My apologies in advance to all the people who Googled the word “porn” and ended up, well, here.
I swear there is more to this post than an attempt to drive site traffic with the keyword porn. Or pornography. Or gratuitous sexual references. Or porn.
There is substance to this post.
It is this.
If you use pornography, you are more likely than the average Australian to vote for the Greens, watch the ABC and have a tertiary degree.
Fact.
This is a good moment to remember, I think, that correlation does not equal causation. Getting hot and sweaty over Hustler will not automatically lead you, panting, to Lateline and Bob Brown.
I stumbled across this extraordinary fact while reading the Sydney Papers (as you do). The Sydney Papers is the quarterly periodical of Gerard Henderson’s The Sydney Institute, and is a compilation of the speeches given by the Institute’s guests.*
In this case the speaker was academic journalist Catharine Lumby, who was talking about an Australian Research Council funded survey of porn users, or “porn consumers”, as she calls them. (Personally the phrase “consuming porn” conjures up images on which I would rather not dwell.)
Anyway according to this survey – of 1023 “self selected” porn consumers – a higher proportion of porn consumers than average Australians vote Green, watch the ABC (or no TV at all) and have tertiary degrees.
Hmm. We may need to drop latte sipping as the identifier of choice.
Some other interesting results of Lumby’s research:
- 33 per cent of Australian adults use pornography
- 58 per cent of porn consumers are religious
- Porn consumers are as likely to be Coalition voters as Labor voters
So there you are. Couldn’t resist passing it on.
*If Gerard responds to this post, the correspondence will be published here in full. Something to look forward to.
7 Comments
Yes, but does the reverse apply? Meaning if you vote Green, watch the ABC and have a tertiary education you are going to want to watch porn?
Ouch! Ms Lumby lacks a sense of humour, nor can she be the lightest brick in the building. He, he, he; giggle.
Of course the religious-right would be heavily into porn. They have been brought up to believe that s-x is evil, mast-rbation sends them blind, and that their nak-d bodies are shameful. Most of these gormless people genuinely believe there is a God who, whilst overseeing the billion, billion planets out there in space, has so little to do with his time that he enters that nether-space between their ears to have little discussions with them. No wonder they are so scr-wed up.
I imagine a nation like OZ, whose inhabitants are besotted by footy and sport, spend so much time watching it whilst shoving pies into their faces and mumbling ‘carn the ‘Pies.’ are too exhausted to pleasure their wives. In short they can’t get it up, wont go to the doctor to get a viagra prescription (it would be not Ocker), and finally get the guilts for failing to satisfy the wife and resort to porn to get an er-ction. Just a theory.
How they are going to reconcile their abhorrence of sexism, racism and exploitation with their use of pornography, which is positively saturated with the stuff, I do not know.
Porn ain’t porn. Much erotic material is sexist, racist and exploitative but it’s certainly not universally the case — it is no more accurate to say that erotica is “saturated with the stuff” as it would be to say that Australians are. Harlequin books are more misogynist than good clean filth
I don’t quibble at calling most of the erotica I enjoy “porn”. And I vote green (well, I preference green ahead of more popular parties).
General parlance calls pretty much any erotic photography or live-action film “porn”. The word is defined by its usage — unfortunaltely by association this cheapens a lot of good art and a large volume of fairly healthy (if artless) voyeurism. Who cares if eg. Winterbottom’s “Nine songs” is porn or art or both or neither? It’s a film full of sex and rock music, without much traditional dialogue, with a very thin plot. I loved it.
I never much liked the glossy sealed magazines you see in the newsagent, which are fairly sexist, though I did eagerly sample this forbidden fruit as a teenager. The internet broadened my horizons somewhat, thank goodness
I agree with 99% of what Andrea Dworkin wrote on the subject of pornography. I feel no shame in enjoying erotica regardless.
Jonathan: Please tell me where I’ve gone wrong in life. I’ve always thought erotica was sex, Shunga, sensuality, style, an open fire and a bottle of Grange.
Whereas porn seems to me to be Tits, tarts, titillation, a knee-trembler, and a bottle of plonk. Sex being, if any, a marginal extra.
Or have I been getting the wrong message?
“The Porn Consumers” would make a good title for an episode of Dr Who.
Does Catherine Lumby have any other topics to write about? She always seems to be banging on about porn. What a way to earn a liv’n…
Venise, I think I have to agree; that’s probably the whole of the difference. Porn, one enjoys alone if at all. Erotica is to be enjoyed in good company.
Lumby’s survey and the book that resulted from it is fundamentally flawed in its methodology and confused in its purpose, as I explain in this detailed review. Lumby admits in the book that the people who completed the survey are not representative of the Australian public – they were a bunch of middle class tertiary educated urbanites who like completing long surveys (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Hence why they like watching ABC tv and voting Green. Correlation is definitely not cause and effect!