Pornographic turning points in the life course: uses of pornography in sexual self-development

ABSTRACT

With the ubiquity of pornography, the connection between the way individuals use pornography and the development of their sexual selfhood merits deeper qualitative analysis and exploration. The current study gathered sexual narratives from 50 participants and examined the way they claimed to use, or disregard, pornography, and the impact on their sexual self-development. Uses for pornography included educational purposes/constructing a sexual knowledge base, arousal, masturbation, learning sexual techniques, sexual exploration, and relationship enhancement. Regardless of the use, utilization of porn, or, in some cases, lack thereof, was determined to often act as a turning point in the trajectory of an individual’s sexual self-development over the course of one’s life.

KEYWORDS:

• Pornography
• sexual selfhood
• sexual self-development
• sex education
• sexual scripts
• life course

Acknowledgements

All data support the claims of this study and have been collected and stored in a manner consistent with Institutional Review Board (IRB) regulations. Ethics approval was received with Iowa State University IRB approval # 20-279-00. All potential research participants were given an IRB-approved informed consent form to read. Upon agreement with the consent form, and with signed or recorded verbal consent, the individuals were interviewed with the right to leave the study at any time and have their interview deleted. All research participants were informed, via the informed consent form, that the study they were participating in was done with the intent to publish. All participants agreed to have any portion of their interview published as part of this study. This study has not been published previously and is not currently under consideration elsewhere.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This study was not funded by research grants through funding agencies or research support from any organizations.