Sexuell Zwang vu Frae: Afloss op Pornographie an Narcissistesch an Histrionesch Perséinlechkeetskrankheeten (2019)

Women’s Use of Pornography

Pornography refers to sexually explicit material developed and consumed to stimulate sexual arousal, available in versatile forms (e.g., photographs and videos) and often accessed online (Campbell & Kohut, 2017). Research has historically focused on the manner in which exposure to pornographic material influences men’s sexual attitudes and conduct. For example, it is argued that men’s use of pornography is related to sexual objectification of partners (Tylka, & Kroon Van Diest, 2015) and sexually coercive behavior (Stanley et al., 2018). Compulsive consumption of pornographic material, in particular, may be closely related to men’s sexually aggressive behavior (Gonsalves, Hodges, & Scalora, 2015). Research indicates that women also engage with pornography, although to a lesser extent than men (Ashton, McDonald, & Kirkman, 2018; Rissel, Richters, de Visser, McKee, Yeung, & Caruana, 2017). Due to disparities in methodology, estimates of women’s pornography use vary significantly across studies, ranging from 1 to 88% depending on the sample and operational definition of pornography (Campbell & Kohut, 2017). In a review of their annual statistics, Pornhub, a large Internet pornography website, reported that just over a quarter of their visitors were women and that their top trending¹ search throughout 2017 was “porn for women,” representing a 1400% increase (Pornhub Insights, 2018). While some studies report that females were more likely to use pornography with a partner (e.g., Ševčíková & Daneback, 2014), other studies have found that their pornography use was more likely and more frequent when alone than with a partner (Fisher, Kohut, & Campbell, 2017).

Consistent with studies of men’s pornography consumption, research has found women’s use of pornography to be associated with attitudes toward sex, sexual conduct, and sexual activities (e.g., number of sexual partners) (Wright, Bae, & Funk, 2013). This is supported further by a recent meta-analysis that found, similar to men, women’s pornography use was associated with sexual aggression, both verbally (i.e., “verbally coercive but not physically threatening communication to obtain sex, and sexual harassment”) and physically (i.e., “use or threat of physical force to obtain sex”) (Wright, Tokunaga, & Kraus, 2016, p.191). The small number of studies in this area has meant the extent to which women’s use of pornography influences their sexually aggressive behavior remains unclear. In one such study, it was found that pornography use predicted all forms of sexual aggression in women (i.e., extortion, deceit, obligation, and emotional manipulation) except for physical violence and intimidation (Kernsmith & Kernsmith, 2009a). The dearth of literature available indicates there is scope to investigate this further, thus we consider three elements of women’s pornography use, that is (1) interest in pornography, (2) efforts to engage with pornography, in additional to (3) pornography compulsivity, which is largely overlooked despite its association with men’s sexual aggression (e.g., Gonsalves et al., 2015).

Narcissistic and Histrionic Personality Disorder Traits

Personality traits may also influence the likelihood of sexually aggressive behavior in women (Krahé et al., 2003; Russell, Doan, & King, 2017). Characteristics of the dramatic, emotional, and erratic Cluster B personality disorders (associated with poor impulse control, emotional regulation, and anger) may be particularly influential on sexual aggression (Mouilso & Calhoun, 2016). For example, narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), found in both men (7.7%) and women (4.8%) and overall in 6.2% of the general population (Stinson et al., 2008), is characterized by a grandiose sense of the self, entitlement, and low empathy for others (Emmons, 1984). In men, narcissistic personality traits are positively associated with rape supportive beliefs and negatively associated with empathy for rape victims (Bushman, Bonacci, van Dijk, & Baumeister, 2003), while NPD is related to perpetration of sexual aggression (Mouilso & Calhoun, 2016). Women with higher levels of narcissism display more negative relationship communication (Lamkin, Lavner, & Shaffer, 2017) and are more likely to engage in sexual harassment (Zeigler-Hill, Besser, Morag, & Campbell, 2016). Pertinently, narcissism is associated with women’s perpetration of sexual coercion (Kjellgren, Priebe, Svedin, Mossige, & Långström, 2011; Logan, 2008), with the entitlement/exploitativeness dimension found to be most influential (Blinkhorn, Lyons, & Almond, 2015; Ryan, Weikel, & Sprechini, 2008). Additionally, females high in narcissism were found to be just as likely as their male counterparts to react with persistence and sexually coercive tactics after being denied during a sexual advance (Blinkhorn et al., 2015). In part, this behavior may reflect the tendency for narcissistic individuals to engage in sex in order to fulfill their need for self-affirmation (Gewirtz-Meydan, 2017).

Found in 1–3% of general population (Torgersen et al., 2000) and reported twice more in women than in men (Torgersen, Kringlen, & Cramer, 2001), traits associated with histrionic personality disorder (HPD) are far less explored than NPD in relation to sexual coercion. This is somewhat surprising as defining characteristics of HPD include excessively emotional, impulsive, attention seeking behavior, and inappropriate or competitive sexual conduct (APA, 2013; Dorfman, 2010; Stone, 2005). Emotionally manipulative and intolerant of delayed gratification (Bornstein & Malka, 2009; Stone, 2005), women with HPD demand confirmation and attention from intimate partners (AlaviHejazi, Fatehizade, Bahrami, & Etemadi, 2016). A study that compared women with HPD to a matched control group without personality disorders found they were more likely to have been sexually unfaithful and report greater sexual preoccupation and sexual boredom with lower levels of sexual assertiveness and relationship satisfaction (Apt & Hurlbert, 1994). Furthermore, Apt and Hurlbert considered that HPD behavioral traits were indicative of sexual narcissism, while Widiger and Trull (2007) noted that HPD and NPD traits were likely to co-occur. The dominant, manipulative, and sexually compulsive behavioral traits found in these studies of women with NPD and HPD are pertinent as they align with extant studies reporting factors underpinning women’s perpetration of sexual coercion (e.g., Russell & Oswald, 2001, 2002; Schatzel-Murphy et al., 2009) and pornography use (e.g., Wright et al., 2013, 2016). Hence, additional research is necessary to examine the influence of both HPD and NPD traits and pornography use on women’s use of sexual aggression.

Research Aims

This study investigated the influence of pornography use and narcissistic and histrionic personality traits on four types of sexual coercion. In line with past research, we predicted that pornography use (e.g., Kernsmith & Kernsmith, 2009a; Wright et al., 2016) and narcissistic and histrionic personality traits (e.g., Apt & Hurlbert, 1994; Blinkhorn et al., 2015; Kjellgren et al., 2011; Logan, 2008; Ryan et al., 2008) would be significantly associated with greater incidence of three types of sexual coercion (i.e., nonverbal sexual arousal, emotional manipulation and deception, and exploitation of the intoxicated). We also predicted that pornography use and personality traits would not be associated with the use of a fourth type of sexual coercion (i.e., physical force or threats) as this has not been reported in the previous research.

Participanten a Prozedur

A total of 142 women, aged 16–53 years (M = 24.23, SD = 7.06), participated in this study. Women were typically in a long-term relationship, of at least 6 months duration (n = 53.5%). The remaining participants were single or divorced (n = 24.7%), in a short-term relationship (n = 11.3%), or married (n = 10.6%). Most participants were heterosexual (n = 85.2%), with a smaller number of bisexual (n = 11.3%) and homosexual (n = 3.5%) women recruited. Just under a half (n = 43%) of these women reported that they currently used pornography. No other demographic data were collected. Two modes of opportunity sampling were used to collect information from a diverse sample of women aged over 16 years, in a student and community population, with no known offending history. Participants volunteered to complete either a paper or online questionnaire, estimated to take 15 min. Remuneration was not offered for taking part in this study.

Participants were recruited via undergraduate and postgraduate classes plus recreational spaces within a large university in England, as well as in the local community, inside shopping centers (n = 37). The first author distributed questionnaire booklets to potential participants placed inside a self-addressed envelope, to ensure confidential and anonymous return. To obtain informed consent, potential participants were verbally informed of the anonymous and voluntary nature of the questionnaire, which was reiterated on a briefing sheet attached to the questionnaire. This briefing sheet also made clear that questionnaires should be completed alone and that return of questionnaires indicated consent for information to be used. On campus, participants were told they could place completed questionnaires in envelopes to return either to the researcher by hand or to a secure drop-in box in a student resource room. Participants were also recruited via snowballing methods using social media postings on Facebook and Twitter (n = 108). These posts detailed the study’s aims and invited females to participate by clicking on a hyperlink that redirected them to view the questionnaire online, so it could be completed securely and remotely.

