porn may be desensitizing but its clearly helping individuals who would abuse a man or women sexually from acting out.

However, I would also like to state that pornography can only increase desire, increase lust, and therefore I could see it leading toward physical actions- masturbation etc.

The reductions of rapes in this country could be associated with many factors besides pornography. A man once said, “Statistics can easily be manipulated to the author’s purpose.” I believe that this statement defines my point. The decline of rapes could be attributed to advances in law enforcement, women becoming more self aware, and social knowledge of rape.

Something that was considered taboo a few decades back now seem to be the norm. A true correlation would be the rise in fornication with the desensitizing of sex with porn.

If one can have consensual sex, who needs to rape.

Anyone agree?

Secondly, while i personally, as a pro-sex (and pro-porn) feminist, want to agree with the statisitcs, the case simply hasn’t been made here.

Correlation does not equal Causation. If it did I could argue that being poor made you black or that a decrease in pirate numbers leads to the onset of global warming.

if there is a strong correlation between A and B there are four possible reasons.

1) Coincidence, which seems unlikely given the scale of the study.

2) A causes B, increased porn leads to decreased rape for example, a credible thesis but not proven.

3) that B causes A, (i.e. fewer rapes, or opportunities, have led to people watching porn instead of raping any one)

Or that C, a third factor like, in this case, urbanisation, gentrification, and the general uplifting of certain areas (with associated exposure for young people to strong female role models) may have lead to BOTH the wealth and inclination to get the Internet (and porn), AND the disinclination towards rape.

I think this “Third factor” option needs to be examined here. what if towns which are religious, or poor, or rural are where there is both a low level of net connectivity and the old fashioned misogyny at play.

That said, if porn did increase rapes, the internet should have launched a tidal wave and if it has done so, it’s been kept a good secret.

You make several good points and certainly the statistics stated can be more widely disected. However, there ic currently NO evidence that porn causes rape rates to increase. Therefore, perhaps we should avoid making recommendations without any legitimate empirics evidence.

-E