Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Porn Up, Rape Down

There's a neat paper arguing that in contrast to initial expectations, pornography is why rape is down 85% over the past 25 years. Both Nixon and Reagan had tried to regulate porn more using the argument that watching porn increases sexual assaults or criminal behavior. The author finds that those states with the least internet access had actual increases in rape, while those with the most internet access and the biggest decreases. Correlation is not causation, but I don't have any other theories. Is there anything porn can't do?

Feminist organizations don't even mention this great progress. We should note the areas where society makes improvements, because we should not take this for granted. Note that in South Africa, a 1999 survey of 4000 women reported 1 in 3 were raped the prior year! Things may be bad, but they can be a lot worse.

Life is full of misfortune, and sometimes we make progress. Never perfection, but that's an unhelpful standard.

2 comments:

James said...

I've not read the paper which may address this, but might it be the case that higher income growth and higher education levels lead to more net access and less violent crime?

Anonymous said...

Maybe I can get financing to start a business in South Africa distributing porn?