by Edward Hall

Created on: February 03, 2010

My gut reaction would be yes, it would seem that access to pornography would increase sexual acting out. It only seems logical doesn't it? A person becomes desensitized by sexual images, there base urges are titillated and they act out sexually. After all, pornography is bad, right?

Without discussing the moral questions relevant to looking at dirty pictures it would appear that pornography does not lead to an increase in rape. In point of fact, it seems to be leading to a decline. Among others I refer you to the Northwestern School of Law study authored by Prof Anthony Damato. This is one of the best studies I found, there are others that use similar data and draw the same conclusion.

Just for an example from 1973 to 2003 nationwide rape statistics were in a steady decline with approximately an eighty percent drop in reported rapes by women twelve and over. If you are not aware 1973 marks the beginning of the pornography boom that went nuclear with the advent of the World Wide Web.

Personally, I woud like to say viewing pornography makes you do bad things. Sitting around watching dirty movies seems like it should make you do bad things after all. However, I cannot fly in the face of hard evidence. If the viewing of pornography has increased exponentially and the incidences of rape have decreased during the same time line you are left with one of two conclusions. Either viewing pornography has no effect on the incidences of rape or it decreases it.

Could that be the case? Could sitting at home looking at pornography on the web actually lead to this dramatic decrease in reported incidences of rape? I am not certain I would go that far there are other factors that could be involved but it is an interesting possibility. You also must deal with the fact that rape is not sex. Rape is about power and violence while sex is about mutual pleasure. So, quite possibly the increase and decrease in overall viewing of pornography could have little or no impact at all.

One thing that is often mentioned. It is said and I do not argue with the assertion that most rapist have a history of viewing pornography. Giving you that fact I still say it does not have a cause and effect relationship. Most bank robbers drive automobiles. Can we blame automobile driving for bank robbery?

Rape is a very serious problem, for the individual victim of rape the fact it is decreasing statistically is pretty cold comfort. We as a society should try every way possible to end rape. What we should not do is base policy on our knee jerk, "that sounds about right" reaction to a statement like pornography leads to rape. If the cause and effect relationship cannot be established move on.

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