Good servant, bad master: How eighty women perceive the influence of pornography on sexual scripts

Abstract

Women are often portrayed as the victims of pornography. Their active consumption and the ways in which pornography shapes their sexuality are still under-researched. This article has three goals: to explore how and why young women watch pornography; to analyse how they perceive the influence of pornography on their sexual scripts; and to determine related positive and negative factors. Guided by sexual script theory, I thematically analysed responses from an open-ended form completed by 80 young Czech women (18-30 years old). The analysis resulted in six themes related to cultural, interpersonal and intrapsychic sexual scripts – in other words, the domains of what is societally appropriate, interpersonal relationships, and inner desires. These findings have important implications: pornography simultaneously influences several domains of sexuality. Findings show that under certain conditions, pornography may be beneficial for sexual empowerment and sexual satisfaction, but at the same time, it may also produce negative effects – providing a complex and often contradictory experience for the individual.

Keywords:

• sexual scripts
• women
• pornography
• sex education
• 3AM theory

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Kateřina Lišková for her guidance during the conduct of research and the writing of the manuscript, and David Šmahel for editorial suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Grant Agency of Masaryk University (GAMU) under grant number MUNI/C/1700/2018, and by the Interdisciplinary Research Team on the Internet and Society in the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. Masarykova Univerzita.