A friend of mine, a real-world meatspace friend going waaay back to my mis-spent youth, sent me a brief email note and a link the other day. This friend of mine is, I’d say, amused to find himself acquainted with an internet pornographer, but I do not think he’s convinced I’m making the best use of my talents and education. The email said, in its entirety but for salutations:

Of the various virtuous roles you might occupy in the greater human scheme, defender of the public peace didn’t come to mind first, but perhaps it should.

Yeah, he talks like that. It’s one of his many charms.

The link he sent was this one, to an article in Slate: How The Web Prevents Rape.

I’d seen previous references to the research documented in the article, but nothing so cogently written. A few excerpts:

First, porn. What happens when more people view more of it? The rise of the Internet offers a gigantic natural experiment. Better yet, because Internet usage caught on at different times in different states, it offers 50 natural experiments.

The bottom line on these experiments is, “More Net access, less rape.” A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines. And, according to Clemson professor Todd Kendall, the effects remain even after you control for all of the obvious confounding variables, such as alcohol consumption, police presence, poverty and unemployment rates, population density, and so forth.

Well, duh.

OK, so we can at least tentatively conclude that Net access reduces rape. But that’s a far cry from proving that porn access reduces rape. Maybe rape is down because the rapists are all indoors reading Slate or vandalizing Wikipedia. But professor Kendall points out that there is no similar effect of Internet access on homicide. It’s hard to see how Wikipedia can deter rape without deterring other violent crimes at the same time. On the other hand, it’s easy to imagine how porn might serve as a substitute for rape.

I said “Well, duh” because, as I wrote back to my friend:

To me, that’s one of those studies with a result that’s intuitively self-evident. (Not to devalue it; so much that is self-evident is also wrong.) The crux for me is in the sentences “It’s hard to see how Wikipedia can deter rape without deterring other violent crimes at the same time. On the other hand, it’s easy to imagine how porn might serve as a substitute for rape.”

In the canonical feminist view of rape, the brainless chant is that “rape is not about sex, it’s about violence and power.” I’ve always thought that to be arrant nonsense. Rape *is* violent, but that’s a statement about practicality and means, not motivation. It’s always seemed to me that rape must be about sexual frustration. Reduce the frustration, reduce the incidence of rape, quod erat demonstrandum. About as controversial as arguing that feeding people reduces hunger.

(If I had been writing the above for this blog rather than in email shorthand to someone who knows me well, I’d have been more cautious. Specifically, when I wrote “rape must be about sexual frustration” I’d have disclaimered it a bit; “many rapes are”, perhaps, rather than “rape must be”. And I would have been more tactful in my description of the opposing view.)

My own belief is that the internet porn effect is broadly beneficial, whatever its debatable effects on the rape statistics. Peeping Toms in the bushes used to be a staple of the suburban police blotters, but when was the last time you heard of one? Didn’t we used to get more high street raincoat flashers, before the internet came along and offered the sending of unsolicited dick pictures as a safer alternative?

I don’t have numbers to prove any of that, of course. Which is why I find the research quoted in Slate to be so interesting.