Academic Researchers Sound Just Like Nutter Campaigners…Researchers claim that lads’ mags use the same language as convicted sex offenders

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Here’s a quote: We are not killjoys or prudes who think that there should be no sexual information and media for young people. But… Can you identify the source? A. Daily Mail B. Mediawatch-UK C. Object D. Church of England E. New Labour F. Academics from Middlesex University and the University of Surrey See press release from surrey.ac.uk

Psychologists from Middlesex University and the University of Surrey claim that, far from being harmless or ironic fun, lads’ mags could be legitimising hostile sexist attitudes. The researchers claim that when presented with [out of context, carefully selected, and nebulous] descriptions of women taken from lads’ mags, and comments about women made by convicted rapists, most people who took part in the study could not distinguish the source of the quotes. The research due to be published in the British Journal of Psychology also revealed that most men who took part in the study identified themselves more with the language expressed by the convicted rapists. Psychologists presented men between the ages of 18 and 46 with a range of statements taken from magazines and from convicted rapists in the study, and gave the men different information about the source of the quotes. Men identified more with the comments made by rapists more than the quotes made in lads’ mags, but men identified more with quotes said to have been drawn from lads’ mags more than those said to have been comments by convicted rapists. The researchers also asked a separate group of women and men aged between 19 and 30 to rank the quotes on how derogatory they were, and to try to identify the source of the quotes. Men and women rated the quotes from lads’ mags as somewhat more derogatory, and could categorize the quotes by source little better than chance. Dr Miranda Horvath and Dr Peter Hegarty argue that the findings are consistent with the possibility that lads’ mags normalise hostile sexism, by making it seem more acceptable when its source is a popular magazine. Horvath, lead researcher from Middlesex University, said: We were surprised that participants identified more with the rapists’ quotes, and we are concerned that the legitimisation strategies that rapists deploy when they talk about women are more familiar to these young men than we had anticipated. Horvath, is concerned that lads’ magazine editors are not working hard enough to moderate the content of their magazines: A lot of debate around the regulation of lads’ mags has been to do with how they affect children but less has been said about the influence they have on their intended audience of young men and the women with whom those men socialise. These magazines support the legitimisation of sexist attitudes and behaviours and need to be more responsible about their portrayal of women, both in words and images. They give the appearance that sexism is acceptable and normal – when really it should be rejected and challenged. Rapists try to justify their actions, suggesting that women lead men on, or want sex even when they say no, and there is clearly something wrong when people feel the sort of language used in a lads’ mag could have come from a convicted rapist. Hegarty, of the University of Surrey’s Psychology Department, added: There is a fundamental concern that the content of such magazines normalises the treatment of women as sexual objects. We are not killjoys or prudes who think that there should be no sexual information and media for young people. But are teenage boys and young men best prepared for fulfilling love and sex when they normalise views about women that are disturbingly close to those mirrored in the language of sexual offenders? He added that young men should be given credible sex education and not have to rely on lads’ mags as a source of information as they grow up.

