When people raise concerns about pornography, they most often are focused on whether pornography increases violence toward women and/or whether it degrades women. While a substantial amount of cross-cultural data suggests that there is no direct link between adult consumption and violence, the question of whether pornography is inherently degrading to women lacks clear answers. As does the question of whether behaviors in pornography that are commonly labeled as degrading are perceived that way when they take place outside pornography. To answer this question about the inherent nature of degradation, we need a better definition and understanding of what particular behaviors people consider to be degrading and whether their perception of what is degrading is influenced by the circumstance or the people involved in a non-pornography setting. To examine this, 496 individuals (247 females, 249 males) were asked to indicate their perceptions of various sexual behaviors when engaged in by males and females toward male and female partners. Results suggest that while some particular sexual behaviors are broadly viewed as degrading (e.g., watersports), perceptions of degradation for other behaviors seem to be influenced by who is doing what to whom. In this sense, the perception of degradation exists in the eye of beholder and is often not defined by the particular sexual act. Future studies of degradation should take into account the context as well as the players involved.

当人们提出对色情的担忧时，他们最常关注的是色情是否会增加对女性的暴力和/或它是否贬低了女性。虽然大量跨文化数据表明成人消费与暴力之间没有直接联系，但色情制品是否本质上是对女性的侮辱，这个问题缺乏明确的答案。色情作品中通常被贴上有辱人格标签的行为，当它们发生在色情作品之外时，是否会以这种方式看待这个问题也是如此。要回答这个关于堕落的内在本质的问题，我们需要更好地定义和理解人们认为哪些特定行为是有辱人格的，以及他们对什么是有辱人格的看法是否受到环境或参与非色情环境的人的影响。为了检查这一点，496 人（247 名女性，249 名男性）被要求表明他们对男性和女性对男性和女性伴侣进行的各种性行为的看法。结果表明，虽然某些特定的性行为被广泛认为是有辱人格的（例如，水上运动），但对其他行为的堕落的看法似乎受到谁对谁做什么的影响。从这个意义上说，对堕落的感知存在于旁观者的眼中，往往不是由特定的性行为来定义的。未来的退化研究应考虑背景以及所涉及的参与者。