In the 1980s, conservatives and feminists joined to fight a common
nemesis: the spread of pornography. Unlike past campaigns to stamp out
smut, this one was based not only on morality but also public safety.
They argued that hard-core erotica was intolerable because it promoted
sexual violence against women.

"Pornography is the theory; rape is the practice," wrote feminist
author Robin Morgan. In 1986, a federal commission concurred. Some
kinds of pornography, it concluded, are bound to lead to "increased
sexual violence." Indianapolis passed a law allowing women to sue
producers for sexual assaults caused by material depicting women in
"positions of servility or submission or display."

The campaign fizzled when the courts said the ordinance was an
unconstitutional form of "thought control." Though the Bush
administration has put new emphasis on prosecuting obscenity, on the
grounds that it fosters violence against women, pornography is more
available now than ever.

That’s due in substantial part to the rise of the Internet, where the
United States alone has a staggering 244 million Web pages featuring
erotic fare. One Nielsen survey found that one out of every four users
say they visited adult sites in the last month.

So in the last
two decades, we have conducted a vast experiment on the social
consequences of such material. If the supporters of censorship were
right, we should be seeing an unparalleled epidemic of sexual assault.
But all the evidence indicates they were wrong. As raunch has waxed,
rape has waned.

This is part of a broad decrease in criminal
mayhem. Since 1993, violent crime in America has dropped by 58 percent.
But the progress in this one realm has been especially dramatic. Rape
is down 72 percent and other sexual assaults have fallen by 68 percent.
Even in the last two years, when the FBI reported upticks in violent
crime, the number of rapes continued to fall.

Nor can the
decline be dismissed as the result of underreporting. Many sexual
assaults do go unreported, but there is no reason to think there is
less reporting today than in the past. In fact, given everything that
has been done to educate people about the problem and to prosecute
offenders, victims are probably more willing to come forward than they
used to be.

No one would say the current level of violence
against women is acceptable. But the enormous progress in recent years
is one of the most gratifying successes imaginable.

How can it
be explained? Perhaps the most surprising and controversial account
comes from Clemson University economist Todd Kendall, who suggests that
adult fare on the Internet may essentially inoculate against sexual
assaults.

In a paper presented at Stanford Law School last
year, he reported that, after adjusting for other differences, states
where Internet access expanded the fastest saw rape decline the most. A
10 percent increase in Internet access, Kendall found, typically meant
a 7.3 percent reduction in the number of reported rapes. For other
types of crime, he found no correlation with Web use. What this
research suggests is that sexual urges play a big role in the incidence
of rape — and that pornographic Web sites provide a harmless way for
potential predators to satisfy those desires.

That, of course,
is only a theory, and the evidence he cites is not conclusive. States
that were quicker to adopt the Internet may be different in ways that
also serve to prevent rape. It’s not hard to think of other
explanations why sexual assaults have diminished so rapidly — such as
DNA analysis, which has been an invaluable tool in catching and
convicting offenders.

Changing social attitudes doubtless have
also played a role. Both young men and young women are more aware today
of the boundaries between consensual and coercive sex. Kim Gandy,
president of the National Organization for Women, thinks the credit for
progress against rape should go to federal funding under the Violence
Against Women Act and to education efforts stressing that "no means no."

But if expanding the availability of hard-core fare doesn’t prevent
rapes, we can be confident from the experience of recent years that it
certainly doesn’t cause such crimes. Whether you think porn is a
constitutionally protected form of expression or a vile blight that
should be eradicated, this discovery should come as very good news.

Via Chicago Tribune