posted
Should we have them? How about if solid evidence is found which indicates that pornography does play "a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior"; should we have anti-porn laws then?
How much harm does pornography have to do before the government is justified in resorting to censorship? Is the government ever justified in doing so?
To avoid this thread turning into a debate over semantics, let's use this rough working definition of pornography: "pornography is sexually explicit material designed to produce sexual arousal in consumers"
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posted
I don't think so, but I don't really have a reason other than my general dislike of the government meddling.
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I know someone is going to ask for a link, but I can not for the life of me remember who did this study but didn't one of those statisticians figure out that the increase of free, discrete internet porn has actually led to a decrease in rape committed by teenage boys? I remember being shocked when I saw that.
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posted
Well if we are using reports we remember reading but cannot link, what about the one that shows pornography use is disproportionately represented in the prisoner population and that a huge percentage of them say that porn use influenced their state of mind into becoming more pron to criminal activity.
Ill actually try to find the study, promise.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: How do you feel about mandatory seatbelt laws, DS?
Honestly, I don't think they should exist. I'd rather people be in charge of their own safety.
Personally, I'm torn. In the first place, I think that that the govenment should get the hell off my lawn and leave us alone. On the other hand, I think that people will have happier and better lives if they wear seatbelts and do not consume pornography.
I haven't come up with an answer that satisfies me yet.
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Basically, the internet was the largest increase in the availability of pornography ever. So a researcher checked the correlation between the availability of the internet as it became widely available and the number of rapes reported and found a huge relationship (across states).
As for the prisoner population one, I'd expect it to be extremely prevalent in the prisoner population regardless of causation: there isn't much to do in prison, and people in prison are less likely to have moral qualms with it.
It is also unsurprising that prisoners would blame something other than themselves for their actions.
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quote:Originally posted by scholar: didn't one of those statisticians figure out that the increase of free, discrete internet porn has actually led to a decrease in rape committed by teenage boys?
It's not the world's most rigorous study, but then neither are the claims on the opposite side.
posted
Thanks- I thought about googling it, but right now I can not think of any good search words that won't give me mostly sites that are scary (and since on work computer, won't make my co-workers wonder what I do when they leave).
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posted
I don't think that's the argument, fugu. The way I've seen it presented is that there are a large amount of prisoners/rapists/pedophiles who use(d) porn before they came into prison.
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posted
Selling porn for use in your home? No censorship laws. Publicly displaying porn, I'm alright with banning it.
Driving around your private property with no seatbelt, let them do what they want. Driving on the highway or any public road, require it.
Seatbelts have to do with public safety. And I can think of ways in which your not wearing a seatbelt could harm me. Either way, my general feelings on privacy vs censorship is for government to stay out of my house, and off my lawn, but once I venture away from my house and lawn, they have a right to intervene to a degree.
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posted
RE: pr0n, I think I agree with Lyrhawn. I don't think there should be laws against the production of pornography (insofar as no other laws are broken during the production). However, I think that access to pornography should definitely be restricted. Public display and providing to a minor both seem pretty out-of-line.
RE: seatbelts, while I can understand the argument against seat belt laws, I also think that a parent who doesn't belt his or her children is stepping over the line into child endangerment. And really, people who engage in the most dangerous common human activity of the modern age without regard to their safety are basically volunteering to die. As long as suicide is against the law, I don't have a problem with seat belt use being mandatory.
After all, your death does have a huge negative impact on the world around you.
posted
"Either way, my general feelings on privacy vs censorship is for government to stay out of my house, and off my lawn, but once I venture away from my house and lawn, they have a right to intervene to a degree."
quote: Girls who look like models are never very good in bed. Don't take my word for it. Ask around.
It really is true. 'Swelp me.
quote: "Either way, my general feelings on privacy vs censorship is for government to stay out of my house, and off my lawn, but once I venture away from my house and lawn, they have a right to intervene to a degree."
Because 'porn' is like seatbelts? An issue of public safety?
A little cart before the horse, eh?
Just because the state has the power, that doesn't give it the right.
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I never equated the two, I addressed them both because they're both being discussed in this thread, and then I gave my general feelings on government when it comes to privacy vs censorship.
Whatever else you want to draw from that is up to you, but it doesn't necessarily reflect my views.
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You address them both, don't provide an argument, but come to a conclusion, and then you want me to do the arguin' bits for you by 'drawing' things from your post that may or may not be there?
What do I look like, Chris Angel?
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You address them both, don't provide an argument, but come to a conclusion, and then you want me to do the arguin' bits for you by 'drawing' things from your post that may or may not be there?
What do I look like, Chris Angel?
There's nothing wrong with just giving an opinion without backing it up. If all that's asked is an opinion, you can give it. I don't think Lyrhawn expected you to do anything.
Of course, I could be wrong. Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
No If they ban porn people will just make it underground... on dirty mattresses in drippy nasy basements.
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Well you certainly have the option of NOT doing so.
Government interference in our lives is always restricted to a degree. The constitution specifically enumerates several things they may NOT do, and specifically says that everything else isn't excluded from protection.
But if a majority get together and vote into power a Congress that wants to ban a giant 100 foot jumbotron in Times Square playing hardcore porn 24/7, they can, and personally I don't have an argument against it. Government is as much a defender of liberty as it is a steward of morality these days (which again, I only degree with to a degree).
Anyway, I addressed both points in much the same way everyone else did. I gave my opinion. Why aren't you going after them?
My conclusion was that when you venture into the public realm, you don't have the same rights to privacy and freedom that you had when you were in your house...and that's it. My conclusion isn't the fruition of the first two points, it's independent of it, and it's my own personal opinion. And I said that.
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posted
There's no effective way to ban porn, especially considering that it can be found willy-nilly on the internet, even when you're not looking. Not to mention that Japan, which is a country where pornography is not only prevalent but culturally OK to read in public, has a rate of sexual assault that is greatly reduced from America's.
Rape per 100,000. United States 34.20 Japan 1.48
This may also be related to the fact that fewer women report rape, and that the culture is a bit bass-ackwards about it, but even with a margin of error, it's an impressive statistic.
There is a lot more sexual harassment, though.
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posted
Indeed. Sexual harassment, particularly on trains, is up in Japan. When I was there, they had instituted women only cars on trains so that there wasn't as much fear of sexual harassment.
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posted
SS: I was responding to BlackBlade's characterization. Not that the change would much matter, there are so many extraordinarily plausible reasons for that correlation having nothing to do with causation that it doesn't even suggest a thing.
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posted
No banning porn. No banning guns. No banning internet gambling.
Are we just going to give up all personal responsibility and let the government dictate everything we can and can't do?
Granted some people are going to abuse... whatever. Some people drink socially, while others become alcoholics. Some people shoot skeet, while others shoot up supermarkets. Some guys enjoy pornography with their girlfriends in a healthy relationship, and others use it to feed their objectification of women.
It's not the government's job to legislate our choices. It's the government's job to intervene when we make *BAD* choices (i.e. leave the guy drinking beer alone, until he gets behind the wheel of a car).
So, no porn on billboards on the highway? Makes sense to me. No porn in your own home? That's a different story.
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posted
Let us take as given that Japan has a lower rates of rape but higher rates of other types of sexaul assault and harrasment.
I wonder if there's any correlation between that and the fact that while pornography is much more commonplace and accepted in Japan, pornography showing coitus is banned.
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posted
m_p_h: the definition of showing is rather different than what you think, I think. A small amount of blurring or whitespace constitutes not showing, despite the act being obviously engaged in. Also, exceptions are increasingly permitted.
The rape rates are different for the same reason murder rates are different; an extremely different cultural perspective on crimes of force.
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posted
I agree that with Japan there are some social factors that play in to their lower crime rates. Perhaps those factors are simply a greater influence then pornography, but that does not mean porn has no effect.
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posted
Somehow I doubt you want to talk about Japan's incredibly lower rape rate being because of the ready availability of porn .
There are also factors in Japan that play into a higher sexual harassment rate that have nothing to do with porn. Any competent social scientist would immediately start looking for a common cause of the acceptance of pornography and the rates of sexual harassment.
Is the situation self-reinforcing? Perhaps, but blaming the porn seems to miss the forest for the trees, or maybe the grass. Sexual norms have a lot more to do with cultural attitudes than the availability of naughty pictures. Extreme sexism, for instance, was (is) often practiced and preached to extraordinary degrees by people vehemently against porn.
You don't like it? Fine. Its constitutionally protected to a certain degree, so unless you're going to get an amendment passed, you're going to have to live with it (edit: or more properly, live with other people living with it), and there are far better things to be focusing your attention on, even with regard to the same problems.
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quote:Somehow I doubt you want to talk about Japan's incredibly lower rape rate being because of the ready availability of porn [Smile] .
I didn't even suggest that. I was merely speculating about a correlation between the degrees of different types of sex crimes in Japan and the types of pornography that is consumed.
quote:Any competent social scientist would immediately start looking for a common cause of the acceptance of pornography and the rates of sexual harassment.
