666723

research-article2016

VAWXXX10.1177/1077801216666723Violence Against WomenSun et al.

Article

Naked Aggression:
The Meaning and Practice
of Ejaculation on a
Womans Face

Violence Against Women

120
The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1077801216666723
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Chyng Sun1, Matthew B. Ezzell2, and Olivia Kendall3

Abstract
Based on in-depth interviews with 16 heterosexual men, this study focuses on
participants meaning-making surrounding a common and controversial sexual act
in pornography: ejaculation on a womans face (EOWF). We analyze the ways that
male consumers decoded EOWF and the ways that EOWF, as a sexual script, was
included in the mens accounts of their sexual desires and practices. The majority of
the men decoded EOWF through the preferred (encoded) meaning as an act of male
dominance and sexual aggression and that they wanted to engage in it despite their
general belief that women would not be interested in it.
Keywords
pornography, sexual behaviors, sexual script, male aggression, audience research,
sexual aggression

Introduction
Mainstream pornography centers on male sexual arousal and pleasure (Moore, 2007).
Williams (1989) stated that hard-core pornographygraphic representations of genitalia and penetrationallows the audience to see the visible truth of sexual pleasure and the documentary evidence of this truth (p. 50). In the phallocratic context
of mainstream pornography, this evidence of pleasure is often typified by male
ejaculation. Moore (2007) explained that although men can both ejaculate without
1New

York University, New York City, USA

Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, USA
3Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
2James

Corresponding Author:
Chyng Sun, Clinical Professor of Media Studies, New York University School of Professional Studies, 7
East 12th Street, New York, NY 10003, USA.
Email: cfs1@nyu.edu

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orgasm and orgasm without ejaculation, the physical presence of the ejaculate, the
seminal fluid, is a material reality that confirms mens pleasure . . . ejaculation is taken
as external proof that a man has experienced an orgasm (pp. 72-73). The depiction of
male external ejaculation is thus a device to explicitly declare male orgasm, which is
most often the climax and the end of a sex scene.
The mere inclusion of male ejaculation in the pornographic sexual script, however, is
not the full story. In sexual interactions with a woman, the male ejaculate rarely lands on
objects such as bed sheets or pillows, but rather mostly on womens bodies, faces, or
mouths. In this study, we focus on the act of male performers deliberate effort to ejaculate on womens faces, including in their mouths (EOWF). Typically, this act takes place
when a male performer, engaged in sexual intercourse with a woman, stops and pulls out
his penis, aims it at the female performers face or mouth, and ejaculates. We focus on
EOWF to examine (a) pornographys role in providing sexual scripts for male audiences,
and (b) how these pornographic scripts are subsequently expressed in mens sexual
desires and behaviors. We chose EOWF for investigation instead of other sexual acts that
are prevalent in pornography for two reasons. First, scholars have traced EOWFs development in pornography from obscurity to todays prevalence (Moore, 2007; Williams,
1989), but despite oral sex performed on male partners being a common sexual practice
among heterosexual adolescents and adults (Herbenick et al., 2010; Leichliter, Chandra,
Liddon, Fenton, & Aral, 2007), there is no evidence that EOWF has been a common
sexual practice, and no known sexual behavior surveys include the act as a measured
sexual practice. We thus argue that EOWF is a sexual act largely constructed and popularized through the pornography industry. Second, the act of EOWF induces no apparent
physical pleasure in and of itself (beyond masturbation) and physical stimulation of the
penis leading up to ejaculation must often be stopped or interrupted to engage in the act.
Thus, the audiences pleasure derived from watching EOWF, fantasizing about it while
masturbating, or acting it out with female partner(s) can be argued to be primarily psychological and ideological. For these reasons, EOWF is a fitting act through which to
investigate pornographys unique role in providing sexual scripts as well as what those
scripts may represent in gender and sexual dynamics.
There have been diverse interpretations of EOWF, but they are almost exclusively
based on textual analyses. No studies that we can find investigate the processes of
meaning-making engaged by consumers around this act. Evoking Stuart Halls encoding/decoding model of communication and sexual scripts theory, this study reviews
the meanings encoded in EOWF by pornographers and, importantly, investigates the
meanings decoded by male audiences. The examination of male consumers interpretations of EOWF allows us to see how the sexual scripts encoded in mainstream pornography, as a reflection and reproduction of the hegemonic masculine ideal, may help
shape audiences own sexual behavior.

History and Textual Analysis of EOWF

Linda Williams (1989) traced the history of the cinematic depiction of male ejaculation
to the stag film genrethe predecessor of modern pornographywhich occasionally

