Australia imposes sanctions on Russian hacker over Medibank breach

Issued on: 23/01/2024 - 

01:41

Video by: Charlotte HUGHES

Australia on Tuesday imposed cyber sanctions on a Russian man for his role in the breach at insurer Medibank, one of the country's biggest data thefts which impacted about 10 million customers.

 Senegal hopes new fleet of electric buses ‘can solve tomorrow’s problems’

23/01/2024 - 

Video by: Sam BRADPIECE

01:48

Public transport in Senegal has been given an upgrade with a fleet of new all-electric buses - the first of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa. It is hoped that the buses will help the capital Dakar cope with a rapidly expanding population over the coming years.

Red Sea attacks latest threat to Yemen's decaying oil tanker

Riyadh (AFP) – Mounting maritime security threats off Yemen's coast have stalled work on scrapping a decrepit oil tanker, officials have told AFP, jeopardising a rare success story in the war-torn country.

Issued on: 23/01/2024 - 

The FSO Safer was holding more than a million barrels of oil as it lay decaying off Yemen's coast © MOHAMMED HUWAIS / AFP

The FSO Safer, a 48-year-old vessel with a corroding hull, was for years described as a "ticking time bomb", going unserviced as fighting raged in Yemen and fears grew that a leak or on-board explosion could release its 1.14 million barrels of crude into the Red Sea.

But last August, the United Nations announced the completion of a complex transfer of the oil to a new vessel, a crucial step in staving off an environmental and economic calamity.

The UN said at the time that completing the project would involve towing and scrapping the Safer, which still posed "a residual environmental threat, holding viscous oil residue and remaining at risk of breaking apart".

However, after delays over a $22 million funding shortfall and other challenges, security in the Red Sea has deteriorated dramatically, a knock-on effect of the conflict between Israel and Hamas triggered by the militant group's unprecedented attacks on southern Israel on October 7.

Iran-backed Huthi forces, which control the capital Sanaa and the waters where the Safer is located, began attacking Red Sea shipping in November, and the United States has carried out several rounds of strikes on Huthi targets this month along with two joint operations with Britain.

The situation has "resulted in unforeseen operational and financial challenges" for the Safer project, making it difficult to move forward, a spokesperson for the UN Development Programme told AFP.

"After much consideration, the UN had no option but to pause the project at this time and has informed the authorities accordingly," the spokesperson said.

"We continue to follow developments on the ground very carefully and closely."

Edrees al-Shami, the Sanaa-appointed executive general manager of SEPOC, the Yemeni oil and gas company, said there was a "big risk" of the ships being struck by a stray missile as Huthi-controlled areas come under attack.
Peace talks in peril

Completing the Safer project was always expected to be complicated because of Yemen's war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, either directly in the fighting or indirectly as a result of war-induced shortages.

It pits the Huthis, who took control of Sanaa in 2014, against a Saudi-led coalition supporting the internationally recognised government based in the southern city of Aden.

Though a six-month truce that took effect in April 2022 has largely held, analysts say the recent regional turmoil threatens efforts to secure a durable ceasefire.

The Huthis say their activities in the Red Sea are aimed at Israeli-linked vessels in support of Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel's withering retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed more than 25,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

The October 7 attacks resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The Huthis have also declared American and British interests to be legitimate targets.

The group "will use all cards at their disposal to tarnish this US-led coalition", said Bader al-Saif of Kuwait University.

A delay for the Safer project "fits into the anti-US propaganda (the Huthis) are good at assembling".

Who owns the oil?

Yemen's rival authorities in Sanaa and Aden are at odds over who owns the oil that was on the Safer as well as the new tanker that now holds it, the MT-Yemen.

The Huthis have previously said they want to sell the oil and use the revenue to cover their employees' salaries.

They have also called for the completion of onshore storage facilities that could potentially hold the crude.

Under the terms of the handover deal announced last summer, the MT-Yemen was to be managed by a UN-contracted firm for at least six months.

The UN says the crew is due to leave under the terms of its contract but that the MT-Yemen remains under the firm's management.

Shami raised the possibility that SEPOC "will have to take over management" of the vessel, a development sure to rile the government in Aden, which does not acknowledge Shami's authority and has named its own executive general manager of SEPOC.

