Tumblr Porn Survey initial findings released

Hot on the heels of Maymay's discussion of "gaze" and person-identification in porn (and my further extension of the ideas in a comment there), comes scientific evidence relating to the concepts discussed of "hetero-identity" or "homo-identity" (that is, identifying with the character that is "different" or "similar" to the viewer) and of "object/embodiment vs empathy" (the "level of involvement" idea that I suggested).

Orlando C. @ the Kink Research Overviews blog devised a study of the subjective responses that porn users have when presented with pornographic photo-stills of a variety of gender combinations and activities. (I posted a selection of my responses to the survey in a NSFW, probably trigger-laden, post at And You Thought I Was Sweet - you can work out from that which of my answers got quoted in the report!) The initial findings released yesterday make for absolutely fascinating reading.

If I were to sum up the findings in a short phrase or sentence, it would probably be "people's minds are unpredictable".

Orlando C reports that from 70 different images in the survey, the descriptions produced the impression of several hundred images as perceived by the respondents!   A common reason was suggested that people freely edited their perceptions of an image to make it fit the narrative they wanted to fantasise about.

I was particularly taken with this observation:

Several respondents viewed image #56 as depicting a couple engaged in anal sex with a strap-on dildo, a reading that I as a viewer simply cannot reconcile with the positions of the model's bodies.

This is because my response was:

It probably doesn't fit completely with the image, but I like to fantasise that the woman behind the man is buggering him with a strap-on.

Which made me LOL when I read Orlando's remarks, seeing as I had admitted the picture didn't really support the fantasy but went with it anyway!   I know that I do this a lot with non-explicit (softcore) porn to create an interaction that I find most exciting.


There were images with models to whom viewers assigned gender at will, assigned BDSM top or bottom role at will, and assigned attitude or emotional context at will, to suit the needs of the internal narrative that the viewer was developing.   Everything could potentially be fluid!

On assumed attitude, it's seems incredible that one image, that simply showed a naked arse with cunt and anus clearly visible, produced the following range of emotions ascribed to the owner of the backside in question:

• “having fun”;
• “not having a good time”;
• “shameless”;
• “not vulnerable”;
• “cold”;
• “excited”;
• “nervous”;
• “crying with pleasure.”

(Images with faces visible were no less varied in interpretation.)   At which point it surely becomes an obvious challenge to certain anti-pornography campaigners, whose arguments are often based on "you can CLEARLY see that this model is feeling...", that those campaigners are seeing what they expect to see based on the narrative they wish to see.

Read the rest of the post at Kink Research Overviews to find out more on just how varied and unpredictable people's dirty minds can be!   But I want to focus on the more political elements that are introduced in the conclusion.

Orlando C. reports in the conclusion that:

Viewers exercise considerable creativity in engaging the image, and often ... add, remove, and modify elements, impose storylines that bear no relationship to the image, freely change the genders of models, and insert themselves into the images in every imaginable way, or stay removed from it.    Moreover, the objective content of the images does little to predict these interpretations

...

The most extreme themes in the respondent's fantasies, such as actual enslavement, mind control, and murder, are often found with images whose elements are quite innocuous.

However, Orlando rejects that these strengthen the anti-censorship position:

Kipnis (1996) has argued that acknowledging these complexities undermines the use of pornography as a “political rallying point” for social conservatives. I am not sure I agree. In the last decade, anti-pornography legislation has increasingly focused on litanies of specific acts, body parts, and types of media, rather than abstract litmus tests for obscenity. Certainly, it is hard to reconcile such checklists with the idea that the content of images is highly subjective. But the acknowledgment of these ambiguities could shift legislators and activists in a more cautious direction. Image #41 is fairly tame in objective terms. One respondent saw it as a sexless “an ad for red hair dye.” But many of the other respondents read it as a slave auction or similarly coercive narrative. The existence of such readings could plausibly be a rallying point for concern about a much broader range of images.

The problem with this is that the broader you draw the lines, the more people you end up implying are "dangerous perverts", and thus the more people you end up alienating. For example, when a government minister suggested that adults dressing up in school uniforms to play sexual roleplay games were just "closet paedophiles", it was quite a big mistake on their part because it's one of the most common of sexual dressing-up games! Indeed, it was precisely this kind of broadness (plus the outdated social-hierarchical attitudes of the prosecutor) that led to Lady Chatterley's Lover being found not guilty of being an obscene publication, and thus effectively brought an end to the Obscene Publications Act being used to prosecute the printed word. You can only make a political rallying-point out of something if you can get people to rally to it, and it's hard to get people to rally to the idea that they're all filthy perverts!

Given that the basis of anti-porn sentiment seems to be "we can stop people thinking about, and doing, nasty (i.e. sex) things if we just stop them seeing it" then this proves the argument must fail because if you cannot predict what someone will see as sexual, then trying to stop people seeing it is impossible without stopping people seeing anything at all (and there's not much chance of that being a popular move)!

The results also weaken the social-conservative position because they demonstrate that simplistic explanations of human behaviour and sexuality are just impossible to uphold. In this case, it shows that with regard to the ways in which pornography is experienced and used, it is not possible to take a single perspective on the issue and use that to describe all porn (or all porn users).