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showed male ejaculation; it was not until the very late stages of the stag films development that such depiction appeared more regularly. It was during the rise of featurelength pornography films that the depictions of male ejaculation served to signal the
climax of the hard-core action (Williams, 1989, p. 73). Moore (2007) further specified
that the cum shot is typically defined where a man ejaculates onto a woman, usually
onto her face . . . or sometimes onto her sex organs. To be classified as a money shot,
the semen must be clearly visible (p. 78). Although Moore articulates the meaning of
money as a referent to the money the actor receives as payout for making the film,
which sometimes includes a bonus for the act of ejaculation (p. 78), other authors suggest money refers to the shot being widely popularized among the male audiences
that provide the bread and butter for the industry (Hardy, 1998, p. 67).
EOWF is indeed common in mainstream pornography. According to a content analysis of best-selling and most rented pornographic DVDs, 62.5% of male external ejaculate
landed in a womans mouth or on her face (Bridges, Wosnitzer, Scharrer, Sun, & Liberman,
2010), and a content analysis of popular Internet sites found that 45% of videos depicted
the act (Gorman, Monk-Turner, & Fish, 2010). Ogas and Gaddam (2011) confirmed
EOWFs prevalence in their analysis of the web-based pornography site fantasti.cc, saying simply, Facials are the most common money shot by a wide margin (p. 225).
The textual analysis of EOWF can be divided roughly into two camps: feminists
condemnation of the act as degrading and psychoanalysts or post-feminists readings
of the act as neutral or even beneficial. For example, based on textual analysis of pornographic films, Jensen (1998) argued that, ejaculating onto a woman is a method by
which she is turned into a slut, something (not really someone) whose primary, if not
only, purpose is to be sexual with men (p. 79). Their interpretation is consistent with
Cowan and Dunns (1994) content analysis of pornography: They include external ejaculation as a degrading act along with other activities that revolve around worship of
the penis (p. 13). Cook (2006) argued that EOWF may indicate a female body marked
by a successful hunter and that repeated ejaculation onto a woman represented visual
proof of her objectification (p. 53).
Others have echoed the function of EOWF to mark women, but disagreed with the
idea that such marking is necessarily degrading. For example, McClintock (1993)
argued that the cum-shot restores gender decorum: the cum on the womans body
marks her as separate, different, out-there. The male withdraws at the moment of
orgasm, to preserve his detached and bounded sexual identity (p. 124). Moore and
Weissbein (2010) also read EOWF as marking women, but emphasize that the act is
primarily about men expressing self-control whereby ejaculate and male desire work
in concert. Ready, aim, fire (p. 87). Offering a more explicitly beneficial reading, Day
(1988) argued that the function of mens ejaculation over women is to replicate the
role of the mother in giving milk to the infant; thus, pornography does not show a
hatred of women but rather a desire to become, at least in one respect, like them (p. 5).
And McElroy (1995) argued that EOWF can be read as almost romantic: The woman
wishes to share in her lovers orgasm (p. 136). She goes on to suggest that no individual reading is correct, but that the delightful diversity of human nature allows for
many interpretations, none of which are inherently right or wrong. They are all

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subjective. They are all benign (p. 136). In this framework, all interpretations are created equal, devoid of social contexts and consequences.
Media images are indeed polysemic, and the pornography audience may adopt different viewing positions so that identification in porn can be multiple and shifting,
bisexual and transsexual, alternately or simultaneously (McClintock, 1993, p. 125).
However, although the possible interpretations may be endless, the audiences biography, socialization, access to decoding strategies/possibilities, and the cultural environment and intertexuality in which the decoding process takes place are all important
factors in determining what meanings the audience would eventually make.

Encoding/Decoding and Sexual Scripts

In his influential encoding/decoding model of communication, Stuart Hall (1980)
argued that after the producer encodes meaning(s) in the messages, the audience has
three possible decoding positions: the preferred (hegemonic) position (the audience is
located within the dominant point of view and accepts and reproduces the messages as
encoded), the negotiated position (the audience acknowledges the dominant message
and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but modifies it in a way that reflects their
own position and interests), and the oppositional position (the audience understands
the preferred meaning but rejects it). Hall (1980) argued that meanings are not free
flowing because the encoder exerts power, thereby naturalizing the codes which
achieve near-universality (p. 132). This is most likely to occur when the encoded
message matches and reflects the hegemonic ideology. Furthermore, preferred meanings are more likely to be decoded by the audience in the context of inter-textual repetitionwhen the same signifiers, scripts, and meanings are encoded across a wide
range of media texts. Even though individuals have potential to come up with counterhegemonic and oppositional readings, several social forces work together to close
down the semiotic and polysemous possibilities of the messages.
Jenkins (1995) study of a group of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) Star Trek fans is
illuminating in this regard. Even as LGB fans may be frustrated and dissatisfied by the
lack of queer representation in the program, they still identify with the characters and the
program as a whole and find pleasure in it as a source of entertainment and release. Not
wanting to compromise their fandom, audience dissatisfaction often leads to resistant
reading that occurs within rather than outside the ideological framework of the program (Jenkins, 1995, p. 263). Thus, the liberatory potential of the oppositional reading is
stunted, and meanings are decoded in the name of fidelity to the program concept
rather than against it: The fans feel a strong identification with the programmes, the
characters, the producers and their ideological conceptions, even when they feel strong
frustration with the failure of the producers to create stories they would like to see told
(p. 263). Similarly, in McKinleys (1997) ethnographic study of teen girls watching
Beverly Hills 90210, she uses the metaphor of swimming with the tide to describe the
construction of an identity in keeping with the dominant ideology, and described the
subjects enthusiastically stroking and kicking to accelerate their progress (p. 235).
This underscores the importance of understanding the audiences decoding abilities and

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Sun et al.

its access to oppositional codes and counter-rhetoric. Using an analysis of students

resistance to a teachers criticism of Disneys animated films, Sun and Scharrer (2004)
demonstrated that even if the audiences are capable of coming up with oppositional readings or even if they are explicitly taught how to do so, they may not want to be critical
because of the pleasure associated with reading along with the dominant text.
The power of encoded messages to shape decoded readings speaks to the role of
media in helping to shape consumers desires and behavior (Huesmann, 1986, 1988).
Media, through the delivery of dominant encoded messages, provide consumers with
scripts that tell them what events should and should not be happening, how people
should behave in response to what is or is not happening, and what the outcomes of
particular courses of action should be (Wright, 2011, p. 348). Pornography, as a form
of sexualized media, also provides a sexual script to the audience (Braithwaite,
Coulson, Keddington, & Fincham, 2014; Hald, Malamuth, & Lange, 2013), and, as
Wright (2011) argued, sexual scripts can influence behavior, shape desire, and structure expectations about real-world sexual encounters. Given the power of encoding in
shaping meanings, as well as the power of sexual scripts to inform or even influence
both the desires and behaviors of consumers, we now ask, what dominant meanings
are encoded in EOWF within pornography?

