A report in France has found that around 90% of pornographic content features verbal, physical and sexual violence, in the latest study revealing the damaging effects of pornography.

Having reviewed millions of videos on the largest international porn sites, the report’s conclusion was that “women, caricatured with the worst sexist and racist stereotypes, are humiliated, objectified, dehumanised, assaulted, tortured, subjected to treatment that is contrary both to human dignity and French law”.

Much of the content is of material so extreme that it could be prosecuted under French law. Some content was deemed to contain ‘torture’, whilst other content featured victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

The report went on: “The women are real, the sexual acts and the violence is real, the suffering is often perfectly visible and at the same time eroticised.”

The report is alarming given the large percentage of men who copy what they seen in pornographic material. Recent research revealed that 49% of men have tried to copy behaviour which they have seen in pornographic content, and 36% of men said that pornography was their primary way of learning about sex.

The head of the French equality watchdog, Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette responded by calling pornography “a school for sexual violence”, with it estimated the majority of 12-year-old boys in France watch pornography every single month.