NCJ Number
88354
Date Published
1982
Length
17 pages
Annotation
Pornography leads to physical brutalization and victimization of women, citing available research to refute the Commission on Pornography and Obscenity's findings that pornography is harmless.
Abstract
The 1970 Commission on Pornography and Obscenity found that exposure to pornography did not seriously promote antisocial behavior, but its choice of research designs and analyses of results were biased by the primary goal of proving that anything associated with the expression of sexuality was good. In contrast, more sophisticated studies have revealed that rapists reported more frequent exposure to hardcore pornography than control groups. The Commission failed to undertake a single laboratory experiment involving children, and its experiments on relationships between pornography and aggression used either male college students or married couples. Other methodological problems included the lack of control groups in two of the three experiments on aggression and the failure to give equal weight to the results of all experiments in the final report. The Commission also relied on preliminary Danish data showing a decrease in sex crimes after all legal restrictions on pornography were removed during the 1960's. Recent research, however, has indicated that rape in Denmark has actually increased to new high levels. Other laboratory studies have demonstrated that pornography appears to increase aggression against females and promotes stereotyped notions of rape. Finally, the author examines the theory that the capitalist state may permit pornography to distract men from their powerless economic condition. The article contains 53 footnotes.