Over the past few years, I’ve written multiple articles here to encourage parents to keep their kids from porn, in part because I believe that the evidence shows that porn leads to increased sexual violence. Porn is a huge reason that women in our society aren’t safe out running or shopping or sometimes even sitting in their own homes. Porn helps some develop unhealthy sexual practices, but porn turns some people into predators who hurt others. One of the sites I follow closely as I seek to educate myself and other parents about why we should keep our kids from porn is Fight the New Drug, and I encourage all parents to subscribe to this great site.
This past week, Fight the New Drug reported a shocking development: the country of Nepal has decided to BAN porn completely because of a sharp increase in rapes in the past few years. Wow! This is shocking to me because as an American, I am used to and love my free speech. I understand that porn will never be banned here because that would infringe on free speech, and so I believe the best thing we can do in America is to educate each other on WHY porn is bad and why we shouldn’t look at it. That’s what Fight the New Drug seeks to do and they do it well.
But WOW. I must say my first reaction to the news about Nepal banning porn was “good for them!” They are, it seems, at least trying to protect women and girls in their country and are not trying to deny the correlation between porn and sexual violence. What exactly IS that correlation, you ask? Well, Fight the New Drug reports that Nepal has equated increased internet access in it’s country to these stark sex crimes figures:
According to government figures revealed in the Nepali Times in June, the total number of rape cases has increased four-fold in the past ten years.
In 2016-2017 there were 1,667 rape cases reported compared to just over 400 a decade earlier—a shocking rise of around 300%.
In the past two months alone, the police have registered 479 reports of rape and attempted rape, more than the total number of cases filed in 2008 and 2009, according to official figures.
As far as scientific findings, last year Dr. John D. Foubert, a professor at Oklahoma State University and an academic expert on sexual violence, published an article that very clearly breaks down how pornography not only is related to but I would say leads to sexual violence. The article says:
“I have studied how to end sexual violence for 25 years. It wasn’t until 10 years ago when I came to the realization that the secret ingredient in the recipe for rape was not secret at all, though at the time it was rarely identified. That ingredient, responsible for giving young men the permission-giving beliefs that make rape so much more likely and telling young women they should like it, is today’s high-speed internet pornography. Pornography itself is a recipe for rape that has rewritten the sexual script for the sexual behavior of the millennial generation and is currently rewiring the brains of the generation to follow.”
