Study shows that the "damaged goods" theory regarding porn-actresses seems to be false

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Study shows that the “damaged goods” theory regarding porn-actresses seems to be false

Some people frequently make the initial knee-jerk assumption that women who are in porn are “damaged goods”, or that they must have had some sort of strong emotional trauma to be in such an unladylike business. But as it turns out, that’s just not the case. It certainly exists in the adult industry, sure, but shocker… some women just really like to have sex and they like to get paid to be filmed doing it and that’s that.

The abstract from the paper, written by researchers at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania:

The damaged goods hypothesis posits that female performers in the adult entertainment industry have higher rates of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), psychological problems, and drug use compared to the typical woman. The present study compared the self-reports of 177 porn actresses to a sample of women matched on age, ethnicity, and marital status. Comparisons were conducted on sexual behaviors and attitudes, self-esteem, quality of life, and drug use. Porn actresses were more likely to identify as bisexual, first had sex at an earlier age, had more sexual partners, were more concerned about contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD), and enjoyed sex more than the matched sample, although there were no differences in incidence of CSA. In terms of psychological characteristics, porn actresses had higher levels of self-esteem, positive feelings, social support, sexual satisfaction, and spirituality compared to the matched group. Last, female performers were more likely to have ever used 10 different types of drugs compared to the comparison group. A discriminant function analysis was able to correctly classify 83% of the participants concerning whether they were a porn actress or member of the matched sample. These findings did not provide support for the damaged goods hypothesis.