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Santorum gone too far

Ladewig said:
Fair enough. I can agree with your assessment.
I am not going to fall on my sword to defend a particular definition or diagnosis.

Here is where I got lost. What is the antecedent of "this kind of rhetoric"?
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What I mean by "rhetoric" is that, in this case, there is no factual basis to Santorum's position on commercial sexual material. He is making up his facts - or rather factoids. In this sense, he is no different from a 9/11 Truther. The power of his position comes not from its basis in a scientifically-founded knowledge, but in the rhetoric he is able to create around it.

Because scientific research has not been directed at addressing the relevant aspect of commercially produced sexual material, the only available response is also a rhetorical position that is founded in a libertarian critique. So, in the end, we have 2 rhetorics competing with each other without reasonable foundations in a scientific body of facts.

I suspect the confusion about what I'm saying here comes from this problem. The familiarity with this polarized situation is so strong that anything that steers from one of the two identified positions is somehow seen as supporting the position opposite from the one held by the listener. So a liberal person hearing me talk like this will perceive that I am somehow siding with Rick Santorum because I am not advocating something completely laissez-faire. And as I have discovered on my Facebook, someone coming from a position informed by feminist theory will perceive as advocating a laissez-faire position and fail to see their own similarity with Santorum's position. No one perceives football as a social problem, and as much as they do, that's up to you to let it happen. The same can be said for many, many aspects of modern life. Unfortunately, what needs to be known about porn to make it this way is not known and not likely to be known anytime in the near future.

Travis said:
You know what else ruins marriages? Football.
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In fact, this is probably just as true for football as it is for porn - or most anything for that matter. The difference is that professional football is very heavily regulated and these regulations are heavily policed. The marriage-ruining aspects of football have been relegated to the realm of personal matters and the social impact of professional football has been controlled so that its continued existence benefits the state and its citizens -- at least sort of.
 
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I've also seen an obsession with motorcycles ruin a marriage.
 
RandFan said:
No. We have a body of sociological data resulting from decades of research.
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Have you read the Wiki? Or are you just presuming you know what it says? I ask this for a very real reason. The title of the page you link to, as you know, is the "Social effects of pornography." Very few, if any, of the researchers listed as contributing to the page are sociologists or anthropologists. Instead, they are psychologists (Zillman, Malamuth), medical practitioners (Alexy, McGuire) or even rape counselors (Silbert & Pines). The most notable thing about the Wiki is that the references are almost all available for free on the Internet.

A better description of the page would be "Medical investigations of the effects of pornography"

What kind of research needs to be done? I don't do work in any of the fields related to this, so I can only suggest what I think would address my problem. But in fact, in an earlier post fuelair answered this for me.
fuelair said:
I may be the only person here who follows/partially agrees with your view on this - and I will go so far as to say I actually up to a point agree -as in I think too many studies are toward the moral/victimization/disease/medical side and not enough to the reasons for the broad success of the business side and it's relationships to other media worldwide.
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I can only speculate that research in this direction would address my problems with current research directions. But one thing I can say is that virtually no one is writing about these sorts of things right now. If you are familiar with more of the research on pornography than is listed on a Wiki link, one of the things you'll know is that these studies have been done over and over and over again since at least 1969. They have different names and different authors, but this is all essentially the same research problem - how bad (or good) is porn? As your link indicates, the vast bulk of work being done now continues to address medical issues about the use of pornography loading either on either the position that porn destroys our human identity or that its a harmless diversion that can be ignored by policy.
 
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Scott Sommers said:
Have you read the Wiki? Or are you just presuming you know what it says? I ask this for a very real reason. The title of the page you link to, as you know, is the "Social effects of pornography." Very few, if any, of the researchers listed as contributing to the page are sociologists or anthropologists. Instead, they are psychologists (Zillman, Malamuth), medical practitioners (Alexy, McGuire) or even rape counselors (Silbert & Pines). The most notable thing about the Wiki is that the references are almost all available for free on the Internet.

