I’m arguing with a beloved porn publisher about the subject of rape-fantasy porn. I’m not a bit opposed to porn itself, but rape-fantasy porn scares me, and not just viscerally. He claims that “there is absolutely no evidence that pornography of any kind leads to an increase in sex crimes.” I suspect that this is like saying that there’s no evidence that The Turner Diaries lead to an increase in bombings or that fringe religious materials lead to an increase in clinic shootings.
Let me emphasize that I am not calling for censorship or suggesting a simple cause-and-effect relationship here. Nor am I looking for anything about how porn is sinful or whatever. I’m just wondering if my friend’s assertion is well founded.
Assuming, of course, that those two replies were neither one useful. It is very possible that nobody has ever found statistically significant evidence of a connection. This does not imply that there is or is not a connection, just that there’s no evidence for it. This is essentially what peace said, although not in so many words.
If there was any such evidence, it would have been used to attack the porn industry by now.
I think the best data you could reasonably hope to find is strong correlational data, such as a correlation between purchasing/watching porn and committing sex crimes, for example. But since correlation does not equal causation, even that kind of data is not going to answer the question very satisfactorily.
And hey, peace’s and Asmodean’s answers may not be “useful”, but at least they replied.
Okay, to be fair, Asmo actually addressed the issue, but I can’t parse out his/her statements, so it’s a tough call. And yes or no assertions are not only less that I was looking for, but contrary to the spirit of Cecil. Imagine if he brushed questions off with yes or no!
Porn causes rape about as much as Heavy Metal music causes teen suicide. There is no correlation. Porn and rape are 2 interests the sexual deviant has, just like some teens are into Judas Priest and suicide. I do not see one causing the other.
What are sex crimes? Sodomy? Bestiality? Most psychologists consider rape “a violent” crime, not a “sex” crime. Rape is usually commited in order to “establish” oneself, to proove own “superiority”, not for sexual gratification per se.
After the Johnson/Nixon-era presidential commission was not able to produce any documentation of a link, the idea was resurrected under Reagan. His presidential commission came back with the “porn is bad” line that they had been sent out to find.
The three members of the commission who were actual social scientists and who had not known what they were supposed to find before the commission started, wrote a minority report pointing out that the commisssion had ignored all the evidence in favor of emotional pleadings at their hearings.
The social scientists said that, despite the majority’s conclusions, there was no evidence for a link between pornogragphy/erotica and sexual crimes…
except that there was a certain amount of correlation between people who read violent porn and people who committed crimes of sexual imposition of one sort or another.
Unfortunately, it has been 14 years or so since that report was released. I don’t know whether the correlation was since shown to have causality or not (or whether the correlation has been shown to be false). I also do not know what was defined as “violent” and what was labelled as sexual imposition.
The Reagan era “study” was known as the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. Most of the web hits are simply lists of places where you can find it in print.
If you extend the defintion of “sex crime”, I mean really extend it, to include the concept of systematic and ingrained societal prejudice against women, well, yes, I think it does lead to “crime”.
The pornography I’ve seen (and that’s not a helluva a lot) seems to perpetuate the role of women as subservient and that of men as dominant. The woman is there to gratify the man. She is an instrument for his pleasure. Nothing more. This dehumanizes the woman in the film, or magazine, or whatever, and thereby runs the risk of dehumanizing all women.
No doubt you will ask how, if I’ve been exposed to porn, have I avoided being adversely influenced by it. Indeed, I have no completely logical or objective answer except to say that although I have not been so influenced, I believe that (many) others have. Maybe if I hadn’t had so many lucky breaks and opportunities in my life (good education, good social net, etc.) it would have been different.
I am opening myself up for attack as being a deigning, arrogant, patronizing bastard, but at least I’m an honest bastard.
If you think pornography has an effect on sexual crimes, then how do you explain Japan? In Japan, they’ve got pornographic anime and manga that makes any domestic stuff look G-rated, and yet, their society is virtually crime-free.
As a porn magazine editor, I must say: NO. No evidence at all. There are mentions of sex crimes in the Bible, and porn wasn’t even invented at the time. So, no, but no.
I can rememeber this debate going on seriously about 10 years ago. There was an article printed at the time (sorry no chance of a reference) stating that in cases where police were granted a warrant to search sex-offenders houses pornographic material was found in the vast majority. I can’t remember specific figures after this amount of time but it was in the range of 75%. This sounded like a fairly high correlation, except that as the researcher pointed out the majority of offenders were males aged between 18 and 45, and that other surveys had suggested that something like 80% of males in this age group had pornography in their houses. The conclusion was that the use of pornography may actually lead to a lowering of the incidence of sex-offences. Admittedely there are some glaring deficiencies in the survey technique.
On the history of pornography, one of the oldest human artefacts is the "Venus of Willendorf’, a statuette of a naked, large breasted woman. There are also numerous prehistoric cave paintings in southern Africa depicting men with comically large erections, so pornography has actually been around longer than writing.
This would be a very difficult study to design, you would have to select two groups of males and give porno to one and not the other and then record the number of sex crimes in one versus the other. The only other way to do it that I can see would be to test sex offenders versus the norm of society but even this could have a third variable. So I dont think you could ever prove inciting crime even if there is a correlation.
Yes, the image of Japan as virtually “crime-free” is indeed a popular one, but it hardly applies to sex-related offenses. There is PLENTY of rape, groping/fondling on crowded rush-hour trains, sexual harassment at work, etc. in Japan, though much of it goes unreported.
Is there a link between this kind of behavior and the consumption of pornographic – and often sexually violent – manga or anime? I’d have to go with KarlGauss on this one: certainly this kind of material, especially when it’s as prevalent as it is in Japan, shapes societal attitudes toward women and how they are to be treated. It helps define the broad parameters of what counts as normal and acceptable behavior, and while it may not turn the average guy on the street into a rapist, at the very least it contributes to a climate in which countless lesser sexual “crimes” against women can routinely take place.
That’s what I think about Japan, anyway. But I don’t feel that pornographic material itself necessarily leads to sexually violent or abusive behavior. How it’s received, and the influence it has, will depend on the particular place that porn occupies among the various other ideas, images, attitudes, etc. toward women floating around in society. (The ideas are floating, not the women.) There are, hopefully, countervailing forces in people’s lives that allow them to view porn and sort of wink at it at the same time.
Still, I’d keep way clear of anyone whose primary form of entertainment is watching or reading porn.
Sounds like a GD to me. As if we didn’t talk about it there already, did we?
Anyway, back to the OP, sure, I believe it does. For the simple reason that those people who didn’t know how sex works, would know how it works after watching porno. Then they can do the act. Easy.
ah, but KarlGauss, your assertation implies that there is a problem with a particular type of porn, but not with porn per se. admittedly, that type of porn (porn which dehuminizes women) is the norm in our society, but the solution in not to ban porn, but rather to create porn that portrays women in a more sexually equal atmosphere.
I don’t think that porn necessarily portrays women as nothing more than pleasure tools. Porn is made to be incorporated into fantasies, and in virtually all porn the woman is at least pretending to really like it - that’s because for most men the woman’s pleasure is very important, the fact you can make someone feel so good is one of the main empowering elements of sex for both men and women. There IS porn which does not portray the women as enjoying it, and even some where the woman supposedly doesn’t want it, but that is not typical of most American pornography.