y is not evil, it is now possible to consider the violence issue. Aremen who are exposed to pornography likely to commit violent acts, such as rapeagainst women, more so than men who are not exposed to pornography? It istempting to believe that media influences males and overstimulates them throughpornography to the point that they become aggressive towards females. But this iscompletely baseless; just as pornography arouses or stimulates, it also satisfies.The American Commission on Obscenity and Pornography performed a study inwhich several college students were asked to spend one and a half hours in anisolated room with a large volume of pornographic media, as well as a largevolume of non-explicit media such as Readers Digest (Howitt, Cumberbatch1975:80). The study was conducted over a three week period over which time itwas discovered that the males involved in the experiment began to lose interest, orbecome desensitized to the erotic media nearing the end of the experiment, even ifnew material was added. To address the argument that males are pushed over thebrink into committing rape because of pornography, one may point to theevidence above; to cover the female body would theoretically only increase malesexual desires. Four more separate experiments were conducted of which theabove was one. Three other experiments came to the conclusions thatpornography does not cause violence against women and reported that the numberof sex offenders that had been exposed to pornographic material were smaller innumber than the amount of sex-offenders that had not been exposed topornography (Christensen 1990:130; Harmon, Check 1988:28-30). These resultscan be offered as evidence against the claim that males become overstimulated andthus dangerous when exposed to pornography. Other experiments conducted inthe early 1980s by the Williams Committee in England, reported that as theavailability and abundance of sexually explicit material increased, the...