A better description of the page would be "Medical investigations of the effects of pornography"
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Ad hominem poisoning the well. The very definition of ad hominem. Also special pleading. The experts include criminologists, psychiatrists, various experts and public health services, and published peer reviewed papers in respected journals.

I can only speculate that research in this direction would address my problems with current research directions. But one thing I can say is that virtually no one is writing about these sorts of things.
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You can lead a horse to water. As I posted earlier consumption of porn soared after the Internet but we've not seen significant sociological trends that would result if claims about the harmful nature of porn were true.
 
RandFan said:
Ad hominem poisoning the well. The very definition of ad hominem. Also special pleading. The experts include criminologists, psychiatrists, various experts and public health services, and published peer reviewed papers in respected journals.

You can lead a horse to water. As I posted earlier consumption of porn soared after the Internet but we've not seen significant sociological trends that would result if claims about the harmful nature of porn were true.
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And what about the people that perform in it? From what I read a large percentage of them were molested. I don't know if they are more messed up then the rest of us.... but it seems that way.
 
RandFan said:
In the mid 1990s the world was introduced to the Internet. Since that time pornography has become cheap an easy to get. The consumption of pornography has sky rocketed.

Questions: What have the past decade and a half demonstrated? Have crime rates risen as a result? Sexual assaults?

How the Web Prevents Rape

The bottom line on these experiments is, "More Net access, less rape." A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines. And, according to Clemson professor Todd Kendall, the effects remain even after you control for all of the obvious confounding variables, such as alcohol consumption, police presence, poverty and unemployment rates, population density, and so forth.
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Of course it fair to point out correlation vs causation and the author deals with that. But let's assume there is no causation for reduced rape. Can we agree the negative correlation demonstrate there is no cause for increasing rape?

Are there potential social harms? Sure. I'm not sure it calls for legislation and I'm not sure what else we could or ought to do about it.
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In case anyone has missed it. The internet has provided us with a statistically important experiment. The consumption of porn has risen sharply. If there are statistically significant concerns they ought to show up in trends.
 
Caper said:
And what about the people that perform in it? From what I read a large percentage of them were molested. I don't know if they are more messed up then the rest of us.... but it seems that way.
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I can't demonstrate that adult performers are not molested. But I can tell you that many if not most self report to the negative. What do you mean "seems" that way? For most people in America it "seems" that there is a god. I'm not sure what to make of that.
 
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RandFan said:
Ad hominem poisoning the well. The very definition of ad hominem. Also special pleading. The experts include criminologists, psychiatrists, various experts and public health services, and published peer reviewed papers in respected journals.

You can lead a horse to water. As I posted earlier consumption of porn soared after the Internet but we've not seen significant sociological trends that would result if claims about the harmful nature of porn were true.
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I honestly can not understand this post. Really, have you read my posts because this post makes me think you don't understand what I'm saying.

What do you think I'm saying?
 
Scott Sommers said:
I honestly can not understand this post. Really, have you read my posts because this post makes me think you don't understand what I'm saying.

What do you think I'm saying?
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"Think"? I quoted you.

Scott Sommers said:
So, in the end, we have 2 rhetorics competing with each other without reasonable foundations in a scientific body of facts.
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Seems little room for ambiguity there.

I don't mind at all a discussion of pornography. I don't disagree that pornography can cause harm (so can automobiles). I take issue when you make categorical claims.

I was a Mormon missionary and anti-porn crusader. Following my mission @1982 and while attending the University of Utah and studying Sociology I took an interest in the harmful effects of pornography. I studied it and it was the subject of a number of papers I submitted for my assignments. It wasn't until the Meese report that I realized the claims about porn were seriously over stated and were so, often, for political reasons. It is because I have been on both sides of the issue and have done much study that opened my eyes that I tend to get my back up when someone claims there is no reliable data about porn.
 
RandFan said:
"Think"? I quoted you.

Seems little room for ambiguity there.

I don't mind at all a discussion of pornography. I don't disagree that pornography can cause harm (so can automobiles). I take issue when you make categorical claims.

