The pedagogy of pornography: What popular pornography on the Internet teaches us about aggression and consent

Pornography remains a highly discussed and hotly debated topic within the academy and popular culture. Despite declining revenues for pornographic content, the proliferation of the Internet makes pornography easier to access than ever before. This study examines aggression and consent in popular pornography on the Internet. One hundred scenes across five highly trafficked Web sites’ “most viewed” sections were selected for analysis. Consistent with existing research literature, women were overwhelmingly the targets of aggressive acts and typically expressed consensual reactions to acts of aggression. The results are examined within the context of social learning theory to posit what ideas and lessons audiences may be learning from pornographic content on the Internet