Porn Might Be Good for Society, Too
Following hard on the heels of Bacchus’s most recent post I cannot but offer the following, a summary by the University of
Hawaii Professor of Anatomy, Biochemistry and Physiology Milton Diamond of what social science research has to say, in sum, about the effects of porn.
Despite the widespread and increasing availability of sexually explicit materials, according to national FBI Department of Justice statistics, the incidence of rape declined markedly from 1975 to 1995. This was particularly seen in the age categories 20-24 and 25-34, the people most likely to use the Internet. The best known of these national studies are those of Berl Kutchinsky, who studied Denmark, Sweden, West Germany, and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. He showed that for the years from approximately 1964 to 1984, as the amount of pornography increasingly became available, the rate of rapes in these countries either decreased or remained relatively level. Later research has shown parallel findings in every other country examined, including Japan, Croatia, China, Poland, Finland, and the Czech Republic. In the United States there has been a consistent decline in rape over the last 2 decades, and in those countries that allowed for the possession of child pornography, child sex abuse has declined. Significantly, no community in the United States has ever voted to ban adult access to sexually explicit material. The only feature of a community standard that holds is an intolerance for materials in which minors are involved as participants or consumers.
In terms of the use of pornography by sex offenders, the police sometimes suggest that a high percentage of sex offenders are found to have used pornography. This is meaningless, since most men have at some time used pornography. Looking closer, Michael Goldstein and Harold Kant found that rapists were more likely than nonrapists in the prison population to have been punished for looking at pornography while a youngster, while other research has shown that incarcerated nonrapists had seen more pornography, and seen it at an earlier age, than rapists.
With a kicker added, perhaps not all that counterintuitively:
What does correlate highly with sex offense is a strict, repressive religious upbringing.
Reflect on that, gentle readers. Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan who cheekily labels it “Douthat bait.”
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=4736
Hats off to Milton Diamond for his defense of pornography, but I question his statement that “no community in the United States has ever voted to ban adult access to sexually explicit material.” I believe that scores of communities (as well as their states) have banned such material in the past. (Maybe some still do, leaving mail order pornographers perplexed.
What I find most telling is the bit about convicted rapist being more likely to have been punished for porn use when young, and overall use less porn than other convicts.
With rape statistics it’s easy to argue that it could be the report rate going down, or some other factor. But it’s hard to see how to argue that this isn’t major counter-evidence to the idea that porn causes rape.
I agree! A few buts…
Is it really porn or masturbation that accompanies porn watching releases “pressure” that might cause this. Also the kids who aren’t allowed to watch porn might also be the one who are told masturbation is bad.
Another factor The 60s were when social norms became relatively more liberal and reliable contraception became popularly available. So maybe people just weren’t sexually frustrated that much?
A good study would be one that compares the pre-internet decades and post-internet years. Since the internet came into being after the sexual revolution but made porn much more accessible.