Effect of the Proliferation of Pornography on Gender Stereotypes - Coursework Example

Running Head: Gender Sociology Gender Sociology: The Effect of the Proliferation of Internet Pornography on Gender Stereotypes and Variations Course Title Date of Submission Name of University I. Introduction Even though previous researches discovered that women were more likely than men to link pornography with harmful effects and were also more probable to advocate limitations on pornography, none of them considered hypothetically the associations among gender, believed effects of pornography on the self and other females or males, and advocacy for restriction of pornography. Through dividing believed effects in relation to gender in the use of pornography in the internet, this study will attempt to provide a more thorough and forceful explanation of gender stereotypes as manifested in the exploitation of internet pornography (Lo, 2002). Majority of the researches that investigated the behavioral aspect of gender stereotypes had used extent of perceptual prejudice as an indicator of support for media censorship. Even though using the extent of perceptual prejudice as indicator of advocacy for media censorship has a number of empirical support, its fundamental theory appears doubtful since it falls short in distinguishing between those who view pornography to have great impact on themselves and on other people, and those who view pornography to have lesser impact on themselves and on other people (ibid). Feminist have even before been critical of liberalism. Even though the emphasis of such disapproval are diverse, ranging from allegations of male prejudice in the grounding framework of the person to perceptual blindness over the qualities of people’s lives, such as enslavement relations, in which issues of equality emerge, they share in the argument that open-minded political standards conceptually abandon issues of gender equality. Wide-ranging liberalism, nevertheless, discovered a number of feminist partners, who argue that liberal ideas of independence echo the heart of feminist values. II. Internet Pornography and Gender A substantial deal of research has investigated the substance and influence of conventional types of pornography in the previous decades. Findings of researches conducted beforehand on pornography implies that pornographic materials portray women consistently as sexual objects or sexual products who take pleasure on suffering or disgrace (Dworkin, 1989). Women are also shown in circumstances that are shameful, corrupting, and unbecoming (Dobson, 1997). In a qualitative research, Jensen and Dines (1998, pp. 90-98) discovered the following aspects essential to the embodiment of sexuality in pornography: hierarchy or the imbalance in power was devastating, regularly situating women at the bottom of the hierarchy; objectification or women were portrayed as objects or dealt with as inferior than humans through their sexual partners; submission or women were depicted as gaining knowledge to submit to the commands and whims of men who overpower them; and violence or cruel acts were portrayed as a tolerable technique of guaranteeing sexual participation from women. Since women are habitually depicted as sexual commodities in situations of humiliations, insult, disgrace, or torture, pornography is viewed as a “method to motivate, orchestrate, justify and guide sexual abuse and violence against women” (Russo, 1998, p.29). As Dworkin (1988) claims, “Pornography is the material means of sexualizing inequality; and that is why pornography is a central practice in the subordination of women” (p.264). The mushrooming of pornographic Web sites on the information superhighway in the past decades created such materials easily accessible to anyone, despite of age, with an online registration or permission of entry to the World Wide Web. The explosion of pornographic materials on the Internet and severe public debate on how to control the Internet has motivated a few of pioneer researches investigating the content and impacts of internet pornography. A content analysis of over 100 pornographic sites by Heider and Harp (2000) discovered that pornographic materials available on the Internet also portrayed women as sexual commodities and as eager, subservient, and obedient to the demands of the male. Following the findings of Jensen and Dines (1998), they assumed that internet pornography appeared to bolster “traditional constructions of men’s power over women in the forms of hierarchy, objectification, submission and violence” (p.23). Previous researches on pornography demonstrate that pornography, including internet pornography, is generated and used mainly by the male population. Women were discovered to be less probable than men to use if often, to be less sexually stimulated by it, and to have less positive response toward pornography. Based on these results which indicate that men tend to prevail in the exploitation of internet photography, and that pornographic characters tend to initiate negative response in women and advance men’s coldness and sexual cruelties toward women, it can be anticipated that the public would regard men as more susceptible to the detrimental effects of internet pornography. It can also be predicted women to be more probable than men to see greater harmful impacts of internet pornography on males (Lo, 2002). III. Responses toward Pornography and Gender The detrimental effects of pornography are numerous. It is not complicated to predict the likelihood that in circumstances of lengthened exposure, particular doubtful aspects of the pseudo-sexuality may turn out to be incorporated within the perceptual approach of some recipients. The primary concern regarding pornography is as Andre van Deventer (1995) argued, is not the temporary and observable behavioral influences on the individual as such, regardless if it is positive or negative, but fairly on the permanent emotional and mental effects on the evolution of mass culture, such as violence against women. With respect to gender, several artists have for ages illustrated images of women, particularly in the nude. This nudity is nevertheless investigated with regard to the outline, appearance and the quality of the female shape. A number of these arts are also intended to be visibly sexual but not automatically pornographic, such as erotic art (Onyejekwe, 2005). Violence against women is a plain expression that surrounds a terrible list of exploitative and abusive actions both physically and mentally that spans from domestic violence, sexual abuse at school and workplaces, rape and corruption, sexual brutalities, including conflict instances, and implementation of gender-prejudiced laws. From the discussion, one is unable to reflect on the manners and ways by which the international society and local regulations can cater to this severe problem of gender