Other steps yet to be completed include tethering an anchored buoy to the MT-Yemen, for stability and to aid the eventual offloading, and inspecting the underwater pipeline that stretched from Yemeni soil to the Safer and will later be connected to the MT-Yemen, Shami said.

All of these are "integral" to the project, he said.

"If the UN fails to support operating the vessel properly, MT-Yemen will be FSO Safer the sequel," he said.

© 2024 AFP

France fines Amazon €32 million over employee surveillance

France's data protection agency said Tuesday that it had fined Amazon's French warehouses unit 32 million euros ($34.9 million) for an "excessively intrusive" surveillance system to keep track of staff performance.


Issued on: 23/01/2024 - 


Amazon France Logistique monitored the work of employees in particular through data from scanners used by the staff to process packages, according to the agency, known by its initials CNIL.

Scanners alerted management of inactivity exceeding 10 minutes or the handling of packages and parcels "right up to the second", the CNIL said in a statement.

One surveillance method targeted by CNIL was the use of so-called "stow machine guns" to note if an article was scanned "too fast", or in less than 1.25 seconds.

It said workers were under constant pressure and had to regularly justify absences. Even the time between the employees' entry into the warehouse and the start of work was monitored.

The agency added that they were not adequately informed about the surveillance, with the data kept for 31 days.

The surveillance was deemed in contravention with the EU's general data protection regulation (GDPR), which imposes strict rules on companies for obtaining consent on how personal information is used.

The fine was equivalent to about three percent of the annual revenue at Amazon France Logistique, which reached 1.1 billion euros in 2021, for a net profit of 58.9 million euros.

Several thousand employees were affected by the systems, said the CNIL, which had opened its inquiry in 2019 following media articles and complaints by workers.

The watchdog said the fine was "nearly unprecedented" and not far from the CNIL's maximum four percent of revenue.
'Quality and efficiency'

An Amazon spokesman said the company rejected the findings as "factually incorrect and we reserve the right to appeal", adding that such systems were needed "to guarantee security, quality and efficiency".

The company employs around 20,000 people overall on permanent contracts in France, with the warehouse workers spread over eight massive distribution centres.

David Lewkowitz, president of Amazon France Logistique, told AFP during a visit at its warehouse near Douai in northern France this month that the management tools were necessary for the precise handling of the tens of thousands of packages that move through the centres each day.

The "stow machine guns", for example, aim to ensure that employees are properly checking items for damage or other problems before they are scanned for shipping "in a manner that conforms with safety rules, in particular by ensuring proper postures", Amazon said in its statement.

Measuring "idle time", meanwhile, was not to control a worker's every movement but to ensure that any supply chain anomaly is quickly investigated and rectified.

But Amazon said that in response to the CNIL's findings it would deactivate the ability of the "stow machine guns" to signal handling speeds, and extend the "idle time" warnings to 30 minutes from 10.

(AFP)

EU under pressure to defuse farmers' anger

Issued on: 23/01/2024 -

01:37
Video by: Liza KAMINOV

EU agriculture ministers will discuss on Tuesday how to resolve European farmers' growing discontent as Brussels scrambles to address the issue ahead of elections this year. Europe's farmers are in revolt. The fury has led to road blockages and tractor parades in the past few weeks, with farmers taking their protests to the street in France, Germany, Poland and Romania, after the Netherlands earlier.

India PM Modi marks 'end of constitutional democratic republic & start of Hindu majoritarian state'


Issued on: 23/01/2024 -

06:00

Tens of thousands of Hindus braved biting cold on Tuesday to pray at a new temple to Lord Ram in India's northern city of Ayodhya, a day after its inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a site believed to be the god-king's birthplace. Hindu groups, Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its affiliates have portrayed the opening as part of a Hindu renaissance after past centuries of subjugation by Muslim invaders and colonial powers. He was among more than 50,000 devotees who lined up before dawn on Tuesday to enter the temple, among some 200,000 who arrived in the city after the consecration, said a government official, Murli Dhar Singh. The site was bitterly contested for decades by Hindus and minority Muslims, sparking nationwide riots in 1992 that killed 2,000 people, mainly Muslims, police say, after a Hindu mob destroyed the 16th-century mosque there. As Hindu Ram temple precipitously opens to the public amid pomp and circumstance, FRANCE 24's Delano D'Souza is joined by Dr Subir Sinha, Author, Director of the SOAS South Asia Institute and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS London.

