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

[Ziggurat]

So is slavery. How vocal were those that favoured keeping slavery in the 19th century?

That's an illogical comparison. You should be comparing yourself to the abolitionist. But they had good arguments. You have not put forward good arguments for banning porn. That requires more than just asserting harm (and much of the harm you have asserted isn't supported by evidence). You have to argue that the effects of banning are net positive. And you haven't even tried to make that argument.

Something should be done about excessive alcohol consumption.

Sure. But banning didn't work, did it? Why do you think banning porn will? Have you considered that maybe there are better ways to reduce porn consumption?

Are millions of children watching porn right now?

At this very moment? Probably not. Have they ever? Yeah, probably.

Most of them will probably survive.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Have you considered that maybe there are better ways to reduce porn consumption?

Or even whether reducing porn consumption would be a good thing.

There's a way we could test that though. Lets start by banning the porn which is most likely to increase the risk of rape - actual rape porn.

Oh wait... Turns out that's already a crime.

Rape pornography

The legality of simulated rape pornography varies across legal jurisdictions. It is controversial because of the argument that it encourages people to commit rape. However, studies of the effects of pornography depicting sexual violence produce conflicting results. The creation of real rape pornography is a sex crime in countries where rape is illegal...

"...in countries where rape is illegal".

United Kingdom
The possession of rape pornography is illegal in Scotland, England and Wales.

Germany
In Germany, the distribution of pornography featuring real or faked rape is illegal

United States
Law enforcement agencies concentrate on examples where they believe a crime has been committed in the production. "Fantasy" rape pornography depicting rape simulations involving consenting adults are not a priority for the police.

 

[Puppycow]

"...in countries where rape is illegal".

Is there any country where rape is not illegal?

 

[Cosmic Yak]

Is there any country where rape is not illegal?

Well, there are plenty where marital rape is not considered to be a crime. Then there are countries that allow a rapist to escape punishment if they marry their victim. Finally, there are countries like India and Pakistan, where rapists regularly walk free, and their victims are the ones who are punished. So, yes, tragically, there are.

‘Marry your rapist’ laws in 20 countries still allow perpetrators to escape justice

Critical UN report says the legislation is ‘deeply wrong’, subjugates women and shifts the burden of guilt on to the victim

www.theguardian.com

 

[Puppycow]

Well, there are plenty where marital rape is not considered to be a crime. Then there are countries that allow a rapist to escape punishment if they marry their victim. Finally, there are countries like India and Pakistan, where rapists regularly walk free, and their victims are the ones who are punished. So, yes, tragically, there are.

I'm aware of that, but even those countries do have laws on the book that make rape a crime.

‘Marry your rapist’ laws in 20 countries still allow perpetrators to escape justice

Critical UN report says the legislation is ‘deeply wrong’, subjugates women and shifts the burden of guilt on to the victim

www.theguardian.com

This makes me wonder if something is being reported inaccurately by the press. A quote from the article:

Michèle Zirari Devif, a Moroccan lawyer specialising in criminal law, said: "Contrary to what has been reported in the press, clause 475 absolutely does not provide for a rapist to marry his victim. It forbids the abduction of minors and provides for cases where a girl has run away with a man – without the threat of violence or deceit – and where she has married him, then he can avoid prosecution."

This bit caused me to ponder what exactly is being reported. In the west, and most developed countries, this would absolutely be rape. If the victim was a minor, then it doesn't matter whether there was a threat of violence or deceit. If a man entices a minor to "run away with" him, he is a rapist and a child kidnapper, whether he used threats of violence or not.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

I'm aware of that, but even those countries do have laws on the book that make rape a crime.

What was the expression I was looking for? Oh, yes- 'effectively decriminalised'.

This makes me wonder if something is being reported inaccurately by the press. A quote from the article:

This bit caused me to ponder what exactly is being reported. In the west, and most developed countries, this would absolutely be rape. If the victim was a minor, then it doesn't matter whether there was a threat of violence or deceit. If a man entices a minor to "run away with" him, he is a rapist and a child kidnapper, whether he used threats of violence or not.

The facts on the ground speak against biased reporting. Consider:

On October 10, the Tangiers Court of Cassation overturned the 2019 conviction of a man for raping his wife, which had been hailed as Morocco’s first ruling to explicitly criminalize marital rape. By referring the case back to the Tangiers Appeals Court, which had sentenced the man to two years imprisonment and ordered him to pay a fine and compensation to the victim, the Cassation Court has effectively annulled a critical legal precedent criminalizing marital rape, setting back the clock on advancing women’s rights in Morocco.
Morocco’s penal code and other legislation do not explicitly criminalize marital rape. While a 2018 law on violence against women criminalized some forms of domestic violence, established prevention measures, and provided new protections for survivors, it did not explicitly criminalize rape within marriage and created new gaps and barriers for survivors to access promised protections. The law does not define domestic violence and fails to specify the obligations of police, prosecutors, and investigative judges in domestic violence cases.

