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

[catsmate]

Is anyone else remembering @DOC right now?

A similar level of incoherence and refusal to listen.

 

[catsmate]

And the details of what's wrong and an the fix are what? Should be easy shouldn't it?

Strawman. Again.

 

[Poem]

What has Stalin got to do with anything?

An example of a bad actor with a terrible ideology.

Personally I've never concealed my view that religious belief is a form of mental illness.

Ok.

 

[catsmate]

You haven't explained why I don't understand. Ok, please let the thread know.

Wow.......

 

[Poem]

Strawman. Again.

You said sex education is bad and the context is the problem in the UK (surely world-wide) of inappropriate sexual harassment in schools. You think the fix is education. What specifically?

 

[Helen]

#Poem, the posts you quoted do not contradict each other.

 

[Poem]

Wow.......

So no substance...just the word 'wow'.

 

[Poem]

#Poem, the posts you quoted do not contradict each other.

ish....
...but it appears to me that society is just rolling over.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Sure, there is nothing wrong with lust per se - but there is a problem when children pop out and they aren't wanted. Abcent fatherhood is a massive problem is it not? It's come up before.

That doesn't remotely address anything I wrote, nor answer my question.

The next time you want to evade someone else's points a simple "whichever" or "OK" would be more economical.

And the lust that you refer to - that does need taming (in general) does it not?

No. Again, consenting adults have every right to engage is sex for fun. Shame about sexual desire, induced largely by religious dogma, is what prevents people from openly sharing even healthy sexual wants with partners. Even among conservative, religious married couples there are a great many who suffer from one or both being unable to overcome feelings of guilt and shame associated with sex, and causing them to be unable to communicate about sex with each other in a healthy way, even when they doing it "according to God's plan".

 

[Foster Zygote]

What is your point please?

Do I need to write using shorter sentences and smaller words?

Seriously, you're just being deliberately obtuse at this point.

 

[Poem]

Do I need to write using shorter sentences and smaller words?

Seriously, you're just being deliberately obtuse at this point.

Either way, I do not understand what point you were making. Whether it's a religious bad actor or a non-religious one, they do terrible things......

 

[Poem]

That doesn't remotely address anything I wrote, nor answer my question.

When it's purely about sex and the result is a pregnancy - what happens then FZ? Porn promotes pure selfish lust and zero responsibility does it not? It seems clear to me that you have swallowed down every last drop of that Kool-Aid...and wonder why there is a massive fallout.

The next time you want to evade someone else's points a simple "whichever" or "OK" would be more economical.

Not aware of that occurring.

No. Again, consenting adults have every right to engage is sex for fun. Shame about sexual desire, induced largely by religious dogma, is what prevents people from openly sharing even healthy sexual wants with partners. Even among conservative, religious married couples there are a great many who suffer from one or both being unable to overcome feelings of guilt and shame associated with sex, and causing them to be unable to communicate about sex with each other in a healthy way, even when they doing it "according to God's plan".

I was talking about lust outside the relationship.

 

[acbytesla]

This is absurd. Poem has never demonstrated that pornography is harmful. If there is an actual problem, then yes let's address it. But I don't see it. There is no threat to the species from it.

As for lust. It is a good thing. It's desire. And society sure seems to think so. We use it to sell everything. And if you don't have it, we will sell you pills so you will.

 

[theprestige]

This is absurd. Poem has never demonstrated that pornography is harmful. If there is an actual problem, then yes let's address it. But I don't see it. There is no threat to the species from it.

As for lust. It is a good thing. It's desire. And society sure seems to think so. We use it to sell everything. And if you don't have it, we will sell you pills so you will.

The thing I resent most about Poem's approach is that I can't call out obvious nonsense like this without Poem trying to turn it into an argument I'm making on his behalf so that he doesn't have to make an argument of his own.

The thing I resent second-most about Poem's approach is that it has so thoroughly and relentlessly poisoned the well that we can't even have a rational debate about the societal trade-offs inherent in monetizing sexual intimacy (or anything, really), and what things like rational education policy might actually look like in practice and in detail.

There's a lot of ground there we could cover, but Poem has arranged it so that nobody in their right mind would want to cede even an inch of it, because they know Poem will try to make it a square mile of misrepresentations, fallacies, and bad faith arguments.

 

[Lithrael]

Agreed. For instance, I'm willing to say that there's plenty of porn (among other things) that I find distasteful, and I think it's a good idea that at minimum, you should have to want to see it in order to see it.

