Pornography is often defended as just a fantasy.
According to this argument, what happens on screen—or in a video’s title—doesn’t necessarily reflect reality. It’s entertainment. Fiction. An escape.
But a growing body of research suggests pornography doesn’t simply reflect cultural attitudes. It can also reinforce them.
That’s one reason a new study from researchers at the University of Iowa is drawing attention. The study, published in 2026, analyzed 5,402,972 video titles spanning more than 24 years of content on xHamster, one of the world’s largest pornography websites. Rather than examining individual videos, researchers looked at the language used to market pornography to viewers, specifically how race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and gender were portrayed.
What they found was a consistent pattern of stereotypes, fetishization, and simplified portrayals of entire groups of people.
The researchers summarized their findings with a striking conclusion:
“Pornographic discourse does not merely reflect social stereotypes but actively reproduces and reinforces them.”
In other words, pornography may not simply mirror society’s biases. It may help normalize them.
Turning identities into products
Every person is more than a label.
Race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and culture all shape who we are, but they don’t define everything about us. Real people are complex. Yet the study found that pornography often reduces that complexity into simplistic categories designed to attract clicks and views.
The researchers called this process “flattening fantasies,” arguing that pornographic content frequently transforms entire identities into marketable products.
As they explain:
“These representations flatten complex identities into simplistic and marketable fantasies.”
That pattern appeared throughout the dataset.
One of the clearest examples involved nationality. Among all nationality references in the 5.4 million video titles, American was by far the most common, appearing in 20.6% of them. The next most common nationalities were Japanese (7.8%), Russian (6.3%), German (4.2%), and French (3.8%).
According to the authors:
“The prominence of American identity reflects the centrality of U.S.-centric perspectives in online pornography.”
At first glance, that finding may seem relatively harmless. But it reveals something important about how pornography organizes identity. When one nationality becomes the default, others are more likely to be framed as foreign, exotic, unusual, or taboo. Instead of presenting people as individuals, pornography often categorizes them according to the assumptions attached to their identity.
The result is a system where race, ethnicity, and nationality become selling points.
When race becomes part of the fantasy
Perhaps one of the study’s most troubling findings was how frequently ethnicity was used as a sexualized marker, particularly when describing women.
The researchers found that ethnic descriptors were disproportionately attached to female performers. Labels such as “Asian” appeared overwhelmingly alongside references to women, suggesting that ethnicity itself was being marketed as part of the appeal.
The authors write:
“Ethnic descriptors are disproportionately applied to women, suggesting that ethnicity serves as a sexualized marker.”
This distinction matters.
There’s a difference between acknowledging someone’s cultural background and turning that background into a fetish.
Yet pornography often blurs that line. Instead of presenting performers as unique individuals with their own personalities, experiences, and relationships, racial and ethnic identities can become shorthand for an entire set of assumptions about what someone is supposedly like.
The problem isn’t simply that race appears in pornography. The problem is that race is often used to package people into categories.
Categories that can then be searched, marketed, consumed, and sold.
The stereotypes aren’t new
What makes these findings particularly concerning is that many of the patterns identified in the study are rooted in stereotypes that have existed for generations.
Long before the internet existed, societies developed myths about different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Certain groups were stereotyped as aggressive. Others were portrayed as submissive. Some were exoticized. Others were treated as dangerous or hypersexual.
Pornography didn’t create those narratives.
But according to this research, it frequently recycles them.
The study found that women were often portrayed through what researchers describe as the Madonna-Whore Dichotomy, a framework that casts women as either pure and innocent or sexually available and promiscuous.
According to the authors:
“Women were often framed through the Madonna-Whore Dichotomy, simultaneously portrayed as innocent and sexually available.”
These contradictory expectations appeared repeatedly throughout the dataset. Women were associated with themes of purity, innocence, and youthfulness while simultaneously being depicted as highly sexualized.
Meanwhile, men were frequently portrayed through a very different set of expectations.
The study found that male identities were commonly associated with power, dominance, and physical strength.
As the researchers explain:
“Men were frequently represented through themes of dominance and physical prowess.”
These portrayals may seem familiar because they reflect broader cultural stereotypes that have long shaped how different groups are perceived. Previous studies examining pornography have similarly found that Black men are often portrayed as hypermasculine and aggressive, while Asian women are frequently depicted as submissive, passive, or exotic.
Again, pornography didn’t invent these stereotypes.
But repeated exposure to them can make them feel normal and even fetishized.
When culture and religion become fetishes
The researchers also identified another recurring theme: the sexualization of religious and cultural identities.