Mesuren

Limitations and Further Research Directions

Despite efforts to recruit more participants, this study was limited by its use of a small, non-probabilistic sample; thus, generalizability is limited. As noted in other studies, the use of self-report questionnaire measures to investigate the sensitive topic of sexual coercion perpetration (e.g., Gonsalves et al., 2015) and personality disorder traits (Hoffmann & Verona, 2018; Khan et al., 2017; Muñoz et al., 2011) may have resulted in social desirability or bias recall. Further, the Cronbach’s alphas for some subscales were low. In part, this reflects the nature of the measure. (The exploitation of the intoxicated and pornography interest subscales contained two items each.) More extensive, detailed measures are recommended for future research. In particular, it was an oversight to overlook the potential influence of different types of pornographic materials, as women are exposed to a range of sexually explicit materials, including violent versus nonviolent pornography (Mattebo, Tyden, Haggstrom-Nordin, Nilsson, & Larsson, 2016). Pornography may contain violent or degrading scenes (Romito & Beltramini, 2015) or stereotyped depictions of females (Zhou & Bryant, 2016), which women are reportedly less aroused by than are men (Glascock, 2005). Important differences may also occur between amateur and professional pornography, with regard to the level of gender inequality featured (Klaassen & Peter, 2015). As important sex differences may occur with regard to the frequency and form of pornography use (Bohm, Franz, Dekker, & Matthiesen, 2015; Hald & Stulhofer, 2016), it would be useful for future studies to directly examine the influence of different types of pornography used by women on their sexually coercive behavior, rather than extrapolate from existing male-oriented research.

Despite efforts to recruit a diverse range of participants, the number of demographic items presented in the questionnaire was restricted, partly due to stringent ethical guidelines; thus, we were unable to examine racial differences in relation to sexual coercion. This may have been interesting to explore as a previous study has found that Asian males report significantly lower rates of sexual coercion victimization in comparison with their Black, White, and Latino counterparts (see French, Tilghman, & Malebranche, 2015). Other factors that previous studies report as significant mediating factors for sexual coercion in women, and thus are likely to yield valuable results in future research, include the influence of alcohol (Ménard et al., 2003) and sexual abuse history (Anderson, 1996; Russell & Oswald, 2001; 2002). Alcohol use may be of particular importance given that this study found HPD traits to be significantly associated with sexual exploitation of the intoxicated. To align with other general population research, this study aimed to examine sexually coercive behavior in women with no sex offense charges; despite recruiting participants from community and student populations, this caveat could only be inferred as questions to explicitly measure sex offending history were not included. Thus, future studies with females could directly measure participants’ engagement in criminality or could recruit participants with known sexual offending histories from clinical or forensic populations.

Females’ sexual coercion of males is often considered as less harmful by the general population than the same victimization of women by men (French et al., 2015; Huitema & Vanwesenbeeck, 2016; Struckman-Johnson et al., 2003; Studzinska & Hilton, 2017). Although male victims of female sexual coercion may also report positive responses to sexual coercion, some studies have reported that 90% of men also report at least one negative response to coercion (Kernsmith & Kernsmith, 2009b) and display significant psychological distress and risk behaviors (French et al., 2015; Turchik, 2012; Walker, Archer, & Davis, 2005). Relatively little research is available, however, to identify factors that influence attribution of blame to female perpetrators. Initial findings suggest that while male perpetrators are perceived to be aggressive, female perpetrators are regarded as promiscuous (Oswald & Russell, 2006). Additional research would be useful to determine factors that influence perceptions of victimization, victim-reporting or self-identification as a perpetrator or victim. An exploration of sexual coercion experienced by females who identify as LGBTQ is also a worthy avenue of further investigation, as previous studies note this may be prevalent but underreported (e.g., Turell, 2000; Waterman, Dawson, & Bologna, 1989). Finally, it is important to emphasize that the current study investigated women’s perpetration of sexually coercive behavior rather than men’s behavior after initial refusal. A range of individual and situational factors may predict responses to sexually coercive behavior such as persuasion that sexual activity is desirable, compliance with unwanted sex, or termination of a relationship (e.g., Nurius & Norris, 1996). The extent to which women’s sexually coercive behavior results in intercourse remains unclear, however, and future research could consider, for example, whether men experiencing sexual coercion subsequently engage in sex and the extent to which this is unwanted. Similarly, the present study did not assess women’s responses to their partner’s refusal. While it has been reported that women experience more negative reactions to sexual rejection than men (de Graaf & Sandfort, 2004), those factors impacting on responses to rejection remain unclear.

To conclude, we investigated factors associated with women’s use of sexual coercion. Findings indicate that women’s effort to use pornography was significantly associated with two subtypes of sexual coercion: nonverbal sexual arousal and emotional manipulative and deception to sexually coerce, while HPD traits were associated with exploitation of the intoxicated. Future research should further investigate the influence of pornography effort and HPD traits on aversive sexual behavior and the extent to which these may inform future intervention.