UC Santa Cruz

Objectification is the treatment of a person as a body, or a collection of body parts, as something to be used to the benefit of others; it strips individuals of their humanity such that their status is demoted to something less than fully human. Scholars have noted that the objectification of women may be theoretically important in sexual violence (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997; Gervais & Eagan, 2017; MacKinnon, 1989). Mainstream heterosexual pornography is an especially persistent source of objectification. It not only portrays women in objectifying and degrading ways (Gorman et al., 2010), but it also frequently pairs such objectification with explicit acts of aggression (Bridges et al., 2010). Moreover, pornography consumers often reenact behaviors they observe in pornography (Rothman et al., 2015), which may lead to the reproduction of objectifying treatment and aggressive behaviors in people’s own sexual encounters. The aim of this dissertation is to test a model containing men’s objectification of women, pornography use, and perpetration of sexual aggression. This model positions objectification of women and porn sex scripting as mediators of the relationship between pornography use and sexual aggression. In the first path, it was hypothesized that men’s pornography use would positively predict objectification of women, which in turn was predicted to be associated with perpetration of sexual aggression. In the second path, pornography use was predicted to be associated with greater porn sex scripting, which was expected to subsequently be related to higher levels of sexual aggression. Data from 261 heterosexual or female-attracted, cisgender young men were analyzed. Structural equation modeling indicated the proposed model was a good fit for the data. Pornography use frequency predicted porn sex scripting, which was associated with greater sexual aggression perpetration. Objectification of women also predicted sexual aggression but was not associated with pornography use frequency. Three alternative models were tested to further optimize data fit. Analysis of these models revealed that preference for aggressive pornography predicted objectification of women. This led to the identification of two alternative models in which all the originally hypothesized pathways between variables were statistically significant. These findings are notable for several reasons. First, only a few studies have investigated the link between men’s objectification of women and sexual aggression. The current study lends further support to the notion that objectification plays an important role in men’s sexual violence against women. This finding has important theoretical implications. Evidence suggesting objectification may facilitate perpetration could lead to the development of sexual violence prevention and intervention programs that specifically target objectification. The current study is also among the first to identify a previously unexplored relationship between pornography reenactment (porn sex scripting) and perpetration of sexual aggression. These findings highlight the need for more critical perspectives of pornography in both academic and cultural discourses.