Which would be a correlation, which is exactly what I was speculating about.
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posted
I think I should clarify Ryuko's post, lest the Japanese are mistaken for a race of anime addicted lechers. Salary men (the Engrish phrase for low or middle rank white collar workers) can often be seen in trains reading thick comics with sexually explicit illustrations, or other periodicals with softcore photographs. It's more tacitly condoned than anything, and most people regard them as dirty old men. Personally, while using the public rail service for the decade or so I went to school there, I've never seen hardcore pornography anywhere in public, and feel that the stigma against pornography is generally similar to other developed countries. I seem to remember seeing plenty of bare breasts on German news stands, and the fact that statistically Americans consume the most pornography per capita. (This is not a blanket accusation against Hatrack - I'm quite certain Australia is not far behind.)
Perhaps the ready importation of risque anime in the US over many other aspects of our culture has exaggerated the impression that pornography is somehow acceptable in Japan.
Also, as has been mentioned a couple of times, correlation does not equate to causation, so we have to be extremely careful about making generalisations about any culture, which is necessarily a very complex system. As mentioned above, there are a host of other reasons the rate of rape is so low in Japan. For one, our crime rates are much lower overall.
Japan has had a very restrictive society until very recently (1945, say), with an attitude towards sex which could sometimes be almost Victorian (but other times not). Marriages were usually arranged, and public etiquette was very rigidly prescribed. Then comes the sudden change to a liberal democracy, and a whole host of things which were once unacceptable are suddenly okay. But some of the old stigma remains.
My own personal theory is that countries which shift towards liberalism very suddenly from a previously rigid culture tend to produce unusual expressions of eroticism. Bizarre explicit anime, German pornography, what have you. I think it's also linked to sexual harassment - an inability for some people to get comfortable with new gender roles.
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Let us take as given that Japan has a lower rates of rape but higher rates of other types of sexaul assault and harrasment.
I wonder if there's any correlation between that and the fact that while pornography is much more commonplace and accepted in Japan, pornography showing coitus is banned.
I think non anime pornography is much easier to obtain in Western countries than in Japan.
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Euripides: I don't know which would be judged easier, exactly, but its definitely easy to obtain non-anime pornography in Japan. When I was on exchange there (in high school, about . . . wow, six and a half years ago) many bookstores with magazine sections had non-anime porn in among the other magazines (typically alphabetically, iirc). We high schoolers found that inordinately amusing.
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posted
Totally true, Euripides. The only thing I'll say from my experience in Japan was while I never saw anyone reading porn or anything like that in public (not even on the trains), it did seem like porn (even the non-anime variety) was more readily available. That may be slightly one-sided though as I spent a good portion of my time in Akihabara game shops, and they might be catering towards their consumers a bit more. Hard to tell. Broad generalizations don't really do a culture justice.
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posted
Akihabara is one of the most concentrated centres of anime pornography you can find in Japan. It wasn't always that bad, but I keep seeing good computer stores in the so-called Electrical Town being usurped by comic stores and vendors of half-nude plastic figurines. Honestly, it's one of my least favourite places in Tokyo because it makes me feel as though the Japanese psyche is perverted.
Not a reflection on you - I know it's the best place to get cameras and other gadgets. Also, they've done up the station a bit so it doesn't look quite as dingy.
As for porn being more available in Japan, well, I could walk into a news agency in Australia or the US and get a copy of Hustler or something even less congenial. And Western cities are never short of sex shops (really, I'm surprised no one has mentioned the French yet). Maybe in the West the magazines are more carefully hidden in the corner, or the sex shops tucked into small tenaments with narrow entrances. Unless I can find some studies/statistics online, I can't be sure.
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posted
Yeah, that's why I tried to point out where I was when I made the statement. I think the availability of porn in the shops that you wouldn't expect (my initial reaction was "video game stores and toy stores have porn? what?!") was just sort of surprising, but it makes sense considering the major audience it's catered for, I guess.
As for general availability beyond this, I'd say Japan and the US are fairly similar (from what I saw). I don't typically see Playboy or anything like that when I go to a grocery store or anything around here, and I typically didn't see anything worse than model magazines (i.e. girls in swimsuits, sort of like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue) at places like 7-11 in Japan. I can't speak about newsstands or anything though, as I don't frequent them here and I didn't in Japan either.
