Aggression: causes, effects, and behavioral patterns

¶ … pornography promotes aggressive behavior in men. It will examine both the pros and the cons of the issue. The author's contention is that there is evidence on both sides of the fence. Compelling anecdotal and circumstantial evidence is available on both sides.

On the pro-side of the issue, the most disturbing evidence has to do with violent and child porn sites and literature and magazines. In 2002, the U.S. Customs Service estimated that there were more than 100,000 websites offering child pornography (illegally) worldwide ("Statistics and information" ). Attorney General Edwin Meese's 1986 report was definitely very strident on its views against pornography. While admittedly dependent mostly on anecdotal information, some of it is compelling. In one case, a man who said he had participated in over a hundred pornographic movies testified at the Commission hearings in Los Angeles as follows: "I, myself, have been on a couple of sets where the young ladies have been forced to do even anal sex scenes with a guy which [sic] is rather large and I have seen them crying in pain" (Russell). In a more disturbing situation, "A mother and father in South Oklahoma City forced their four daughters, ages ten to seventeen, to engage in family sex while pornographic pictures were being filmed" (Russell). From the industry itself, Linda Lovelace tells all about her horrendous experiences in the industry. Given abuse from her husband on and off the set during the filming of the porn classic Deep Throat, Ms. Lovelace has a chilling tale to tell about pornography and violence mixing explosively before the product is even finished. The prima facie evidence for supporting regulating and limiting pornography, especially violent and child porn, is very commanding ("Ordeal," 2010).

On the con side of the argument Steven E. Landsburg at Slate Magazine quotes some statistics that attack the subject from a unique angle. He maintains that pornography does not breed rape and that violent movies do not breed violent crime. The article maintains that just the opposite is true. According to the Slate article, since the Internet caught on as a phenomenon at different times in different states in America, ergo, we have 50 different experiments.

According to Clemson University professor Todd Kendall, the more Internet access, there is a lesser incidence of rape. The statistics are very startling. A 10% increase in Net access has yielded a 7.3% decrease in reported rapes. States that developed the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines in the percentage of rapes. Kendall goes on to guarantee the quality of the data as he claims that these declines remain even after the studies take into consideration various variables, such as alcohol consumption, police presence, poverty/unemployment rates, population density, etc.

This tentative review of data certainly makes a good prima-facie argument to support the conclusion that Net access reduces rape. However, it is very far from proving that porn access reduces rape. For instance, Net access has not reduced the homicide rate.

So, what is the function of Internet porn for young men in the critical age group of 15 to 19 years of age? Most of these young men today are likely to be living at home with their parents. Logically, it would be easier to collapse your browser in a hurry, delete the cookie files and delete the browsing history than it would be to stash the stack of Hustler Magazines. For this reason, the auxiliary evidence is rather consistent and dovetails with the hypothesis that Internet access reduces rape as the Net makes it easier to get access to porn.

We also must analyze the factor of violence. University of California professors Gordon Dahl and Stefano DellaVigna claim that the more violence is on the screen, the less on the street when new movies are released. The biggest drop in crime (about a 2% drop for every million people watching violent movies) occurs between 6 p.m. And midnight -- the prime movie going hours. Those experiments demonstrate that most "normal" people become more violent after viewing violent images. However, as the article rightly observes, this is the incorrect question. The one is do the sort of people who commit violent crimes commit more crimes after they watch violence? The evidence seems to indicate that this is not the case.