Does 'rape culture' accurately describe (many) societies?

[TragicMonkey]

I'll also note that there's never any discussion about the portrayal of rape in "romance" novels. Women's sexuality can never be problematic, even when it involves rape fantasies.

And men's sexuality can never not be problematic, even when it doesn't involve women.

 

[Poem]

I'll also note that there's never any discussion about the portrayal of rape in "romance" novels. Women's sexuality can never be problematic, even when it involves rape fantasies.

Could you explain your meaning?

 

[lobosrul5]

I just read through seven pages and I have a lot to say.

My first observation is that the overwhelming majority of people participating in this thread are males (I don't know what sex Poem is though), and that of those males most have taken a very male-centric view.

The predominant argument against Poem's position seems to be that they want easy access to porn, and don't want anything put in place that might make it harder for them to get access to porn. My perspective is that for most of the posters, this is an extremely male view, and it's based on the underlying assumption that males have a right to expect sexual satisfaction, and that it is somehow wrong for any hurdles to be put in place for males gaining sexual satisfaction.

Poem presented a lot of information showing that a material amount of user-loaded content on porn hosting sites is either non-consensual or under age... and that got waved away as if that's not a big deal. Some posters have gone so far as to assure us all that it's very, very difficult to find rape and child porn unless one knows exactly how to search for it the right way. I'll let that marinate for a moment. All in all, it comes across as if most (not all) of the male posters in this thread place their desire to access porn well above the safety of children and females.

No. My argument is essentially two pronged:

1) I have seen no evidence that easy access to porn leads to a culture of rape. In fact states that seem to have easy access to porn, ie Sweden, have lower incidences of rape than other countries where it is highly restricted. And, rape was acceptable in many societies in many circumstances long before porn existed. If anything, its generally less accepted now than at any time in human history at least in Western society.
2) Making porn inaccessible on the internet is a far more challenging task and will require far more "big brother" intrusiveness into their internet traffic than many people realize, or would accept, I think. Do you want a government agent looking at everything you view, and if you were to use encryption or a VPN would you be OK with being arrested cause well, you could've used it to get around restrictions?

 

[Ziggurat]

Could you explain your meaning?

Romance novels are essentially porn for women. And often, they involve rape scenes. Women fantasizing about rape is a thing, in case you weren't aware.

But it's never discussed in terms of "rape culture". If fantasies are part of "rape culture", why is that never discussed?

Because the point is not an actual understanding of human sexuality and pathology. It's an agenda-driven discussion, whose true purpose is political power. That's why you have the blatant dishonesty of describing Hentai as being about children, and the obvious double standard of male fantasies vs. female fantasies.

 

[Darat]

I just read through seven pages and I have a lot to say.

My first observation is that the overwhelming majority of people participating in this thread are males (I don't know what sex Poem is though), and that of those males most have taken a very male-centric view.

The predominant argument against Poem's position seems to be that they want easy access to porn, and don't want anything put in place that might make it harder for them to get access to porn. My perspective is that for most of the posters, this is an extremely male view, and it's based on the underlying assumption that males have a right to expect sexual satisfaction, and that it is somehow wrong for any hurdles to be put in place for males gaining sexual satisfaction.

Poem presented a lot of information showing that a material amount of user-loaded content on porn hosting sites is either non-consensual or under age... and that got waved away as if that's not a big deal. Some posters have gone so far as to assure us all that it's very, very difficult to find rape and child porn unless one knows exactly how to search for it the right way. I'll let that marinate for a moment. All in all, it comes across as if most (not all) of the male posters in this thread place their desire to access porn well above the safety of children and females.

Would you mind if I use this as an example of poisoning the well for Wikipedia?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Now for some more specific responses to some posts. theprestige - I want you to take note that I'm trying really hard to follow your suggestion of reading all the way through before I comment. But there's still going to be several posts by me showing up anyway, so you can just deal with that.

So much of Rape Culture is based on the extremely silly idea that sex is somehow a competitive game, both between partners and between peers.

Educators would be well advised to teach kids that there is no scoreboard and no medals for having more or less sex than anyone else.

This is an idea I have never run across, and I don't think this is even remotely what anyone means when they talk about rape culture. I don't know how you end up with this interpretation at all.

Rape culture is one in which rape is trivialized. One where it's brushed under the rug, ignored, or where the victim is blamed for their own victimization. "What were they wearing" and "How many people did they have sex with before this" and "Well they're known to be promiscuous" and "They shouldn't have drunk so much" and "they're a tease".

Rape culture is one in which the potential risk of reputational damage to a male is deemed to be of such import that the injuries and harms to the victim are given very little consideration. Despite the fact that false accusations are extremely rare, in the vast majority of cases where the victim (which are about 95% female) actually presses the claim, they are assumed to be lying from the start, and there is a huge amount given to whether or not it's worth supporting the victim of such violence, all because it *might* hurt the reputation of the accused (which are 98% male).

Rape culture is one in which the sexual gratification of males is held as a higher priority than the safety of female. And this accurately describes almost the entire planet.

I find the insistence that kids need to be shielded from sex (much more than from violence), or their lives will be ruined and they will become sexual deviants ... not to be empirically supported.

You're broad brushing this in a way that ignores what's actually going on. We're not talking about trying to pretend that sex doesn't exist at all, trying to hide the reality of reproductive activities from kids. I agree that the US in particular is more prude about sex than is warranted.

On the other hand, however, I also think that both porn and what passes as "sex ed" nowadays is detrimental. Porn doesn't present anything remotely like a realistic view of what sex should be expected to be like. It ends up being a very skewed and, in my opinion, unhealthy view of sex. There's relatively little porn out there that is just two people having normal romantic sex. On the other hand, there's an overabundance of gang bangs, violent sex, anal sex, choking, slapping, etc. Sex ed has attempted to address this to some degree... but it's doing so by trying to teach kids how to "safely" have anal sex, how to "safely" engage in "breath play", how to "safely" have fun slapping your partner.

The net result is that we have now taught young people that this is normal and expected sexual behavior... and the consequent of this is that kids feel as if they *should* engage in it, and if they don't like it, then something must be wrong with them. This has resulted in an increase in sexual harm being experienced by youth.

I think it's more to do with the enforced taboo, and the unwillingness of parents to have an open, non-judgemental and calm talk with their kids about sexuality, depending on what the child wants to know and what he/she might have seen and would like to understand, and the availability of pragmatic sexual education.

When you get right down to it, sex is something very silly most of the time, and it would be a good thing for everyone not to take it so seriously.

Speaking as a female who has been the target of attempted rape twice, and has been physically harmed by an aggressive partner... I think perhaps your "don't take it so seriously" comment might be a bit misplaced. I think it would do society as a whole a bit of good if males in particular took sex a little more seriously.

 

[Darat]

Romance novels are essentially porn for women. And often, they involve rape scenes. Women fantasizing about rape is a thing, in case you weren't aware.

But it's never discussed in terms of "rape culture". If fantasies are part of "rape culture", why is that never discussed?

Because the point is not an actual understanding of human sexuality and pathology. It's an agenda-driven discussion, whose true purpose is political power. That's why you have the blatant dishonesty of describing Hentai as being about children, and the obvious double standard of male fantasies vs. female fantasies.

There is also a large amount of fiction for women, wrote by women of so-called M-M relationships that are to me problematic i.e. rape, sexual violence etc. Sadly, this more often than I would like intersects with a genre I like, urban fantasy, and I have read extremely - of course to me - disgusting descriptions of sexual violence. They are one of the few books I do not finish.

Certainly, the idea that fantasy sexual violence is only desired by males is countered by such examples.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Pornhub believes that requiring its adult customers to identify themselves will drive away business because pornography is a product many consumers prefer to consume anonymously.

I'm not convinced that pornhub's desire for profitability is a good excuse to minimize safeguards that would prevent harm.

Because parents aren't parenting sufficiently, and hope to childproof the rest of the universe to make up for their own failure.

Don't want your kids seeing stuff? Monitor their internet usage. Don't give them unfettered access. Don't give them smartphones. Don't put computers in their rooms and ignore them. Pay attention. Raise them.

Very good points. I ran across a comment some years ago that I've echoed many times since:

When your kid is "on the internet", they're not sitting beside you on the couch - they're in an unknown location, hanging out with strangers of all ages that you don't know, with no supervision. If you as a parent would not allow your child to go to an unknown place with a bunch of strangers to do stuff you have no insight to in real life, why would you allow them to do so virtually?

 

[dirtywick]

Some posters have gone so far as to assure us all that it's very, very difficult to find rape and child porn unless one knows exactly how to search for it the right way. I'll let that marinate for a moment. All in all, it comes across as if most (not all) of the male posters in this thread place their desire to access porn well above the safety of children and females.

i'm the one who said that. what are you trying to imply?

 

[Ziggurat]

My first observation is that the overwhelming majority of people participating in this thread are males (I don't know what sex Poem is though), and that of those males most have taken a very male-centric view.

That's probably true.

The predominant argument against Poem's position seems to be that they want easy access to porn, and don't want anything put in place that might make it harder for them to get access to porn.

I don't really think that's what anyone here is arguing. As lobosrul5 pointed out, though, it's very hard to make porn categorically inaccessible without severely compromising free speech rights. Also, it's a mistake to lump all porn together, as if there's no distinction between actual child porn and rape videos versus consensual adult content.

My perspective is that for most of the posters, this is an extremely male view, and it's based on the underlying assumption that males have a right to expect sexual satisfaction

Everyone has a right to sexual satisfaction. Wouldn't you find it weird if someone wanted to prohibit the sale of dildos or vibrators? What people don't have the right to is compelling anyone else to participate in that sexual satisfaction. This distinction is important. And yes, that is perhaps a very male view, but likewise it's a very female view to ignore it.

and that it is somehow wrong for any hurdles to be put in place for males gaining sexual satisfaction.

Any hurdles? Absolutely no one here thinks it's wrong to put up any hurdles. Everyone here is fine with prohibiting rape. Everyone here is fine with prohibiting child pornography. But beyond that, the details of the prohibition matter. Not all prohibitions are worth doing, even if they have some beneficial effects. The downsides can be worse.

Poem presented a lot of information showing that a material amount of user-loaded content on porn hosting sites is either non-consensual or under age... and that got waved away as if that's not a big deal. Some posters have gone so far as to assure us all that it's very, very difficult to find rape and child porn unless one knows exactly how to search for it the right way.

No, this is a misrepresentation of the argument. It's not that it's difficult to find. It's that you generally won't find it if you aren't looking. Yes, this is a male perspective, but at the risk of mansplaining, I suspect it's a perspective with more experience than yours. I have never been interested in rape or child porn, I have never looked for rape or child porn. But I have looked for porn. And I have never come across rape or child porn while looking for ordinary porn. Can it happen by accident? Probably. Is it the typical experience of most porn watchers? I don't think it is.

All in all, it comes across as if most (not all) of the male posters in this thread place their desire to access porn well above the safety of children and females.

I think you're misreading the intentions of other posters because their primary focus isn't matching yours. And there's nothing wrong with you wanting more focus on what you care about. But I suspect that if you just ask posters here if they would like more steps to be taken to prevent sites like Pornhub from posting child and rape porn, most would say yes. I would. But again, that distinction between different kinds of porn is important, because both legally and morally they really aren't the same, and you have to make that distinction explicit in your discussions.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I'm not convinced that pornhub's desire for profitability is a good excuse to minimize safeguards that would prevent harm.

