Internet porn is good for us

Porn, especially internet porn, is bad, right? We have been assured that it inflames men's passions and leads them to commit rape and other sex crimes. The idea is that after men see sex on the screen they just cannot wait to rush out on a panty raid.

Apparently this is not so. Research by Professor Todd Kendall suggests that the level of sex crimes in a community declines as internet use increases. Kendall argues that when peoples access to internet porn increases they spend more time viewing the porn, and less time committing rape. Instead of porn inflaming people to commit rape, it actually serves as a substitute.

You can see how that might be; how masturbation might well serve as a substitute for molestation.

This is bad news for the wowsers [Wowser - Australian slang for "one whose overdeveloped sense of morality drives them to deprive others of their pleasures". ] and misandrysts [Misandryst - a man hating woman. The female equivalent of a misogynist.]. These two groups had no evidence that viewing porn lead men to commit sex crimes, but they loved the idea.

The wowsers liked the idea because they cannot bear the thought of anybody having fun. Wikipedia quotes the Australian writer C.J. Dennis's definition: 'Wowser: an ineffably pious person who mistakes this world for a penitentiary and himself for a warder'. There are lots of wowsers in the UK, and they are always busy trying to think of new things to ban. I am surprised we do not rename the country Banistan.

The misandrysts liked the idea because it gave them another opportunity to indulge their pathological hostility towards men.

Will Kendall's research stop these two groups from continuing to claim that porn leads to rape? I doubt it. Inconvenient research usually gets ignored or derided.