I was a Mormon missionary and anti-porn crusader. Following my mission @1982 and while attending the University of Utah and studying Sociology I took an interest in the harmful effects of pornography. I studied it and it was the subject of a number of papers I submitted for my assignments. It wasn't until the Meese report that I realized the claims about porn were seriously over stated and were so, often, for political reasons. It is because I have been on both sides of the issue and have done much study that opened my eyes that I tend to get my back up when someone claims there is no reliable data about porn.
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I don't care what religion you are or how well-schooled you think you are. You have not read anything I posted properly. You are misquoting me and I suggest you reread my posts. Or you can read the post from fuelair because he seems to somehow avoided your problem. I don't think I can deal with this any longer until you have read my posts properly.

fuelair said:
I may be the only person here who follows/partially agrees with your view on this - and I will go so far as to say I actually up to a point agree -as in I think too many studies are toward the moral/victimization/disease/medical side and not enough to the reasons for the broad success of the business side and it's relationships to other media worldwide.

We disagree however on the medical for sure though: porn is no more a hotbed of protection/preservation of STDs than is your local chapter of Little Sisters of the Poor.

Yes, the persons acting in adult materials do have more contacts than most civilians but they are regularly checked for STDs and some registies make that information available to their colleagues. I suspect that prostitution (in the US), rape and unprotected sex - including heavily with minors (Africa/others) and the like have far more liklihood of sufficient expansion for dangerous mutations in the ferocity and spreadability of STD than the first world (non-prostitution )sex industry.
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RandFan said:
I can't demonstrate that adult performers are not molested. But I can tell you that many if not most self report to the negative. What do you mean "seems" that way? For most people in America it "seems" that there is a god. I'm not sure what to make of that.
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It mean that I haven't conducted any research studies.... so I can only go by what I observe. Pornographic performers seem more messed up then your average guy on the street.
 
RandFan said:
I can't demonstrate that adult performers are not molested. But I can tell you that many if not most self report to the negative. What do you mean "seems" that way? For most people in America it "seems" that there is a god. I'm not sure what to make of that.
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I'm not sure If I trust that source.... I don't think I trust the source she's railing against either. One thing I do know is if you want stat to back your argument, no matter what side you are on... you'll find it on the web somewhere.
 
Scott Sommers said:
You have not read anything I posted properly. You are misquoting me and I suggest you reread my posts. Or you can read the post from fuelair because he seems to somehow avoided your problem. I don't think I can deal with this any longer until you have read my posts properly.
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I've no idea what on earth you are talking about. I've read the fuelair quote and I've gone back and read a number of your posts. I honestly don't know what your complaint is.

  • You said there was no body of evidence.
  • I demonstrated there was a body of evidence.
  • You attacked that in ad hominem fashion.
You have made claims about harm and marriage and disease. It is that, that I'm responding to. Where I have agreed with you I said so. I've not been rude. I've not had an attitude. Ignore me if you are incapable of responding in an adult and substantive way.
 
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Caper said:
It mean that I haven't conducted any research studies.... so I can only go by what I observe. Pornographic performers seem more messed up then your average guy on the street.
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Even if true, so what? Banning porn would not stop the molestations.

Caper said:
So you asked them?
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I interviewed Alana Evans as part of my college paper. That was one question I put to her and she said she had not. So there is one data point.
 
Caper said:
It mean that I haven't conducted any research studies.... so I can only go by what I observe. Pornographic performers seem more messed up then your average guy on the street.
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How much observation have you had? Do you understand what skepticism means? Do you understand what anecdotal evidence is? Do you know what confirmation bias is?
 
Caper said:
I'm not sure If I trust that source.... I don't think I trust the source she's railing against either. One thing I do know is if you want stat to back your argument, no matter what side you are on... you'll find it on the web somewhere.
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Then perhaps you should take the null hypothesis? In any event, if you self reported yourself to be X and someone else claimed you were not X I would be happy to accept your self report. Seems charitable given the lack of contradicting evidence.
 
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