discrimination. Some nations are recently exerting efforts to fight this pain in the neck. The police force of the United Kingdom is, for instance, communicating with other forces globally in an effort to shut down websites with sexually vulgar and violent themes (ibid, p.76). These efforts, even though praiseworthy, have failed to address what is demanded as greater appeals for the increase in the application of software that censors what is given out to people through the internet has also been faced with severe yet varied concerns. According to Katrien Jacobs (2000), “Pornography as sexually explicit electronic traffic and a bubbling entertainment industry has pervaded the Internet from its very infancy, and is now causing fear and headaches amongst citizens and rightwing organizations. While porn consumers are frantically buying access to state-of-the-art sites, the unwieldy empire of the senses is stirring up new modes of chaotic conservatism and censorship legislation” (as cited in Onyejekwe, 2005, p.77). IV. Sociological Analysis of the Problem Gender is a mechanism of social traditions within a specific societal context that represent individuals as diverse in socially relevant manners and mobilizes relations of inequality on the basis of that diversity. The persistent, daily acceptance of the gender structure demands that both people’s experiences and commonly held cultural values and beliefs prove for them than men and women are adequately varied in numerous ways that support men’s dominance and advantage. In the case of internet pornography, gender becomes identical to other structures of prejudice and inequality such as race and class. Gender is unique, nevertheless, in the sense that it constitutes cultural beliefs and positive experiences must be maintained in the regularity of constant interaction, frequently of familiar situations, between those privileged or the men and the disadvantaged or the women by the structure of the electronic media (Lo, 2002). Consequently, incidents at the interactional stage in the internet have a particular influence over the gender structure. As interactional events endorse gender relations over varied circumstances, they verify or weaken gender beliefs. Hence, interaction contributes to supporting or changing the gender structure as an entire appearance of actively changing physical and social structural conditions. The frequent tempo of interaction between men and women not merely makes interaction an influential domain in the gender structure; it also influences the essential rules that people apply to build interaction itself. In the case of internet pornography, gender is deeply involved in the basic system of interaction in the cyber world; people become not just their gender orientation but a lot of other things in addition to their sex. Because of the representation of women in internet pornography and the high frequency of use of these pornographic materials by the men, additional classification takes place which is the basic appreciation of the individual as male or female (Slade, 2001). Therefore, gender is a contextual identity that alters other identities that are frequently more relevant in the context than it is. Two elements are likely to form the patterns of gender relations with regard to the issue of internet pornography, namely, the interaction between sex classification and conditional power and prestige. The structural backgrounds in which heterogeneous sex and homogeneous sex interaction take place may confer privilege to one sex more than the other (ibid). Moreover, cultural gender stereotypes such as women as reproductive commodities and men as breadwinners, themselves generate a product of contact patterns, are probably to form the manner individuals organize their contacts within the limitations of their structural context; hence, in the case of internet pornography, leads to violence against women. V. Conclusion The Internet is a public domain. It will hence be counterproductive to depend on extremist perspectives and frameworks to solve the dilemma of gender discrimination in the cyber world. An important mechanism in addressing these dilemmas is methodological and empirical research on gender prejudice in the internet. This will facilitate the putting out of pressure on governments and even on the international community to initiate considering gender issues seriously (Slade, 2001). Similar studies will also be essential so as to arouse awareness and knowledge about the issues, also to successfully monitor development in the future. No society is excluded to this predicament. While designing and implementing ethical standards for the communications media, might travel a long way in advancing respect and common welfare, specifically for the internet which flashes sameness across the globe, confronting the negative impacts of the internet on women demands concentrating not entirely on violence but on the whole range of media representations that restricts, demoralize or humiliate women (ibid). In the contemporary world, in the cyber realm, gender equality should be the main theme and not the ancient story of gender discrimination. References Dobson, J. (1997). Pornography harms society. In A. Alexander & J. Hanson (Eds.), Taking Sides: Clashing views on controversial issues in mass media and society (pp. 200-206). Guilford, Connecticut: Dushkin/Brown & Benchmark. Dworkin, A. (1988). Letters from a war zone. New York: Dutton. Dworkin, A. (1989). Pornography: Men possessing women. New York: Plume. Heider, D., & Harp, D. (2000, August). New hope or old power: New communication, pornography and the Internet. Paper presented at the annual convention of the Association for Journalism and Mass Communication, Phoenix, AZ. Jacobs, Katrien (2000) “Sex is Just a Mess” [A review of Zillah Eisenstein’s 1998 book Global Obscenities: Patriarchy, Capitalism, and the Lure of Cyberfantasy New York: New York University Press]. Available from the Internet at: http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0009/msg00009.html (1 August 2005). Jensen, R. & Dines, D. (1998). The content of mass-marketed pornography. In G. Dines, R. Jensen, & A. Russo (Eds.), Pornography: The production and consumption of inequality (pp. 65-100). New York: Routledge. Lo, V.-H. (2002). 2002. Third-Person Effect, Gender and Pornography on the Internet , 13+. Onyejekwe, C. (2005). The Internet and the Commercialization of a Gender Perspective. Nebula , 70-81. Russo, A. (1998). Feminists confront pornographys subordinating practices. In G. Dines, R. Jensen, & A. Russo. (Eds.), Pornography: The production and consumption of inequality (pp. 9-25). New York: Routledge. Slade, J. W. (2001). Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Van Deventer, Andre (1995) “Pornography and Mass Culture: A Cultivation Theory Perspective.” Newsletter [South Africa], 7 (3), September, pp. 5-6. Read More