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You've heard the statistics: One in six American women have been the victim of sexual assault or rape, 44 per cent of them are under age 18, and every two and a half minutes someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted (www.RAINN.org). It's likely that you've also heard the warnings about how to protect yourself and what to do if you are raped or assaulted. But how often is the cause of rape discussed?

Rape and sexual assault are the result of systematized sexism and racist sexism. One of the most prevalent widely accepted and influential forms of sexism is pornography.
Here are some statistics that are less well known. One 1980s study found that 56% of rapists and 42% of child molesters interviewed "implicated pornography in the commission of their offenses("Pornography and Rape: A Causal Model", by Diana E.H. Russel, 1988) and another that after being exposed to sexually violent images of women enjoying rape, the percentage of male students who admit that there is some likelihood they would rape a woman if they could get away with it increases from 30% to 57%.
Porn works on many different levels to cause conditions where rape is likely. Violent and non-violent porn both pair sexually arousing/gratifying stimuli with dominance of women, often in the form of rape, increases males' rape fantasies, sexualizes dominance and submission, causing people to trivialize rape, be more accepting of interpersonal violence and male dominance in intimate relationships, and become desensitized to dehumanizing sexual material over time. In addition, exposure to pornography has been shown in countless studies to predispose some men to want to rape and to undermine some men's internal inhibitions against acting out rape. (Russel, 1988).
It doesn't end there either. Racism is systematically reinforced in pornography as well. In porn, racist myths are used as turn-ons. "Asian women are portrayed as pliant dolls; Latin women as sexually voracious yet utterly submissive; and Black women as dangerous and contemptible sexual animals," writes Dorchen Leidholdt (1981). These sexual stereotypes are not publicly discussed, yet are privately extorted as truth. (Making Violence Sexy ed. by D.E.H. Russel, 1993.) Let us not also forget that most porn is heterosexist and the only form of homosexuality that is tolerated is the straight male fantasy of two women performing sexual acts solely for the viewer's entertainment.
Besides indirectly causing and encouraging rape, who can

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