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

Overall its aims and ambitions were fine but the final bill is a crap piece of legislation.
Okay.
But to go back to the point you keep ignoring, one that is from your own posts of content you think should be considered "..."While no direct causal link has been established....."...."
Why do you think more than 50 Frenchmen did what they did to Gisele Pelicot?
 
Overall its aims and ambitions were fine but the final bill is a crap piece of legislation.
Why isn't this yet another example of the de facto prioritizing of adult sexual freedom over and above the concerns of keeping children safe?

De Souza says: It should be an opportunity to force tech companies to face up to their responsibilities...

User-generated porn sites only exist when there is high enough demand. One could argue that such sites are effectively 'built' by the consumers. To spell it out, society is furnishing children with such content (whatever protests to the contrary might suggest otherwise) and those with the power to legislate to make sure that does not happen are crumbling under that demand.
 
Okay.

Why do you think more than 50 Frenchmen did what they did to Gisele Pelicot?
I don't know (and my opinion is that there will be different "reasons" for different rapists, personally I would view such "reasons" as excuses not reasons) - what I do know, thanks to you - is that "...no direct causal link has been established....." with porn to explain such behaviours.
 
Why isn't this yet another example of the de facto prioritizing of adult sexual freedom over and above the concerns of keeping children safe?

De Souza says: It should be an opportunity to force tech companies to face up to their responsibilities...

User-generated porn sites only exist when there is high enough demand. One could argue that such sites are effectively 'built' by the consumers. To spell it out, society is furnishing children with such content (whatever protests to the contrary might suggest otherwise) and those with the power to legislate to make sure that does not happen are crumbling under that demand.
Another reason is that technology is complex and most of our MPs will not have the background and knowledge to craft a good bill.

Are you moving on from Pornhub to the likes Justforfans etc? If so I would say that such sites already have strong protections in place to prevent children accessing them.
 
Another reason is that technology is complex and most of our MPs will not have the background and knowledge to craft a good bill.
That would be a monumental scandal if true.
Are you moving on from Pornhub to the likes Justforfans etc? If so I would say that such sites already have strong protections in place to prevent children accessing them.
No - Pornhub is user-generated.
 
Another reason is that technology is complex and most of our MPs will not have the background and knowledge to craft a good bill.
Which essential says that the effort and drive expended in making sure porn is satisfying societal demand exceeds that expended in restricting it.

An astonishing cultural exposé.
 
Which essential says that the effort and drive expended in making sure porn is satisfying societal demand exceeds that expended in restricting it.

An astonishing cultural exposé.
.....What? No, that's the whole internet. Porn is not driving the whole internet. And legislators have ALWAYS lagged behind tech in understanding.
 
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You could make the argument that it ought to be the standard for porn sites, to have more than a 'yes I am over 18' clickthrough gate, and I wouldn't object to a kid-captcha to weed out anyone who can't google 90s politics trivia or something. But I'm a hard no on KOSA style ID verification. Scope too big. No thanks.
In what way is the scope too big? Hasn't stopped verification for UK gambling sites.
 
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.....What? No, that's the whole internet. Porn is not driving the whole internet. And legislators have ALWAYS lagged behind tech in understanding.

The dirty secret that drives new technology: it's porn.

"Camcorder and VHS video machines were pioneered by porn barons anxious to find a cheap way to mass market blue movies. Take-up of DVD players was driven by pornographers and their customers because the technology enabled users to skip to and from their favourite scenes."
 
That Guardian article just about sums up why easy access porn has won the battle...and why efforts such as the UK's 2023 Online Safety Act are going to fail. Nobody wants to admit it, but the drive for porn sex has exceeded the safeguarding of kids.
 
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The dirty secret that drives new technology: it's porn.

"Camcorder and VHS video machines were pioneered by porn barons anxious to find a cheap way to mass market blue movies. Take-up of DVD players was driven by pornographers and their customers because the technology enabled users to skip to and from their favourite scenes."

Don't forget film photography, lithography, movable type, oil painting, mosaic tiles, stone sculpture, fired clay, and figurines carved out of bone with flint tools.