 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

Drone the size of a bread slice may allow Japan closer look inside damaged Fukushima nuclear plant

MARI YAMAGUCHI
Tue, January 23, 2024



This photo shows a robot designed to probe at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, while in demonstration in Naraha town, northeast of Japan, Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant demonstrated mini drones at a nearby research facility Tuesday ahead of their first flight for an investigation inside of one of the damaged reactors, as they seek to gather more data about hundreds of tons of melted fuel that remain inside of them. 

(Daisuke Kojima/Kyodo News via AP)

NARAHA, Japan (AP) — A drone almost the size of a slice of bread is Japan’s newest hope to get clearer footage of one of the reactors inside the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant where hundreds of tons of damaged fuel remain almost 13 years after the disaster.

A magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami in March 2011 destroyed the plant's power supply and cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt down. Massive amounts of fatally radioactive melted nuclear fuel remain inside to this day.

The plant’s operating company, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, unveiled Tuesday small drones they want to use to gather more data from parts of one of the reactors previously inaccessible.

TEPCO has previously tried sending robots inside each of the three reactors but got hindered by debris, high radiation and inability to navigate them through the rubble, though they were able to gather some data in recent years.

During Tuesday’s demonstration at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s mockup facility in Naraha, a drone weighing only 185 grams (6.5 ounces) circled around, showcasing its maneuvering ability, carefully avoiding obstacles and mock-up remains that included an abandoned robot from a 2015 internal probe. It also continuously sent a black-and-white live feed using its installed camera to an operation room.

Shoichi Shinzawa, the probe project manager, said the demonstration was the result of the training that started in July. He also said four drones were ready to be sent inside the No. 1 reactor for five-minute intervals, partly due to short battery life.

He said utility officials hope to use the new data to develop technology and robots for future probes as well as for the plan to remove the melted fuel from the reactor. He added that the data will be used in the investigation of how exactly the 2011 meltdown occurred.

In February, the company intends to send the drones inside the primary containment vessel of the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Two drones will first inspect the area around the exterior of the main structural support in the vessel, called the pedestal, before deciding if they can dispatch the other two inside, the area previous probes could not reach.

The pedestal is directly under the reactor’s core. Officials are hopeful to be able to check out and film the core's bottom to find out how overheated fuel dripped there in 2011.

About 900 tons of highly radioactive melted nuclear fuel remain inside the three damaged reactors. Critics say the 30-40-year cleanup target set by the government and TEPCO for Fukushima Daiichi is overly optimistic. The damage in each reactor is different and plans need to be formed to accommodate their conditions.

TEPCO said it will do a test trial to remove a small amount of melted debris in the No. 2 reactor possibly by the end of March after a nearly two-year delay.

Spent fuel removal from Unit 1 reactor’s cooling pool is set to start in 2027, after a 10-year delay. Once all the spent fuel is removed, melted debris will be taken out in 2031.

Japan began releasing the plant's treated and diluted radioactive wastewater into the sea and will continue to do so for decades. The wastewater discharges have been strongly opposed by fishing groups and neighboring countries including China and South Korea.

Japan's Tepco tests drones for wrecked nuclear plant in decommissioning first

Reuters
Tue, January 23, 2024 

TEPCO conducts media tour after Fukushima nuclear power plant treated radioactive water release began

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese nuclear power plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company wrapped up testing on Tuesday of the first drones to be deployed to the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi plant in its decades-long decommissioning process.

A snake-shaped robot and four drones are set to be dispatched in February to survey the damage at Fukushima Daiichi's Unit 1 reactor, almost 13 years after its core melted down and triggered a hydrogen blast in one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.

Although robots have surveyed the submerged interior of the Unit 1 reactor's containment vessel, this would be the first time a drone would enter the vessel to provide a fuller picture of the damage above water, according to Tepco.

Tepco hopes the images from the drone will help assess how the melted fuel debris could be removed.

"We will make sure to conduct this investigation with a safety-first mindset, checking the procedures and instructions one by one and ensuring safety at all times," a Tepco spokesperson said.

The nuclear reactor in Unit 1 was the first to start melting down after a massive tsunami struck the east coast of Japan in March 2011.

It is believed to be the most severely damaged out of the four reactors that were operating that day, and Tepco is still in the process of trying to understand the extent of the damage and how to remove the molten fuel - a process that experts say will take decades.

