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

Poem said:
"Research for the Home Office suggests that only 4% of cases of sexual violence reported to the UK police are found or suspected to be false. Studies carried out in Europe and in the US indicate rates of between 2% and 6%."
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OK, so this is your source. But you misrepresented this source in your subsequent post. 4% of accusations are "found or suspected to be false" by the police. Do you think that the police were able to determine all false rape accusations as being false? That would be naive. More likely is that some number of false reports never got flagged as false. A lot of false allegations probably got dropped as having insufficient evidence, but insufficient evidence alone won't get you flagged as being false (and rightly so since plenty of real allegations can fall into this category).

The truth is that this 4% rate DOES NOT represent the rate of false accusations. We do not know the real rate of false accusations. We have no good evidence of what it actually is. It could easily be much higher than 4%.
 
Ziggurat said:
Sure, that's what porn is. So what? There are lots of things I'm not personally willing to do which shouldn't be banned. I'm also not willing to perform musical theater, but that doesn't mean no one else should. What I am personally willing or not willing to do isn't a useful metric for social policy decisions.
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Shouldn't be banned. Typo? Making it analogous to performing in music theatre is....unfortunate.

Why has the UK made such an act illegal? As I understand it - one can face 2 years' custody.
 
Darat said:
To step outside the realm of porn, there have always been orgies, swingers' parties are still a thing and even dogging.

I'm a bit like Ziggurat, that's not my sexual kink but some people get off on watching other people in real life have sex with other people, some people get off by having sex with an audience. Porn is only an extension of that.
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Acknowledge but far from the point I am making.
 
Poem said:
Shouldn't be banned. Typo?
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No. Musical theater shouldn't be banned. That's not a typo. Do you disagree? Do you think musical theater should be banned?
Poem said:
Why has the UK made such an act illegal? As I understand it - one can face 2 years' custody.
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What act? Having sex in front of children? Well, of all the reasons to ban it, the fact that *I* won't do it shouldn't be on the list. Which is why I still don't get what point you thought you were making when you asked me.
 
theprestige said:
My non gender specific sibling in a messianic savior deity, I'm quoting the very same source you quoted, in your post that I replied to. How did you not figure this out already?
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You are indeed, but I am still waiting for a citation that proves what you said. I'm genuinely interested to see such.
 
My non gender specific sibling in a messianic savior deity

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Poem said:
I didn't find it...but please show me what I missed.
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Your source:
www.city.ac.uk

New scorecards show under 1% of reported rapes lead to conviction – criminologist explains why England’s justice system continues to fail | City St George's, University of London

Dr Katrin Hohl, a criminologist at City, University of London, assesses why rape prosecutions are so low, why cases take so long, and why most victims withdraw their case.
www.city.ac.uk www.city.ac.uk

The relevant passage:
"Long delays in cases progressing through the system are directly linked to a decade of government funding cuts to the justice system. In the words of one prominent barrister: “having broken the legs of the justice system, the government now wants to score how fast it can run”."

theprestige pointed out that your own source indicates that there is a problem with prosecuting and convicting criminals across all crimes in the UK, not just rape.
 
Ziggurat said:
Your source:
www.city.ac.uk

New scorecards show under 1% of reported rapes lead to conviction – criminologist explains why England’s justice system continues to fail | City St George's, University of London

Dr Katrin Hohl, a criminologist at City, University of London, assesses why rape prosecutions are so low, why cases take so long, and why most victims withdraw their case.
www.city.ac.uk www.city.ac.uk

The relevant passage:
"Long delays in cases progressing through the system are directly linked to a decade of government funding cuts to the justice system. In the words of one prominent barrister: “having broken the legs of the justice system, the government now wants to score how fast it can run”."

theprestige pointed out that your own source indicates that there is a problem with prosecuting and convicting criminals across all crimes in the UK, not just rape.
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Maybe Poem wants me to cite Dr Katrin Hohl's source for that quote in her article. She says it's a "prominent barrister", but then cites an anonymous message on Twitter.

Is that what you were looking for, Poem? Ironically, that anonymous person on Twitter cites an article in The Telegraph, that talks specifically about court delays and poor service across the board. Rape is "effectively decriminalized" because violent crime in general is "effectively decriminalized" by budget cuts. That's not rape culture. That's poor governance.

Also, if an anonymous Twitter user is Dr Hohl's idea of a "prominent barrister", then I'm not really going to take her seriously on whatever subject she's blathering about.
 
