Sex Aware

The average porn user may have more egalitarian views towards women than non-users, a contentious new study has suggested.

Researchers at Western University in Canada have even argued that many pornography fans might be useful allies in women's struggles for equality in the workplace and in public office.

Taylor Kohut, the study leader and a post-doctoral fellow in psychology, analysed data from 35 years of the General Social Survey, a US government-funded project that interviews around 24,000 men and women a year about a variety of issues.

They reported in the Journal of Sex Research that the 23% of people who said they had watched an X-rated film during the previous year were no more or less likely to identify as feminists than those who did not watch porn.

They also found that, on average, porn-watchers expressed more positive attitudes towards women in positions of power, as well as less negative attitudes towards abortion and women in the workforce.

Kohut said: I'd rather not live in a culture where our government decide to regulate [or] outlaw behaviour or material because they assume it's harmful. I'd rather they demonstrate it is, first.

Supporting the study Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Texas A&M International University, said that gauges of male aggression such as rape and domestic violence have actually been decreasing throughout the Internet era, the National Post reported. Dr Ferguson said:

I think if porn were going to ruin society, it's already had 20 years to do it ... And it's not happened.

Kohut said that the results may partly be explained by the fact that porn users are more likely to be liberal people, where as non-users are more likely to be conservative or religious.

Men aren't the only ones with a porn habit - as one in three women admit to watching X-rated videos at least once a week - and many say that they are using their cell phones to view it.

British photographer Amanda de Cadenet teamed up with Marie Claire magazine to create a comprehensive survey exploring modern women's relationships with porn - and the results indicate that the majority of female porn fans are viewing the erotic videos alone, for their own pleasure, rather than with a partner.

Out of the more than 3,000 women surveyed, 91% of the survey's respondents identify as female, 8% identify as men and 1% is transgender.

And while 31% of them say they watch porn every week or so, 30% report viewing X-rated film at least a few times a month.

However, despite popular misconception, women aren't watching porn to appease their significant others. While 31% of people say they occasionally watch porn with their partners, only 3% say they do it regularly.

As for what women are watching, 63% say they enjoy heterosexual porn. And while 83% of respondents are straight, 44% say they gravitate towards lesbian porn and 31% say it's a mixed bag .

Watching porn is not an addiction like substance abuse and viewers do not elicit the same neurological responses as other addicts, a study has revealed. Sexual psycho-physiologist and lead researcher Nicole Prause said:

The findings provide clear evidence that porn does not look like other addictions.

Prause and her colleagues examined 122 men and women, 55 of whom reported a porn problem .

The volunteers viewed photos categorised as pleasant, neutral and unpleasant. Half of the pleasant photos were erotic. The team focused on late positive potential (LPP), a common measure for the intensity of the brain's emotional response at a given moment.

They found that porn addicts showed a lower -- and not higher -- late positive potential when viewing sexually explicit images.

Those who said they had experienced major problems with porn usage showed decreased brain reactions when shown the sexual images .

The research was published in the journal Biological Psychology:

Modulation of late positive potentials by sexual images in problem users and controls inconsistent with porn addiction

Abstract

Excessive viewing of visual sexual stimuli (VSS) is the most commonly reported hypersexual behavior problem and is especially amenable to laboratory study. A pattern of enhanced sexual cue responsiveness is expected in this sample if hypersexuality shares features of other addiction models. Participants (N = 122) who either reported or denied problematic VSS use were presented with emotional, including explicit sexual, images while their evoked response potentials were recorded. An interaction of hypersexual problem group and the level of desire for sex with a partner predicted LPP amplitude. Specifically, those reporting problems regulating their VSS use who also reported higher sexual desire had lower LPP in response to VSS. This pattern appears different from substance addiction models. These are the first functional physiological data of persons reporting VSS regulation problems.

British women are paying for sexual services because they want great sex, are too busy for relationships or do not want to have a conventional relationship.

These are the initial findings of a new study which has been launched into women who buy sexual services.

The study, led by Dr Sarah Kingston of Lancaster University, and co-led by Dr Natalie Hammond at Manchester Metropolitan University, will potentially be one of the most in-depth analyses of the subject ever undertaken in the UK.

Researchers have spoken to 21 escorts in the UK who are paid for their sexual services. Now they want to speak to their female clients to find out more about the experiences of women who pay for sex. Their early findings reveal that women who pay for sex come from all backgrounds and ages, although there is a common trend that women are in their thirties and forties.

Dr Kingston, a Lecturer in Criminology at Lancaster University, has research interests in the sex industry, policy and law. She explained:

We have made some fascinating early findings, but we still have much work to do. We are seeking to explore motivations and experiences of women who book escorts; who and where they buy sex from and to explore how physical and sexual safety is negotiated.