(Reporting by Sakura Murakami and Tom Bateman; Editing by Kim Coghill)

U.S. raids Chinese auto parts maker in Ohio

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas looks on during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing titled "Worldwide Threats to the Homeland" at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on Wednesday, November 15, 2023. DHS agents raided an Ohio-based auto parts manufacturer recently. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. Department of Homeland Security officers have searched a Chinese auto parts maker that a congressional committee has accused of trade fraud.

DHS officers executed the search warrant at Harco Manufacturing Group in Moraine, Ohio, on Thursday, according to the Dayton Daily News. Harco is a subsidiary of Sunsong, the Chinese parts manufacturer. Sunsong acquired Harco in 2015. The address for Harco is the same address Sunsong North America lists on its website.

There is growing concern among U.S. lawmakers that some Chinese companies are evading U.S. tariffs, the news portals Axios and Bloomberg have reported.

The search was "part of an ongoing federal investigation," a DHS spokesperson told Dayton Daily News.

In September, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party in September wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas accusing Qingdao Sunsong of moving some of its production to Thailand to evade U.S. tariffs.

The letter identified Qingdao Sunsong's public filings, which say the company's products are subject to U.S. import tariffs of 25% imposed on certain goods made in China and that "in order to reduce tariff costs, the issuer has accelerated production in Thailand.

In the letter to Mayorkas, Republican congressmen Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Darin LaHood of Illinois called Sunsong's actions a "case of blatant trade fraud that is having a catastrophic impact on American manufacturers."

"The use of transshipment to evade United States tariffs is a serious violation of U.S. law and undermines American economic and national security," the lawmakers wrote.

The Biden administration has kept many of the tariffs that the Trump administration imposed on China beginning in 2018.

China has not met its commitment laid out in a 2020 trade deal with the U.S., which required the country to increase its purchases of U.S. goods and services.

New psychology research sheds light on the mystery of music enjoyment

by Eric W. Dolan
January 23, 2024
in Cognitive Science

(Photo credit: OpenAI's DALL·E)


In a new study, scientists unveiled new insights into how our brains process and enjoy music by distinguishing between the sensory and cognitive elements of musical experience. They found that both sensory perceptions, like the actual sound of music, and cognitive factors, such as our understanding and familiarity with musical styles, independently contribute to our expectations and enjoyment of music. The research has been published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Music has been a part of human culture since prehistoric times, and most people find music deeply rewarding. Studies have shown that our pleasure in music often stems from the way it meets, violates, or delays our expectations. These expectations are believed to arise from two sources: sensory expectations, based on the actual sounds we hear, and cognitive expectations, which come from our learned understanding of music patterns. Until now, however, the distinct roles and interactions of these sensory and cognitive elements in shaping our musical experiences were not fully clear.

“Music is fascinating to me because it can evoke strong emotions with just patterns of sounds. Intuitively, we seem to like music that is somewhat predictable, but not overly so. I want to find out how people come to form these musical expectations and their role in shaping how much we like a song,” explained Vincent K. M. Cheung of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, who conducted the research as a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

The study draws upon the predictive coding of music (PCM) model, a concept suggesting that musical expectations and subsequent surprises – whether fulfilling or violating these expectations – are a source of pleasure. The PCM model proposes that the brain creates musical expectations, and any deviation from these expectations results in a surprise element. This surprise is a key factor in the pleasure we derive from music.

At the heart of this study are chord progressions from commercially successful pop songs. These progressions, which form the backbone of many musical pieces, were extracted from the McGill Billboard dataset. This dataset is a rich repository containing over 80,000 chords from 745 pop songs that hit the U.S. Billboard ‘Hot 100′ chart between 1958 and 1991. The chosen chord progressions, each consisting of 30 to 38 chords, were transposed to the key of C major and played using a combination of marimba, jazz guitar, and acoustic guitar timbres.

The research consisted of two separate experiments.

Experiment 1 focused on two distinct groups: musicians and non-musicians. The study involved 25 healthy adults, including 13 musicians and 12 non-musicians. Participants were presented with the selected chord progressions and asked to rate their surprise at each chord using a mechanical slider. This continuous rating system provided nuanced data on how each chord compared to the listeners’ expectations. The researchers aimed to capture the instant reaction to each chord, gauging how predictable or surprising the chord was based on the listeners’ musical experience.