Encoding EOWF
Academic research on pornographers is scarce, and accounts of what meanings they
encode in EOWF are limited. However, the comments of pornography industry insiders about the act are revealing. For example, veteran pornography director and actor
Bill Margold stated,
Id like to really show what I believe the men [audience members] want to see: violence
against women. . . . The most violent we can get is the cum shot in the face. Men get off
behind that, because they get even with the women they cant have. We try to inundate
the world with orgasms in the face. (Stoller & Levine, 1996, p. 22)

Similarly, Brandon Iron, the producer and director of Bakers Dozen (2010), produced a series of pornography videos depicting 13 men ejaculating on a womans
face. When asked why the focus of attraction was EOWF, Iron responded, Because
she is so beautiful. Its like a dog marking its territory (Sun & Picker, 2008). These
comments, in which industry insiders note that EOWF is encoded with meanings
tied to violence, ownership, and degradation, speak in concert with comments from
former hard-core pornography director Sam Benjamin (2010) about the broader
environment of the pornographic set. He noted that although his overt task at hand
was to make sure the girls got naked, his true responsibility as director was to
make sure that the girls [sic] got punished through scenes where female actors
were verbally degraded and sometimes physically humiliated (para. 5). The comments from Margold and Iron above suggest that the mechanism of such humiliation
could be EOWF.

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Violence Against Women

The encoded meaning of EOWF as an expression of humiliation and degradation may

also be revealed by the fact that self-described feminist female pornographers, such as
Candida Royalle (McElroy, 1995), who aim to create women-friendly pornography, tend
to avoid the act. As Royalle reasoned, most women do find it degrading (McElroy,
1995, p. 176). In fact, Royalles sentiment was validated by subscribers to Sssh.com, a
popular Internet pornography subscription site among women, whose choices showed
that EOWF is the least popular type of sexual content on the site (Ogas & Gaddam, 2011).
If mainstream pornography producers are encoding EOWF with a dominant meaning as degrading and phallocratic, we ask: How are male consumers decoding its
meaning, and how may these media scripts inform and potentially influence their sexual desires and behaviors?

Method
A convenience sample of young heterosexual men was recruited in a large city in the
northeastern United States. Recruitment fliers seeking heterosexual men older than
18 years old to discuss issues about pornography were placed around a local university
campus and the surrounding streets, and information about the study was also posted
on Craigslist and Internet message boards. Ultimately, 16 men participated as interviewees. Each man was promised US$12 for his participation.
All 16 participants were U.S. citizens. The racial identity of the men was mostly
(12) White, with two Asian (one Chinese American, one Indian American), one Latino,
and one African American participating. About half of the participants were undergraduate students; one third were graduate students and the rest were working adults
with college degrees or at least some college credits. Their ages ranged from 19-32
years, with the average age being 25 years and the median 24 years. The vast majority
of the participants first saw pornography in their early teen years, and all but two were
current users of pornography. Among current users, the average rate of consumption
ranged from once a week to daily; their primary source was free Internet pornography.
All interviewees were sexually experienced and active, with about one third having a
sexual partner/girlfriend at the time of the interview.
The primary investigator (PI), an Asian American female professor with a journalism background, conducted semi-structured interviews that lasted 60-120 min in
2009-2010. Interview questions focused broadly on participants history of exposure
to and consumption of pornography (e.g., When was the first time you saw pornography? How often do you watch pornography currently?), their preference for certain types of pornography (e.g., What kind of pornography do you like to watch?
Any sexual scenes or sexual acts that you like to watch?), their sexual interests and
experience (e.g., Any sexual acts that you have not done and wish to do? Where did
you get the idea?), and the processes of meaning-making in which participants
engaged (e.g., How did you feel about that? What do you think it means?). The
questions were mostly open-ended to allow the interviewees to answer freely.
The interview room was a private office with little traffic nearby. All procedures were
approved by the PIs university institutional review board.

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Sun et al.

All interviews were fully and orthographically transcribed. Two of the authors
served as coders; they first test-coded the same three transcripts using HyperResearch
(version 2), a QDA software program, to establish the coding scheme, codes, and subcodes. They then discussed any differences in their coding and mutually decided on
the final scheme. Every transcript was read by the two coders to check consistency in
coding across the study. The three authors wrote analytic memos on emergent themes
to build the analysis.
As is the case with all qualitative research, the structural locations and identities of
the participants and the PI shaped and informed the interactions that unfolded across
the research process. For example, the interview itself is a site in which male interviewees may not only reflect on their identities as men but in which they may enact
those identities (Schwalbe & Wolkomir, 2003). It matters, for example, that the interviewer in this project was female (see, for example, Lee, 1997). Participants may well
have answered questions differently with a male researcher. That said, the PI, having
a background in journalism and being older than the participants by two decades,
sought to create an open and non-judgmental space in which the interviews took place.
This allowed her to build rapport and a conversational approach to the interviews.