The study involves interviewing men, women, transgendered and transsexual people who sell sexual services to women, as well as women who purchase sexual services.

We still want to speak to women who buy sexual services. This will be completely confidential and they will not be identified in any way. Phone and Skype interviews have been popular so far, and we are flexible on methods. Speaking directly with women will provide us with a valuable insight into how and why they engage in this activity.

The research team explained:

Some of our participants say most of the women who buy sex are professional people, some of whom may simply want pleasurable sexual experiences. Paying an escort is described as a way of ensuring discretion, as opposed to other ways of securing sexual encounters.

In some instances women were very specific about the services they required. This came across in some interviews with escorts who had one-to-one bookings with women. Escorts relay how women with specific requests email their expectations ahead of meeting.

However, some women also pay for more than just sexual intercourse, they might go for a drink or meal with their chosen escort before progressing onto sexual contact, which some escorts describe as the 'boyfriend experience'.

It is also evident that women purchase sexual services as part of a couple. The majority of the escorts interviewed see couples, stating they are booked for regular excitement and fun, or simply for a relationship treat. In couples, some men appeared more nervous than their female partner.

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Professor Brian McNair is one of the world's foremost academic experts on pornography.

The subject matter of his work is often seen as peculiar or taboo, yet he believes pornography should be studied in the same way as Hollywood movies and the pop industry. Professor McNair told ABC Brisbane's Spencer Howson that the growing acceptance of pornography had made it a fascinating subject of academia:

Since the 1990s many scholars have taken the topic of pornography seriously and tried to apply to it the same methods that we use for mainstream cinema, advertising and so on, he said. There is a growing acceptance and tolerance of pornography as something ordinary people do or use.

There is no evidence that today's generation of young people are behaving any differently in relation to sex, marriage, pregnancy, children or STDs. Professor Brian Mc Nair. He said the ease and degree of access had led to more people viewing pornographic material:

Children as young as 8, 9 or 10 have access to pornography, hard-core explicit images of a type that could not be purchased legally, or even in sex shops in Sydney, he said.

That is a qualitatively different environment than existed pre-internet, so it creates justified anxieties amongst parents about what their children are watching in their bedrooms at night.

That said, there is no evidence that today's generation of young people are behaving any differently in relation to sex, marriage, pregnancy, children or STDs than previous generations.

The statistics in all of these elements are improving.

He believes parents must take responsibility for policing the media consumption of their children. He said:

Apart from the very clear and unambiguously bad forms of pornography, I do not think it is helpful for the state to intervene and try to censor the internet for everyone

Whether or not you attribute broader social harms to pornography, there is no evidence that increasing access to pornography is somehow generating more sexual abuse or violence ... or the other things that sometimes pornography is accused of.

There is evidence of greater tolerance of gay marriage, reduced tolerance of domestic violence and sexism. All of this has happened despite the face that we have this hugely sexualised culture.

Introduction

During sexual stimulation, some women report the discharge of a noticeable amount of fluid from the urethra, a phenomenon also called squirting. To date, both the nature and the origin of squirting remain controversial. In this investigation, we not only analyzed the biochemical nature of the emitted fluid, but also explored the presence of any pelvic liquid collection that could result from sexual arousal and explain a massive fluid emission.

Methods

Seven women, without gynecologic abnormalities and who reported recurrent and massive fluid emission during sexual stimulation, underwent provoked sexual arousal. Pelvic ultrasound scans were performed after voluntary urination (US1), and during sexual stimulation just before (US2) and after (US3) squirting. Urea, creatinine, uric acid, and prostatic-specific antigen (PSA) concentrations were assessed in urinary samples before sexual stimulation (BSU) and after squirting (ASU), and squirting sample itself (S).

Results

In all participants, US1 confirmed thorough bladder emptiness. After a variable time of sexual excitation, US2 (just before squirting) showed noticeable bladder filling, and US3 (just after squirting) demonstrated that the bladder had been emptied again. Biochemical analysis of BSU, S, and ASU showed comparable urea, creatinine, and uric acid concentrations in all participants. Yet, whereas PSA was not detected in BSU in six out of seven participants, this antigen was present in S and ASU in five out of seven participants.

Conclusions

The present data based on ultrasonographic bladder monitoring and biochemical analyses indicate that squirting is essentially the involuntary emission of urine during sexual activity, although a marginal contribution of prostatic secretions to the emitted fluid often exists.

...Read the full paper

See Also: Female ejaculation comes in two forms, scientists find

13th January 2015. See  article from  finditwestvalley.com