This website was created in response to a newspaper article which stated, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "pornography is harmless". This did not seem right to me. How can something which so objectifies and denigrates women be harmless?

Since I have a science background and worked for a while in scientific research, I felt the way to resolve this for myself was to search the scientific literature and determine if any studies have been done on the effects of pornography. In the space of an afternoon I discovered a plethora of studies showing that pornography does indeed cause harm, and in a variety of ways. A representative sample of that research is presented on this site, together with some articles referring to other studies for which I could not find the originals.

Of course, just as there is with all areas of research, there were some studies that bucked the trend, and purported to show pornography consumption has no effect. Those I came across however, had obvious flaws. One study for instance noted that in areas where pornography readership had increased, rape conviction rates went down, and so drew the conclusion that pornography reduced incidence of rape. However, we know from our experiences in the UK that rape convictions are an extremely poor measure of incidence of rape, and further, since other research has shown that pornography consumption results in reduced sympathy for rape victims, a trivialisation of rape and a greater belief in rape myths, it might be expected that when pornography is widespread, fewer convictions for rape are achieved. Thus this particular research is not showing that pornography reduces rape as it claims, but is in fact revealing a potential double whammy for women, where we not only experience greater sexual violence, but also receive less justice.

When looking at the research as a whole, the effects of pornography become clear. Pornography consumption results in more callous and objectifying attitudes towards women, trivialising rape and sexual violence, and so increasing the likelihood that users will themselves be sexually violent. Many studies show a definite link between pornography and sexual violence, and the more extreme and violent the material, the greater the effect.

I hope this site will provide reassurance to those people who feel instictively that pornography is harmful, and provide them with sufficient ammunition to confidently and truthfully counter claims that there is no evidence that pornography causes harm. I hope women will realise that working for this industry is not glamourous, but exploitive and cruel, and that men will realise how much they are being manipulated and brutalised, and at what cost to their future emotional wellbeing (and their wallet). The only people who benefit from pornography are those that run the industry, who callously abuse women to exploit not only men's sexual desire, but their egotism and aggression as well. Such an industry should not be part of any civilized society.