Results
The participants were largely White, middle class, and college educated. Although
their fields and professions included philosophy, education, nursing, literature, political science, neural science communication, and sociology, and their patterns of pornography exposure and consumption were divergent, given the prevalence of EOWF
within mainstream pornography, they had all consumed pornographic material that
included this act. In the sections that follow, we will discuss the meanings these men
articulated with regard to EOWF, as well as how it served as a sexual script that guided
their desire and behaviors.

Decoding of EOWF
The vast majority of the interviewees found EOWF to be arousing and liked to watch
this sexual act in the pornography they consumed. When asked what was attractive
about the act, most of the participants had difficulty articulating an answer. They
tended to default to an uncritical and unreflexive it just is response. Consider the
following exchanges:
Dean (White, 19-year-old): It [EOWF] is crowd pleasing.
Interviewer: Do you think that act has any meaning?
Dean: No.
Interviewer: Then why it is always on a womans face?
Dean: Because it is a crowd pleaser.
Abel (White, 21-year-old): I dont know, I would get aroused by [watching EOWF].
It is hard to put it into word form. It is just what appeals to me I guess.

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Jack (White, 32-year-old): I dont know. Ive always liked [scenes of EOWF]. I
think its definitely more, I wanna say, taboo, but moreI dont know. Just,
more conventionally wrong in some ways. Its kind ofI dont know how to put
it into words to be honest with you.

When invited to reflect and speculate on the possible meanings of EOWF, however,
most interviewees came up with remarkably similar answers. Despite its normative
and nearly ubiquitous inclusion in mainstream pornography, many of the men argued
that the appeal of EOWF, as Jack asserts above, was its status as taboo. Other
respondents interpreted EOWF as marking something beautiful, staking your
claim, mak[ing] your mark, and defilement, noting that the act is dirty, disgusting, degrading, demeaning, or misogynistic. Consider, for example, Abels
comments when he was asked to say more about the meaning of EOWF:
Abel: I dont know. [Maybe it shows] How a male is dominant over a woman?
Interviewer: Why would you think that?
Abel: Probably, it makes sense. That happens and it is degrading, I guess. It puts the
man on top of the woman. I guess it is probably how it originated with how the
man thinks he is so superior to the woman.
Here, Abel places the act within the broader context of male dominance and patriarchal inequality. Herald answered similarly, but went further:
Herald (White, 19-year-old): It [EOWF] really puts the woman in the submissive
role and I can see people liking that. But that is just speculation, I cant speak for
the truth of it.
Interviewer: Why would you say the woman is in the submissive role?
Herald: I am guessing that typically most people wouldnt want to be ejaculated on
so the woman there is undergoing something relatively unpleasant on behalf of
the man.
For Herald, the degradation of the woman is not just enacted through EOWF; the
womans degradation is the source of the appeal. Anthony commented further on the
ways that other aspects of the scene provide context for EOWF:
Anthony (White, 23-year-old): Sometimes when that [EOWF] happens, the guy
will yell something, and I always find it kind of funny. But in those cases it
seems kind of demeaning.
Interviewer: Demeaning? Why?
Anthony: Because the girl is on her knees, and hes standing over her, yelling something, and then ejaculating on her face.
Anthonys comments speak to the power of other encoded aspects of the staged
performance to shape the meanings likely to be decoded by the consumer. That is,

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although EOWF may be polysemic, when it is represented in the context of other acts
of submission such as a woman on her knees and being verbally abuseda common
component of mainstream, heterosexual pornography (Bridges et al., 2010)other
readings are rendered less likely.
Other respondents expanded on the ways that EOWF represents the degradation of
women through a sexual act, highlighting specifically the symbolic meaning attached
to the human face and womens willing self-sacrifice and subjugation for mens pleasure. For example, Jack argued that EOWF was arousing because
Its a girl whos willingis not only engaged in the act, but its specifically for the
pleasure of the man. Its like, Im willing to give everything, even my face. And the
face is the most sensitive area. Anywhere else, its not likeyou know, the guy can
[ejaculate] anywhere else and its not really going to affect the girl as much; but in the
face, I dont know [trails off].

Albert commented on the significance of the face as the site of ejaculation, as well:
Albert (White, 26-year-old): It can definitely be construed as a kind of defilement
or something.
Interviewer: Defilement? What do you mean?
Albert: It means to corrupt or make impure. Maybe just because we get so much
information as human beings from the face. I guess theres a lot of identity thats
contained in the face. Theres just something more to it, somehow, than the body.
Symbolically at least.
Interviewer: Thats interesting. If you find that act attractive, do you think it has
anything to do with that [defiling a woman]?
Albert: I guess it might, at some level . . . (laughs) I just dont know.
Albert was quite eloquent in identifying exactly why EOWF may be an act of defilement. And, like Sam Benjamin (2010), a former pornographer, who was excited
while directing (encoding) acts of male performers humiliating female performers,
Albert also acknowledged the pleasure involved in defiling a woman. But notice the
way Albert distances himself from responsibility for finding enjoyment in that defilement: I guess it might, at some level . . . (laughs) I just dont know.
Alberts hedging on the source of his enjoyment of EOWF in pornography may
well speak to part of the reason for mens lack of critical reflection on the practice
more broadlyit may function as a form of moral identity work (see Kleinman, 1996),
a way for the men to maintain a sense of themselves as good people. After all, most of
the respondents stated both that they do not like to see violent pornography and that
the performers pleasure is crucial to their arousal. The respondents may not want to
think of themselves as the type of man who receives sexual pleasure from physical
violence, rape, or the active subjugation of women. Also, the context of how pornography is used leaves room for EOWF enthusiasts not to engage in critical reflection
and confront their own moral standardsa point we will discuss in a later section. It

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is telling, in fact, that of the two men in the study who stated they were not interested
in EOWF, both engaged in critical reflection on the practice and made a moral decision
to reject it. For example, Mark (White, 24-year-old) said,
It [EOWF] is getting to a place where it is intentionally offensive to women . . . like
violence against women . . . I dont have any doubt that it is consensual, but a lot of times
I think it is for men who like it . . . because it is making your mark and being the man.

