Porn: 50, MacKinnon: 0
I’ve always been interested in Catherine MacKinnon’s work. She had a lot of interesting theories and novel approaches to social problems. Unfortunately, she based huge chuncks of her theories on conjecture and assumptions, and little of the evidence rang true to me (or anybody else I can find that wasn’t a victim of violent rape).
Regardless, I’ve read a lot of her work and thought a lot about her approach to law and women’s issues, so I read with great interest an article that actually manages to measure the correlation between rape and porn. MacKinnon said porn leads to rape. Her opponents said porn and rape are unrelated.
It turns out both camps were wrong. There is a correlation. Unfortunately for MacKinnon, the correlation is negative. As it turns out, exposure to porn makes you less likely to commit rape.
The methodology here is also interesting. Rape statistics can be broken down state-by-state, and so can internet access. And since internet access is the same thing as porn access, you can see how internet adoption correlates with rape stats. The best part is, you can see this correlation 50 times over, once for each state.
There’s a lot of potential gaps in the chain of logic here, but these 50 data points are the only real data points we have. Everything else is just anecdotes and fear.
November 2nd, 2006 at 7:03 pm
This has to be the silliest study I’ve ever heard of; I’m amazed that people are taking it so seriously. Assuming a direct connection between internet access and regular porn viewing is a pretty big stretch. I kinda believe that the reason the study is being so widely touted is so all those guys who jerk off to Jenny Jameson can tell their wives they’re not being sexist pigs, they’re preventing rape.
There are all sorts of alternative explanations, like all those teenage kids are actually playing Call of Duty or Warcraft online with their friends than downloading dirty movies (I’ve done that for several hours at a time; it’s quite engrossing. Uh, playing games, that is). And the study completely ignores another major development over the past decade: The explosion nationwide of concealed carry permitees. Perhaps the reason women aren’t being raped as often is because the word is getting out to potential rapists that they might get shot.
Look, I don’t believe porn causes rape; never did. My attitude towards porn has always been whatever turns you on, just don’t force me or my kids to view it. But to assume that it prevents rape by directly correlating internet access with porn viewing is just as wrong. Correlation does not equal causation.
November 2nd, 2006 at 8:02 pm
What the Cap’n said.
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Yes, of course correlation doesn’t equal casuation. The point, though, is that a negative correlation refutes causation. If you accept access to the net equals access to porn, there is a negative correlation between porn and rape. That negates the argument that porn causes rape.
And it’s reasonable to think that access ot the net is access to porn. There’s a ton of porn on the net and it’s easy to get to. If you believe that increased access to porn doesn’t lead to increased viewing of porn, you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a horny young man.
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:47 pm
Not necessarily, Brutal. A correlation is simply correlation, particularly when you haven’t adjusted for any other notable factors. It’s useful for analysis until you can get a better system – a controlled study, for example – but otherwise it’s not particularly useful.
To give the cliche example, foot size correlates strongly with performance on standardized tests. It’s a impressively strong correlation, in fact. But it’s also pretty valueless, since we could already expect infants to do worse on the SATs than we would a full-grown adult, and full grown adults tend to have larger feet than infants.
Likewise, in addition to the Cap’n’s viewpoints, there have also been significant advances in other sectors that weren’t ‘adjusted’ for – for example, internet use is correlated to more female-friendly concept adoption (as well as many other things), simply as a side effect of chat rooms. There is also a correlation between internet use and self-education that haven’t been seen at any time in history before : it’s just never been so easy to find more answers than you need for any given question, and often the excess info leaks in (a mini-Singularity, if you will).
I agree that porn pretty assuredly doesn’t cause rape (although it does encourage kinks) and may have a beneficial aspect, but taking a few time points and slapping a map around them really isn’t particularly useful.
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:14 am
[…] […]
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:14 am
Yes, you’re right that negative correlation doesn’t always negate causation. But it would take a hell of a lot of causation to overcome a pretty significant negative correlation.
November 3rd, 2006 at 10:26 am
I don’t think it takes all that much causation to “overcome” a negative correlation. All it takes is the ability to explain the negative correlation, and to tease out extraneous factors to see what role, if any, causation plays between the items you are interested in. Maybe the real effect of Internet access isn’t more porn, but a better, less misogynistic form of porn than the same kids would otherwise scrounge from a magazine. Or maybe porn on the Internet causes a few rapes here and there, but non-porn on the Internet prevents more. For example, maybe every new rapist spawned by the porn sites is offset by two potential rapists who now occupy themselves by blogging about their fantasies on MySpace, trolling on SayUncle, vandalizing Wikipedia entries or posting diary entries on dKos.
Or maybe Mackinnon is full of crap, as has been my view all along. I just don’t think the new study goes nearly as far toward proving that as the author of the story seems to think.