Does pornography influence rape Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Does pornography influence rape - Essay Example The debate has mainly focused on violent pornography since the perception revolves around the male tendencies to develop negative myths about rape, which is believed to emanate from the scenes depicted in violent pornography (McKee, 2007). However, the evidence of any adverse effects of pornography is inconsistent and comparatively, violent pornography is rare worldwide (Malamuth, Addison & Koss, 2000). The rate of victimization of rape demonstrates an inverse relationship between rape rates and pornography in the United States alone, a country believed to have fully addressed the rape menace. Data from other western nations have portrayed similar results. Even though these data cannot be relied on to determine whether pornography has cathartic impact on the rape conduct, with the weak evidence that support the negative causal hypothesis derived from the scientific reports, it has been challenging to relate pornography and actual rape. Most findings conclude that it is time to discar d the widespread hypothesis that pornography contributes to the increased statistics of sexual assault behavior that can simplistically be termed as rape (Malamuth, 2014). One of the long-standing concerns in the social sciences involves the relationship between sexually explicit products and different asocial behaviors, which entails the propensity to commit rape. In order to make effective and informed policies toward getting solutions to the sexual assault problem, it is imperative examine the nature of the relationship between sexually explicit materials or pornography and rape. Rape, which is a severe form of sexual aggression, is a major problem for women in the global society (Seto, Maric & Barbaree, 2001). Rape is a big epidemic that affects nearly all the nations of the world. The victims of this form of sexual assault come across all ethnicities, races, ages, classes, religions and cultures. Sociologists and other concerned persons, therefore, have committed to