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Liberal defenders of pornography readily admit that, if there were reliable evidence to show that consumption of pornography significantly increases the incidence of violence sexual crime, there would be a very strong liberal case for prohibiting it. However, liberal defenders of pornography remain unconvinced that there is reliable evidence to show that pornography is a cause of rape or other sexual crime. Ronald Dworkin, for example, writes "in spite of MacKinnon's fervent declarations, no reputable study has concluded that pornography is a significant cause of sexual crime: many of them conclude, on the contrary, that the causes of violent personality lie mainly in childhood, before exposure to pornography can have had any effect, and that desire for pornography is a symptom rather than a cause of deviance" (Dworkin 1993: 38).
The question of whether pornography causes harm raises tricky conceptual issues about the notion of causality, as well as empirical and methodological ones. (See Schauer 1987 and The Attorney General's Commission on Pornography 1986, excerpts from which are reprinted in Mappes and Zembaty 1997: 212-218.). The causal connection between consumption of pornography and violent sexual crime, if there is one, is unlikely to be a simple one. As some liberals have argued, it seems implausible to think that consumption of pornography, on a single or even repeated occasions, will cause otherwise "normal, decent chaps" with no propensity to rape suddenly "to metamorphose into rapists". (Feinberg, 1985:153, also see entry on Freedom of Speech.) However, we might agree with Feinberg, and yet think that pornography might still be a cause of rape. Consumption of pornography might cause rape by making it more likely that those who are already inclined to rape will actually rape, thereby increasing the overall incidence of rape. Of course, pornography may not be the only cause of rape or other violent sexual crime. The contributing causes of violence against women are likely to be numerous and connected in complex ways: they may include, among other things, "macho values" (as Feinberg suggests) and certain sorts of childhood events and circumstances (as Dworkin says). But the mere fact that there may be other causes of sexual violence against women does not show that consumption of pornography cannot also be a cause. Consumption of pornography may, on its own, be neither necessary nor sufficient for violent sexual crime (or for sexist attitudes and behaviour more generally); yet it might still be a cause of violent sexual crime and these other harms, if it increases the incidence of them.
It might be helpful to consider an analogy with smoking. Smoking cigarettes, on its own, is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient, condition for developing lung cancer: since there are people who smoke like chimneys who never develop lung cancer and live perfectly healthy lives to a ripe old age; and there are people who have never smoked a cigarette in their whole life who develop lung cancer. Yet it is generally agreed nowadays that smoking cigarettes is a cause of lung cancer. This is because smoking (in combination with other factors such as genetics, diet and exercise) makes it significantly more likely that a person will develop lung cancer, or so the studies suggest. Likewise, we might think that consumption of pornography will be a cause of violent sexual crime (or of sexist attitudes and behaviour more generally) if there is good evidence to suggest that consumption of pornography increases the incidence of sexual violence or sexist behaviour, holding fixed other known causes of these harmful states of affairs.[6]
There is considerable disagreement, among social science researchers as well as liberal and feminist philosophers, about whether pornography is a cause of violent sexual crime (see Donnerstein et. al. 1987, Copp and Wendell 1983, Itzin 1992). Both the final report of the Commission of Obscenity and Pornography in the U.S. in 1970 and the Williams Committee Report into Obscenity and Film Censorship in the U.K. surveyed the data from clinical and experimental trials then available and found no evidence of a causal connection between pornography and rape (although the 1970 Commission did not review the evidence concerning sexually violent material). However, the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography in the U.S., which submitted its final report in 1986, found that the clinical and experimental research virtually unanimously shows that exposure to sexually violent material increases the likelihood of aggression toward women; and that "the available evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that substantial exposure to sexually violent materialsbears a causal relationship to antisocial acts of sexual violence and, for some subgroups, possibly to unlawful acts of sexual violence" (Mappes and Zembaty 1997: 215). The report also found that non-violent but degrading pornographic material produced effects "similar to, although not as extensive as that involved with violent material". However, the report concluded that non-degrading and non-violent material (erotica, in feminist terms) "does not bear a causal relationship to rape and other acts of sexual violence".
A number of studies have found a positive correlation between exposure to violent pornographic images (for example, of rape, bondage, molestation involving weapons and mutilation) and positive reactions to rape and other forms of violence against women. Studies suggest, among other things, that exposure to violent pornography can significantly enhance a subject's arousal in response to the portrayal of rape, that exposure to films that depict sexual violence against women can act as a stimulus for aggressive acts against women, and that prolonged exposure to degrading pornography (of a violent or non-violent sort) leads to increased callousness towards victims of sexual violence, a greater acceptance of rape-myths' (for example, that women enjoy rape and do not mean no when they say no), a greater likelihood of having rape-fantasies, and a greater likelihood of reporting that one would rape women or force women into unwanted sex acts if there was no chance of being caught.
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