Perhaps or perhaps not. But my comment was in response to "Pornhub clearly wants children to access their material; why else are they suing?" Pornhub doesn't want (and certainly not "clearly want") children to access their material; Pornhub wants to make money. (Which children do not even have, usually.) Which is their motivation for suing.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Pornhub serves content, it may be very badly moderated regrading not verifying that everything it hosts is a legal performance but it is marketed as providing performances. As was mentioned before watching fictional murders does not make you a part of a "murder culture" per se I would say there requires an additional step.

I think there's a nuance in here that you're missing, though I take your meaning.

When we're watching fictional murders in a TV show or movie, we're watching something that was professionally produced, with a whole lot of observers involved, and a pretty high degree of assurance that it is indeed fictional.

I would say that if we're watching professionally produced porn from a licensed studio, we have at least some of the same assurances that it's consensual and safe, and that nobody is being harmed* in the making.

The problem with user-uploaded content and amateur porn is that no such assurances exist. There are no safeguards, there's no way to ensure that the people involved are of legal age, nor that they've consented to either the sexual acts themselves or to the content being shared on line.

If there were widespread consumption of user-uploaded murder films where the viewers didn't really give much thought to whether or not the murders were actually fake... and there had been multiple repeated cases of similar content having been identified as actual real snuff films... Then I think there'd be a good argument to be made for it being indicative of "murder culture".

*Some would argue that in many cases, the actors involved still suffer harm, as there's a notably high level of drug use involved, and sometimes coercion. I don't make that argument, but there is a risk. On the other hand, there's a risk of coercion and drug use involved in a lot of TV and movies too, so I don't see it as being massively different, and I accept that the oversight involved is sufficient to reduce that abuse.

 

[Ziggurat]

I think it would do society as a whole a bit of good if males in particular took sex a little more seriously.

Males absolutely should take sex a lot more seriously.

But you haven't been paying attention to the modern hookup scene if you think females don't need to take it a lot more seriously as well. This is a general social dysfunction, it is by no means limited to males. Look up some of the @whatever podcast clips to see how deep the delusions can go among females. It will horrify you.

And note: I'm not saying women are worse than men. But they aren't necessarily better either. Their dysfunctions just manifest differently than men's.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Because technology makes it virtually impossible to implement without very serious "big brother" style surveillance and limitations. I got access to porn at an early age before home internet access was really a thing (and I didn't have it anyways). Trying to pass legislation to keep kids from seeing it these days is just "feel good" legislation to make people think their representatives are "doing something". Its a virtual impossibility. Changing societal norms so that kids are monitored at all times on all devices/screens is probably impossible and possibly more harmful than beneficial anyways.

What volume of porn did you have access to pre-internet? How easy was it for you to get hold of? Did you have access to thousands and thousands of magazine/videos/dirty pictures depicting everything ranging from plain old missionary position to massive gang bangs to bondage and simulated rape to choking?

This is much like saying "I had access to candy as a kid and I turned out fine" without recognizing that the candy we had as children used real sugar in lower amounts, and we got that candy on a sporadic basis... and failing to consider that candy these days is packed full of corn syrup and being consumed every day if not multiple times a day.

It's an oversimplification of the situation that doesn't acknowledge a change in the nature of the content.

 

[Darat]

...snip....

On the other hand, however, I also think that both porn and what passes as "sex ed" nowadays is detrimental.

Examples - and please not the odd extremism but representative of the usual.

.

Porn doesn't present anything remotely like a realistic view of what sex should be expected to be like. It ends up being a very skewed and, in my opinion, unhealthy view of sex.

This I tend to agree with and is the main reason I do have issues with kids getting access to pornography prior to learning about sex.

There's relatively little porn out there that is just two people having normal romantic sex.

After this thread started I had a look at heterosexual Pornhub and there was a lot of sex that seemed to be just 2 people having sex, although of course it will be the fantasy version of sex that is shown in porn.

Why did you put the word romantic in there?

On the other hand, there's an overabundance of gang bangs, violent sex, anal sex, choking, slapping, etc.

I would agree there seems a lot - but is there any study that has actually looked at the relative proportions?