Throughout the dataset, various religious identities were repeatedly portrayed as forbidden, taboo, or transgressive sexual categories.
The authors observed that:
“Religious identities were often positioned as taboo or transgressive sexual categories.”
For millions of people around the world, religion is tied to community, tradition, family, values, and personal belief. Yet pornography often strips away that context and repackages religious identity as a fantasy. Some pornographic videos take what religious observers view as sacred, holy, or symbolic, such as religious garments, and instead sexualize them.
The same dynamic can occur with cultural identities more broadly.
Instead of understanding culture as something that shapes how people live, connect, and understand the world, pornography can reduce it to a collection of stereotypes designed to attract attention.
The issue isn’t that culture appears in pornography.
The issue is how culture appears.
Why this matters beyond a screen
Some might wonder whether video titles really matter. After all, they’re only words.
But words shape perception. And in the case of pornography, titles are what drive clicks and reflect tastes.
The language people encounter repeatedly influences how they understand the world around them. Researchers who study media effects have long argued that repeated exposure to particular narratives can influence expectations, beliefs, and attitudes.
The Iowa study suggests that pornography may be doing exactly that when it comes to race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and gender.
When viewers repeatedly encounter the same messages about who is dominant, who is submissive, who is innocent, who is aggressive, who is desirable, or who is exotic, those associations can begin to feel normal—even when they don’t reflect reality.
This is why the study’s conclusion is so significant.
The researchers are not simply arguing that stereotypes appear in pornography. They are arguing that pornography can help sustain them.
As they conclude:
“Pornographic discourse does not merely reflect social stereotypes but actively reproduces and reinforces them.”
That’s a powerful statement.
Because if pornography helps reinforce stereotypes, then the issue extends far beyond entertainment. It becomes a question of how millions of viewers learn to think about real people.
People are more than categories
At its core, this conversation isn’t really about pornography titles.
It’s about people.
It’s about whether entire groups of human beings should be reduced to racial clichés, cultural stereotypes, and sexual fantasies for the sake of clicks and profit.
The new study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that pornography often relies on exactly that reduction. Rather than presenting people as complex individuals, it frequently turns identity itself into a product—something that can be categorized, marketed, and consumed.
But real people are more than stereotypes. More than fantasies. More than labels.
And perhaps that’s the most important takeaway from this research: when entertainment repeatedly reduces human beings to categories, we shouldn’t be surprised when those categories begin shaping how people see one another in the real world.
Your Support Matters Now More Than Ever
Most kids today are exposed to porn by the age of 12. By the time they’re teenagers, 75% of boys and 70% of girls have already viewed itRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy —often before they’ve had a single healthy conversation about it.
Even more concerning: over half of boys and nearly 40% of girls believe porn is a realistic depiction of sexMartellozzo, E., Monaghan, A., Adler, J. R., Davidson, J., Leyva, R., & Horvath, M. A. H. (2016). “I wasn’t sure it was normal to watch it”: A quantitative and qualitative examination of the impact of online pornography on the values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of children and young people. Middlesex University, NSPCC, & Office of the Children’s Commissioner.Copy . And among teens who have seen porn, more than 79% of teens use it to learn how to have sexRobb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.Copy . That means millions of young people are getting sex ed from violent, degrading content, which becomes their baseline understanding of intimacy. Out of the most popular porn, 33%-88% of videos contain physical aggression and nonconsensual violence-related themesFritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B., & Zhou, Y. (2020). A descriptive analysis of the types, targets, and relative frequency of aggression in mainstream pornography. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(8), 3041-3053. doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0Copy Bridges et al., 2010, “Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A Content Analysis,” Violence Against Women.Copy .
From increasing rates of loneliness, depression, and self-doubt, to distorted views of sex, reduced relationship satisfaction, and riskier sexual behavior among teens, porn is impacting individuals, relationships, and society worldwideFight the New Drug. (2024, May). Get the Facts (Series of web articles). Fight the New Drug.Copy .
This is why Fight the New Drug exists—but we can’t do it without you.
Your donation directly fuels the creation of new educational resources, including our awareness-raising videos, podcasts, research-driven articles, engaging school presentations, and digital tools that reach youth where they are: online and in school. It equips individuals, parents, educators, and youth with trustworthy resources to start the conversation.
Will you join us? We’re grateful for whatever you can give—but a recurring donation makes the biggest difference. Every dollar directly supports our vital work, and every individual we reach decreases sexual exploitation. Let’s fight for real love:
