No. That rapist seek out porn doesn’t contradict the findings of the study. At question is if there are people who would be rapists, but due to the avalibility of porn, don’t commit any rapes. What people who do commit rapes do vis-a-vis porn doesn’t really make a difference. After all, it’s pretty obvious easily available porn doesn’t prevent all rapes.
But that’s just a parody of what the study cited by the OP says. It doesn’t just make a hand-waving argument that since the internet showed up, rapes have gone down. It says that in otherwise analogous populations, those with earlier or more internet adoption have had earlier or more intense decreases in incidence of rape. If you could show that such a correlation also existed for autism or homicide, then that to would in fact suggest that internet use is linked with those things.
While I’m not certain it can lead certain men to rape who wouldn’t otherwise (assuming we’re not talking about child pornography), I think there’s a pretty good argument for overexposure to porn being detrimental to both men and women’s sex lives.
I’d also be curious to know whether being exposed to violence and violent porn might cause teens and adults to define rape differently (i.e. as ‘rough sex’ even if someone said ‘No,’ as ‘Not really rape’ if there was no physical violence, etc.).
(And the idea that rape is only about sex or only about power is worth debating, but, I think, ultimately un-solvable. Especially when wartime rape and cases like this enter the equation.)
That’s a claim based purely on ideology, with nothing to back it up.
For that matter, it denies human nature; men want sex with women; some men are ruthless enough to take what they want by force; therefore some men will rape women. Are you actually claiming this never happens ? That no matter how ruthless a man is, he’ll never rape unless he has a power issue with women ?
Oh, let’s have more fun. Autism rates among the Amish, who do not have the internet or TV? 1 in 15,000. In the rest of America? Roughly 1 in 200. You can find all sorts of correlations that mean nothing at all. To jump from correlation to causation leads to all sorts of silly conclusions. These are not controlled studies and there is no reason to believe that early adoptng communities are analogous in all other ways to those that are later adopters.
I don’t know where I fall in this. I can certainly believe that the premise in the OP is true, that porn can be an outlet and reduce desire in some men.
But I have a hard time believing that violent porn images don’t also have a negative effect. If images don’t nudge behavior then there are a lot of companies wasting $billions on advertising.
I kind of lean towards the two effects canceling each other out.
I’m not quite sure what point you think that article makes.
Per your link:
It may be that rapists experience no more erection arousal from scenes of coreced sex than do other males - both groups experiencing less erectile responsiveness to “aggressive porn” than to portrayals of consensual sex, in at least some studies.
So? If anything that supports the contention that rape is not about sexual arousal/satisfaction but about power, as rapists are, if anything, not especially sexually aroused by scenes of coerced sex. If it was about sex then consensual sex - perhaps even by way of payment, would be preferred as an outlet over the riskier coercive approach.
And per your cite, rape numbers need to be interpreted with great caution - internationally there has been no clear pattern of increase or decrease compared to violent crime in general during the internet era and many confounding factors come into play that makes use of these statistics very tricky indeed. The article makes a good case that the statistics in aggregate do not support the hypothesis that pornography in general increases rape in a significant manner.
The same data set showing no significant believable significant increase or decrease across countries through times of variable porn accessibility also supports the hypothesis that pornogrphy does not reduce rape in any significant way. Which is the proposition of the thread.
All that can be said is that any possible effect in either direction is small enough as to be swamped by the potential changes in reporting, definition, and other cultural changes. Neither hypothesis is supported or denied completely.
Depends on what you mean by rape.
Most rape in the US is date rape. That can run the gamut from “I misunderstood what she wanted” to drunken Yah Dude douchebag/ stereotypical frat boy shit.
I do know that the biggest reason why date rape is so hard to really reduce is b/c the guy very often thinks " Oh I’m not a rapist"
I don’t condone date rape…but I mean we do live in a society that tends to pussyfoot around about interactions in intiminate relationships.
With that sort of stuff, it’s easy to understand how date rape can and does happen.
With “classic” rape it’s not about sexual frustration, at ALL. Anyone remember the Glen Ridge gang rape on a retarded girl? (for those of us who are closet Lifetime movie addicts this was Outrage in Glen Ridge) These were Yah Dudes who could have ANY girl they wanted. In fact, they were rather active sexually.
Yet they raped a retarded girl for absolutly no reason at all.
I know of another case where a married jr high gym teacher raped/seduced two girls despite being “happily married”
Classic rape has nothing to do with sexual frustration. …It’s mostly sociopathicly fucked up behavoir.
I have heard a thousand times that rape is not about sex. I am not sure i accept that. It is first about sex. Power and strength are the tools and humiliation is the byproduct. Rape has to be forced and it requires power and subjugation. But I don’t think it is done to conquer.
As I said before; are you going to claim that ruthless men who have no particular power issues with women are going to refrain from rape ? For no particular reason ?
Rape is non-consensual sexual activity…I suppose that if you did yourself when intoxicated or mentally incompetent that you could argue that you were not capable of consensual sex (even with yourself).
Now, I’m not going to argue that violent media (sexual or otherwise) is going to CAUSE less rapes (or ice pick shankings or whatever else), but you can’t honestly look at that graph and tell me it’s CAUSING more problems.
This study from the university of Adelaide also points towards the fact that while it is true violent media (though this specifically deals with the “shoot people in the face” type of violence) increases feelings of aggression, it also appears that it also increases anger management and that the most frequent players of the more violent material actually viewed the game as more violent (meaning, I would guess, they realized in more depth how bad actually doing that would be).