Like Herald, who said earlier, I can see people liking that, Mark also mentioned that
male aggression in pornography may be the reason for its appeal to male audiencesit
makes the viewer feel they are, in his words, being the man.
Also, consider these comments from Jason (White, 23-year-old):
I remember seeing some scenes about that [EOWF] and . . . I thought it was . . . from the
male perspective that it is this great thing and then they try to get the women to act like
they really like it. But it is so gross, though. . . . It was like, Wow, God, ewww.

Jason was unique among the interviewees in that he had stopped using pornography at
the time of the interview for moral reasons. He was also the only respondent who consistently displayed an empathic connection to the women in the scenes, putting himself
in the female porn performers shoes. For example, he stated that he could not stand
watching gagging scenes (scenes in which women are penetrated orally by a man to
the point that they gag) because they reminded him of throwing up frequently as a
child. Jason also pointed out the purposeful encoding that the pornographers engage in
to try to get the women to act like they really like it. Female performers on-screen
enjoyment of EOWF is crucial to our understanding of its powerful impact, a point we
will return to in the next section.

Male Dominance and Its Appeal

The majority of our participants had decoded the preferred reading of EOWF as an act
of male dominance and female subjugation; this raises the question of why they gained
pleasure in viewing it. The most direct answer would be that these men found the
domination of women appealing. Most of the respondents did not frame the appeal
explicitly in misogynistic terms; as noted above, they tended to hedge or distance
themselves from an association between womens debasement and their own sexual
pleasure. But some men displayed no such hesitation. Consider the following comments from Tom (African American, 29-year-old),
I like the woman to show emotion. Usually distress . . . I guess what appeals to me about
it is if the woman seems like shes kind of afraid but kind of enjoying it. . . . And I guess
I kind of like that power imbalance on a sexual level.

And Jack, when asked if it would be arousing to see a woman in pain or discomfort,
said,

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Sun et al.

Jack: Oh, wow. In some ways, yeah. In some ways it would be.
Interviewer: Why?
Jack: Lets see how I verbalize this. . . . In some ways its dominating her. Its in a
punishing way, I think theres a certain appeal of that. Like, Look, you thought
you were a big girl and you could take this; well, now youre finding out how
hard it is. Its kind of like a lesson, too. I gotta say, theres something exciting
about that.
Here, it is not just the power imbalance that is sexualized and arousing, but the use of
sexual subjugation to put women in their place, to teach them a lesson. The college
men in Michael Kimmels (2008) study used pornography similarly; the young men
felt entitled to sex but frustrated by womens perceived control of access to it. They
used pornography as a salve, a way to symbolically punish, as Jack said, women for
not having sex with them. As Kimmel put it, watching these girls sexual humiliation
is a way to level the playing field just a little bit (p. 83).
Tom and Jack were the minority to admit the attraction of female submission, yet
even Tom engaged in boundary setting in the comments above, when he says that he
wants to see women kind of afraid but kind of enjoying it (emphasis added). Most of
the participants still highlighted the female performers (depiction of) pleasure as
important in enhancing their own arousal and argued that they could tell if the women
were really enjoying the act or not. In other words, although the men understood that
the pornography was staged, in their accounts they argued that it was the (perceived)
authentic pleasure of the womenrather than, or in addition to, the womens pain or
degradationthat gave the men pleasure as consumers. This reflects another instance
of shared encoded and decoded meanings in the pornographic sexual script: The sex
acts are aggressive, but the women like it. As Jerry put it, Its better if shes into it and
she wants it. It definitely adds to the hotness. At the same time, the majority of the
participants said that they imagine that most women, the women in their lives and social
circles, would not like to have their faces ejaculated on. As Craig (Latino, 21-year-old)
reported, Seeing cum shots on a girl, it was Whoa, my girlfriend would never let that
happen! It is kinda cool! Moreover, Irvin (Asian American, 21-year-old) reported that
when he asked his girlfriend if he could ejaculate on her face, she replied, What the
hell are you talking about? and told him not to ever ask that question again.
If these men think most women would not like EOWF, and have heard definitively
from women in their lives that they do not like it, why would they think that the onscreen women actually enjoy the practice? Why would they decode this preferred
meaning? In part, this involves othering (Fine, 1994) the women in pornography, seeing them as the type of women who would like such a thing. As Craig suggested, his
girlfriend would never let that happen, but the woman on the screen would. In this
way, some of the men discursively create a subclass of women who not only would
sign on to these practices but also are deserving of the debasement (you thought you
were a big girl and you could take this; well, now youre finding out how hard it is).
But even this othering requires the willful denial of the realities of class inequality and
economic necessity as the backdrop of womens entrance into the sex exploitation

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industry (Barton, 2006). As that reality was actually known to most of the respondents,
they needed to engage in willful denial to enjoy it. As Albert said,
I sort of imagine that, you know, theyre people sort of freely exercising their sexuality.
Which I understand, to a certain extent is a suspension of disbelief. Theres part of me
that does realize that these are people that are being paid, that theres a whole sort of
economy and system going on here. But Im mostly able to push that out of my mind and
imagine it as something thats just sort of naturally occurring.

