UNITED STATES
Lifesite
Matt Fradd
It is interesting to note that since the advent of the Internet and the invention of the web browser, some statistics suggest that rape rates have actually declined.
In fact, some claim that states in the U.S. that adopted the Internet more quickly have seen a greater and faster decline of rape than other states. For many people, this makes a lot of sense: if you are the kind of guy who is inclined to want to rape a woman, perhaps sitting at home in front of your laptop more or less gets it out of your system, making you less inclined to commit rape.
But I’m skeptical that easy access to porn is what has resulted in less rape. We should not confuse correlation with causation. That is, just because two things are correlated, it does not follow that one caused the other (the rooster is not the cause of the sun’s rising).
The supposed decline in rape rates could be due to a number of factors, like greater measures being put in place to protect women, or, more education about rape.
Second—and this is a big one—the claim that rape is actually on the decline, as reported by the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), may simply be false. Many organizations have criticized their findings, saying they were based on poor data collection. The National Women’s Study, the National College Women Sexual Victimization Study, the National Violence Against Women Study, and the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence survey all report higher rates of rape and sexual assault than the NCVS.
I am of the opinion that the evidence points, rather, to the opposite: not that men who watch porn all become rapists—that is patently false, no one is arguing that—but that porn shapes how men see women, and when you have a whole culture of men who are fed on porn, you create a culture where women become sexual commodities, which is an ideal environment for sexual abuse to flourish.
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