the news networks covering this story. 3 Grasso, “Gloria Steinem,” The Daily Dot. 1 toy industry makes $15 billion a year worldwide.4 Steinem’s question exemplifies the obtuseness of the anti-pornography movement, which has long espoused the same narrative that Steinem did against Pornhub. Choosing to use sex toys is exactly an exercise in free will, just as is choosing to watch pornography. Steinem has long been a leader of the feminist anti-pornography movement. She is also arguably the most prolific face among feminists today. What does it say about feminism when a leading activist, such as Steinem, and an organization, such as NOW, publically decry pornography as a source of violence against women in our culture? This is the same exact ideology that Steinem has touted since the 1970’s, an idea with which she has collaborated with conservative lawmakers and activists to further the anti- pornography movement. Their argument is easy and compelling, and designed in a way that makes any opposition seem complicit in violence against women. However, breaking down that argument will reveal that it actually punishes the autonomous and consensual sexual activity it seeks to encourage. While Pornhub, like most corporations, is not the epitome of ethical business practice (they got their start by pirating the content of sex workers), they represent how the vast majority of people access pornography.5 In 2017, Pornhub saw an average of 81 million visits per day, with 28.5 billion annual visits, and transferred enough data to fill the memory of every iPhone in the world.6 This is proof enough that a lot of people are 4 “Sex Toy Industry Statistics,” Statistic Brain, 2017, https://www.statisticbrain.com/sex-toy-statistics/ 5 Steinem was not protesting Pornhub’s stealing of sex worker content. She was protesting pornography and a company that provides it to the masses. 6 Pornhub Insights, “2017 Year in Review,” Pornhub, 1/9/2018, https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2017- year-in-review 2 watching pornography. If Steinem is correct, are all of these people consuming content that makes them accepting, and even perpetrators, of violence against women? Women in the industry say it is not so simple. Porn performer and activist Lorelei Lee commented, “When Steinem says sex work is the invasion of our bodies she is saying that our consent does not matter. When you deny our ability to consent you deny our ability to talk about our actual rapes.”7 Steinem is not the only person speaking about porn and sex work in this way. Anti-pornography sentiments are quite common. In February of 2018, comedian Chelsea Handler tweeted, “There is an entire generation of children whose first memory of their President is a man who supports child molestors, wife beaters, Russian hacking, and porn stars.”8 Sex work and pornography are so often demonized as social corrupters promoting violence to the masses. In reality, this is a one- dimensional ideology that reinforces essentialist ideas about gender. Sex work-inclusive feminism, like Lee’s, offers an alternative to the anti- pornography, anti-sex work platform that Steinem and other boast. Additionally, porn scholars are beginning a new age for understanding pornography holistically and academically. Sharif Mowlabocus and Rachel Wood stress the need for a more nuanced research model because hegemonic anti-porn arguments “build on a particularly entrenched form of ‘common sense,’ loosely based upon anecdotal evidence and partially researched statistics, while drawing on hegemonic assumptions of sexual ‘purity’ (and the 7 Lorelei Lee (@missloreleilee), “When Steinem says sex work is the invasion of our bodies she is saying that our consent does not matter. When you deny our ability to consent you deny our ability to talk about our actual rapes,” 2/14/18, Tweet. 8 Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler)., “There is an entire generation of children who’s first memory of their President is a man who supports child molestors, wife beaters, Russian hacking, and porn stars. It is our responsibility to make that a memory and not a consistency. We all have a moral obligation. Keep going,” 2/10/18, Tweet. 3 purity of sexual subjects).”9 Again, the simplicity of anti-pornography arguments are persuasive because they appeal to “common sense,” but lack sound, bias-free academic evidence. The realities of consuming porn are diverse and nuanced in such ways that it cannot be a homogenized experience. With the sheer volume of porn content accessible today, it is increasingly difficult to pinpoint exactly what pornography is or is not, and even more difficult to understand what porn “does” or not. The word pornography has become an umbrella term for the drastically varied sexually explicit content available to anyone with Internet access.