The second experiment expanded the participant pool to 39 healthy adults, with no specific requirements for musical training. Participants underwent a similar procedure as in Experiment 1, but this time, they rated how pleasant each chord was, again using a mechanical slider. This setup aimed to explore the emotional response to music, particularly how expectancy and surprise translate into feelings of pleasure or displeasure.

In both experiments, the research team controlled for various factors, such as the duration of each chord and the presence of background rhythms, to ensure that the focus remained solely on the harmony and structure of the music.

The researchers used four computational models to simulate and predict the participants’ responses. These models were designed to represent different aspects of musical expectancy: two focused on sensory elements, one on a mix of sensory and cognitive elements, and one solely on cognitive aspects.

The models included the Spectral Distance (SD) model, the Periodicity Pitch (PP) model, the Tonal Expectation (TE) model, and the Information Dynamics of Music (IDyOM) model. These models calculated expectancy in terms of spectral similarity, neural encoding in the auditory system, a mix of sensory and cognitive processing, and internal cognitive representations of musical styles, respectively.

In the first experiment, both the IDyOM and PP models were effective in predicting the surprise ratings of the participants, with IDyOM being particularly more effective, especially among musicians. This suggests that our brains use both the actual sounds and our learned knowledge of music to form expectations. Interestingly, the IDyOM model, which focuses on cognitive aspects, accounted for more variance in the surprise ratings than the PP model, indicating a stronger role for cognitive factors in shaping musical expectations.

In simpler terms, both sensory and cognitive aspects were important in predicting how surprised the participants were by the chords. However, the cognitive aspect (like familiarity with music styles) seemed to play a bigger role, especially for musicians.

In the second experiment, focusing on pleasantness ratings, the results were equally revealing. Here, the researchers found that both sensory and cognitive expectations, as modeled by PP and IDyOM, independently predicted how pleasant the participants found the chords. This suggests that the sensory aspects of music (such as its rhythm and melody) and our cognitive understanding of music (like recognizing a familiar tune or style) both play distinct roles in how much we enjoy music.

In other words, when it came to how pleasant the participants found the music, sensory and cognitive factors were independently important. This means that what we actually hear and what we understand or know about music both contribute to how much we enjoy it.

“Our finding that cognitive and sensory surprise contributed additively was quite unexpected,” Cheung told PsyPost. “Basically, it suggests that there are two separate systems in the brain—one higher level, and another lower level—that monitor music structure and generate subsequent predictions. It is reminiscent of the two systems of thought popularized by Daniel Kahneman (author of ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’), where System 1 is fast and intuitive, and System 2 is slow and logical.”

In short, this study tells us that our enjoyment and surprise from music come not just from the music itself, but also from how it interacts with our knowledge and expectations of music.

“People derive pleasure from music by the confirmation and violations of predictions,” Cheung said. “These predictions are mostly learnt through extended exposure to music from a particular genre, but are also influenced by the way sounds are processed in the brain. So it really is shaped by both nature and nurture.”

However, the study is not without limitations. One of the main constraints is that the computational models used may not fully capture the complexity of how humans process music. Moreover, the study primarily used chord progressions from Western pop music, raising questions about whether these findings would apply to other musical styles or cultural contexts.

“Our focus was on music that participants had never heard before,” Cheung added. “Although the chord progressions were taken from real pop songs, none of the participants could identify the original song. An important question that remains to be addressed is why people still enjoy songs that they are familiar with, despite them being completely predictable.”

The study, “Cognitive and sensory expectations independently shape musical expectancy and pleasure“, was authored by Vincent K. M. Cheung, Peter M. C. Harrison, Stefan Koelsch, Marcus T. Pearce, Angela D. Friederici, and Lars Meyer.

MONEY SHOT

New study challenges common perceptions of pornography viewer preferences

by Eric W. Dolan
January 22, 2024
in Relationships and Sexual Health


(Photo credit: Adobe Stock)

Viewer preferences for male ejaculation in pornographic videos appear to be more varied and complex than previously assumed, according to new research published in the scientific journal Sexes. Contrary to popular belief, the study found that a significant number of viewers, particularly women, prefer male ejaculation inside the female partner’s vagina, with less interest in other forms, such as on the face or mouth.

