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

acbytesla said:
No, it's not. How dishonest can you be? No one 18 and 19 years of age is a child.
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Anyone with a preference for such porn will increase the chances of triggering a similar sexual response when observing a real child. It's naïve to think otherwise.
 
Poem said:
Anyone with a preference for such porn will increase the chances of triggering a similar sexual response when observing a real child. It's naïve to think otherwise.
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You are talking out of your ass. Every word you post is bull.
 
Probably not a popular opinion, but I think being sexually attracted to a sixteen year-old who closely approaches our ideal standard of beauty is a healthy response. Indulging in that sexual attraction to form a romantic interest is not, however, a good thing. So I see nothing particularly reprehensible about porn that celebrates the youth and beauty of people just this side of what is legal. As long as everyone really is legal, and what's on the tin is legal.

On the other hand, I think being sexually attracted to pubescent or prepubescent children is not at all healthy, and should never be indulged in any way.

Everybody seems to be fond of conflating the scenarios, which peeves me no end.
 
arthwollipot said:
It's not. Nobody in "barely legal" videos looks like a child.
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it’s also a completely age appropriate and normal attraction for a huge chunk of the porn viewing audience. of course as we’ve covered, poem has never actually seen any porn and must rely on their imagination based off of descriptions from biased and dishonest sources

i personally think there’s a lot of issues with porn and sexualization on social media, and plenty of exploitation problems in the porn industry, and it’s an interesting topic. but poem being some combination of confused and blatantly dishonest about it isn’t really contributing to either the informative or interesting parts of it.
 
theprestige said:
Probably not a popular opinion, but I think being sexually attracted to a sixteen year-old who closely approaches our ideal standard of beauty is a healthy response. Indulging in that sexual attraction to form a romantic interest is not, however, a good thing. So I see nothing particularly reprehensible about porn that celebrates the youth and beauty of people just this side of what is legal. As long as everyone really is legal, and what's on the tin is legal.

On the other hand, I think being sexually attracted to pubescent or prepubescent children is not at all healthy, and should never be indulged in any way.

Everybody seems to be fond of conflating the scenarios, which peeves me no end.
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Yeah, pretty much.

I also think there is a nostalgic reaction. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 are the ages when both males and females first real sexual experiences are common. You're not going to see prepubescent children on Pornhub, or other popular internet sites. You're not going to see 16 or 17 year olds either. No, what you're typically going to find are mostly early twenty year olds with an occasional 18 or 19 year old.
 
theprestige said:
Probably not a popular opinion, but I think being sexually attracted to a sixteen year-old who closely approaches our ideal standard of beauty is a healthy response. Indulging in that sexual attraction to form a romantic interest is not, however, a good thing. So I see nothing particularly reprehensible about porn that celebrates the youth and beauty of people just this side of what is legal. As long as everyone really is legal, and what's on the tin is legal.

On the other hand, I think being sexually attracted to pubescent or prepubescent children is not at all healthy, and should never be indulged in any way.

Everybody seems to be fond of conflating the scenarios, which peeves me no end.
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The people who criticize making a distinction between pedophilia and ephebophilia often miss something important I think. Personally I don't see anything unhealthy in simply being attracted (and nothing more) to someone physically sexually mature but under the legal age. That's just biology at work. Acting on it is something entirely different, as that shows a contempt for the rule of law, to say nothing about issues of informed consent, etc.

Being attracted to someone who hasn't yet started developing secondary sexual characteristics is (IMO at least) something totally different and inherently unhealthy, even if not acted upon.

So I agree with you. Seeing a 16 year old who is as physically developed as much as the average 19 year old and thinking she's hot is a normal response. Thinking it's therefore acceptable to act on that in any fashion other than walking the other way is of course not.

And as has been stated endlessly already, 'barely legal' doesn't mean a 13 year old with boobs. It's the 18 year old who just turned 18 last week and looks it.

Of course I think there's valid grounds for skepticism that nuanced arguments like these will ever make any headway with the OP.
 
Joe Random said:
The people who criticize making a distinction between pedophilia and ephebophilia often miss something important I think. Personally I don't see anything unhealthy in simply being attracted (and nothing more) to someone physically sexually mature but under the legal age. That's just biology at work.
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Especially since, as we have already established, the cutoff at 18 is arbitrary. You are not significantly different on the day after your 18th birthday as you were on the day before it, except that the law recognises you as a different category of person.
 
arthwollipot said:
Especially since, as we have already established, the cutoff at 18 is arbitrary. You are not significantly different on the day after your 18th birthday as you were on the day before it, except that the law recognises you as a different category of person.
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Absolutely! The problem (again, IMO) with knowingly banging someone just under age is the willingness to transgress the law knowing what the law is, and not the 'wait, you were attracted to her- she was only 17.5 years old!' angle.
 