Porn Research…Invitation to a survey about the everyday use of pornography

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See pornresearch.org

Clarissa Smith, Feona Attwood & Martin Barker are embarking on a research project about the everyday usage of pornography. They are inviting users to contribute via an online anonymous survey. They write: We want to emphasise from the outset that the research we are conducting is unlike almost all the previous research that has been conducted on pornography. In the past, pornography has overwhelmingly been assumed to be a problem, and the only really important questions to ask about it are — how much do people (and especially children) encounter it, and how great is the harm that it does? This research is different. Our project is concerned with the everyday uses of pornography, and how the people who use it feel it fits into their lives. Pornography is of course a highly topical issue, subject to many opposing views and strong opinions. And we are not saying that there are no moral or political issues. But we are saying that the voices of users and enjoyers have been swamped. In fact, there is very little research that engages with the users of pornography, asking how, when and why they turn to it. We want to gather the thoughts and responses of people who have chosen to use pornography of their own accord. We believe that there can be many different and complicated reasons for looking at pornography. We also don’t believe that all the materials that go under that label, pornography, are the same — only to be distinguished by how extreme or explicit they are. We are hoping to gather thousands of responses from both frequent and infrequent users of pornography. The more we can gather, the more confidently we will be able to present the results in the on-going public debates on this issue. We want to know some very simple things, like what you view, how you find it, how often, what you particularly like, what is exciting and how this fits in with your feelings about sex, your body, and your pleasures. If you don’t know us, we are happy to tell you about ourselves, you can learn in detail about our previous work in this kind of area. If you just want to move to the questionnaire, we will just say here that all three of us have been involved in questioning the basis of moral campaigns about the media. Clarissa Smith has been researching pornography since the mid-1990s and has written widely about the problems of censorship and the attempts to legislate against sexually explicit materials. Feona Attwood’s research is in the area of sex in contemporary culture and controversial media. Martin Barker has been involved in such work since the early 1980s, beginning with the so-called video nasties campaign. The questionnaire we are asking you to fill in has been carefully designed. It will enable us to understand the patterns of use of porn by ordinary people. You’ll find the questionnaire is a mix of multiple choice and open questions, and we will only be able to use what you say if you answer all the questions. Please feel free to add as much detail as you like in the spaces available about your pleasures and disappointments in pornography, how you use it and why. We reckon it will take you between 20-30 minutes to complete. Once this project is completed (which will probably be around the end of 2011), we promise that it will be made widely available, including via this website. Thank you — and if you agree that these issues badly need more knowledge and less assumption and bias, help us by passing on this weblink to other people.

Dr Terror…Quaint horror films invoke life long fear

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Based on article from dailymail.co.uk

Terrifying films can leave viewers with life-long fears, says an academic. Professor Joanne Cantor questioned hundreds of adults and found that women who have seen Psycho are often frightened to go into the shower, while the threat-laden soundtrack of Jaws can make men tremble. It, the 1986 film based on a Stephen King novel, shows a clown attacking children in the bathroom, after coming in through the toilet or shower drain. Professor Cantor, of Wisconsin University in the U.S., told BBC Focus magazine: It produced extended nightmares, and many children avoided the bathroom after that. For many of these children, fear of clowns extended into adulthood. The professor found the five most frightening films, not ranked in order, were: Jaws Psycho It A Nightmare on Elm Street Poltergeist. In Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock injected terror into the most benign of places – the shower. The professor, a world expert on the psychology of films, said: Hitchcock took a normal activity that most people do daily and infused it with terror, by showing a totally unanticipated attack in blood horror accompanied by intense music. Many women in my studies who saw that movie are uncomfortable in the shower to this day. The 1984 slasher movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street, resulted in many sleepless nights, said professor Cantor. This film provided the quintessential recipe for insomnia because the bloodthirsty villain, Freddy Krueger, could only attack you in your dreams, she said. So your only defence against him was to stay awake – and that’s what many reported doing. …Read the full article

Disney Unsuitable for Children…Researchers find Disney films with inappropriate personal contact of children by adults

Based on article from telegraph.co.uk

Carleton University researcher Classic Disney cartoon films are giving children the wrong message about how to deal with stranger danger, psychologists have warned. They claim films like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Robin Hood contain scenes in which children receive unwanted personal contact or threatening approaches from adults, and that the victims fail to set a good example in the way they respond. The study warns that the films also undermine efforts to teach children about personal safety and how to minimise the risk of sexual abuse, by treating the victims’ discomfort with humour. In one example, the researchers found that the Pinocchio had been groomed by the adult characters Honest John and Gideon but that his response to the abuse resembled victim blaming. The report says: It is possible that viewing these scenes could influence children to believe that telling a trusted adult about a stranger’s advances is unnecessary because the film characters model successful independence. The academics wrote that they were surprised to find depictions of children being touched, usually by adults, contrary to the expressed desires of the child. The research, published in the journal Child Abuse, was conducted by a team of psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists at Carleton University, in Canada. They studied 47 animated feature length Disney films, released between 1937 and 2006. In ten of them, they found examples of unwanted personal contact or scenes which show child characters in risky situations. The report concludes: The findings raise questions about potential impacts on child audiences. Is the unwanted contact and risky situation content appropriate viewing for children, given efforts to teach children sexual safety?