Maybe it's because of all the criticisms that come out of working in the porn industry, but there's certainly a widely held view that people who watch porn may not necessarily have the most intelligent thoughts when it comes to gender equality. Well, a new study actually shows that there's definitely a correlation between people who watch porn and people who support feminist ideologies and equality between genders.
According to the Huffington Post, Taylor Kohut, a postdoctoral fellow in The University of Western Ontario's department of psychology and one of the study's authors, polled 25,000 people—men and women—and had them answer questions about their pornography use and preferences, feminism, and gender equality.
Apparently, the study did show that there was a clear relationship between the two, which might seem strange considering that the porn world has often taken heat for the way it portrays women's bodies. Nevertheless, Kohut wants to make sure nobody thinks that watching pornography will suddenly make someone hold more progressive views.
"Although some of our findings suggest that pornography users are slightly more likely to hold some gender egalitarian beliefs and attitudes than non-users, we do not have any compelling reasons to believe that pornography makes people become more feminist," he said.
Still, it's a pretty interesting and unexpected observation.
