Continuing its series on explicit material in today’s society, the YWCA tackled “Race and Pornography” during its Wednesday meeting.

Fifteen people attended the discussion.

Pamela Thomas, director of the Margaret Sloss Women’s Center, and Vikki Carnine-Irwin, graduate assistant for the center, were the facilitators of the informal discussion.

Thomas said one of the points she was trying to get across during the discussion is that pornography “perpetuates the stereotypes of women of different ethnicities.”

Thomas said in pornography, women of color are depicted as exotic, but “not exotic in a positive sense.”

“For the most part, women of African decent are depicted as being wild, more closely associated with animalistic desires and wanting sex,” she said. “And Asian women are for the most part depicted as submissive, again the ‘geisha girl’ image, and then Latina women as exotic and the ‘hot tamale’ stereotype.”

Carnine-Irwin said there has not been much research on race and pornography.

“I came across only one article that mentioned a relationship between race and pornography,” she said. “Specifically, as far as race goes, there just isn’t much out there. I was very surprised that there hasn’t been more research done on this area.”

The discussion also centered around the treatment of women in pornography.

Carnine-Irwin said in general, most pornography depicts all women in stereotypes. The images of violence against women in pornography also promotes a negative image, she said.

“You can never make a statement that pornography causes rape, but you can say that pornography is one of many factors in our environment that influences rape,” she said. “I think that both men and women are adversely affected by pornography.”

Robert K. Perkins, graduate student in sociology, said men have trouble separating the fantasy images of women from real women.

“I think for most men, they do not make the link,” Perkins said.

However, Carnine-Irwin said pornography is a complex issue.

“There has been a lot of discussion on how we define pornography,” she said. “I don’t want people leaving this room thinking that when we are talking about pornography, we’re talking about sex.”