[Merged]Rape Plummets as Porn Proliferates

But surely anything other than a sharp increase would be strong evidence that porn does not encourage rape?
 
Ian Osborne said:
But surely anything other than a sharp increase would be strong evidence that porn does not encourage rape?
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And what use or significance would such 'evidence' serve? I'm pretty sure that there's equally strong evidence to show that iPod use, eating BigMacs, watching Oprah and wearing contact lenses don't encourage rape either. Are you suggesting we should all indulge in such activities, lest we're tempted to divert our attention to raping instead?!
 
Southwind17 said:
And what use or significance would such 'evidence' serve? I'm pretty sure that there's equally strong evidence to show that iPod use, eating BigMacs, watching Oprah and wearing contact lenses don't encourage rape either. Are you suggesting we should all indulge in such activities, lest we're tempted to divert our attention to raping instead?!
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Are you suggesting that there have been serious attempts to link iPods to rape? To link BigMacs to Rape? Oprah? Contact lenses?

If you aren't, then what was the purpose of this post?
 
Ian Osbourne:

It depends. There may be another very strong factor influinging rape numbers (or rape reporting) so that a small effect (if one existed) of pornography might be not be easily discerned. Remember I am not arguing for or against any such relationship. I am merely pointing out why the figured quoted in the OP are not at all helpful in determining whether any such relationship exists.
 
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Southwind17 said:
And what use or significance would such 'evidence' serve? I'm pretty sure that there's equally strong evidence to show that iPod use, eating BigMacs, watching Oprah and wearing contact lenses don't encourage rape either.
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I'm sure there are, but no one's suggested these activities lead to rape. Whether or not pornography does is a serious question. The significance of this 'evidence' would be that it appears to offer an answer.

Are you suggesting we should all indulge in such activities, lest we're tempted to divert our attention to raping instead?!
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Absolutely not - I have no agenda here, regarding pornography, Oprah, contact lenses, Big Macs or iPods. I appreciate correlation doesn't imply causation, but in questioning the assumption that porn leads to rape, that's the point this thread is trying to make.
 
Professor Yaffle said:
There may be another very strong factor influinging rape numbers (or rape reporting) so that a small effect (if one existed) of pornography might be not be easily discerned. Remember I am not arguing for or against any such relationship. I am merely pointing out why the figured quoted in the OP are not at all helpful in determining whether any such relationship exists.
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Absolutely, but rape reporting has increased over the years, due to more sensitive handling of investigations and DNA evidence increasing the likelihood of a conviction.

I'm not saying there isn't another 'very strong factor' at work here, but if there is, it would have to be very strong indeed if it managed to counter the reporting rise and the massive increase in access to porn.
 
Ian Osborne said:
Absolutely, but rape reporting has increased over the years, due to more sensitive handling of investigations and DNA evidence increasing the likelihood of a conviction.

I'm not saying there isn't another 'very strong factor' at work here, but if there is, it would have to be very strong indeed if it managed to counter the reporting rise and the massive increase in access to porn.
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Well, perhaps that's why I am not actually arging that there is a relationship. Merely pointing out the flaws in the argument of one person who happens to agree with your conclusion. Just because ones reasoning is flawed, it doesn't always make ones conclusions false.
 
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Parallel thread bearing the world's most inappropriate title ("Monday, November 5, 2007"). I raised the obection that:

While my inclination is to agree, in the absence of controlled, double-blind studies, the author is really saying more than he/she knows. Maybe rapes would have decreased just as much if there'd been no Internet with 244 million porn pages (I'm still trying to find the last 14 of them...); maybe the decrease would have been even greater without 244 million porn pages. There's really no way of telling for sure.
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I remember reading a story many years ago about the connection between sex crime and porn in Sweden. (this was perhaps 30 years ago or more) The conclusion at the time was that serious sexual assaults were essentially unchanged, but that minor sex crimes such as exposing, "peeping", and so forth were generally reduced after pornography rules had essentially been lifted.

You have to wonder about what definition of "rape" is being used; there is the normally-accepted legal definition, and then the vastly-expanded version promoted by some groups.
We still get the "One in Four" posters at school here, indicating that 25% of the female student body will be raped at some time during the typical 4-year higher-education experience.
I have commented on this before, maintaining that it's politically-correct nonsense, not borne out in any way by the facts.
 
Arguably, the internet makes it easier for predators to hook up with children or pictures of children. We've seen an increase of people getting busted for that, from the teacher/student thing to the pediatrician child porno lover. So don't go tooting the horn yet.
 
Dorian Gray said:
Arguably, the internet makes it easier for predators to hook up with children or pictures of children. We've seen an increase of people getting busted for that, from the teacher/student thing to the pediatrician child porno lover. So don't go tooting the horn yet.
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This is about porn though not the internet. How has the prevelance of legal porn affected that?

If anything the internet has made local obsenity laws far less relevant.
 
LibraryLady said:
Yes, but correlation does not mean causation--post hoc ergo propter hoc.
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Right. But the situation is reversed here. If there is causation happening, we should be seeing some correlation. We aren't. So either there's a mysterious masking effect no one can identify or porn doesn't cause increases in sexual assault.
 
quixotecoyote said:
Right. But the situation is reversed here. If there is causation happening, we should be seeing some correlation. We aren't. So either there's a mysterious masking effect no one can identify or porn doesn't cause increases in sexual assault.
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Are there any figures about the reporting of sex crimes? Could it be reporting that has dropped, because of some of the high profile cases, such as the Duke case?
 
LibraryLady said:
Are there any figures about the reporting of sex crimes? Could it be reporting that has dropped, because of some of the high profile cases, such as the Duke case?
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In the UK at least, reporting has gone up due to increased sensitivity in the way rape cases are handled by the police and courts.
 
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