Indeed, pushing out the awareness that on-screen women may be suffering was crucial for the respondents continuous enjoyment of viewing depictions such as EOWF.
Different from Jason putting himself in porn performers shoes, most of the respondents used strategies to avoid empathizing with them; for example, when encountering
scenes that were too violent or disgusting to bear, respondents reported fast-forwarding or lowering the volume to mute the verbal abuse. In doing so, these men managed
their own discomfort but avoided empathizing with the female performers whose
experience of degradation was made invisible.
Rick (White, 20-year-old) articulated another commonly encoded component of
EOWF scenes that the men used to enjoy depictions of female degradation:
When the man is getting ready to come on their [female porn performers] face, they [the
women]ll be like give it to me! you know, Aw, yeah baby, I want your hot steaming
semen in my mouth you know, I mean, hearing that reaffirms that . . . theyre equally
participating in this. That maybe there is equal, mutual satisfaction. And that makes me
feel okay. If thats not there, then I might be a little bit more uncomfortable.

Ricks comment illustrates the powerful encoding of womens enjoyment of a degrading act, through verbal cues, which encourages mens decoding of that preferred reading. Even though respondents harbor the knowledge and gut feelings that women
generally do not enjoy such an act, the on-screen womans enthusiasm made it difficult
to disagree with her, to come up with oppositional readings that she was not enjoying herself; thus, the preferred reading of women enjoy their own debasement was
easier to decode.
Augmenting this pattern, porn stars, when interviewed in the media, often emphasize their enjoyment of the sex acts common in pornography (Jensen, 2007). In addition to supporting mens use of womens encoded pleasure in their own meaning-making,
such comments from women in pornography also reinforce the impression that porn
stars are indeed different (other) from the women in mens lives. Men are thus able to
use womens pleasure as a resource in their own moral identity work, supporting the
belief that they are good people, and as a means to avoid confronting the morality of
pornographic pleasure.
Beyond the encoded and staged performance of womens pleasure in their own
debasement, the cumulative impact of repeated viewing of pornographic media over
the course of years shaped the mens decoding and meaning-making practices. Abel
commented that scenes involving EOWF become so normalized over time that he

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came to easily take the womens on-screen demonstration of pleasure at face value:
The woman enjoys it even though she obviously doesnt. Furthermore, he noted that
his repeated consumption of pornography had shaped his desire to include EOWF in
his own sexual practice: It had just become so normal that that is what you do. In
other words, EOWF was not normal in his own sexual practice with partners, but
through repeated and regular consumption of pornography than included EOWF, he
had come to see the act as normative and his own sexual life as abnormal in its absence.
Evon (Asian American, 28-year-old), too, commented on the ways that pornography
consumption had shaped his sexual desires and practice. For him, male dominance,
expressed through pornographic sexual scripts, was a means to control his girlfriend:
I was afraid she was going to leave me, I was afraid if I didnt make her mine in that
sexual sense then I was like being too much of a pansy. Cumming on her face or doing
anal sex or pulling her hair, it was almost as if I had to dehumanize her, objectify her
sexually so she would feel a bit subservient to me or attached to me.

In this account, EOWF and other acts within the pornographic sexual script are not just
a means through which to signify dominance as men in relation to women, but strategies
that can be applied to subjugate women and, thus, exercise control within intimate relationships with them. While Evons rationale is certainly not representative of all of our
respondents, the mens articulations of EOWF in this study demonstrate that male dominance, explicit or implicit in the mens meaning-making, was ever present.

The Pornographic Sexual Script

All participants in this study stated that their exposure to EOWF came from watching
pornography and that their pleasure in the act was deeply ingrained in the viewing
experience. Evon, a highly educated and self-described feminist man who participated in
labor and social movements, expressed his frustration and puzzlement about pornographys power over him: I always wanted to try it [EOWF] . . . being intellectual I was
like, why do I care so much about doing it, what the hell is it? Rick stated explicitly that
his desire to try EOWF was entirely a result of his exposure to the act in pornography:
Rick: The only reason I would ever, ever [consider] coming on a woman, ejaculating on a woman, is because Ive seen it in porn. That is something that never
would have ever entered my brain as a sexual being. But because Ive seen it on
porn, there is a desire to do it.
Interviewer: Why is it desirable?
Rick: Its not. I think its stupid.
Interviewer: But you just said you wanted to do it.
Rick: Because Im an impressionable person. Ive seen it done.
Pornographys role in providing sexual scripts, in shaping the mens sexual desires in
real life, went well beyond EOWF. Moor (White, 29-year-old) said simply,

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Violence Against Women

Moor: My sexual fantasies are implicated with [porn].
Interviewer: In what way?
Moor: I probably would never have had the idea of having two women eat each
other out and sleep with me at the same time if I hadnt seen pornography. But
now that I have I think it is a great idea.

And Jerry (White, 24-year-old) said,

That [pornography] is where all my ideas have come from. Why do you think I have all
these sick twisted fantasies that are never going to happen! [Laughs] Without porn, it
would just be plain, boring . . . the same boring stuff. This is where we [men] get all of
those ideas.

