Decriminalize Prostitution Now Coalition
Your Tax Dollars Are Being Wasted Ruining Citizens Lives
Instead of fighting real crime
COPYRIGHTED 2000-2004 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - MAY BE REPRINTED OR QUOTED FROM ONLY IF CREDIT IS GIVEN Decriminalize Prostitution Now Coalition with URL given
While I do not know of studies have been done on sexwork I believe the studies of porn that show no bad effects and just common sense would lead to the conclusion that sexually frustrated men without a source for sexual satisfaction are far more likely to be sexually aggressive in negative ways than those as in most of the world have easy access to sexworkers. In some countries having a good sex life is almost a public policy issue.
As one sexworker who use to work in a Nevada brothel who moved to a conservative Southern U.S. city said how much more fear she had of being attacked on the street in the South where men didn't have choices for sexual expression as they do in Nevada. In most of the world sexually aggressive behavior and crimes are far lower than in the U.S. In most of the world except the U.S. private sexwork is legal and is a benefit to cultures. Historical studies have shown the more repressive a culture sexually the more violent it is. Sexuality has many physical and emotional benefits. Not everyone has a loving wife or girlfriend, or satisfying sexuality even if they do.
Porn reduces sex crimes and benefits a society.
The more porn, the fewer "sex" crimes, and the fewer problems related to ignorance of things sexual. In effect, porn can be seen as teaching us about ourselves. The argument can be made that the educational effect far outweighs any other effect. If that's true, the films of Candida Royale, say, should be made available in every school library. ;) Perhaps we will have found a means of addressing the dropout rate .... Maybe we can put another nail in the tail of the "no child should ever see a breast" boogieman.
This study has already been done (and done well) in European countries and Japan where porn has been legal and readily available for years. The data shows that sex crimes against women and against children goes down as the availability of erotica goes up. This correlation cannot prove the case that porn reduces sex crimes, but any argument that porn increases sex crimes would have to have a positive correlation, not the negative one found.
Doing the study in the US would be difficult as the availability of porn, while increasing, is not evenly distributed in the US and the actual availability in various localities cannot be measured well. Also, crime statistics are not uniformly accurate in the US as some jurisdictions lie about their data (Salt Lake and Atlanta are a good examples, while bidding on the Olympics). But we don't need to do the study, it has been done and nobody pays any attention to it in this Puritan dominated society.
The following is quoted from “Pornography, Erotica, and Behavior: More Questions than Answers” Fisher and Barak, Intl Journal of Law and Psychiatry, V.14, 65-83, 1991
"With respect to the impact of increasing amounts of pornography on aggregate sex crime statistics, three studies known to us have failed to establish a link between the availability of pornography and the incidence of sex-related crimes. Kutchinsky (1973) studied the impact of the legalization of most forms of sexual material in Denmark in 1965 on the occurrence of sex crime in that country. Contrary to what would be expected if there was a robust pornography-aggression link, the legalization of sexually explicit material was associated with either no change or with a decrease in various categories of sex crime, and such findings have served as the basis for discussion of a "catharsis" or "substitution" hypothesis with respect to pornography and sex crime (see Kutchinsky, 1973; Rubin, 1970). Moreover, Kutchinsky (1985; 1991) has replicated these findings in a recent paper which indicates that the legalization of sexually explicit material in West Germany was also associated with either no change or with a decrease in various categories of sex crime.
In still more research on the pornography-aggression link in natural settings, Abramson and Hayashi (1984) studied the incidence of violent pornography and sex crime in Japan. According to these investigators, "the juxtaposition of sexuality and aggression is evident in almost all forms of Japanese sexual material. . . . If there is a direct connection between the prevalence of rape imagery and rape behavior, Japan should have an overwhelming occurrence of rape" (p. 181). Despite the very high prevalence of rape theme pornography in Japan, however, this nation has an extraordinary low incidence of reported rape (2.4 per 100,000, compared to 34.5 per 100,000 in the U.S.)."
"In contrast to these findings for no association or a negative association between prevalence of pornography and occurrence of sex crime, two studies claim to have found evidence for a positive relationship between the two (Baron & Straus, 1984; Court, 1984), although Court's research line has been severely criticized (Brannigan & Kapardis, 1986), and Baron and Straus' (1984) findings may need to be qualified in light of inconsistent evidence reported both by Scott (1985) and by Baron and Straus (1986) who reported that the relationship became nonsignificant when controlling for macho attitudes. Overall, the number of studies which have failed to find a link between the prevalence of pornography and aggregate occurrence of sex crime is considerable and is highly inconsistent with the presumption of direct links between pornography and antisocial behavior."
Refs:
Kutchinsky, B. (1973). The effect of easy availability of pornography on the incidence of sex crimes: The Danish experience. Journal of Social Issues, 29, 169-181
Kutchinsky, B. (1985). Pornography and its effects in Denmark and the United States: A rejoinder and beyond. Comparative Social Research, 8, 301-330
Kutchinsky, B. (1991). Pornography and rape: theory and practice? Evidence from crime data in four countries where pornography is easily available. Intl Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 14, 47-64.
Abramson, P.R. and Hayashi, H. (1984). Pornography in Japan: Cross-cultural and theoretical considerations. In N. M. Malamuth & E. Donerstein (Eds.), Pornography and sexual aggression (173-183). Orlando, FL: Academic Press
http://www.sexwork.com/coalition/lesscrime.html
Local government is hardly the most riveting subject and the clauses of bills relating to it normally go unnoticed by the general public. That all changed in 1988 when Parliament passed an amendment to the Local Government Act. The amendment, Section 28, was intended to stop local authorities promoting homosexuality.
Posts
