Objectification and sexual aggression are common themes in pornography. However, there are only a handful of quantitative studies that examine the role of race in pornography that included Asian women, a population that has been fetishized extensively and historically portrayed as hypersexual in mainstream media. There were also no studies on the self-reported attitudes of viewers around this topic. 96 male university students took a survey measuring the frequency and perception of their pornography use, their acceptance of sexual aggression myths, their objectification of Asian women, and their propensity to agree with microaggressions about Asian women. Results indicated that while problematic pornography use had a moderate positive association with the objectification of Asian women and acceptance of microaggressions against Asian women, there was only a slight positive association between problematic pornography use and acceptance of sexual aggression myths. Results also indicated that the strength of one's acceptance of racial microaggressions against Asian women and their level of problematic pornography use positively predicted the likelihood of one's acceptance of sexual aggression myths.

Pornography use has been reported to have harmful effects on relationships and individuals. However, research on effective treatment for problematic pornography use (PPU) is limited. This manuscript reviews the previous treatment literature for PPU and highlights the gaps that need further study. Then, I discuss how I performed a qualitative study of 11 couples who had successfully been treated for PPU in order to analyze the key mechanisms of change that were employed in their recovery process and address the missing gaps in this field of research. The five major emerging themes from this study are Catalysts for Recovery, Foundation of Support for Recovery, The Work of Recovery, Healing Perspective of Recovery and Meaning Making, and Hindrances and Recovery Cautions (see figure in Appendix E). These themes are outlined with associated subthemes and representative quotes. Key implications for clinicians and future research are discussed.

Previous studies suggest that religious individuals are more likely than non-religious individuals to perceive their pornography use as problematic. For our six-month longitudinal study, we recruited a sample of adults from Turkprime.com. We hypothesized that more religious individuals who use pornography at baseline would report higher self-perceived problematic pornography use at three months, which would be associated with higher depression at six months. We constructed and validated our own measure of self-perceived problematic pornography use, which included two factors: excessive pornography use and compulsive pornography use. We ran two separate structural equation models, one with excessive use at three months and the other with compulsive use at three months. Contrary to our hypothesis, religiosity was not related to self-perceived problematic pornography use in any of the models. Both models were moderated by biological sex. For men, religiosity at baseline was associated with increased pornography use at six months. For both men and women, excessive pornography use at three months was associated with increased depression at six months. For men, depression at baseline was associated with self-perceived problematic pornography use at three months. For women, higher self-perceived problematic pornography use at three months predicted lower frequency of pornography use and higher depression at six months. Women’s pornography use was more stable over time than men’s. Our findings are discussed in light of theories of depression, religious incongruence, and sexual scripts.