But that doesn't mean I think banning it is an appropriate or effective way to 'combat its evils' and we're still relying on surveys by activists to prove that youngsters are being shown porn at all, much less extreme porn, by anyone besides other kids who did find it on purpose and want to be shocking and precocious.

I also have a problem with non-explicit hypersexualization, which is everywhere and inescapable on popular social media and which would not be touched by a porn ban.

 

[Lithrael]

The 'national emergency' announced by the NPCC, for example, is a headline for drumming up support, not a legal declaration of any kind. And I don't see any mention of porn in this rundown of how VAWG initiatives have been going.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/violence-against-women-and-girls-in-2025/

So, I can agree that the government etc is not doing a great job at learning from its own efforts, how to more effectively deal with VAWG. And the difficulty might even be partly down to rape culture!

But I can't say I've seen anything that comes close to showing porn is a major factor in VAWG, unless you count the 'Oh... I thought girls liked choking etc' epidemic that Fifty Shades inflicted on pop culture.

 

[Lithrael]

As for education: this is the revised guidance for schools in the UK that it seems just rolled out last month.

Relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education

Statutory guidance on relationships education, relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education.

www.gov.uk

It seems pretty milquetoast though. This is as close as they get to anything more specific than 'teach them to be respectful and stuff:'

"Pupils may be exposed to online content which normalises harmful or violent sexual behaviours, which might include sexist and misogynistic influencers who normalise sexual harassment and abuse. Young people may be more vulnerable to this content when they have low self-esteem, are being bullied, or have other challenges in their lives. Teachers should encourage pupils to consider how this content may be harmful to both men and women, while avoiding stigmatising or perpetuating harmful stereotypes about boys, and avoiding directly signposting to specific content and content producers."

 

[Poem]

Your phrasing is a little ways off, there. Traits that aren't beneficial to propagating genes only decrease their expression in populations if they are expensive or detrimental. Otherwise they stick around in the mixed bag, waiting for environmental pressures to change.

Phenotypes that are unsuccessful at reproduction are expensive in evolutionary terms - that is why their numbers will always be low,

There is literally nothing about humans that requires heterosexuality to be dominant in order that the species should thrive. A society that was all homosexual but was culturally dedicated to child-rearing as a civic virtue and form of generational property management etc would do fine.

Would never get off the ground in the first place - the evolutionary cost rises as the number increases.

If you're looking for a situation where the population collapses if there's no sexual drive behind reproduction, you'd be looking at animals that have no idea sex makes kids. We are smart enough to have kids on purpose. We do not need a heterosexual sex drive in order to have kids.

I think that is right; it would indeed be possible now; however, that isn't the natural way of things - the ideal of children being with their biological parents isn't something that we can just glibly dismiss.

 

[Lithrael]

The natural way of things is not axiomatically something to aspire to. It's a system that works entirely on what's good enough to propogate genes in a particular environment. Many natural things are beautiful, sure. The natural way of things for humans is for mothers to die from around 3.5 out of every 1000 births.

 

[arthwollipot]

Something to do with your post perhaps?

Doesn't say a single thing about any country that got it right.

I'll ask again, where has the curriculum gone wrong art? You say the English (and Welsh) have got it wrong - but that you aren't sure that any country has got it right - and yet somehow the 'right' education will solve the problem. What is the educational fix pleased art? Let's have some detail please and no vague platitudes.

And I'll answer again, because I'm generous like that. I don't know how to write a curriculum. It's not within my competencies, and I strongly suspect it's not within yours either. I've given a quite detailed set of aspirations, which I would hand to any curriculum expert who believes that they may be able to get such a curriculum adopted, but as it turns out nobody's asking me because I'm not an expert.

I can't answer your question and you know that - that's why you ask it. Just like I know that you can't answer my question about when you last accidentally stumbled across porn.

And the lust that you refer to - that does need taming (in general) does it not?

Taming? You mean, like a wild animal? Beaten down until it is meek and compliant?

..but, ok, I accept the reason why you don't watch.

You are adding a "because" in there that Helen never said.

The 'national emergency' announced by the NPCC, for example, is a headline for drumming up support, not a legal declaration of any kind. And I don't see any mention of porn in this rundown of how VAWG initiatives have been going.

I think Poem needs to learn the difference between a headline "national emergency" and a real national emergency. Headlines are crafted to draw attention. Actual genuine national emergencies are declared by national leaders in order to galvanise action.

Phenotypes that are unsuccessful at reproduction are expensive in evolutionary terms - that is why their numbers will always be low,

This is incorrect. Would you like to know more? I could explain with examples of very successful species where the majority of individuals do not reproduce. I wonder if you can think of any on your own.