🚀 go-pugleaf

Are you referring to research done primarily by Neil Malamuth
and Ed Donnerstein ?

The obvious problems with the evidence to date (and there are
several studies out there) is that they are correlational.
Thus, as much you would like to get us to buy the idea that
"porn causes rape,"  it is equally possible that rapists merely
buy pornography to affirm their views.  In slightly more direct
terminology, it is true that all rapists are pornography collectors
(this is not widely known).  However, NOT ALL PORNOGRAPHY COLLECTORS
ARE RAPISTS.

As for "desensitization" studies, let's have your references.

They must address the following which they currently do not: (a)
what are the longitudinal effects (long term) as opposed to the
short-lived (e.g., 3 days of viewing)? (b) might it be that these
subjects were merely engaging in demand behavior, and (c) these
studies typically gauge desensitization by getting an index of
the number of years an individual would send a rapist to jail for
(the cases are usually cut-and-dried).  It has yet to be demonstrated**
that people exposed to pornography would be less likely to find
a defendant guilty.  Since the judges do the sentencing, the entire
premise may be vacuous.

The claim that porn causes agression towards women must also
be viewed in light of the study by Linz, Donnerstein, and Penrod.
It turns out that "slasher" movies (e.g., Friday the 13th) _also_
led subjects to lessen their negative views of rape.  (see
also Donnerstein's 1980 study in the Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology - Donnerstien found that only "rape"
films affected views towards rape; erotic films did not).

While its true that regression studies have found some
relationship between the availability of pornography and
incidence of rape (controlling for things like the number
of males in their "raping" years), certain countries
like Japan have porn widely available - including violent
porn where women are raped on film [acting] - but Japan
has NOT seen an increase in rape rates.  Thus cultural
factors can possibly account for differences.

Checkmate in two.
-- 
Larry Cipriani, att!cbvox1!lvc or lvc@cbvox1.att.com
"I just love the smell of gunpowder." -- Bugs Bunny