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Tim Worstall argues that it does:
It has long been said that there's a connection between pornography and rape and other sexual crimes and attacks. Recent evidence shows that there is indeed a connection, but it is that the more porn there is available, the lower the incidence of rape.
This goes against two powerful strands of thought in American society, strange bedfellows though they may be. From the conservative side (best exemplified by Ronald Reagan's Commission on pornography and obscene materials) there is the allegation (perhaps supposition is better) that exposure to more sexual material in the form of porn leads to more sexual acts, of which rape is simply one.
In what is a case of very strange bedfellows indeed there is also a critique from the feminist side: that as porn objectifies women exposure to it will lead to more rape as those exposed to porn will continue to objectify women.
Both groups are therefore claiming that the more porn there is around then the more rape there will be. The only problem with this idea is that in recent decades the incidence of rape has dramatically declined. As the above chart shows, since the mainstreaming of porn into American lives in the early 70s, marked by the release of "Deep Throat", the incidence of rape per capita has declined by an astonishing 85%. Yes, this does include rape and attempted rape, homosexual and heterosexual. Something, clearly, fairly major has been going on in our society. It's also true that we've seen an explosion in the availability of pornography over this period, so perhaps the two points are linked, the availability of porn and the prevalence of rape?
He makes the case for that proposition in the rest of the piece.
Comments (2)
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If I had to guess what accounts for the decline in rape over the last 20-30 years, I would choose, in no particular order:
1) Public education campaign carried on via TV, movies, etc. from the 1970s forward, from which (a) men have learned that that rapists are not smooth ladies' men like Rhett Butler but sadistic creeps, and (b) women have learned about the prevalence of rape and have also learned self-protective behaviors.
2) Development of DNA testing as forensic tool.
I don't have a view as to whether Internet porn has affected the prevalance of rape, but it would seem to pale in comparison to these two factors.
The way this person puts it, it's hard to tease out pornography from the general more open sexual culture, but Reason actually covered a study a couple of years ago that corrected for this.
I'd be curious to see if this negative relationship also exists between child porn and child sexual abuse. It would be difficult to run the same regressions with child sexual abuse instead of regular sexual abuse, though, since that kind of abuse is much more hidden and I would be very skeptical of anyone who claimed to have hard facts about it.