No, Porn Doesn’t Cause Violence. Science Has Proven Otherwise.
The Link Between Pornography and Sexual Violence: Examining the Evidence.
The assault on pornography has spanned decades, and it’s forged some rather unusual alliances. At times, sex-negative feminism and Evangelical Christianity have found themselves under a big tent of anti-porn and anti-sexuality together.
The assault on pornography has spanned decades, and it’s forged some rather unusual alliances. At times, sex-negative feminism and Evangelical Christianity have found themselves under a big tent of anti-porn and anti-sexuality together.
I’ve written about the hidden ties between the Mormon Church and anti-porn groups, spreading disinformation about the purportedly harmful effects of pornography.
TL;DR version: all the studies that say porn causes erectile dysfunction (it does not), a loss of love between partners, and is addictive “like a drug” have been disproven numerous times.
These “studies” mainly were put out by Mormon activist organizations pretending to be scientists. The goal is to morally police porn (and ban it) along with all other forms of sex they deem ethically unacceptable.
Anti-Porn or Anti-Woman & LGBTQ?
Prominent members of anti-porn groups, like Fight the New Drug, oppose LGBTQ marriage equality, premarital sex, and any other sex the religion doesn’t agree with.
Much of what we’re seeing now in religious conservative States like Utah and Florida is about maintaining the power to shame and marginalize sexuality.
Anti-porn “support” groups masquerade as caring support systems, yet, they use vehement moral language to vilify sexuality.
Mary Anne Layden is a frequent contributor to these organizations and says that “the more pornography women use, the more likely they are to be raped.”
She also says that the younger boys start using pornography, the more likely they will rape women when they get older.
The Marriage Between Right-Wing Religion and Sex-Negative Feminism
In 1980, feminist author Robin Morgan penned the famous quote, “Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice.” Since then, this quote has delineated a sect of feminists who maintain staunchly anti-porn views.
Morgan’s blog is doubling down on the idea. She links surrogate motherhood to prostitution and pornography, pretending they’re all approximately the same. I don’t need a study to tell you why this is insane.
Prostitution–with the high (and early) death rate suffered by women–is central to [a quilt of violence that’s stitched together with surrogate motherhood]. So is violent pornography, in that it literally educates boys and men as to what is expected of them and their patriarchally constructed “manhood.” So is sexual harassment, which thrives along the spectrum of this violence.
Morgan’s lone conception of sex work seems to be old-school prostitutes hanging out on dirty street corners and not the self-employed women of OnlyFans making $1 million a day from the comfort of their own homes.
Central to the belief system of both sex-negative feminists and anti-porn Mormons is Morgan’s idea: pornography teaches boys how to be violent.
The idea claims that porn either causes violence or plays a role in causing violence.
How well do these claims hold up to scientific scrutiny?
The Science of Porn and Violence
One of the problematic parts of proving that porn, even violent porn, leads to personal violence is the problem of proving direction.
Studies like this 2019 paper by Rostad et al. have shown a link between exposure to violent pornography and violence between teens dating each other.
The study found that for girls, the odds of perpetrating violence on boys were associated with marijuana use, alcohol use, and suspension or expulsion from school.
In boys, you have all of these factors, but we can also tack on their viewing of violent pornography and their internalized acceptance of rape myths.
But we can’t rule out that kids who were predisposed to violence were also predisposed to alcohol use, marijuana use, pornography consumption, and behavior that gets them suspended. Kids who take more risks are more likely to engage in all of these behaviors.
This is where taking a broader view of the issue comes in handy.
Disproving Causality
A 2000 study asked 100 women in rape crisis centers about their abusers’ pornography consumption. Published in the academic journal Violence & Victims, we can assume the goal was to prove that porn caused violence.
The study did the opposite.
Of the women, 28% reported that their abusers used pornography, while 12% reported that they imitated pornography.
Alcohol consumption causes alcohol addiction. If we went to a rehab and analyzed 100 alcoholics in treatment for alcoholism, we’d expect to find precisely 100 of them had been drinking alcohol.
Finding out that only 28% of alcoholics in rehab consumed alcohol would present a significant problem for the theory that alcohol consumption causes alcohol addiction.
Same for porn.
A Study to Czech Off Your List
The Czech Republic used to have an all-out ban on pornographic material. Then they legalized porn, and residents were granted full access to all the porn they could consume.
A 2011 study analyzed the rates of rape and sexual assault in the Czech Republic to see if there was a correlation. If porn caused sexual violence, you'd figure that when you suddenly gave widespread access to digital porn to a population that didn’t even have smut magazines before, their rape and sexual assault numbers would skyrocket.
Researchers found no rise in sex crimes when porn was introduced. Rapes decreased with the introduction of pornography, from 800 per year to 500 per year.
This same phenomenon has been observed in every country where porn was introduced suddenly.
Past to Present
A 1993 study analyzed research from 1974 to 1987, before the internet boom, when pornography was smut magazines that often contained violent cartoons and imagery. There was a lot of fear that these violent images were growing in number and driving the rise in rapes.
They found that while rape rates were indeed increasing, violent imagery in porn magazines remained stagnant.
And get this. The rates of every other type of crime were skyrocketing at the time, too, not just rape and sexual assault.
A 1991 study analyzed the period between 1964 and 1984 to see if the introduction of widespread pornography in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and the United States correlated with a remarkable rise in sexual violence.
The study authors were concise in their conclusion:
The results showed that in none of the countries did rape increase more than nonsexual violent crimes. This finding in itself would seem sufficient to discard the hypothesis that pornography causes rape.
Porn Explodes: Sexual Violence Declines
Then the great porn explosion of the internet happened in the mid-1990s, and something strange began to emerge.
The rates of sexual violence began going down.
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which researchers consider a far more accurate measure of violence than police reports, sexual assault rates in the U.S. have plummeted by 44% since 1995.
Denmark, China, Hong Kong, and Japan are all places where porn was formerly banned. And in each of these countries, sex crimes of all stripes decreased after porn legalization.
They tell you that porn causes rape, hate, violence, and a lack of love between partners. Science has proved these claims invalid.
A 2009 study looked into rates of public acceptance and sex-related crimes concerning pornography. The authors concluded, in full:
A vocal segment of the population has serious concerns about the effect of pornography in society and challenges its public use and acceptance. This manuscript reviews the major issues associated with the availability of sexually explicit material. It has been found everywhere it was scientifically investigated that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased. It is further been found that sexual erotica has not only wide spread personal acceptance and use but general tolerance for its availability to adults. This attitude is seen by both men and women and not only in urban communities but also in reputed conservative ones as well. Further this finding holds nationally in the United States and in widely different countries around the world. Indeed, no country where this matter has been scientifically studied has yet been found to think pornography ought be restricted from adults. The only consistent finding is that adults prefer to have the material restricted from children’s production or use.
Porn doesn’t lead to violence. Porn doesn’t isolate men from others. Porn doesn’t lead to erectile dysfunction. And no, it’s not addictive.
Thank you for reading. Sign up to my Medium email list, so you don’t miss a beat.
Footnote: I don’t watch porn. I’m not a porn activist. I write about the science of human sexuality in all forms. Porn is one of those forms.