Porn Up, Rape Down

is the title of an SSRN paper the abstract of which reads:

The incidence of rape in the United States has declined 85% in the past 25 years while access to pornography has become freely available to teenagers and adults. The Nixon and Reagan Commissions tried to show that exposure to pornographic materials produced social violence. The reverse may be true: that pornography has reduced social violence.

It's a grand total of six pages long and very readable, largely because there's not a whole lot there beyond the following:

• Rape has declined drastically in recent years. If one looks at state-by-state data, it turns out that those states with the most prevalent internet access (and therefore most freely available porn) experienced the greatest decrease in rape. Those states with the least prevalent internet access experienced and increase in rape.
• The author was a member of Nixon's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. Nixon was furious when the commission found no link between porn and antisocial behavior. The later Reagan commission which did find a link was composed of individuals who passed an "ideological litmus test."
• The author posits two reasons for the reduction. One, potential rapists "get it out of their system." Two, pornography has greatly demystified sex.

Openness is better than repression.