A lower incidence of reported rape does not mean there is less rape. There are a variety of factors to be considered in response to reporting to law enforcement. And reporting to LE doesn’t mean it will be entered in as a sex crime, it may be just considered a general “assault” for a variety of reasons relating to crime reporting and the benefit that LE agencies get from having lower crime rates, or lower “violent” crime rates (and assault and battery is not considered a statutorily violent offense in many states, whereas CSC is).

Just thought I’d point out that fundamental flaw. The more subjective ones I’ll leave out. I thought it to be a very interesting post, though!

3. Fundamentally it doesn’t matter why anyone rapes. It’s about whether or not the woman consents, period, end of story.

last entry was hacked up.

either way, that statement is like saying “I don’t care how cancer occurs, just fix it”. You need to know why something is happening before you can cure it. You seem to imply that only women are raped. I suspect those men and boys who have been raped, would also be interested in making sure that it never happens to another person.

I also would like to say that I don’t think sexual frustration causes rape. I find it hard to believe that someone who wouldn’t ordinarily rape can get so frustrated sexually that they’ll skip consent “just this once.” Either they are a person who respects consent every time, or they are someone who doesn’t respect consent. I doubt there’s a case of, “Golly, if only they had masturbated before the date/hiding in the bushes with a knife/sneaking into the neighbor’s house, that rape wouldn’t have happened.” Call me a skeptic ;-)

Thanks for the provocative post, Bacchus :-)

>>SNIP

This statement:

It’s easy to imagine how porn might serve as a substitute for rape.

Is just the flip-side of what “they” have been saying for ages:

It’s easy to imagine how porn can provide the inspiration or catalyst to rapist, who might otherwise be under self-control.

You say potato and they say potatoe.

I can “imagine” both statements to be true, to some degree. But, I’m not buying that it’s a significant effect either way. And, I would think the minimal positive and negative effects (with respect to rape) would just counter one another.

If the spread of internet access is somehow linked to a decrease in sexual assaults, then I think it must be due to some third factor at play.