Field Notes

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Sexual Consent Communication in Best-Selling Pornography Films

a content analysis

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Malachi Willis, Sasha Canan, Kristen Jozkowski, and Ana Bridges published this content analysis in the Journal of Sex Research in 2019. It codes consent communication in 50 twenty-minute segments from best-selling pornographic films of 2015. The repository downloader received HTTP 403 from the publisher, so this card records the study from its abstract rather than a local snapshot.

What it found

Consent communication is depicted more often than the popular “no consent in porn” claim implies, but the form it takes carries its own lesson: nonverbal cues appeared more frequently than verbal ones.

The authors identify five sexual scripts the films support directly or indirectly:

  • explicit verbal consent is not natural;
  • women are indirect and men are direct;
  • sex can happen without ongoing communication;
  • lower-order behaviours do not need explicit consent;
  • people receiving sexual behaviours can consent by doing nothing.

Why this card matters more than its findings

The study’s closing move is the reason it is preserved here. Having established what the scripts are, the authors write that further research is needed to examine whether viewers are acquiring, activating, or applying them.

That is the precise gap Does better pornography production improve viewer outcomes asks about, named by the literature best placed to close it and not yet closed. Content analysis can characterise supply in fine detail. It cannot, by itself, establish that changing supply changes anyone.

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