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The latest on sex and the Internet You've gotta love the Internet. It's an unregulated portal to virtually any kind of kink and depravation that gnaws at the human soul. So naturally, we've got legions of upstanding citizens condemning the dark and sleazy sides of the Internet, with the hope that if they can just murder the messenger of the World Wide Web, our families and children will once again be safe. We even have counselors and psychiatrists doing what any freshman in college will get an F for—using anecdotal evidence for making serious claims. Without a whole lot of scientific research, they are saying that porn on the Internet is as dangerous as cigarette smoking, and that people who watch it start to adopt a "sex carnival" attitude in their private lives, whatever that means. They don't mention any of the real research that's been done. For instance, before the fall of the Soviet Union, places like Croatia were not exactly hubs of the porn trade. However, since the fall of the evil empire, porn is now readily available in Croatia, as well the technology to view it and to download it. So you've got a pretty neat lab setting to do a before-the-influx-of-porn and after-the-influx-of-porn study. And that's exactly what researchers like Milton Diamond have done. Here's what he reports: "We've just finished a porn study in Croatia. As a post-communist country, it shows, like all the other countries we've looked at so far, despite a major influx of available porn, there was NO increase in sex crimes." As for claims that pornography and the easy availability of porn on the Internet is destroying families at an unprecedented rate, that's a pretty easy one to explore—let's compare the divorce rate in America a decade before the Internet and a decade after (give or take a half a decade). The divorce rate in America reached its historical height in 1980. It has modestly declined since then. But we shouldn't go quoting divorce rates without looking at marriage rates. Marriage rates have declined nearly 50 percent since now and 1960. The decline in marriage is clearly contributing to the decline in divorce rates. (When singles who have been living together split up, it's not called a divorce.) Has porn on the Internet influenced people to crave "carnival sex," and is this causing a drastic decline in the amount of marriage? That might be true if the decline in marriage rates began in 1995 or 2000, but it was well underway by the 1980s, long before the birth of the World Wide Web. As for other dimensions to porn on the Internet, people who claim that it is destroying the American family never seem to mention all of those sexless marriages that stay together thanks to masturbation. Why not give porn on the Internet its just do in providing for a better masturbation experience that allows people to stay in a sexless marriage? (When children are involved, it is usually better for them if their parents stay together, as long as the parents are friends and get along. So rather than destroying these sexless marriages, some sex researchers believe that porn on the Internet might be helping them to stay together.) One thing I think we do need to look at, and to try to understand, is the proliferation of websites where people post pictures of themselves either with legs spread or doing the nasty. We're not talking porn stars here. These appear to be average men and women with no financial incentive. They simply enjoy posting pictures of themselves having sex on the Internet. I have no idea whether this is good or bad, but I do find it fascinating. Perhaps readers who have posted sex photos or videos of themselves on the web will let me know some of their thoughts and feelings about doing this. I'm sure it must be exhilarating on some level, perhaps like the streakers of decades past (reach me at paul@goofyfootpress.com). Paul Joannides is the author of Guide To Getting It On, The Universe's
Coolest & Most Informative Book on Sex.
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