Prolific levels of “overt” violence depicted in “mainstream” pornography is fuelling instances of physical and sexual aggression towards women and girls, a newly published Irish report has suggested.

The report, titled ‘Facing Reality: Addressing the Role of Pornography in the Pandemic of Violence against Women and Girls’, posits that the majority of freely available pornography on the internet “constitutes sexual violence”, and that, in turn, this violence is shaping the attitudes and behaviours of those who consume pornography.

The report was prepared by the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy (SERP) Institute, commissioned by Women’s Aid and funded by Community Foundation Ireland.

Depictions of violence in pornography “actively distort and break the boundary between ‘sex’ and ‘sexual violence’”, the report says, and impact negatively on adults and young people – leading directly to sexual violence, unhealthy relationships, hostile misogyny and a compounding of gender inequality.

“There is a significant body of research evidence demonstrating the relationship between consumption of pornography, in particular regular consumption, and the perpetration of violence against women and girls,” the report notes.