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Sorry pfresh85, I didn't mean to suggest that you were unaware that Akihabara is not representative of Japan. It's just one of my pet rants. Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
Totally understandable. Despite the sleaze, I was fond of Akihabara. Then again, I'm a gaming nerd, so it was like a mecca. Posts: 1960 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I think the real question behind this entire porn-law issue is this: where (and when) do we draw the line on pornography and its distribution?
I get the idea that lots of people (if not most) like porn. (This is something I don't entirely understand, as the idea of erotic stimulation is something I can't tolerate.)
However, the fact that there are other people who don't like porn is starting to be ignored. You see clear evidence on the newspaper racks everytime you go to the store, anywhere you go. Porn and sex magazines are everywhere. As porn has direct affect on one's moral and sexual outlook, isn't this infringing on others' natural rights to think and believe as they please?
I see the matter this way. There are two sides of the social spectrum (sort of like the left-right political spectrum). On one end is Anarchy, while the other is Tyranny.
Most people who argue in favor of porn (and thus, against porn laws), feel that creating laws on the distribution and presence of pornography will begin a slippery slope towards tyranny. As Flying Cow remarked, "Are we just going to give up all personal responsibility and let the government dictate everything we can and can't do?"
However, I feel that America is already on a slippery slope towards anarchy on this particular issue. Many people argue that as pornography is a form of expression, then "freedom of expression" applies here. No laws, no stops, just let me express myself to the world as pornographically as I want to--whether or not you want to listen.
Which is the crucial factor. Many people (myself included) just don't want to hear, see, or have anything to do with porn. By forcing that on us by surrounding us with it, you are forcing me to take part in something that I just don't want to do. The purpose of "drawing the line" is to prevent this from happening.
Then again, me preventing you from expressing your mindset in this way is, to many people, a violation of your "freedom of expression".
How about this: Your "freedom of expression" is acceptable as long as it does NOT intrude on my freedom to interpret life as I please, and maintain my own moral views.
(NOTE: I have no problem with individuals participating in pornography, so long as it does not interfere with my social and moral life.)
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(This is something I don't entirely understand, as the idea of erotic stimulation is something I can't tolerate.)
I'm assuming you worded that incorrectly.
quote:Originally posted by 777:
How about this: Your "freedom of expression" is acceptable as long as it does NOT intrude on my freedom to interpret life as I please, and maintain my own moral views.
What if it wasn't pornography? Should be ban loud communist posters? Wouldn't forcing you to see that intrude on your "freedom to interpret life as [you] please", at least as much as an explicit image would?
Many people against anti-porn laws (e.g. Lyrhawn, or myself) are also comfortable with laws against displaying porn publicly. I agree that there's a line to be drawn somewhere. I think it's fair that people should not be exposed unwillingly to explicit or grossly violent images while going about their own business, but beyond public TV projectors and posters, I don't see how that would happen. Unless you have to walk through the red light district or something like that.
I also have a bone to pick with your usage of the word 'anarchy'.
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
"what about the one that shows pornography use is disproportionately represented in the prisoner population and that a huge percentage of them say that porn use influenced their state of mind into becoming more prone to criminal activity."
Self-reporting from pathological manipulators is a dubious proposition. These are the same people who proclaim that they are innocent of any crime, or that their victims "asked for it", or that their trials and convictions were "unfair". A disproportionately large percentage of prisoners also report that they were raised in highly religious households. And that they are "good Christians/etc" now.
Quite different from comparing non-tamperable data such as the number of people in jail vs availability of erotica. Which leads to interesting facts such as most pornography is sold in the BibleBelt states, by a HIGHLY disproportionate amount on a per capita basis.
posted
Also, when talking about the links between porn and criminal behaviour, perhaps we should distinguish between pornography which depicts consenting partners and that which involves some kind of coercion or violence.
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posted
Sorry about that, Euripedes. By anarchy I mean a lack of control or regulation over what is morally acceptable by society and what is not. Essentially, our moral views on a particular view are in "anarchy" if there is no government influence whatsoever in determining the authority a certain moral view has. (I'm really crappy at wording these things.)
For instance, there's the matter of marriage. To descend the slippery slope of marriage would go something like this: homosexual marriage, then bisexual/transexual marriage, polygamy, adjustments to what exactly marriageable age is, and so on. This would represent our social views on marriage in anarchy--no rules, anything goes.
I also understand that much of what I said is impractical. I understand that there is little chance that common erotica and sex mags will be banned from store shelves, but at least some people can make an effort, rather than sitting back and watching it happen.
Also, what was it about my wording in that fragment that didn't make sense?
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