Today Regina Lynn pointed me towards the second piece of evidence linking an increase in the availability of pornography with a lowering incidence of sex crimes.
Regina found an article by Paul Joannides (author of the well researched but mind-blowingly reactionary ‘Guide to Getting it On’ - a book which luxuriates in the ‘Women are complex, men are simple’ viewpoint loved by 70’s style feminists and anyone who thinks having a nice car makes you a dick. Now I’ve made that comment I’m sure he’ll think I’m the guy who put the ‘ape’ in ‘Date Rape’)
Joannides quotes:
“We’ve just finished a porn study in Croatia. As a post-Communist country, it shows, like all the other countries we’ve looked at so far, despite a major influx of available porn, there was NO increase in sex crimes.”
He goes on to explain that since divorce rate peaked in the America back in 1980 (following the peak in marriage rates back in the 1960’s) it’s hard to blame internet porn for the destruction of the American family. The web only came into common currency in 1995, and only reached a significant chunk of the populace a couple of years after that, if web porn was the cancer some suggest divorce rate would have rocketed up since then and they haven’t.
The other, more academic, piece is incongruously titled ‘Porn Up, Rape Down‘, presumably in some bizarre echo of HBO’s classic pandering documentary ‘Pimps Up, Ho’s Down’ its abstract states:
“The incidence of rape in the United States has declined 85% in the past 25 years while access to pornography has become freely available to teenagers and adults. The Nixon and Reagan Commissions tried to show that exposure to pornographic materials produced social violence. The reverse may be true: that pornography has reduced social violence.”
I have my doubts about connecting two such distinct trends in a positive way, i.e. the idea porn might reduce violence. In the last 25 years our consumption of olive oil’s increased too but that hasn’t reduced sexual violence. Unless you use it as a lubricant. It doesn’t seem to track.
On the other hand if porn did destroy families and lead to rape there should have been a growth in crime along with the growth of the web. Unless there’s been an opposing force counteracting porn’s corrosive effect. No one’s come up with a viable influence but I suspect it’s the Christian Right. When I’ve been watching porn and I feel all rapey I just think of fundamentalists and my erection disappears almost immediately (almost - Pat Robertson’s hot).
So that’s alright then. Carry on pornagraphying.