May 17, 2010
Why apple & the app store could be contributing to sex crimes!
Despite my love of Apples products one of my major bugbears about apple is their ‘nanny state‘ attitude towards sex and sexuality & its obsession with protecting us as if we weren’t adults all under the guise of protecting our children which quite frankly is not apples job its the job of every parent to decide what their children do or do not see.
To illustrate apples repressed attitude towards nudity and sex here is the letter apple sent to some developers in February…
From: appreview@apple.comSent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 x:xx PMTo: <COMPANY NAME>Subject: <APP NAME> Removed from Sale
Dear <COMPANY NAME>,
The App Store continues to evolve, and as such, we are constantly refining our guidelines. Your application, <APP NAME>, contains content that we had originally believed to be suitable for distribution. However, we have recently received numerous complaints from our customers about this type of content, and have changed our guidelines appropriately.
We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.
Thank you for your understanding in this matter. If you believe you can make the necessary changes so that <APP NAME> complies with our recent changes, we encourage you to do so and resubmit for review.
Sincerely,iPhone App Review
Apple say that they have a zero-tolerance policy for porn and nudity in the App Store.
Now apps that have no sexual material whatsoever have the extremely annoying 17+ pop up warning simply because they connect to the internet!
Apples stance is nothing short of hypocritical given that there are many big media players (FHM, Maxim etc) that apple allow to purvey their sexually titillating material (which is far more damaging than overtly or explicit sexual material at least according to the social scientists).
Why apple & the app store could be contributing to sex crimes
Numerous studies have concluded that as pornography increases in availability sex crimes either decrease or do not increase*
Studies have also found that being punished for porn may contribute to someone committing sex crimes and not the porn use itself.
Michael Goldstein and Harold Kant in their study ‘Pornography and Sexual Deviance’* (and scientists with similar studies) have found that rapists were more likely (than nonrapists in the prison population) to have been punished for looking at pornography while a youngster.
Other research has shown that incarcerated nonrapists had seen more pornography, and seen it at an earlier age, than rapists.
One thing that has been shown to correlate highly with sex offenses is a strict, repressive religious upbringing. ‘The Scientist‘ has reported that a repressive religious upbringing is more of a factor in sex crimes than porn so perhaps apple should be banning all those bible and religious apps instead!
In conclusion
What we can conclude from these studies is that often it is the lack of a sexual outlet or punishment for displaying interest in sexuality that causes the conflict that produces sex crime. So why do apple continue to punish healthy sane adults for their healthy natural appetites by denying many of us even mildly sexual apps?
Apples represssed attitude to sexuality and porn could in fact be doing more harm than good! perhaps apple could open a password protected app store for those adults who want to access porn apps to do so?
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