Free Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry by Melinda Tankard Reist, Abigail Bray

empirical studies have now established a significant relationship between the consumption of sexually explicit media and sexual delinquency. Irrespective of additional mediating/moderating variables, pornography contributes directly to pro-sexual-offending attitudes, intimate relationship difficulties, sexual callousness, disinterest in the suffering of others, and desensitisation to violence against women, acceptance of male dominance and female servitude, leniency toward rapists in legal proceedings, accepting various rape myths (that rape can be justified), self-assessed proclivity to force sex on women, and thedirect instigation of sexual assault (Dèttore and Giannelli, 2008; Marshall, 2000; Waltman, 2008). Pornography has been rendered “instrumentally causal in the aetiology of sex offending” (Itzin, 2002, p. 21).
Violence against women is a human rights violation, yet the industry that fuels the production and distribution of pornography continues unabated in the denigration of women and the indirect facilitation of the most heinous of crimes. Meta-analyses of published research show consistent and reliable evidence that exposure to explicitly violent as well as so-called non-violent pornography has a direct influence on gender violence. This is true not only for adults, but also minors. In one study, an overwhelming majority (97%) of juvenile sex offenders disclosed their involvement with pornography (Wieckowski et al., 1998). It has also been demonstrated that juvenile sex offenders who consume pornography have a greater propensity to engage in rape, forced oral or digital penetration, verbal aggression, exhibitionism and bestiality (Alexy et al., 2009). In fact, research into developmental harm from pornography exposure is so conclusive, that the empirical literature now considers it to be beyond question (Oddone–Paolucci et al., 2000).
Juvenile sex crime victims are also exposed to pornography by perpetrators in an endeavour to normalise sexual behaviours and facilitate subsequent grooming. Research studies conducted with child sex offenders (convicted for indecent assault, rape and buggery) have repeatedly found pornography to be used as part of the crime, with prevalence rates ranging from 33% (Elliot et al., 1995) to 55% (Langevin and Curnoe, 2004). Yet just as sex offenders groom their victims, so it appears the pornography industry inconspicuously grooms consumers. With pornography gaining unrestricted access into the homes and minds of ordinary people, more than at any other time in human history, unsuspecting consumers are undeniably conditioned. Therefore, it is reprehensible for policy makers to remain idle on the issue of pornography. Based on the empirical research reviewed in this chapter, it could well be argued that to produce, distribute, consume, or even passively condone pornography, is to endorse sexual violence against women. The discrepancy between the sex industry’s spin about ‘sexual freedom’ and our actual human liberty is so great that it is legitimate to suggest Legman’s ideology has ultimately become ‘Make war not love’.
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