The Importance Of Pornography In American Culture

It can be examined throughout American culture, that we as a society place high value on the relationship between how much pornography an individual watches and their personal sexual encounters. These frequencies include, but are not limited to, what kind of sexual fantasies an individual may prefer, the amount of sexual partners they may have, and whether the association varies by gender. This topic is vital to both research and examine as sex in the United States is often taught to be a “taboo” subject; Hegemonic discourse reinforces archaic religious-based values that negatively associate sex as being sinful or hedonistic, and only encourages the act of intercourse within the sacred confines of marriage and for procreation purposes. However, it is due to this cultural mystification of sex coupled with more lenient attitudes toward male consumption of pornography due to their perceived hypersexuality, that I argue American males watch pornography significantly more than females. I expect the consumption of pornography to have more of an effect on the sexual behavior of males in contrast to females, because of the …show more content…
Even parents who actually decide to talk to their children about sexual intercourse use the archaic and cliché story of the “birds and the bees” – displaying a severe uncomfortable connotations with sex from the beginning. Zillmann argues “because consensually accepted programs of sexual education are lacking, erotica have come to serve as a primary agent of sexual socialization” (41). This inevitably leads children to learn about their own “strange urges” through alternative means, such as their dad’s Playboy magazines or the internet, as per modern advancements in technology and internet