The Effects Of Pornography

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Porn and the imagery associated with it has pervaded almost every aspect of society. It is easily available to anyone who is curious and has potentially dangerous impacts. Porn can impact the mental and sexual health of people exposed to it and leads to the subjugation of women through how they are objectified and treated as inferior in most pornography. Companies in the porn industry make money from this. Any company which makes money from objectifying or demeaning anyone based on an arbitrary characteristic such as their sex is operating unethically and not does not adhere to any amount of social responsibility. The pornography industry takes advantage of the most basal human sexual desires in order to profit. By doing this, many forms of…show more content…
It exists entirely outside of taboo and it pervades every aspect of society, with a study by a team from Ohio State University suggesting men and women think about sex about 19 and 10 times a day respectively (Stafford, 2014) . Another study by the University of Montreal found that a researcher could not find one single male in their 20s who has never watched porn (James, 2011). It preys upon the most primal instinct; the human desire to reproduce. From as young as children are left to browse the internet alone they have access to pornographic material. While pornographic material has been available in various forms for hundreds of years, the 1990s saw the rise of the internet and with it the rise of accessible porn. Easy access to pornography has a long-term, potentially harmful impact on any person who is unduly exposed to it at a young age. The Australian Institute of Family Studies suggested that it can have serious impacts “on young people’s: knowledge of, and attitudes to, sex… attitudes and behaviours regarding gender equality… [and] behaviours and practices within their own intimate, sexual or romantic relationships.”(Quadara, El-Murr, & Latham, 2017). This may be due to a change in the way pornography causes men to view women. Psychology today suggests that “it doesn’t look like pornography is leading men to treat women as mere objects… Instead,…show more content…
Moral rights is defined as “the ethical concept that moral decisions are those that best maintain the rights of those people affected by them.” (Wood, 2017. p.183) As stated previously, pornography treats women as inferior due to nothing but the arbitrary fact that they are a woman. The majority of porn unquestionably degrades women and results in them being viewed and treated differently in society, society being defined as “a community, a nation, or a broad grouping of people with common traditions, values, institutions, and collective activities and interests.” (Wood, 2017. p.6). Research from the University of Indiana found that “those who indicated that they had watched porn in the last year (about a quarter of men and a sixth of all women in the survey) were also more likely to respond negatively when asked if they were “for or against preferential hiring of promotion of women.”(Burton, 2013) This is reflective of the fact that porn impacts how women are viewed and therefore it is impossible to suggest that the porn industry functions morally due to the fact that women cannot be fairly treated by men who have been exposed to porn. Equally so the justice approach, defined as “the ethical concept that moral decisions must be based on standards of equity, fairness and impartiality” (Wood, 2017. p.183-4), could not be adhered to as that requires decisions to be
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