Moroccan Court Overturns Landmark Marital Rape Conviction

On October 10, the Tangiers Court of Cassation overturned the 2019 conviction of a man for raping his wife, which had been hailed as Morocco’s first ruling to explicitly criminalize marital rape.

www.hrw.org

 

[Poem]

Oops, looks like I was a few pages out of date. But yeah, I'm with Chanakya here. YOU may not be talking about whether young viewers mistake the narrative for how things really work in real life, but Poem definitely was. Half the point of Poem saying 'so much porn is violent!' was about young people making the same kind of error as thinking that, say, a show about a bunch of antisocial characters, represents how it's acceptable to act, and the young audience going on to try to emulate those antisocial behaviours on their peers.

It was not about how the piece of fiction got made, and how much trickery was or was not involved in producing it.

A punch or a sex act done after someone yells 'action' is a real act done in service of a fiction,

A punch in a film wont be really a punch - but the sex in the porn movie will generally be real sex.

and the fiction may contain real acts, but the context matters, and the context is that it is something made by actors specifically to create what you are watching.

That is to say, it may be, but is in no way guaranteed to be and often isn't, as a whole, at all realistic. Or a good idea to emulate or to use as a basis for forming real-world impressions, without first finding out how realistic the narrative was.

Plenty of people are imitating what they see - particularly young people...I have posted on this quite a lot.

I haven't had a chance to respond fully to your (and Chanakya's) lengthy posts on this - but can I ask you, do you have a partner / spouse?

 

[Lithrael]

Yeah I do.

 

[Poem]

Yeah I do.

Just to clarify - you agree with Chanakya that: "porn is a performance, fiction, not real"?
That being so - could you expound on what you mean by 'not real'? If, for example, a married couple both considered porn to be so (ie 'not real'), what would that mean if one or the other made such content with someone outside the marriage?

 

[Lithrael]

Siiiigh. The actions taken as part of a performance are real actions (though what appears to be a real action in the final production may not have been a real action on set); the narrative is fictional and not real.

Ask the same question to actors with spouses, who perform steamy scenes for movies. It's personal; some actors (ie the banana evolution guy iirc) won't even do steamy-adjacent scenes because they feel it's incompatible with their commitment to their spouse. Others have no problem with real kisses and real eye****ing to portray a fictional relationship.

There are people who are married to porn actors. Would you like me to find some interviews where they answer this question?

 

[Poem]

Siiiigh. The actions taken as part of a performance are real actions (though what appears to be a real action in the final production may not have been a real action on set); the narrative is fictional and not real.

Ask the same question to actors with spouses, who perform steamy scenes for movies. It's personal; some actors (ie the banana evolution guy iirc) won't even do steamy-adjacent scenes because they feel it's incompatible with their commitment to their spouse. Others have no problem with real kisses and real eyefucking to portray a fictional relationship.

There are people who are married to porn actors. Would you like me to find some interviews where they answer this question?

Real actions - but the porn is fictional?

It feels like there isn't actually much disagreement between us on this - you are putting emphasis on the fictional elements and I on the real aspects.

As I said, we know that very young people are imitating porn. They see real sex and it gives them ideas to try out. The majority of child abuse in the UK is now carried out by children - and that, perhaps, isn't that surprising given their access to porn.

 

[Lithrael]

And their lack of access to sex ed and/or healthy behaviour modeling.

Again, the story of a young boy choking a young girl and saying he thought it's what you are supposed to do because of a video he saw, is a woefully incomplete story. You genuinely don't get choking videos served up to you out of the blue, and a healthy boy doesn't think you're supposed to hurt people because he saw it happen in a video. I'd buy a kid thinking you're really supposed to hit people with folding chairs because of wrasslin before I'd buy a kid thinking you're really supposed to choke women because of porn. If the story is true, I'd guess the kid had a shared computer loaded up with nasty stuff or other kids intentionally misled him.

 

[Poem]

And their lack of access to sex ed and/or healthy behaviour modeling.

Again, the story of a young boy choking a young girl and saying he thought it's what you are supposed to do because of a video he saw, is a woefully incomplete story. You genuinely don't get choking videos served up to you out of the blue, and a healthy boy doesn't think you're supposed to hurt people because he saw it happen in a video. I'd buy a kid thinking you're really supposed to hit people with folding chairs because of wrasslin before I'd buy a kid thinking you're really supposed to choke women because of porn. If the story is true, I'd guess the kid had a shared computer loaded up with nasty stuff or other kids intentionally misled him.

You don't think choking is normalized?
The Guardian (1st September 2024):
‘I think it’s natural’: why has sexual choking become so prevalent among young people?

