UPDATE I: please see Lesley’s comments for some fuller criticisms of Kendall’s methodology
UPDATE II: I expected better from Freakonomics.
Slate.com has some good things going for it, like Dahlia Lithwick. It’s also got some downsides, like Jack Shafer Clearly, Shafer wasn’t enough, because now Slate’s got Steven Landsburg and his simple declarative sentences. Guess what we have now? Proof that Internet porn prevents rape! Yes, really.
Landsburg and I have radically different ideas about what constitutes proof. Let’s begin with his opening statement.
Does pornography breed rape? Do violent movies breed violent crime? Quite the opposite, it seems. First, porn. What happens when more people view more of it? The rise of the Internet offers a gigantic natural experiment. Better yet, because Internet usage caught on at different times in different states, it offers 50 natural experiments.
The bottom line on these experiments is, “More Net access, less rape.”
What experiments, Steven? What methodology? What possible conflation of variables? I’m sure you’ll enlighten us, right? First off, we have a link to a paper by a prof from Clemson (Todd Kendall), which concedes in the abstract that most previous studies contradict his own results. In fact, the majority of the paper consists of Kendall vascillating. However, Kendall is not deterred and goes on to assert that his data indicate that porn and rape can function as substitutes.
Trigger/NSFW warning: sexual assault, explanations of porn studies, and sexist stupidity
Now, without diving straight into the quagmire which is porn and feminism, let’s establish that some porn is, in fact, rape on video tape. Some of it is a damn convincing approximation. The fact that there is a porn star whose signature move is attempting to push the head of the woman he’s fucking into a toilet is prima facie evidence of the erotization of sexual assault. Not an open question.
Kendall, however, regards porn and rape as largely mutually exclusive. Indeed, he seems to dismiss the potential rapes and abuses which may occur in porn production as a cost of reducing rape more widely. There are fewer people making porn than there are consumers, so, Kendall reasons, the problem is really on the supply side, not the demand side. (Kendall eventually capitulates and concedes that he can’t endorse internet porn because it may cause more “deleterious effects” than it alleviates. In Twisty’s words, Geeze, Todd, ya think?
Yes Landsburg takes Kendall’s piece (which could be generously characterized as wishy-washy) as gospel.
OK, so we can at least tentatively conclude that Net access reduces rape. But that’s a far cry from proving that porn access reduces rape. Maybe rape is down because the rapists are all indoors reading Slate or vandalizing Wikipedia. But professor Kendall points out that there is no similar effect of Internet access on homicide. It’s hard to see how Wikipedia can deter rape without deterring other violent crimes at the same time. On the other hand, it’s easy to imagine how porn might serve as a substitute for rape.
Really, how? Kendall theorizes that watching porn could either satisfy sexual cravings or power trips and that masturbating to orgasm obviates the desire to rape. Landsburg is content to speculate that would-be rapists are instead finding love on Match.com and add a few more references to Kendall’s paper. (If that’s not enough to deter someone from internet dating, I don’t know what is.)
There’s also the idea that people who are watching porn are otherwise engaged and therefore cannot be raping and watching the latest Tristan Taormino flick simultanteously. (The same idea is proposed for violent movies: blockbuster releases of particularly violent movies correlate with a short term drop in crime.) But that really doesn’t answer the questions about the long term. Surely, as a policy matter, we need to think about the effects of repeated viewings of explicit material, both that night and for the nights after.
Landsburg wraps up his article with this cheerful commentary:
Psychologists have found that male subjects, immediately after watching pornography, are more likely to express misogynistic attitudes. But as professor Kendall points out, we need to be clear on what those experiments are testing: They are testing the effects of watching pornography in a controlled laboratory setting under the eyes of a researcher. The experience of viewing porn on the Internet, in the privacy of one’s own room, typically culminates in a slightly messier but far more satisfying experience—an experience that could plausibly tamp down some of the same aggressions that the pornus interruptus of the laboratory tends to stir up.
Wait, wait, wait. That sounds like we’re seeing misogynistic attitudes as a result of blue balls instead of watching porn. Frankly, I’m not sure which is worse: the idea that if a man can’t jerk off to porn he’s more likely to commit rape or that sexual frustration is a direct cause of rape. It sounds like a variation on “bitch wouldn’t let me have some, so I took it,” or something equally nauseating.
Also, I’m not seeing an easy way to get around this study design issue. I would love to be on the IRB reviewing that study proposal. Methods section: hire male subjects to watch specified internet porn clips in their own bedrooms, have them choose whether or not to whack off, and then take an online survey designed to assess attitudes.
It would be comical if it weren’t so sickening.