Machismo in Media Research: A Critical Review of Research on Violence and Pornography

Two areas of media research, pornography and violence, are examined with a view to accounting for their discrepant findings, i.e. the effects of pornography are innocuous while those of violence are serious and warrant censorship. Both sets of research are characterized by sexist biases in the way problems are conceptualized and in their research designs. Drawing on a related field, studies of humour, I suggest that reference group theory could eliminate the bias. With respect to current state of knowledge, I treat the contradiction itself as a social fact. The underlying logic of the contradiction, it is suggested, is a machismo orientation defined here as narcissistic pride in sexual virility (pornography) the other side of which is anxiety about male sexual identity (male against male aggression films). Further research on machismo is proposed, similar to F scale research which also looked for unifying dimensions behind apparent contradictions.