Men as ambiguous as ever about porn

The British male's ambiguous attitude to pornography was perfectly reflected in the most recent snap survey on the MHF's health information website malehealth. Perhaps surprisingly, younger men seemed less, for want of a better word, 'liberal' on porn than older men.

Although a slim majority of respondents - 98% of whom were male - thought it was 'generally healthy' (56%), a significant minority of more than one person in three (34%) disagreed. Many people also thought it damaged relationships between men and and women and exploited women.

Men were divided over the question of exploitation - 47% thought it exploited women while 45% thought it didn't. The rest didn't know. Some 39% also thought pornography exploited men.

On relationships, 44% thought porn could damage relationships between men and women - 42% disagreed.

The real confusion came over crime. While 34% thought porn made sex crime more likely and 25% thought it did not, the majority (41%) said they did not know.

In general, younger men - under 35 - were more likely to think that porn damaged relationships and made crime more likely.

Of course, the issue is not something that can easily be boiled down to a couple of yes/no answers and this complexity was reflected in readers' comments. For example, is the magazine pictured above porn? And, regardles sof what you call it, is it dangerous?

Vist malehealth for more readers' comments and all the site's recent coverage of porn, porn addiction and whether its use can ever be healthy.