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The idea that pornography leads to negative attitudes toward women is pervasive, helping shape obscenity laws, fuelling censorship attempts and even spawning a recent Hollywood movie.

But the notion may have little actual foundation in fact, suggests a contentious new Canadian study that concludes the average porn user holds, if anything, more egalitarian views regarding women than non-users.

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Many pornography aficionados might even be “useful allies” in women’s struggles for equality in work, income and public office, the researchers at London’s Western University argue in a paper that is already generating fierce criticism.

At the very least, they say, the study calls into serious question the view that pornography is so damaging that, in one activist’s words, it’s “what the end of the world looks like.”

What the end of the world looks like

“I’d rather not live in a culture where our government, lawmakers decide to regulate, outlaw behaviour or material because they assume it’s harmful,” said Taylor Kohut, the post-doctoral fellow in psychology who led the study, about its value. “I’d rather they demonstrate it is, first.”