That aside - wouldn't we expect porn to be the more fantastical sex? Just like we don't go to see a movie about a couple who get up in the morning, go to work, come home, have their dinner, do the chores and go to bed. Entertainment is never the same as real life, it would not be entertainment if it was.

Sex ed has attempted to address this to some degree... but it's doing so by trying to teach kids how to "safely" have anal sex, how to "safely" engage in "breath play", how to "safely" have fun slapping your partner.

Can't see anything wrong with teaching about anal sex - apparently a large proportion of people do practice it - this was discovered decades ago. As to the rest, again do you have examples - and again I don't want the odd example of extremism - in a world so full there are extremes in everything, I would like to see what is usually taught? Even if you can only provide it for your country.

The net result is that we have now taught young people that this is normal and expected sexual behavior... and the consequent of this is that kids feel as if they *should* engage in it, and if they don't like it, then something must be wrong with them. This has resulted in an increase in sexual harm being experienced by youth. ...snip...

This I again agree with, but I recognise my opinion may be a perception not a reality so do we have statistics on the increase in sexual harm? I could see that we might now have an increase in reporting since we have been thankfully breaking down the barriers that have kept sex from being something normal.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Anybody really think rape is pervasive and normalized in the US or indeed much of Western society?

What do you think constitutes "pervasive"? One in six females in the US is the victim of attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. I consider that pretty pervasive, but perhaps you think that's an acceptable level of rapes.

I do love the bit about slut-shaming; who exactly shames sluts? Answer: other women.

Do you hold the naive view that "slut shaming" is limited to actually literally calling someone a slut? I don't, and I don't think most people do.

And denial of widespread rape is a "when did you stop beating your wife," bit extended to the culture in general--either you acknowledge widespread rape, in which case rape culture pretty obviously, or you deny it, in which case rape culture.

Or, you know... One in six females that you mean has been subjected to an attempted rape, and maybe you could think about the impact that has on females in general? Rather than rhetorically pretending it's not a big deal?

 

[TragicMonkey]

If "rape culture" is defined as "the culture prevalent in a place where rape occurs" then is there now and has there ever been a culture that wasn't a "rape culture"? If the US is a "rape culture" because of the 1 in 6 statistic, then what's the cutoff number between "rape culture" and "not rape culture"? If we reduced it to 1 in 7 is that sufficient to flip? What's the limit? 1 in 10? 1 in 50? 1 in 100?

I don't think there's a sufficient connection between "rape occurs in this culture" and "porn occurs in this culture" to declare they are causally linked and reducing the latter will reduce the former.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I call bull **** on this statistic. I don't think it's remotely possible to get an accurate measurement of something like this globally. First, how the hell are you going to get accurate data in places like Afghanistan, or even China? I don't think you can. Hell, getting accurate data about this even in the USA or other liberal western democracies is hard.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than-percent-rapes-lead-felony-convictions-least-percent-victims-face-emotional-physical-consequences/

Only about a third of rapes get reported, and most of those don't even result in an arrest. Of those arrested, only a very small number actually go to court and get convicted.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The porn industry is a sleazy business, but a business is all it is. I'd draw a rough analogy with mining and petroleum: those guys need supervision or they get up to very dangerous mischief. There are laws to govern that.

There are laws to prevent the worst abuses of the pornographers. There are also laws to restrain the anti-pornographers.

There are laws governing professional pornography production companies. Those are relatively robust.

There are laws governing pornography hosting sites, and those are entirely different and much less robust laws. They're also laws that are frequently unenforced or unenforceable.

When it comes to hosting sites that allow user-created uploads, the safeguards have been quite week, and the abuses have been fairly widespread.

 

[Emily's Cat]

When we have 'societies' where the victim of a gang rape, in a public setting, is sentenced to death for being raped, it seems particularly weird to focus on pornography in the western world as 'rape culture'.

"Hey, only one in six of you females have to deal with rape, and you're not being executed for it, so you should thank your blessings and just keep quiet" is perhaps not the message you want to send?