SAN FRANCISCO – On his Psychology Today blog, journalist Michael Castleman is reevaluating the question “does more porn mean less rape?”

The big thudding sound you just heard was my head hitting the desk, because if there’s one thing my brain can’t handle much more of, it’s people treating correlation and causality as though they’re the same damn thing.

In fairness to Castleman, he seems quite attuned to the pitfall of conflating correlation and causality, as well as the limits of social science in establishing a relationship between porn and a rise or fall in sexual assault statistics.

“[L]et’s assume money were no object, and researchers wanted to design the best study imaginable to discover the link, if any, between porn and sexual assault,” Castleman wrote. “What would it look like? It would track all men on Earth continually from birth to death, determine how much pornography they consumed, track their every move, including any sexual violence they committed, and see if the two were related. Of course, such a study would be impossible.”

Regardless, “more porn, less rape” is how Castleman expressed his bottom line take in both his current and previous examination of the question, and it’s just too definitive for my tastes.

Yes, as Castleman noted, prospective studies like those he relied on in coming to his conclusion are (generally, at least) superior to retrospective studies. In the context of the question at hand, though, the relevant prospective studies aren’t without flaw, either.

For starters, the latter kind of studies essentially isolate the movement of two data points — an increase in the availability of porn and a corresponding decrease in sex crimes — without considering other contributing factors.

In the case of the Czech Republic, for example, while it’s true there has been a substantial reduction in the number of rapes that have occurred per year since the country legalized pornography, the legalization of porn is one of a countless number of changes, political and social, the Czech Republic has undergone since the fall of communism.

Similarly, in Japan, Hong Kong and other countries that have repealed or relaxed their bans on porn in recent decades, there also has been a slow but steady march toward greater respect for women’s rights, a movement that may also contribute to a reduction in sex crimes.

None of this is to say I think the opposite of Castleman’s claim is true or I believe there’s something to the idea watching porn encourages people to commit sex crimes. I will happily concede the best data available certainly suggests Castleman’s conclusion is correct — but the key word here is “suggests.”

No matter how you slice it, were it true exposure to porn has a causal impact on viewers, inciting them to commit sex crimes, we ought to have seen an immense spike in sex crimes in the past 20-25 years corresponding with the rise of the internet and the easy access to porn it famously affords us all. That we haven’t seen such an increase in sex crimes clearly shoots a massive hole in the theory of causality championed by anti-porn activists, but we still can’t definitively conclude the opposite to be true.

I know I’m splitting pubic hairs here, but it’s important to do so. If I’m going to take issue with every shaky “scientific” claim made by anti-porn activists (and I am), intellectual honesty and fairness dictates I do the same with iffy counterclaims made by porn’s defenders.

Besides, as I see it, actively discouraging people from committing sex crimes isn’t a hurdle porn needs to clear. We don’t demand the same of other forms of entertainment that are accused of causing bad behavior among their consumers (other than the occasional unconstitutional effort by certain states to over-regulate the sale of violent video games, of course), so why should porn be unique in this regard?

So, “more porn, less rape?” Well yes, as far as the movement of these two data points is concerned, this is what the data shows. But less rape because of more porn? Personally, I believe this conclusion goes beyond the scope of the data.

On the other hand, it’s very difficult (if not impossible) to read the data in a way that supports the notion watching porn causes people to commit rape. Given porn’s internet-driven trend toward global ubiquity, isn’t this good news, whether one is pro- or anti-porn?

Somehow, I’m guessing Donna Rice Hughes will find a way to say “no.”

Image © Maximus117