Pornography, for these men, was the source of the sexual scripts that guide their desires
for real-world sexual encounters. The power of pornography is particularly revealing not
only because these mens desire to engage in EOWF came from seeing it done in pornography but also because they wanted to engage in it even in the face of their partners perceived or actual rejection of the practice. Irvins comments are illustrative on this point:
Irvin: I have [ejaculated] on the body before of partners. I would like to on the face,
but no one will ever let me because girls find semen to be disgusting; but, I
would like to try . . . I think it is a just very powerful thing to do just to douse a
woman with your powerfulness.
Interviewer: But, why the face?
Irvin: I dont know, I think I just attribute that to watching a lot of porn. Just because
I have seen it in pornography so much that it has become just a part of my sexual
experience. Me having sex without having done that is kind of incomplete. All
of what I have known about sex comes from pornography, everything that I have
done and have seen comes from porn. Everything that is plausible, cum-shots on
the face, not something I have experienced. I feel like since I have seen it all the
time it is part of what I know I should at least try to see what it is like.
Irvin has fully acquired both the desire to engage in the act, EOWF, and the meaning
encoded in the act, male dominance. In his account, his sexual experience is incomplete without ithe has not fully enacted the desired pornographic scripts. He also
expresses a sense of entitlement: He has the desire to engage in EOWF, and he should
act on that desire.
The accounts of the men who had engaged or who wanted to engage in EOWF are
also important to consider. For some, the practice marked the line drawn between
good women and bad women, reminiscent of the line some of the men drew
between women in their liveswho would not want to be ejaculated onand the
women in pornographywho would want to be ejaculated on or who, in their view,
deserved to be. For example, Anthony said that he would never engage in EOWF
with any girl that I care about. I would never do that. This sentiment was echoed by

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Steve (White, 20-year-old), adding that he would only do it with a scumbag because
he finds the act demeaning or degrading.
Other men sought ways to engage in EOWF, regardless of how they felt about their
sexual partners. Some of the men believed they could tell which women would want
to engage in EOWF:
Jerry: Oh, ever since I started seeing it [EOWF] in porn [I wanted to do it] . . . yeah!
Yeah, I definitely remember that [first time doing EOWF]. It was a White girl,
young, she was really hot. She was blonde. She was porn-star looking, sort of.
And we were really rough and kinky and I just did it. I didnt ask her, I just did it.
Interviewer: And before you did it, you thought about doing it?
Jerry: Oh, I knew I was going to do it. She just gave off that sexual energy from the
beginning.
Not seeking active consent and assuming they could tell which women wanted EOWF in
the moment was a strategy highlighted by other men. Although Abel noted that he had
asked partners about their desire to engage in EOWF, he also said, If I have been going
out with them for a while, I dont have to ask every single time . . . But importantly, upon
further reflection, he noted that this was likely a one-sided experience:
I doubt any of them actually like it; now that I am thinking about it, they all probably
despised it. I guess you are both just caught up in the moment that it doesnt matter at all
that you dont think about it. You dont think about it, it just happens . . . I mean sometimes
it is probably not positive at all.

Jack noted that he engaged in boundary-testing and strategic progression of sex acts
to fulfill his desire to engage in EOWF:
Normally somewhere in my head I got a progression. I will cum inside in a condom first.
Gradually as we have more sex I am assuming she will want to be a little more adventurous
and more dirty, she kind of gets that vibe from me too. We will move up to ejaculation on
the body. The face, you got to work your way up to it, there are a lot of girls and they dont
want that. I have been told by girls, Dont cum on my face. Some girls have told me.

Jack, who had ejaculated on all of his sexual partners, further noted that he prefer[ed]
to come on [his partners] face. He found this sexy and arousing because you
are kind of staking your territory and you are going to do what you want to do. He
said that he enjoyed sex more when he [knew] that the girl [was] also enjoying it.
However, the womans sexual pleasure was ultimately secondary: I dont want to be
a dick about it, but I am going to get what I want, too. Importantly, such boundarytesting and sexual coercion are not new in heterosexual relationships but we question
what role pornography may play in shifting the parameters and sexual acts being
tested.
In this study, men not only acquired the sexual scripts from pornography, they also
wanted to act on them. The men were often strategic in progressing to the desired sex

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Violence Against Women

act and in approaching/manipulating their sexual partners toward that end. By and large,
the men we interviewed had decoded the dominant readings of pornographic sex acts
EOWF especiallyas male-centered and misogynistic. Given this, the men were under
no illusions that most women would want to engage in the acts. For example, when the
first author asked Jerry if he felt pornography had had a positive or negative impact on
his life, he responded: Positive? [More like] negative, because where am I going to find
a girl whos going to do all of this? To fulfill all of these fantasies that I have? Some
male subjects expressed similar kinds of frustrationnot that they had acquired a desire
to engage in misogynistic sex acts, but that they were left feeling unfulfilled by womens
(actual or perceived) lack of willingness to accommodate their desires.

