Well, it’s almost spring break, and you know what that means — time to talk about porn!
As the Republican frontrunners put individual states’ support behind them, the major issues facing the forefront of the eventual presidential race begin making their way into the minds of politically aware Americans. This year, as with many other years, sex is a huge theme being used by both the Republican and Democratic parties: birth control, homosexuality, abortion. It seems no matter what we do, our politicians want to kick down the doors to our bedrooms and jab a law stick at our wombs.
But another sexual American past time is being threatened, and one slightly less orthodox than the previous three — pornography. Adult, legal pornography.
According to Internet Filter Review, 28,258 internet users are viewing pornography every second. A 2009 survey of North American universities by Michael Leahy claims that 42 percent of male students and 20 percent of female students said they regularly view porn. Considering the secrecy of such a habit, I’m assuming those numbers are actually higher.@@Females probably lie about it more than men do@@
The current face of the anti-porn coalition is Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who has come out against the porn industry and promises to create and enact more rigorous obscenity laws to squash the billion-dollar-a-year business. Aside from promoting sex, which Santorum seems to be terrified of, he also claims that porn “contributes to misogyny and violence against women.”
No, Mr. Santorum. It does not. And as a man who claims that pregnancy through rape is a “gift” that “God has given to you,” I honestly don’t respect your views on violence toward women.
But let’s get started.
Since 1991 (around when the Internet started becoming public), rape cases involving victims 12 years and older has dropped 86 percent to 2009. Indeed, many studies have found that the Internet — or, more specifically, pornography — has been met with a decline in the rate of sexual violence. For instance, economist Todd Kendall@@http://www.toddkendall.net/@@ found that “in contrast to previous theories to the contrary, liberalization of pornography access may lead to declines in sexual victimization of women.”
A 2009 article by Milton Diamond from International Journal of Law and Psychiatry found that “there is an inverse causal relationship between an increase in pornography and sex crimes … objections to erotic materials are often made on the basis of supposed actual, social or moral harm to women. No such cause and effect has been demonstrated with any negative consequence. Nowhere has such a temporal association been found.”
The fact is, stating a desire to prevent sexual violence as an excuse to hinder the production of adult pornography is a ruse. People are against porn because of baseless moral and social reasons, not for any tangible negative repercussions.
Porn is a practice of the first amendment that uses the naked human body, an instrument that horrifies some people. It glorifies sex for enjoyment rather than for reproduction, and like the rest of the sexually based debate flaring up during these campaigning times, people who are anti-sexual enjoyment begin crawling out of the woodwork.
Pornography helps liberate women. It’s a profession, and, as in almost every aspect of life, is safe when legal. People chose to work in that industry of their own free will — if anything, it’s a fantastic example of the “American Way.”
Anti-porn activists cite porn addiction as a negative effect of the porn industry, but addiction is a negative effect of almost anything: the Internet, television, chocolate, travel.
Restricting Americans’ access to chocolate probably won’t lead to more violent sex crimes. Porn, on the other hand, can’t claim that.
Odds are, you’ve looked at porn. You can admit it in your brain; you don’t have to say it to me. And you have the freedom to decide it’s not for you, or to bookmark that particular video or image for future use (hey, no judgment). In an advanced way, porn is an art form we can choose to either appreciate or not.
What we shouldn’t do, however, is ban it using a veil of false claims.
Bouchat: Rick Santorum doesn’t understand porn
Sam Bouchat
March 17, 2012
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