Pornography: A Taboo Topic’s Pluses and Minuses.

This article first appeared in BU Today.

If you’ve wondered why Playboy is abandoning its iconic nude shots as “passé,” in the word of one executive, Emily Rothman can explain it to you.

“My six-year-old was on YouTube looking for My Little Pony videos,” says Rothman, a School of Public Health associate professor of community health sciences, referring to a kids’ TV and film franchise. Instead, she found “hardcore male gay porn.”

That’s but one example of the chasm between the commercial titillation of thePlayboy variety and the mass of what’s out there in the internet age, Rothman says–soft porn has melted away faster than the polar icecaps, leaving sexually explicit material that is overwhelmingly hardcore. And overwhelmingly violent: 80 percent involves some kind of violence, including spanking, slapping, or gagging, Rothman tells students in a recent session of her course Understanding Pornography: A Public Health Perspective.

Which leads to a central question the class ponders: the long-standing allegation that sexually explicit material promotes sexual violence against women. Does it really?

Rothman sums up her answer in class: “We can’t really ask the question—does pornography cause violence?—because there are pornographies.…Part of Playboy’s argument is, ‘We’re outta here because you can see so many extreme things.’” Less extreme pornography actually can be beneficial, she says.

Her course is part of an SPH effort to probe the public health ramifications of pornography. Handling this snapping turtle of a topic, involving not just questions of violence incitement, but arguments over First Amendment rights and people’s differing standards of decency, requires special sensitivity. Rothman’s syllabus makes clear that viewing sexually explicit material is not a course requirement. (Indeed, she spent a good portion of the recent session in deep academic discussion about five theories of the possible porn/aggression nexus, down to the very meaning of “theory” in science.) While nude artwork, including ancient statues, is shown, Rothman promises trigger warnings to students before presenting any depictions of nudity. She invites any discomfitted students to contact her.

No one seemed unsettled during class, or pruriently interested. One student’s answer to Rothman’s question about whether she’d been curious enough to explore outside of class the pornography they’d studied in it: “Having taken this class, I have no interest in going home and looking at Bound Gang Bangs.”

“It can be very traumatic,” Rothman agrees about viewing porn. Holding a secondary appointment on the School of Medicine faculty, she is an expert on violence prevention and has training in batterer intervention, and she serves on an advisory council to the Massachusetts governor on sexual assault and domestic violence.

It’s also true that some nonviolent pornography does have public health benefits, Rothman writes in a recent article. She cites research into the effects on helping to realize sexual identity, bettering sexual satisfaction, encouraging safe sex, and helping with sexual dysfunction.

In the end, she says, “I am positively not propornography or antipornography,” because it depends what sort of porn is being discussed.

Unsurprisingly, students say they’ve never taken a class quite like this. “The biggest thing that I’ve learned is to look at the topic of pornography from a nuanced perspective, to sort of see it from both sides,” says Alyssa Harlow (’16). “I came in with more of a positive perspective…that it’s liberating, that it provides an outlet, promotes positive sexuality.” While retaining that opinion, “I’ve also definitely learned about some of the negative implications,” she says. “There are certain people who are predisposed to the negative influence of pornography…for violence against women or to be more sexually aggressive.”

Anna Bresnick (’16) carries away a similar view. “You can be pro and con” about pornography, she says. Having leaned con coming in, “I think this class has really opened my eyes up to why porn can be a good thing,” as when feminist porn stresses “both people finding pleasure and…we should take pride in our bodies.”

Yet there are dangers as well, Bresnick says: “We don’t want youth looking at it and thinking all porn is reality.”

—Rich Barlow