Here’s some food for thought for conservative groups demanding restrictions on Internet porn to safeguard the minds of innocent boys (an oxymoron if ever there was one): As it turns out, all those clips on Hustler.com may be protecting womens’ safety. A reader tipped us off to Slate columnist Steven E. Landsburg’s analysis of how the increase in use and availability of Internet porn has, contrary to popular opinion, contributed to the national decline in reported rapes. As he puts it, “The rise of the Internet offers a gigantic natural experiment. Better yet, because Internet usage caught on at different times in different states, it offers 50 natural experiments.” The results, according to a study by Clemson University professor Todd Kendall, indicate that a 10 percent increase in Internet access yielded around a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes, with states that had greater Internet access seeing the largest and fastest declines.
Still, as Landsburg points out, how do we know the Web use-rape link is connected to porn? Maybe online gaming, sports chat rooms or other male-dominated sites are in fact catching the attention of potential rapists. Kendall responds to this argument by offering murder rates; while the data consistently ties increased Internet use to decreased rapes, no such correlation exists for homicides. “It’s hard to see how Wikipedia can deter rape without deterring other violent crimes at the same time,” Landsburg noted. “On the other hand, it’s easy to imagine how porn might serve as a substitute for rape.” Coming as no surprise, the effects are strongest among boys ages 14 to 19, a demographic that Kendall, and common sense, identify as the group that relies most heavily on the Internet for porn access.
True, plenty of arguments remain for placing restrictions on the content and availability of sexual material on the Web. One primary concern, the potential luring and sexual victimization of minors, has hardly lacked for attention these days. Nonetheless, this study points to some pretty strong evidence that freedom to broadcast and access Internet porn, in addition to being protected by the Constitution, can result in tangible benefits for both sexes.
As for psychological studies showing that male subjects are more likely to articulate misogynistic attitudes immediately after viewing pornography, Kendall dismisses the results by pointing out defects in the experiments themselves. As Landsburg delicately rephrases, watching porn in a controlled laboratory setting with teams of researchers looking on is hardly comparable to “the experience of viewing porn on the Internet, in the privacy of one’s own room, [which] typically culminates in a slightly messier but far more satisfying experience.”
Fox News: A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a gang rape victim to 90 whip lashes. Her crime? Being caught in a car with a man other than her husband. Meanwhile, her rapists were sentenced to punishments ranging from 1,000 lashes to as few as 80, plus one- to five-year prison terms. The victim’s family intends to appeal the sentences for the rapists, which they consider inadequate, but announced no plan to appeal her sentence as well.
Again Fox News: Danish researchers have presented evidence that HPV tests are more effective than Pap smears in identifying older women at high risk for cervical cancer. According to the study, a substantial number of older women with negative Pap smears also tested positive for HPV, indicating that they had a greater than 20 percent chance of developing cervical cancer within 10 years.
MonstersandCritics: The first official Asian Women’s Film Festival opens today. Set in Kozhikode, a coastal city in northern Kerala, India, the festival will include 24 films, all of them documentaries, submitted by women from countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and India.
China Daily: Chinese women are catching up to men in consumer power as they gain increased economic independence, according to a speaker at the annual China Luxury Summit in Shanghai. Luxury spending in particular, which until recently was 90% dominated by men, has seen a huge swing, with young women beginning to supplant men over 35 as the principal consumers of luxury goods.
Finally, after all this news of state-sponsored abstinence and rumors of women fudging their numbers, science offers women a reason to put those come-hither stilettos back on. According to Agence France-Presse, Australian scientists have discovered that female promiscuity can have positive effects on marsupials. Specifically, females having frequent sex with multiple partners increased the survival rate for babies born to the brown antechinus, a mouselike creature related to the Tasmanian devil (we’ll let you make your own jokes about that one).
This conclusion comes after researchers spent two years examining antechinus sex activity in enough detail to make even webcam voyeur blush. One group of breeding-ready females was allowed to mate with a single male, while another group was given free rein to get cozy with as many mates as possible. The rate of offspring survival for the free-love cluster was nearly three times that of the monogamous pack. The reason? “Paternity tests showed that the sperm of some males were far more successful than others and … that babies fathered by these males were twice as likely to survive.”
These findings make perfect Darwinian sense; stronger and more varied sperm lead to stronger offspring, which in turn lead to still-stronger sperm and offspring, and so forth. Applying this conclusion to humans leads to inevitably messier results, though. Issues of STDs, unwanted pregnancies and paternity tests aside, we still have that whole intimacy factor to contend with. As William Saletan summed it up in Slate, “Fidelity isn’t natural, but jealousy is. Hence the one-spouse rule. One isn’t the number of people you want to sleep with. It’s the number of people you want your spouse to sleep with.”
Still, it’s nice to hear something about females benefiting from plentiful sex in any capacity. But the research ends on a sad note: Most of the males in the study died after a single mating season, killed by exhaustion and fights with other males. Imagine the mess we’d have on our hands if human sexual practices had the same downside.