Some feminist scholars have argued that certain depictions of male ejaculation, particularly those involving ejaculation on a woman’s face or in her mouth, are symbolic of misogyny and sexual domination. However, until now, little was known about the actual preferences of pornography viewers regarding these portrayals. This lack of understanding prompted researchers to investigate what viewers, both male and female, genuinely prefer and perceive regarding male ejaculation in pornographic videos.

“I have been teaching a class on the sociology of deviance for the last 10 years at McGill University, and as part of it, have looked into pornography,” explained study author Eran Shor, the co-author of “Aggression in Pornography: Myths and Realities.”

“While doing that, I found that there are many misconceptions about pornography in both the academic literature and in public discourse. Some of these misconceptions have to do with the content of mainstream pornography and others with what viewers want to see and how they interpret the content of pornographic videos.”

The research team used a mix of voluntary and purposive sampling techniques to recruit a diverse group of participants. The study’s participants, who were drawn from 55 different countries and included a near-equal number of men and women, as well as non-binary individuals, were primarily recruited through online platforms such as Craigslist, Kijiji, and Facebook groups. Participants were required to be over 18 and regular viewers of online pornography.

The interviews, conducted in either French or English, were carried out by two skilled graduate research assistants via Skype audio calls, ensuring the anonymity of both parties to encourage openness and reduce social desirability bias. The conversations, which ranged from 30 to 120 minutes, were recorded and transcribed for detailed analysis. The researchers focused on two primary questions: the importance of seeing male orgasm in pornography and the preferred placement of male ejaculation.

A significant portion of the interviewees (about half) expressed indifference to the depiction of male ejaculation. This sentiment was notably higher among heterosexual men, with a substantial number stating that they often stopped watching before the male orgasm occurred.

Contrary to the common depictions in mainstream pornography, the most popular specific preference (37.8% of all interviewees) was for ejaculations to occur inside the female partner’s vagina. This preference was particularly strong among women, with nearly half of the female participants expressing this view.

A segment of the participants did express a preference for visible ejaculations on various body parts. However, only about 17% of all interviewees preferred ejaculation on a woman’s face or in her mouth, far less than what might be expected based on the content of popular pornographic videos.

“One thing that I found interesting is that there were relatively minor differences between the preferences of male and female viewers of pornography related to male ejaculations,” Shor told PsyPost. “The literature leads one to expect a much more substantial difference here.”

Interestingly, less than 10% of the interviewees, including a slightly higher percentage of heterosexual women than men, preferred to see male ejaculation on the female performer’s face. Moreover, this practice often elicited strong negative reactions from participants, who described it as unappealing or even repulsive.

“In contrast to common assumptions, most viewers either did not care about the male ejaculation or its placement, or preferred for it to be in the female partner’s vagina,” Shor said. “Very few viewers expressed a preference for ejaculation on a woman’s face or in her mouth and many of them found such practices disturbing.”

A related study, published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2022, found that both men and women viewed images of external ejaculation more positively when accompanied by facial expressions indicating pleasure from the recipient. This suggests that the enjoyment of viewing external ejaculations is not about degradation but rather is influenced by perceived mutual pleasure, challenging some common assumptions about its appeal and significance.

Similarly, the findings from the new study “are not in line with the assumptions of many feminist scholars,” Shor told PsyPost. “These assumptions suggest that male ejaculations in pornographic videos, particularly ejaculations on a sexual partner’s face or in their mouth, are often used to symbolically debase and humiliate women and that they are therefore prefered by many male viewers (leading producers to include them in videos).”

The new study also uncovered interesting variations in preferences across different cultures and genders.

“The preference for ejaculations inside a female performer’s vagina was especially salient among South Asian and African interviewees, perhaps because these cultures ascribe great importance to the male semen and the common belief that spilling semen in vain weakens men,” Shor explained. “Visible ejaculations (ejaculations on the female performer’s face or body) were especially popular among Middle Eastern interviewees. One possible explanation for this is that Middle Eastern cultures ascribe great importance to the male orgasm and viewers wanted visible proof that it occurred.”

While the study provides valuable insights, it is not without limitations. Despite efforts to mitigate it, the results might be influenced by social desirability biases. In other words, participants might have responded in a way they believed to be more socially acceptable or favorable, rather than providing their genuine preferences and thoughts. This is a common challenge in research involving personal and potentially sensitive topics like pornography viewing habits.


The study was titled: ““As Long as It’s Not on the Face”: Pornography Viewers Discuss Male Ejaculation Perceptions and Preferences“.