Youth, Gender And Pornography

1942 Words8 Pages
Youth, Gender and Pornography A major research project has been launched in the Nordic countries which studies the way in which the spread of pornography is affecting the perception of gender by young people. The background for this project comprises changes in the cultural status of pornography that have followed in the wake of the development of new media. By Susanne V. Knudsen and Anette Dina Sørensen From newspaper articles, anthologies and a handful of recent individual studies, in which young people are allowed to voice their own opinions, we know that teenagers of both sexes watch pornography, their motives being partly curious, partly sexual and partly connected with their need for information about sexuality (e.g., Mossige 2001, Håvold and Moen 2003, Søndergaard 2002). On the other hand, we have no concrete knowledge about the way that increasing exposure affects children and young people, about their attitudes to what they are watching, and the way that this relates to their perceptions of sexuality and gender and to their own sexual experiences. The few Nordic researchers who have studied this problem disagree about whether exposure to hard-core pornography has any effect upon well-balanced children and young people and, if it does, what kind of effect we are dealing with. In many ways this research project is unique. It focuses on an area in constant development and in which the new media play an important role. The access that children and young people have to cable and satellite television and the internet as well as their consumption of products of mass culture have increased their chances of exposure to pornographic material – both regular pornography and mainstreamed, fragmented references to the pornographic universe. Exposure is not always voluntary. As an element of aggressive promotion by producers of pornography, the internet has
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