The problem with the legalistic approach is that it absolves the beneficiary of any moral obligation to consider the maturity of their prospective partner, and take a humane approach to the relationship.
 
Not sure if I'm parsing you correctly, but I'm fine with social rather than legal castigation for bros with flash cars trying to pull 18 year olds who are not in fact really mature for their age.
 
dirtywick said:
it’s also a completely age appropriate and normal attraction for a huge chunk of the porn viewing audience. of course as we’ve covered,
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Are you saying that kids watching an adult have sex with what looks looks like a child is healthy (see below)?
dirtywick said:
poem has never actually seen any porn
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Spreading untruths is wrong isn't it?
dirtywick said:
and must rely on their imagination based off of descriptions from biased and dishonest sources
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Everyone is biased. I pointed out that Gabby Bertin (who leads the UK's porn taskforce) studies porn as part of her job. I cued a video a few pages back. How about this from The Guardian (June 2025):

When the Conservative peer Gabby Bertin arrived for a meeting with the the science and technology secretary, Peter Kyle, earlier this year she startled him by laying out an array of pornographic images across his desk.

“They were screengrabs showing little girls, their hair in bunches, and massive, grown men grabbing little girls’ throats,” she says. She had selected images which appeared to depict child abuse, and yet were easily and legally available on a popular website.

I suspect the reason why many MPs don't want to talk about it (according to the article they don't) is because they are consuming it:

She also means a situation where a member of her own party had to resign after twice watching porn (perplexingly tractor-themed) on his phone, as he whiled away time on the green benches in the House of Commons.

“People have slightly lost the plot on porn. Would someone 20 years ago have just taken Playboy into the Commons, and had it lying on their lap? It just shows what an extraordinary place we’ve got to,” she says. “You can do what you like in your private life – I don’t have a problem with that – but you can’t watch porn in the House of Commons, and you shouldn’t be watching porn at your desk. There’s a place for these things and it’s not in the office.”
dirtywick said:
i personally think there’s a lot of issues with porn and sexualization on social media, and plenty of exploitation problems in the porn industry, and it’s an interesting topic. but poem being some combination of confused and blatantly dishonest about it isn’t really contributing to either the informative or interesting parts of it.
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An actually case of dishonesty was pointed out above. How many times do I have to say that I have seen porn in the past? You speak of my dishonesty but cite nothing.
 
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Poem said:
Are you saying that kids watching an adult have sex with what looks looks like a child is healthy (see below)?

Spreading untruths is wrong isn't it?

Everyone is biased. I pointed out that Gabby Bertin (who leads the UK's porn taskforce) studies porn as part of her job. I cued a video a few pages back. How about this from The Guardian (June 2025):

When the Conservative peer Gabby Bertin arrived for a meeting with the the science and technology secretary, Peter Kyle, earlier this year she startled him by laying out an array of pornographic images across his desk.

“They were screengrabs showing little girls, their hair in bunches, and massive, grown men grabbing little girls’ throats,” she says. She had selected images which appeared to depict child abuse, and yet were easily and legally available on a popular website.

I suspect the reason why many MPs don't want to talk about it (according to the article they don't) is because they are consuming it:

She also means a situation where a member of her own party had to resign after twice watching porn (perplexingly tractor-themed) on his phone, as he whiled away time on the green benches in the House of Commons.

“People have slightly lost the plot on porn. Would someone 20 years ago have just taken Playboy into the Commons, and had it lying on their lap? It just shows what an extraordinary place we’ve got to,” she says. “You can do what you like in your private life – I don’t have a problem with that – but you can’t watch porn in the House of Commons, and you shouldn’t be watching porn at your desk. There’s a place for these things and it’s not in the office.”

An actually case of dishonesty was pointed out above. How many times do I have to say that I have seen porn in the past? You speak of my dishonesty but cite nothing.
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we've interacted in the past and you've said as much. if you've said something else somewhere else, idk.

in any case, your complete mischaracterization of the content is why i'm calling you dishonest. as i've said many times in this thread, anyone can go to a porn site right now, click the barely legal tag, and see the content of the videos aren't as you and your sources describe. yet you constantly describe it as child porn. it's dishonest
 
Joe Random said:
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Being attracted to someone who hasn't yet started developing secondary sexual characteristics is (IMO at least) something totally different and inherently unhealthy, even if not acted upon.
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I don't think it's unhealthy if not acted on. An alcoholic who abstains has a healthy relationship to alcohol, it's just different to mine.
 
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