Porn

The feminist argument that pornography is harmful lacks adequate support. First, the feminist argument typically alleges that pornography increases men’s willingness to rape women, or at least tothink of them only as sex objects. But this argument ignores the fact that the print pornography industry alone earns more money each year than the entire “legitimate” bookselling industry. For that tobe true, there must be many, many men and women who read pornography regularly. And yet crime statistics suggest that not many men rape women. Furthermore, most men today believe in women’s equality,as a study by Dr. Knowitall and her research group at the Institute on the Status of Women demonstrates. Feminists acknowledge that scientific studies have failed to show that porn harms women. Ifthere had been only a few such studies, or if we had reason to believe they were unreliable, we should conclude that nothing has yet been shown about whether porn harms women. But I think that whenreliable studies have repeatedly failed to show a relationship, that fact constitutes some evidence that the relationship doesn’t exist. So it seems unlikely that porn is harming women in the way thefeminist argument alleges.
 
In the absence of positive evidence from studies, we have to rely on common sense. Can people distinguish between the sometimes-degrading scenarios they see in porn and reallife? I believe they can. I think pornography is a lot like television and movies—it presents images that, while they certainly do have some impact on us, we all realize are nothing more than fiction.Young children may have difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality, but they are not often exposed to pornography. Men and women who look at porn should know better than to think that itgives a realistic picture of sexual relationships between men and women. If porn cannot be shown to harm women as a class by making them more vulnerable to sexual violence or causing men to think of...