Porn

[flexibeast]

Further to previous posts i've made on the issue of porn (such as the ones here and here):

The incidence of rape in the United States has declined 85% in the past
25 years while access to pornography has become freely available to
teenagers and adults. The Nixon and Reagan Commissions tried to show
that exposure to pornographic materials produced social violence. The
reverse may be true: that pornography has reduced social violence.

[ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913013 ]

[B]efore the fall of the Soviet Union, places like Croatia were not exactly hubs of the porn trade. However, since the fall of the evil empire, porn is now readily available in Croatia, as well as the technology to view it and to download it. So you've got a pretty neat lab setting to do a before-the-influx-of-porn and after-the-influx-of-porn study. And that's exactly what researchers like Milton Diamond have done. Here's what he reports:

"We've just finished a porn study in Croatia. As a post-Communist country, it shows, like all the other countries we've looked at so far, despite a major influx of available porn, there was NO increase in sex crimes."

[ http://www.goofyfootpress.com/weeklycolumn/the_latest_on_sex_the_internet.php ]

Comments

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

i've only seen a bit of Eastern European porn, but on the basis of that, yes, i've seen what you describe at least some of the time. Still, is it correct to assume that the majority of porn accessed in Croatia is of Eastern European origin? It would be interesting to know whether the study in question examined this . . . .

[scopo.livejournal.com]

I don't know - and I haven't yet read the articles you've linked, so I won't postulate too much until I have. I s'pose it was just my gut reaction that the spread of porn into Eastern Europe, and out from it as an export, is worrying on a number of levels: I think of it as a pretty 'unreconstructed', macho society (also one recovering from numerous very recent wars and revolutions) and also as a bit of a Russian Mafia-driven 'wild west' where all sorts of things can go on unpoliced. If there is snuff being made, it's most likely to be coming from Eastern Europe ...

But, wild assumptions, so I'll shut up for now! ;)