This is in regard to the Janey Ellis letter that pornography destroys society and leads to violence against women (“Pornography destroys society, does not have positive effects” ODE, Jan. 26). Her letter is filled with half truths and misleading facts.
I recommend that she read “Defending pornography: free speech, sex, and the fight for women’s rights” by Nadine Strossen, the President of the American Civil Liberties Union.
She writes that in general sex “offenders (have) less exposure to sexually explicit materials than most men, that they first saw such materials at a later age than non sex offenders, that they were overwhelmingly more likely to have been punished for looking at them as teenagers, and that they often find sexual images more distressing than arousing.”
Marcia Pally, President of Feminists for Free Expression, says that “in the 1950’s, with the marketing of sexual material, the country has seen the greatest advances in sensitivity to violence against women and children. Before the mass publication of sexual images, no rape or incest hotlines and battered women’s shelters existed, date and marital rape were not yet phrases in the language.”
Pornography is very much an issue of free speech. Sexual expression has always been an integral part of free societies. The most repressive governments in the world have always banned pornography – Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s Red China.
International cross cultural studies show that violence and discrimination against women are common in countries where sexually oriented material is almost completely unavailable (Saudi Arabia, Iran, China). Where sexually explicit materials are available, violence against women is uncommon (Denmark, Germany, Japan).
There is no evidence whatsoever that people who view pornography are any more or less moral than those who don’t. The idea that looking at pornography leads to something awful has never been proven by any legitimate study. As Gore Vidal once said” the only thing pornography is known to cause directly is the solitary act of masturbation”.
Dennis Kay
Eugene resident
No link between rape and pornography
Daily Emerald
February 8, 2007
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