Conclusion
As sexologist Leonore Tiefer (2004) made clear, sex is not natural but is rather a
learned behavior, and thus, social and cultural. Given that U.S. society is White
supremacist, patriarchal, and capitalist (hooks, 1994), it is not surprising that pornographers would encode these values in sexual expression and gender dynamics that may
also be familiar and even attractive to male consumers. Put simply, pornography
reflects the hegemonic value of male dominance and further perpetuates it. Just as rape
is both illegal and normalized within patriarchal cultures (see, for example, Buchwald,
Fletcher, & Roth, 2004), male dominance and sexual aggression in pornography may
be found simultaneously distasteful and enticing. Some of the men in our study were
open and direct about the appeal of EOWF as an expression of male dominance, but
others couched the appeal of the act in its role in pushing boundaries or in its status
as taboo, even if they could articulate the preferred meaning upon reflection. The
strategy of euphemizing male sexual aggression as taboo may allow respondents to
eroticize it without feeling misogynisticbut this strategy has its contradictions.
Indeed, multiple contradictions were revealed in the respondents discourses around
pornography and sex. Typically, male participants initially failed to articulate why
they liked to watch EOWF in pornography or what meaning they saw, if any, in the act.
But when they were allowed some time to reflect, they stated that it is about male
dominance and female degradation. Most men acknowledged that female porn stars
come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and would only perform EOWF
for money, but they also maintained that some performers genuinely liked itand they
maintained that they could tellwhile saying that they often engaged in a suspension
of disbelief to convince themselves of the performers enjoyment. Respondents also
stated that they did not think women around them would like to be the targets of
EOWF; nonetheless, they desired or had performed the act. This group of men seemed
to struggle with cognitive dissonance (Aronson, 1992; Festinger, 1957; Stalder &
Baron, 1998) concerning pornographys function of providing sexual pleasure (in private, while masturbating) and the misogynistic messages that they were made aware
of through self-reflection (in public, with an interviewer). The respondents lack of
critical reflection, or their holding multiple, contradictory perspectives without resolving them, may be a form of moral identity work that allows them to maintain their

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stated attitude of respecting women while finding pleasure in male dominance. It is

particularly at this juncturerecognizing the misogyny of EOWF but finding excuses
to keep watching or performing itthat we recognize the power of pornography both
in its encoded messages and in the context in which it is used.
Male aggression is made acceptable in mainstream pornography, as a recent content
analysis of popular pornography shows that close to 90% of the scenes depicted verbal
or physical aggression, and while almost all targets of aggression were women, they
showed no resistance, and mostly showed pleasure or no response (Bridges et al., 2010).
Gail Dines stated, Pornography takes violence against women, and it sexualizes it.
And when you sexualize violence against women, you render the violence invisible
(Sun & Picker, 2008). But our findings suggest that Dines statement may be incomplete: To fully make the violence invisible, male aggression against women may not
only need to be sexualized but also encoded as female enjoyment, thus making the
reading of female degradation less likely. Accordingly, it may be more apt to say,
When pornography sexualizes male aggression and shows women seeming to enjoy it,
it renders the violence invisible. In other words, when male aggression is encoded with
female pleasure, and the preferred meaning suggests that male aggression is pleasurable
for both men and women, it sets limits on how the audience interprets the message, and
makes an oppositional readingfor example, that male aggression hurts women and is
wrongdifficult to discern. Furthermore, the respondents othering of female pornography performers as different from women in their lives who do not like aggression and
degradation, and their strategies of avoidancesuch as fast-forwarding through scenes
or lowering the volumeallow them to avoid confronting the aggression imposed on
those on-screen women and, thus, not to empathize with them.
Understanding the context in which pornography is consumed is equally crucial in
understanding the audiences internalization of pornographic sexual scripts. Pornography
is generally used by male audiences to facilitate masturbation, a context that can delimit
critical thinking. Ariely and Loewenstein (2006) demonstrated that sexual arousal has a
strong impact on judgment and decision making, as the increase in motivation to have
sex produced by sexual arousal seems to decrease the relative importance of other considerations such as behaving ethically toward a potential sexual partner (p. 95). Thus,
pornographic sexual scripts and their connections to pleasure responses (sexual arousal
and eventual orgasm) may be learned and enhanced while bypassing ones critical faculty, and this tendency may be enhanced by repeated viewing.
Coming from a qualitative study of 16 men, quite homogeneous in their race and
class, our findings are not intended to be generalizable to all men; this study seeks analytic (theoretical) rather than statistical (frequency) generalizability (Yin, 2003), such
that the patterns we uncovered among the men in our study may be similar for similar
persons facing similar situations and conditions. Pointing in that direction, the major
finding of this studythat the pornographic sexual script can shape mens desires and
behaviorsis consistent with results from larger surveys (Hald et al., 2013; Wright,
2011; Wright & Arroyo, 2013). To put it simply, sexualized media matter. This study
makes a unique contribution to literature on gender inequality and sexism, sexuality,
interpersonal violence, and audience studies. Particularly, it helps us understand

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Violence Against Women

pornographys distinctive role in providing sexual scripts that the respondents probably
would not have learned elsewhere, and it sheds light on the processes through which
those scripts are learned, desired, and enacted in intimate relationships. Given that the
subjects in the study were highly educated and had access to discourses of feminism
and gender equality, the finding is particularly sobering. More research on these issues,
especially research that can elucidate the processes of meaning-making that men and
women are bringing to bear on questions of sex, sexuality, and pornography, is needed.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Myra Kaye, Soyun Won, Min Xi Chua, and Areerat
Worawongwasu for their excellent research and editorial assistance.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

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Author Biographies
Chyng Sun is a clinical professor of media studies at NYU School of Professional Studies and
a documentary filmmaker.
Matthew B. Ezzell is associate professor of sociology at James Madison University. His
research and teaching interests focus on identity and inequality, media and culture, and interpersonal violence.
Olivia Kendall received her master of science in Clinical Psychology & Mental Health Services
from Goldsmiths College, University of London.

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