CarnalNation

A study that set out to examine male subjects who had never been exposed to pornography was foiled by a lack of porn-virgins. Assistant professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse from the University of Montreal launched his research to compare participants in their 20s who had consumed pornography with those who had never been exposed to it. 

"The objective of my work is to observe the impact of pornography on the sexuality of men, and how it shapes their perception of men and women,” explains Lajeunesse. “We started our research seeking men in their twenties who had never consumed pornography but we couldn't find any."

Instead, the researcher examined the pornography habits of 20 men and the impact on their sexual identity and relationships. He found that the majority of pornography (90 percent) is accessed via internet with video stores only accounting for 10 percent of the market. The average age at which young men recall seeking pornography is 10 years of age and participants reported sifting through material to reject subject matter that they found offensive.

Lajeunesse disputes the notion that pornography causes men to be violent against women noting that aggressive men do not require porn as an incentive to become violent. He found that the subjects were able to differentiate between sexual fantasy and reality and did not desire partners that looked or acted like the actors in pornographic films.

The Gazette reports that Genevieve Rail, principal of Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Montreal's Concordia University, agrees that pornography should not be universally demonized. "There's the commercial kind on the Internet or purchased at video stores, and there's other kinds that are done by particular groups, for instance feminists, queers, and the disabled . . . and artists who use pornography as a medium for other things," she suggests. "It's not cut and dried."