Ziggurat said:
Sure, that's what porn is. So what? There are lots of things I'm not personally willing to do which shouldn't be banned. I'm also not willing to perform musical theater, but that doesn't mean no one else should. What I am personally willing or not willing to do isn't a useful metric for social policy decisions.
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That's a good point. Porn itself isn't inherently bad, and it doesn't cause most people to commit rape. There is even some evidence that it reduces the tendency to rape. But there is one 'drug' that is a big part of our culture which is inherently bad - alcohol. It's a poison, which just happens to have an effect on the brain that many people crave - and some are addicted to. Another bad thing about alcohol is that children are permitted to watch people drinking it, even when behaving badly.

But one thing about it is far worse - alcohol is a date-rape drug. In fact, alcohol is the drug most commonly involved in drug-facilitated sexual assaults. Alcohol also reduces inhibitions and increases aggressiveness, especially in men. You would think that these properties would cause it to be banned in places where it might facilitate rape. But no, it flows freely and is often the main attraction in places where women (and men) are most vulnerable.

If you are really concerned about reducing rape, target the activities that are mostly responsible. Porn isn't it. Ask the police and rape crisis centers etc., and they will tell you what is. Our society isn't so much a 'rape culture' as it is a drug culture, especially alcohol. And this isn't just causing rapes. It's also responsible for the majority of violent acts, and a large proportion of road injuries and deaths, and destruction of property (ask me about that!), and serious disease and medical conditions too, as well as wreaking relationships and lives.

Yet strangly, Poem doesn't appear to have mentioned the word 'alcohol' even once in this thread. Why not? Could it be that Poem is focusing on something of minor importance while ignoring the elephant in the room? I hope I am wrong, and Poem is actually leading the charge to get rid of this scourge from our society. And I certianly hope (s)he doesn't indulge in it - even a little bit - as that would be the height of hypocricy.
 
P, is your position that children were less exposed to sexual content before the rise of the Internet?
Like at the time they lived in a single room with their siblings and parents?
 
Roger Ramjets said:
But there is one 'drug' that is a big part of our culture which is inherently bad - alcohol.
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I wouldn't classify alcohol as inherently bad. I don't think there's good evidence that low consumption rates are worse for a health person than zero consumption. But it definitely is inherently dangerous. And you are quite right to note that it's a contributing factor in a lot of rape, sexual assault, and a whole host of other criminal activity and social pathologies. If we want to reduce rape and sexual assault, dealing with how alcohol contributes to it would be a pretty good start.

But here too we see that societies which simply ban alcohol (rather than learn to socially regulate it better) aren't really less violent and don't have less sexual assault and rape. Human behavior is complex, and simply eliminating one contributor to bad behavior doesn't tend to stop bad behavior, or even necessarily reduce it. If people don't learn self control, then it doesn't matter what you prohibit, they're going to act badly. And if people do learn self control, you don't really need to prohibit anything which doesn't do direct and immediate harm.
 
Ziggurat said:
But outlawing slavery has, in fact, dramatically reduced how much of it there is in places where it's outlawed. The fact that we feel better for having done so is pretty irrelevant next to the fact that the ban actually reduced the amount of it.
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It's reduced the number as a percentage of the world's population - but there are more slaves now than there have ever been.

There are no countries that allow slavery btw.
 
Ziggurat said:
But you are suggesting that in places where porn is banned, porn might still be a significant contributor to the prevalence of rape and sexual assault (hence the high rates in places where porn is banned). And that logically requires one of two things: either the ban isn't effective in even reducing the amount of porn available, why bother, or that there's no dose/response curve for the effects of porn and that a little availability causes as much rapes as a lot of it. I don't find either explanation very plausible, but it doesn't matter, because in neither case would a ban accomplish any reduction in the number of rapes or sexual assaults. If you just want to feel smug for banning it even though a ban does nothing, I'm not interested in joining you.
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Rather than looking at the amount of porn, shouldn't we rather be asking how accessible porn is where it is banned? The availability of VPNs suggests that access is easy.

I would hazard that most of those with the authority to impose a ban a probably watching porn themselves...Pornhub's popularity figures are off the scale as already noted.
 
Ziggurat said:
No. Musical theater shouldn't be banned. That's not a typo. Do you disagree? Do you think musical theater should be banned?
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No, of course that should not be banned. Your post implied that we should not ban the showing of porn to children CMIIW.
Ziggurat said:
What act? Having sex in front of children? Well, of all the reasons to ban it, the fact that *I* won't do it shouldn't be on the list. Which is why I still don't get what point you thought you were making when you asked me.
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Perhaps you could clarify why you would not have sex knowing that children could be watching and hearing you? If you think that is wrong, then you must therefore think that porn is wrong.
 
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