It’s down to the wire in the Virginia Senate race, and between “macaca,” naughty novels and possible assault charges, the mudslinging couldn’t get much uglier. But with the candidates neck-and-neck in the final days before the election, both sides are scrambling to find the deciding factor that will push the other over the edge. According to the New York Times, that crucial factor looks to be women voters, leaving the parties with a new challenge: How do two notoriously testosterone-soaked candidates woo female support in a state that’s increasingly divided between the upper-middle-class Democrats of Northern Virginia and the staunchly conservative habitants of the southern region?
For starters, both sides have recruited politically savvy women to assist in the final push, with Lynda Robb, wife of former Virginia Sen. Chuck Robb, publicly endorsing Democratic candidate Jim Webb, and Republican strategist Mary Matalin lobbying for incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen. While Robb, daughter of LBJ and adept political tap-dancer in her own right, is lauding Webb as “understanding the needs of Virginia’s families,” Matalin’s strategy reportedly consists of encouraging women to “talk to your girlfriends” in support of Allen. It’s an interesting choice of words, evoking images of beehived matrons gabbing at the local beauty parlor. What civic-minded woman wouldn’t be moved by such inspiring language?
But as the Times points out, the real battle for female votes is being fought on the air, as both parties lob cannonballs via carefully orchestrated TV spots aimed at influencing women. Webb’s tactic has been to dig into “woman-friendly” issues like healthcare costs, college tuition rates and legislation governing family and medical leave. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, meanwhile, has placed its bet on good old-fashioned character attacks, running ads featuring heavily hyped steamy scenes from Webb’s previously published novels as proof of the former Marine’s “chauvinistic attitudes.” No policy discussions, no attacks on the challenger’s stance on the minimum wage or immigration — just a serious-looking female announcer invoking PG-13 passages from a 28-year-old first novel. Women may not love Webb’s writing, but they also may not appreciate the assumption that their votes rest not on, say, support for withdrawal from Iraq, but an awkwardly written sex scene.
It’s certainly cheering that both candidates have readily acknowledged the importance of the female constituency and devoted time, money and energy to women voters. But if Republican strategists still think the way to capture female votes is through patronizing messages and “salacious” book reviews, they may want to rethink their assessment of the grasp we girls hold on politics.
Ah, celebrities. They’re never far from view, gazing from ubiquitous newsstands, inhabiting our subconscious minds with their dewy skin and perfect smiles, and, whether we like it or not, influencing our self-images. When icons like J.Lo and Beyonce hit the scene, it looked as though the craze for excessive thinness might have finally run its course — if voluptuousness was celebrated by the mainstream media, maybe regular women could at last enjoy a second helping of dessert.
Now, as the New York Post reports, that voluptuousness is burning off like a low-cal protein bar. In a piece titled “Et tu Booty?” Post writer Mackenzie Dawson notes that as more and more actresses and singers drift toward malnourishment and career trajectories rise according to the number of ribs displayed by backless dresses (a look exemplified by, but not exclusive to, Nicole Richie), the trend toward abundant backsides is in its death throes. Beyonci and J. Lo themselves haven’t become emaciated to follow the wave (though the former is visibly thinner), and Details magazine rather dubiously noted earlier this year that some curvy women still thrive in Hollywood. But the celebrity-rag spotlight has simply turned from ample curves to gaunt images of predominantly white starlets like Kate Bosworth and Keira Knightly.
This time, however, the female populace isn’t ready to go gently into stomach-growling nights. Dawson quotes professional women getting uppity about the thin trend: “I am so exhausted by the enthusiastically skeletal teen queens who stagger around Hollywood proclaiming 95 pounds to be their ‘natural’ body weight,” said one, while another opined that “men will always choose the Monica Belluccis, Scarlett Johanssons and Salma Hayeks over the Kate Bosworths of the world.” Another expresses outrage that celebrity culture “pay[s] lip service to ‘embracing individuality’” but then devotes attention to ritualistic starvation. And rightfully so; after all that adoration of celebrity curves and touting of “healthy” body images, we’re right back to where we started, with Hollywood starlets passing out in public and insisting that they’re simply “overtired” while struggling to hide protruding collarbones.
Blame for the current trend can’t rest on the stars alone; the media is capitalizing on corpselike actresses with unabashed glee. Celebrity weeklies like Star and Us Weekly run regular features like “Star Bodies: Too Thin?” and set newsstand sales records with cover stories such as “Nicole Seeks Treatment.” The eventual result? Normalization of the idea that having an eating disorder will get you desirable attention — not exactly an ideal message for young women still developing their own body images. Studies show that girls remain as susceptible as ever to cultural beauty standards, and feel tremendous pressure to meet them. It’s doubtful that the booty backlash is helping to ease their minds.
Booty queens: Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez. 