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

[Lithrael]

Yes, much like a romantic movie has real kisses in it, which some people in committed relationships see as incompatible with their relationships (because it is a real kiss) and other people do not (because it is acting, for a fiction).

 

[Poem]

Yes, much like a romantic movie has real kisses in it, which some people in committed relationships see as incompatible with their relationships (because it is a real kiss) and other people do not (because it is acting, for a fiction).

Okay - and what is your view? Would you let your partner have sex with another in a porn film? Again, it was you who agreed with Chanakya's: "porn is a performance, fiction, not real".

 

[Lithrael]

I'm not the best person to ask, because I'm unusually permissive. My concerns would mostly be about a safe and respectful (to the workers) set.

There are people who are married to porn actors, would you like me to find some interviews where they comment on the subject?

 

[Poem]

I'm not the best person to ask, because I'm unusually permissive. My concerns would mostly be about a safe and respectful (to the workers) set.

I guess this comes down to one's philosophy of life...what exactly we are as human beings; what, if anything, we consider to be special about a relationship between (two) people.

There are people who are married to porn actors, would you like me to find some interviews where they comment on the subject?

I am aware of this - but sure if you think it will be beneficial.

 

[theprestige]

I think pretty much everyone who's had sex understands that porn depicts unrealistic and impractical sex acts and narratives. Though I admit it took me a couple tries, to figure out that sex and water don't mix.

Anyway, I it doesn't seem like a point that needs the belaboring it's received here.

 

[Lithrael]

I guess this comes down to one's philosophy of life...what exactly we are as human beings;

To decide if porn is ok, we must first create the universe.

I don't know, it seems like sexual imagery is among the very earliest of human artefacts. You could argue that was about fertility rather than gratification, but something tells me gratification was not rare in the earliest of cultures.

 

[Ziggurat]

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.

Sure, but the problem you describe is due in no small part to the fact that the sex part of porn is real. It actually happens, and we can tell it actually happens. And because that part is real, it makes the fiction part easier to believe, even when we shouldn't. If it was all fiction, it couldn't deceive as well as it does.

 

[Lithrael]

The complaints about women suddenly finding guys trying out bdsm on them, thinking they'd like it, seemed like it was because of the hype around the book, 50 shades of grey. No real sex in that.

 

[Poem]

To decide if porn is ok, we must first create the universe.

I don't know, it seems like sexual imagery is among the very earliest of human artefacts. You could argue that was about fertility rather than gratification, but something tells me gratification was not rare in the earliest of cultures.

According to the Neo-Darwinian view (viz. Richard Dawkins), we are gene machines:

"We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes".

Of course genes aren't selfish - they blindly and randomly mutate - so it's a anthropomorphism that serves to explain and is relatable. This theory does appear to explain pornography - with gratification the focus.

It's worth noting that, whilst still remaining thoroughly Darwinian, a third of biologists have said that Neo-Darwinism is inadequate to explain the history of life.

Under Darwinism, of course, there is nothing about porn that is 'wrong'.

 

[Poem]

The complaints about women suddenly finding guys trying out bdsm on them, thinking they'd like it, seemed like it was because of the hype around the book, 50 shades of grey. No real sex in that.

Books aren't written in a vacuum; 50 shades is part of the sexual revolution we are undergoing and could seen as part of porn normalization.

 

[Poem]

9 year olds aren't stumbling on mountains of free porn available 24/7 either.

Whilst you have a point (the average age of first exposure is about 13), I'm not sure that's exactly helpful to your case.

I was 9 once. And I stumbled on 'mountains' of 'free' Playboy magazines. Of course I read them, as any inquisitive 9 year old would. Guess what? The nudity and sex stories didn't interest me at all. I do remember one letter to the editor where the guy explained how he or his girlfriend would stick their nether regions up to the car exhaust while the other one revved the engine. According to him she liked rapidly pulsing the throttle, while he preferred a constant 6,000 rpm. As an adult this might be slightly arousing, but to a 9 year old it was pure parody. Obviously the writer was taking the piss out of those equally silly letters where men described their supposed sexual exploits. Or was he?

Ok.

I bet the average 9 year old would have the same reaction to porn that I did - it's boring! Why do adults do it? It will be a few years before they begin to understand, by which time they are not really 'children'.

Young people are getting hooked on porn and some are acting it out in real life. That is an unconscionable fact; an indictment of the society that has left it lying around.

If the average person found porn boring then there would not be the porn saturation status quo that we have today; so, on the contrary, most people find porn extremely moreish.

But plenty of 9 year olds are constantly exposed to booze-fueled violence, including members of the family being beaten up and even raped. Often they themselves are the victims. And in many homes the booze is not kept away from the children. Also unlike sex, even 9 year olds could be attracted to booze. If young children aren't drinking it's only due to 'parental controls', same as porn - except they are far less likely to be interested in watching porn (beyond simply because it's forbidden).

So again I have to ask - why are you singling out relatively harmless porn, when alcohol is a much more clear and present danger? That's not rhetorical. You say you used to watch porn. So why did you stop? Logically It can't be to reduce the risk of rape, since the effect of one person not doing it is miniscule. In fact there is credicble evidence that eliminating porn would increase the incidence of rape. So what's your real reason for railing against it?

Perhaps you should post a thread on the ills of alcohol.

Your assertion that porn is relatively harmless isn't borne out by children's charities and child experts. I have posted on this many times. I've already agreed that alcohol is harmful and would support a ban.

I stopped watching because I think it isn't good for me; it steers one away from a healthy relationship. I also haven't gone back to it for all the reasons outlined in this thread.

 

[Poem]

Sure, but the problem you describe is due in no small part to the fact that the sex part of porn is real. It actually happens, and we can tell it actually happens. And because that part is real, it makes the fiction part easier to believe, even when we shouldn't. If it was all fiction, it couldn't deceive as well as it does.

Even when we shouldn't? Could you elaborate?

 

[Myriad]

Young people are getting hooked on porn...

Are they, though?

It's difficult to imagine a person too young to masturbate getting "hooked on" porn.

It's also difficult to imagine a person old enough to masturbate requiring porn to get "hooked on" masturbation.

Unless, perhaps, it's because they lack all imagination and any ability to visualize. I can see that being a problem, perhaps caused by over-exposure to screen images at the expense of verbal and text narrative earlier in childhood. But not caused by porn; the dependence on porn would then be a result not the cause. In that case, banning porn because too many adolescents use it would be like banning eyeglasses because too many adults use them.

 

[Lithrael]

It's also difficult to imagine a person old enough to masturbate requiring porn to get "hooked on" masturbation.

Unless, perhaps, it's because they lack all imagination and any ability to visualize. I can see that being a problem (...)

I can imagine this happening in specific circumstances, like the 4chan boards where you can yell exactly what you want to see and the community will dig up and post scores of images for you. Since it's drawn, it can get pretty crazy, and I can imagine people accidentally using it as a kink amplification machine until they only find balloon animals arousing or something.

Then, you have some people who literally can't visually imagine things; I can see that being a problem for private fantasy time.

There is written porn by and for guys and it's genuinely so different from the stuff women typically write for women that it's hard for women writers to pastiche it without sounding like they're making fun of it. But in any case the consumers of that stuff are probably fine; I've never heard of a guy addicted to reading letters to Hustler.

These days most young guys I actually hear about having trouble with porn addiction have it in the same way/at the same time as video game addiction. It seems to me, to be about falling too deeply into escapism, gravitating towards stuff that will engage their attention and distract them from stress or depression or some other malaise, but of course it's like trying to live on candy floss.

I'm under the impression that this is pretty different from what we usually mean by addiction; it's more like a learned helplessness type of psychological thing. People who get out of it don't seem to ever crave it or relapse as such. It's just that breaking the habits can get to be a monumental challenge. This is all just an impression though, don't take it as fact.

The worst is when you combine porn addiction with a grift. I have heard stories about guys sending insane amounts of money to camgirls or even just straight up catfish.

 

[Poem]

I explain clearly why it isn't semantics, particularly in context of what we'd been discussing, you and I, over the last many days: and "Semantics Chanakya" is all you have to say to that? ...And also, our discussion throughout has been about porn, porn in general. You'd suggested to me that you'd want porn to be proscribed. To now limit your reaction merely to "forced rape" is a blatant, brazen goalpost-shift. Unless it is the case that you now retract your suggestion about proscribing porn in general, and limit that to merely "forced rape" porn.

I was attempting to make a point that would have made a previous post of yours contradictory but it didn't work.

I'm now starting to agree with the others here who have suggested that you're not doing this in good faith. I don't mean this as a put-down,

Suggesting someone isn't acting in good faith is suggesting that are not being honest - so it is a put down.

but the above does point in that direction. If all you want is to interminably dance the dance, and go through the motions of rational thought and discourse, while leaving out the core of skeptical thinking, which is sincerity of intent: well then, you can do that with the one or two others on this thread who clearly share that inclination. I myself have neither the time nor the stomach for it.

I'd suggest you enjoy using vague terms that are confusing to me.

For the last time: What is happening on the set, and what is being depicted, those are two different things.

No, that is not true. A penis entering an orifice on the set is the same when seen on the video made of that scene. What might be different, for example, would be the fact that on the set they had a break whilst filming before resuming (maybe there was an issue with soreness or lack of lubricant or someone felt sick etc) - something that would not be included in the video edit.

To keep the former safe and healthy for all is a matter of regulation, that I have already supported, as you have not. The latter is what the audience will end up viewing; and, while certainly there's certainly space for regulation as far as the latter as well, but it is this latter that is fictive, and any viewer that does not recognize that and understand the implications of it, should be educated towards that end. Your conflation of these two is what is confusing you, or at any rate confusing the issue as you present it here.

Since you haven't demonstrated a significant 'misalignment' between the two then we'll ignore this.

In any case, trying to proscribe porn is just as silly an idea as wanting to proscribe violence in movies and shows: and I'd support neither of those, not in principle, and not in practice.

Violence in movies is fiction. Sex in porn is real.
Silly like banning slavery?

Please demonstrate that it is silly.

There's certainly room for regulation there, both in how porn (or violence) is actually shot at the level of the actors, as well as in how they are depicted and to what kind of audience and with what kind of control: and certainly you can bring up better means of enforcing those and future regulations: but again, a ban is completely out, as far as I'm concerned.

So nothing concrete then.

 

[Poem]

Are they, though?

"Young people tell me their exposure to pornography is widespread and normalised – with the average age at which children first seeing pornography being 13 years old," Dame Rachel de Souza, the current Children’s Commissioner, tells the BBC.

It's difficult to imagine a person too young to masturbate getting "hooked on" porn.

By all accounts, masturbation occurs at a very young age.,

It's also difficult to imagine a person old enough to masturbate requiring porn to get "hooked on" masturbation.

?

Unless, perhaps, it's because they lack all imagination and any ability to visualize. I can see that being a problem, perhaps caused by over-exposure to screen images at the expense of verbal and text narrative earlier in childhood. But not caused by porn; the dependence on porn would then be a result not the cause.

?

In that case, banning porn because too many adolescents use it would be like banning eyeglasses because too many adults use them.

I never new eyeglasses were responsible for causing the equivalent of the 'severe harm' to children and society in general that porn does.

Your trivialization of this issue is in line with the very meaning of rape culture.

 

[Poem]

There is a continuing denial among posters regarding what is actually occurring with children's easy access to porn - so I'll repost this from CEOP (Child Online and Exploitation Protection Centre - part of the UK's Nation Crime Agency):

Child sexual abuse is when a child, by which we mean anyone under the age of 18, is pressured, forced or tricked in to any sexual activity with an adult or another child. This isn’t only physical contact and can happen both in person and online.

All sexual contact between an adult and a child, online or in person, is sexual abuse; this includes:​

not taking proper measures to prevent a child being exposed to sexual activities by others
showing a child images of sexual activity, including photographs, videos or via webcams

 

[Lithrael]

People intentionally texting porn/porn links to minors is a different thing than porn being available to people who go looking for it. I don't think you'll get ANY pushback against beefing up laws/conequences around the problem of inappropriate ◊◊◊◊ being sent to minors. Really the only caveat there is to deal appropriately with people who are themselves exploited into doing it.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

"Young people tell me their exposure to pornography is widespread and normalised – with the average age at which children first seeing pornography being 13 years old," Dame Rachel de Souza, the current Children’s Commissioner, tells the BBC.

Funny how you snipped the part immediately preceding this quote:

Recent research from their office found that, in 2023, 10% of children had seen porn by the age of nine and 27% had seen it by age 11.

So, not actually that widespread, then.

 

[Poem]

People intentionally texting porn/porn links to minors is a different thing than porn being available to people who go looking for it. I don't think you'll get ANY pushback against beefing up laws/conequences around the problem of inappropriate ◊◊◊◊ being sent to minors. Really the only caveat there is to deal appropriately with people who are themselves exploited into doing it.

That's disingenuous Lithrael. Porn website owners, users who upload content, consumers and porn advocates are all implicated in this sex abuse scandal. What about:

not taking proper measures to prevent a child being exposed to sexual activities by others

is in any way ambiguous?