This Week in the Mercury
Friday, August 26, 2011
SEX Porn: Pro & Con
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 9:53 AM
Perhaps the most serious accusation against pornography is that it incites sexual aggression. But not only do rape statistics suggest otherwise, some experts believe the consumption of pornography may actually reduce the desire to rape by offering a safe, private outlet for deviant sexual desires. “Rates of rapes and sexual assault in the U.S. are at their lowest levels since the 1960s,” says Christopher J. Ferguson, a professor of psychology and criminal justice at Texas A&M International University. The same goes for other countries: as access to pornography grew in once restrictive Japan, China and Denmark in the past 40 years, rape statistics plummeted.... It is important to note that these associations are just that—associations. They do not prove that pornography is the cause of the observed crime reductions. Nevertheless, the trends “just don’t fit with the theory that rape and sexual assault are in part influenced by pornography,” Ferguson explains. “At this point I think we can say the evidence just isn’t there, and it is time to retire this belief.”
Con:
Demand for female genital cosmetic surgery—so-called "designer vaginas"—has risen five-fold in a decade on the NHS yet most women do not need it, researchers have found. Surgeons who treat women when there is no clinical need practise a type of female genital mutilation outlawed in the UK, the researchers say. The rise in women seeking the operation, which involves reducing the size of the labia at the entrance to the vagina, is being driven by pornographic images of women on the internet and TV programmes about cosmetic surgery.
A steep drop in sexual assaults, a sharp rise in labial insecurity—is the tradeoff worth it?
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