Anthony D'Amato, Northwestern School of Law - There were 2.7 rapes for every 1,000 people in 1980; by 2004, the same survey found the rate had decreased to 0.4 per 1000 people, a decline of 85%. Official explanations for the unexpected decline include (1) less lawlessness associated with crack cocaine; (b) women have been taught to avoid unsafe situations; (c) more would-be rapists already in prison for their crimes; (d) sex education classes telling boys that “no means no.”
But these minor f actors cannot begin to explain such a sharp decline in the incidence of rape. There is, however, one social factor that correlates almost exactly with the rape statitistics. The American public is probably not ready to believe it. My theory is that the sharp rise in access to pornography accounts for the decline in rape. The correlation is inverse: the more pornography, the less rape.
While the nationwide incidence of rape was showing a drastic decline, the incidence of rape in the four states having the least access to the internet showed an actual increase in rape over the same time period. This result was almost too clear and convincing, so to check it I compiled figures for the four states having the most access to the internet. Three out of four of these states showed declines (in New Jersey, an almost 50% decline). Alaska was an anomaly: it in creased both in internet access and incidence of rape. However, the population of Alaska is less than one-tenth that of the other three states in its category.
5 comments:
Or, it could be that the incidence of rape hasn't changed so much, but rather owing to greater skepticism of realizing authentic justice, victims may be less willing to report. It is bad enough having been subjected to violation once, but the prospect of subjection to more abuse and character assignation in the form of a trial unlikely to convect may proof too daunting.
Just because two events occur at the same times does not mean that there is a causal relationship between the two. Rapists do not rape for sexual gratification. They rape to exercise power and control over their victim.
Rape is about power and dominance; not about getting your rocks off.
I'm shocked that the man who wrote this article teaches law at Northwestern. I thought lawyers were. at the very least, logical.
4:32
Rape is more likely to be reported today, because a woman actually has a chance of being believed.
In the not too distant past, like the 1980s and 90s, reporting a rape was much worse and many of the old beliefs that are now understand to be "slut shaming", like "wearing a short skirt, meant she wanted it" could actually be used as a defense in court. Judges and juries would not convict a rapist over such nonsense. If the rapist had been an intimate partner, there was no hope at all of getting the court to see it was rape, unless the rape was accompanied by a brutal beating. The results of reporting rape were usually the same, the woman would end up publicly humiliated.
Now at least, men and women both know, that a woman can report a rape and be believed, and the courts have become less forgiving to rapists. That alone might be responsible for the drop in rape.
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