5 Myths That Anti-Porn Crusaders Keep Repeating – By Elizabeth Nolan Brown (Reason) / Dec 9 2019
The porn wars are raging once again!
The porn wars are raging once again, with would-be censors on the right and left trotting out the same tired excuses for suspending the First Amendment—and the same absurd explanations, made even sillier in the digital era, for how a federal porn ban would work.
This round started because four Republican legislators wrote a letter to Attorney General William Barr last week asking for the Department of Justice to make obscenity prosecutions a priority once more.
Let’s take a look at some claims from today’s porn prohibitionists…
1. Claim: The rise of online pornography and digital marketplaces for sex work has coincided with a rise in violence against women.
In fact, the last several decades have seen decreases in all sorts of violent crime rates, including rates of rape and sexual assault. “Victimization rates for rape in the United States demonstrate an inverse relationship between pornography consumption and rape rates,” noted researchers Christopher J. Ferguson and Richard D. Hartley in a 2009 article for the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior reviewing studies on the effects of pornography. And “data from other nations have suggested similar relationships.” Overall, “the increasing availability of pornography appears to be associated with a decline in rape.”
People who commit rape appear to consume less porn than the general population. In the U.S., rape rates declined faster in states with early internet access. And research has suggested that online “erotic services” marketplaces like Craigslist are directly linked to a decline in female homicide rates. Studies “have also reported positive associations between pornography use and egalitarian attitudes,” according to 2015 research from the University of Western Ontario.
2. Claim: Teens who watch porn are more likely to engage in sexually risky behaviors.
Continue to article: https://reason.com/2019/12/09/5-myths-that-anti-porn-crusaders-keep-repeating/
