hy perpetuating violent acts toward women, pornography defenders claim that the use of pornographic material can act as a cathartic release, actual lessening the likelihood of males committing violent acts. The reasoning is that the pornography can substitute for sex and that the 'want' to commit sexual crimes is acted out vicariously through the pornographic material (Whicclair 327). This argument, however, does not explain the crimes committed by serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacey, who regularly viewed pornography during the lengths of their times between murders and rapes (Scully 70). By saying that pornography would reduce harm to women through cathartic effects, pornography defenders display a large lack in reasoning because through their argument the rise in the production of pornography would have led to a decrease in sexual crimes, but as has been shown previously, that simply is not true. Pornographers and pornography defenders proclaim that the link between pornography and violence is exaggerated and that the research linking pornography to sexual crimes is inconclusive. They state that the fundamentals of sex crimes are found inherently in the individuals and that the sexual permissiveness of American society cannot be blamed on the increase of pornography's availability (Jacobson 79). David Adams, a co-founder and executive director of Emerge, a Boston counseling center for male batterers, states, "that only a minority of his clients (perhaps 10 to 20 percent) use hard-core pornography. He estimates that half may have substance abuse problems, and adds that alcohol seems more directly involved in abuse than pornography" (Kaminer 115). The statement made by Adams and the view that pornography does not contribute to the act of sex crimes is heavily outweighed, however, by the various studies connecting violence and pornography. Bill Marshall's observations on his patients and the examples of individual crimes o...
