Enjoyment, Exploration and Education: Understanding the Consumption of Pornography among Young Men with Non-Exclusive Sexual Orientations

This qualitative research examines the influence of pornography consumption on young men with non-exclusive sexual orientations. Drawing on 35 in-depth interviews with young men from an elite university in the north-eastern United States, we examine how pornography was experienced as a leisure activity to be consumed in free time. Rather than focusing on the potential harms of pornography, we use an inductive analytic approach to explore the broader range of experiences that participants had, since the time they first consumed pornography. We demonstrate that pornography had educational benefits for these young men, related to their sexual desires, emerging sexual identities and for developing new sexual techniques. This study is part of a growing body of research that seeks to develop a holistic understanding of pornography in society, addressing the absence of the lived experience of the consumer in most pornography research

Sexual Priming, Gender Stereotyping, and Likelihood to Sexually Harass: Examining the Cognitive Effects of Playing a Sexually-Explicit Video Game

The present study examines the short-term cognitive effects of playing a sexually explicit video game with female “objectification” content on male players. Seventy-four male students from a university in California, U.S. participated in a laboratory experiment. They were randomly assigned to play either a sexually-explicit game or one of two control games. Participants’ cognitive accessibility to sexual and sexually objectifying thoughts was measured in a lexical decision task. A likelihood-to-sexually-harass scale was also administered. Results show that playing a video game with the theme of female “objectification” may prime thoughts related to sex, encourage men to view women as sex objects, and lead to self-reported tendencies to behave inappropriately towards women in social situations

KIMA: Noise: A visual sound installation on urban noise

KIMA: Noise is a participatory art piece inviting audiences to explore impact of urban noises interactively. Using specific urban sound sources, the audience experiences noise as spatial soundscapes, responding to it, physically engaging and interacting with it. KIMA: Noise creates awareness for the phenomenon of noise pollution. The paper looks at preeminent research in the field, and draws conclusions of how sound affects us as individuals. The art project KIMA: Noise is introduced technically and conceptually

“Shake It Baby, Shake It”: Media Preferences, Sexual Attitudes and Gender Stereotypes Among Adolescents

In this study exposure to and preferences for three important youth media (TV, music styles/music TV, internet) were examined in relation to adolescents’ permissive sexual attitudes and gender stereotypes (i.e., views of men as sex-driven and tough, and of women as sex objects). Multivariate structural analysis of data from a school-based sample of 480 13 to 16-year-old Dutch students revealed that preferences, rather than exposure were associated with attitudes and stereotypes. For both girls and boys, preferences for hip-hop and hard-house music were associated positively with gender stereotypes and preference for classical music was negatively associated with gender stereotypes. Particularly for boys, using internet to find explicit sexual content emerged as a powerful indicator of all attitudes and stereotypes

One hundred SMUDGes in S-PLUS: ultra-diffuse galaxies flourish in the field

We present the first systematic study of the stellar populations of ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) in the field, integrating the large area search and characterization of UDGs by the SMUDGes survey with the twelve-band optical photometry of the S-PLUS survey. Based on Bayesian modeling of the optical colors of UDGs, we determine the ages, metallicities and stellar masses of 100 UDGs distributed in an area of $\sim 330$ deg$^2$ in the Stripe 82 region. We find that the stellar masses and metallicities of field UDGs are similar to those observed in clusters and follow the trends previously defined in studies of dwarf and giant galaxies. However, field UDGs have younger luminosity-weighted ages than do UDGs in clusters. We interpret this result to mean that field UDGs have more extended star formation histories, including some that continue to form stars at low levels to the present time. Finally, we examine stellar population scaling relations that show that UDGs are, as a population, similar to other low-surface brightness galaxies.Instituto de Astrofísica de La PlataFacultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísica