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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30564 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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Roll up, roll up to yet another round in the "Pornography: Harmless Enjoyment That Prevents Rape, or Degradation of Women And Should Be Banned" boxing match!

This time, news from Ireland. A study by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ‘Use of Pornography by Young Adults in Ireland’, was published today. It's generally on the negative side. I was surprised by this plum which I plucked out - men from advantaged, as opposed to disadvantaged, backgrounds use porn more.

Before anyone goes "Ah yeah, well this is what you'd expect the ESRI in Ireland to say", they're not religious, they're no more right-wing than any semi-government body, the Church has nothing to do with them, and remember we're up to our necks in Pride parades and trans non-binary gender rights (as Leo tried and failed to get with the recent referenda. Speaking of which, I'll be coming back to those elsewhere) with social liberalisation now, so it's not "little Catholic Ireland finger-wags at porn, the backwards repressed bunch".

This is the age cohort they studied, the ESRI says the study is about "pornography use among over 4,500 young adults at 20 years of age" which is when the last reporting was done:

This cohort started in 2008 with 8,500 children aged 9 years. Information was collected from parents, teachers, Principals and the children themselves. Additional perspectives were collected by post from non-resident parents and regular carers of the Study Child. This cohort was revisited at age 13 years, 17/18 years and at age 20. Fieldwork for Cohort ’98 at 25 is currently underway.

Growing Up in Ireland is the national longitudinal study of children and young people, a joint project of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) and the Central Statistics Office (CSO). Since 2006, the study has provided Government with an evidence base to make informed policy decisions on a wide range of issues based on data from children and young people living in Ireland.

For over 15 years, the study has followed the progress of two groups of children: 8,000 9-year-olds (Cohort ’98) and 10,000 9-month-olds (Cohort ’08). The members of Cohort ’98 are now 25-26 years old and those of Cohort ’08 are around 16 years old. In 2023, the study launched a new third cohort of babies who will be 9 months old in 2024.

Now! The juicy summation of findings, which is where the hair-pulling starts!

(O)nline pornography use in Ireland is highly gendered, with 64 per cent of young men and 13 per cent of young women reporting use.

Key findings:

  • Different factors are linked to pornography use for men and women.
  • Men from more advantaged backgrounds are more likely to use pornography. In contrast, there is little systematic variation by social background for women.
  • Men from lone-parent families are less likely than those from two-parent families to use pornography, while rates of use are higher for women from lone-parent families.
  • Pornography use is lower among those with a religious affiliation and where there is greater parental monitoring of behaviour in adolescence.
  • There is no strong relationship evident between the provision of Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) at school and pornography use. However, this finding is limited by the fact that the GUI study did not collect data on the quality or extent of RSE received by young people.
  • Young people who are more reliant on the Internet or (in the case of men in particular) their friends rather than their parents for information about sex are significantly more likely to use pornography. LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly women in this group, are more likely to use pornography. This may reflect information-seeking among this group or their lack of contact with other LGBTQ+ youth.

The study also looked at the relationship between pornography use and two sets of outcomes: sexual behaviour and wellbeing.

  • In general, users and non-users of pornography do not differ in their use of contraception, but users of pornography are significantly less likely to use condoms regularly.
  • Men who use pornography have poorer wellbeing than non-users, being less satisfied with their lives, reporting more depressive symptoms and having a poorer self-image. This pattern is evident even taking account of levels of wellbeing at 17 years of age.
  • Among both women and men, those who use pornography have higher levels of aggression and are more likely to cope with stress by using negative strategies, such as drinking alcohol or drug-taking, or taking to their bed.

I'm leaving this here for discussion, I'm not going to express an opinion one way or the other.

From the study, about half of the negative effect of porn is just gay men watching more porn and being more depressed in general (model 3 on page 50). Also, the study suspiciously says porn usage imparts a massive uptick in violence, which leads me to believe there's just other factors not being controlled for. One of the authoritarian right's attacks on porn is that masturbation leads to men essentially "leaking their manna" and becoming passive and less likely to pursue their goals, which is the opposite of what this study finds.

Yeah, but the whole thing is this is not the authoritarian right, it's not a right-coded conservative think-tank. I don't think it comes down to "porn makes you more X", I think it's more like "people with problems like depression, anger issues, etc. engage in anti-social/coping behaviours like getting in fights, being aggressive, drinking, smoking, drugs, and porn use".

the whole thing is this is not the authoritarian right

I wasn't saying this publication was from the auth-right, I was saying it has similar goals as the auth-right in banning porn, but its evidence is the opposite of what the auth-right normally claims. Both sides want to ban porn, but one side is saying it increases violence while the other side says it decreases violence. Both claims can't be true simultaneously. At an intuitive level, the claim that porn leads to violence simply doesn't make much sense to me, and leads me to believe this study is falling victim to selection effects, i.e. the old "correlation doesn't equal causation".

I think it's more like "people with problems like depression, anger issues, etc. engage in anti-social/coping behaviours like getting in fights, being aggressive, drinking, smoking, drugs, and porn use".

I agree with this, the behaviors correlate but aren't caused by each other. So a porn ban wouldn't have the desired effect and the study is effectively worthless.

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