"In July researchers from Melbourne and Queensland universities published a study on the prevalence of sexual strangulation among 18- to 35-year-olds in Australia and found that over half of the more than 4,700 surveyed had choked or been choked by a sexual partner. Among young people, sexual choking has become mainstream."

 

[Lithrael]

I don't find it surprising that young adults would consensually try it to see if they liked it. It can look like it might be sexy as part of a scene. But to modify the line from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, you don't have to go leaping straight for the choking like a bull at a gate.

There's also a problem with porn giving people the impression that motorboating a woman's crotch is an acceptable way to do oral.

ETA: sounds like this shift might be partly due to that ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ book: https://www.bodyandsoul.com.au/sex-...r/news-story/9b18c328d90599b3eeeefd1caeaa3e1d

 

[Poem]

I don't find it surprising that young adults would consensually try it to see if they liked it. It can look like it might be sexy as part of a scene. But to modify the line from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, you don't have to go leaping straight for the choking like a bull at a gate.

There's also a problem with porn giving people the impression that motorboating a woman's crotch is an acceptable way to do oral.

ETA: sounds like this shift might be partly due to that ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ book: https://www.bodyandsoul.com.au/sex-...r/news-story/9b18c328d90599b3eeeefd1caeaa3e1d

You still maintain that porn is fiction; it's not real?

 

[Lithrael]

It's real in that it exists. It's also fictional. A lot of pop culture is fictional and, being pop culture, can turn into a game of telephone and give people stupid (or good) ideas. If the people are familiar with critically evaluating their interactions with the pop culture they're swimming in, the harm is reduced and the exploration can be more positive. The guy who 'thought all women liked that now' got a firm 'no thank you' from the girl and presumably reevaluated his impressions. It would have been better if he'd thought about it enough to talk to anyone about it or ask first, but it is what it is.

 

[Poem]

It's real in that it exists. It's also fictional. A lot of pop culture is fictional and, being pop culture, can turn into a game of telephone and give people stupid (or good) ideas. If the people are familiar with critically evaluating their interactions with the pop culture they're swimming in, the harm is reduced and the exploration can be more positive. The guy who 'thought all women liked that now' got a firm 'no thank you' from the girl and presumably reevaluated his impressions. It would have been better if he'd thought about it enough to talk to anyone about it or ask first, but it is what it is.

If one is unable to acknowledge the actual reality of porn sex then one will find it difficult to argue that one's partner should abstain from making such content with another person...it's just fiction isn't it?

Perhaps you'd like to comment on that?

 

[Poem]

...When you’re seeing the show, then what you’re seeing is a story, a narrative, a rendering. And that rendering is fictive. …However, if you had happened to visit the set where that show was being shot, and actually observed what the actors are doing there, and the director and the cameraman and the rest of the staff, well then, what you’re seeing there, that meta thing, is real...

You make the point that attending the set makes it real, but watching it as a film is fictive.

But then you say:

...The depiction is fictive if it is actual actors performing on stage, in an actual old-school theater...

This appears to contradict your previous assertion.

Hell, the depiction is fictive even when you’re sitting there reading out a bedtime story to your child. …But when you go meta, and then it becomes real. When you’re seeing the person reading the story, as opposed to attending to the story per se, then that is real.

I have no idea what this means. Are you a philosopher in your spare time?

When you’re looking at the play not as a narrative but as a bunch of people doing stuff on a stage with a bunch of people sitting there in chairs looking at them, then that is real. …And when you visit a movie set (including a porn-movie set), and actually see the actors and director and the rest of the team there do their stuff, then that is real too --- unless of course that meta-depiction is itself the meta-narrative being depicted fictively.

I'm lost again.

…I think you can now see why your looking in through someone’s window --- generic “you”, no snide personalizations and insults intended! --- and watching whatever is going on in there, be it people just sitting around and talking, or eating, or watching TV, or having sex, or whatever else, is not fictive but real. Unless of course a man looking through a window is what is being fictively depicted in a show or something, and you’re seeing a scripted performance, in which case obviously it is fictive.

Baffling.

Would you let your partner act in a porn film (ie with other porn actors / actresses? If your answer is 'no', then it would speak loudly about how real you think such sex is.

 

[Lithrael]

If one is unable to acknowledge the actual reality of porn sex then one will find it difficult to argue that one's partner should abstain from making such content with another person...it's just fiction isn't it?

Perhaps you'd like to comment on that?

Did you read post #1270? You replied to it but seem to have missed the part where it comments on that.

 

[Poem]

Did you read post #1270? You replied to it but seem to have missed the part where it comments on that.

With respect Lithrael, you are the one arguing that porn isn't real.

And yet you say:
The actions taken as part of a performance are real actions (though what appears to be a real action in the final production may not have been a real action on set); the narrative is fictional and not real.

I remain confused by your position Lithrael. It's much easier to just state the obvious - that porn has real sex in it....such that most folk (ie those in committed monogamous relationships) would not want their partner to act in it.