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Category: Project

Description: The current study employs an online survey of viewers of pornography featuring transgender performers (N = 250) to investigate the relationship between pornography consumption and attitudes toward transgender people. Results demonstrated a statistically significant but substantively weak association between greater pornography viewing and more positive attitudes toward transgender people. Additionally, results demonstrated that viewers’ experience of shame about their sexual attractions to transgender people did not moderate the relationship between porn viewing and attitudes. However, analysis revealed an unhypothesized direct influence of sexual shame on attitudes toward transgender people such that higher levels of shame were associated with greater prejudice. Results are discussed in the context of sexual scripting and the revived porn debates. Further longitudinal research focusing on how the feelings viewers have about the pornography they view impacts erotic media’s effects is encouraged.