If the other planets of the Solar System had half-naked native women like in the old pulp SF stories, we'd have had colonies on Mars thirty years ago.

Secret? To whom?
 
Don't forget film photography, lithography, movable type, oil painting, mosaic tiles, stone sculpture, fired clay, and figurines carved out of bone with flint tools.

If the other planets of the Solar System had half-naked native women like in the old pulp SF stories, we'd have had colonies on Mars thirty years ago.

Secret? To whom?
Right - it's not a real secret....the Guardian is merely referencing a stereotype.
 
"https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/15/business/pornhub-videos-removed/index.html

So, a very different picture from the complacent tolerance of violent and/or child porn that you want us to believe. Annoying, isn't it, when the facts get in the way of your self-righteous ranting?"


If the poster had been following the thread then they would know about Sound Investigation's 2023 exposé of Pornhub. They would also know that Pornhub is facing multiple lawsuits and class actions and that the same VPs and executives that were there before the Kristof article are still there now (according to Laila Mickelwait of Traffickinghub).
 
"Again, your sour and puritanical world view is preventing you from posting the full picture. I gues I'll have to do it myself:"
The poster clearly considers Canada's proscription of porn depicting minors (ie adult actors looking like minors) as puritanical. The UK also bans such depictions and with good reason - there is ample evidence (posted on this thread) that this can lead some down an escalatory porn rabbit hole.

The notion that this is about a puritanical individual is clearly not borne out by the facts.
 
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"Again, your sour and puritanical world view is preventing you from posting the full picture. I gues I'll have to do it myself:"

The poster clearly considers Canada's proscription of porn depicting minors (ie adult actors looking like minors) as puritanical. The UK also bans such depictions and with good reason - there is ample evidence (posted on this thread) that this can lead some down an escalatory porn rabbit hole.

The notion that this is about a puritanical individual is clearly not borne out by the facts.
Again utterly disgusting.
 
"While no direct causal link has been established....."
The full quote is:

"While no direct causal link has been established, there is substantial evidence of an association between the use of pornography and harmful sexual attitudes and behaviours towards women. According to government research before the Covid-19 pandemic: "There is evidence that use of pornography is associated with greater likelihood of desiring or engaging in sexual acts witnessed in porn, and a greater likelihood of believing women want to engage in these specific acts."

Clearly most folk are willing to take the risk.

Posted before:

How extreme porn has become a gateway drug into child abuse

It is the increasingly extreme themes available on mainstream porn sites that he (Michael Sheath - child abuse expert of the Lucy Faithful Foundation) thinks legitimise further deviant and criminal behaviour.

“Anything you want to find you can Google. Typically these men I work with will have been watching porn that is freely available on the internet at eight, nine, 10 years old. This isn’t looking at naked ladies, it’s group sex, it’s rape-themed, incest-themed. And that’s at an age when I still believed in Father Christmas.”
 
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That Guardian article just about sums up why easy access porn has won the battle...and why efforts such as the UK's 2023 Online Safety Act are going to fail. Nobody wants to admit it, but the drive for porn sex has exceeded the safeguarding of kids.
I clicked over to that article assuming it was going to discuss the difficulties of implementing ID checks vs privacy vs surveillance, but it's just a guy asserting a bunch of stuff about the social history of porn consumption and making a few leaps off of the point that people prefer to keep their pornography consumption private and anonymous.
 
I clicked over to that article assuming it was going to discuss the difficulties of implementing ID checks vs privacy vs surveillance, but it's just a guy asserting a bunch of stuff about the social history of porn consumption and making a few leaps off of the point that people prefer to keep their pornography consumption private and anonymous.
The article affirms the colossal societal demand for porn which has driven tech advances facilitating provision tailored to the consumer's desire for anytime and anywhere content. If we compare that with what by all accounts appears to be a totally... flaccid...push back in the form of the UK's Online Safety Act, then it's no wonder previously cited barrister Roberts compared it to stopping a tsunami with a paddle. Note his reference to woefully inadequate powers and resources given to OFCOM. With the porn industry worth as much as $100,000,000,000 globally then I very much doubt they are quaking in their boots.

The UK bans porn that suggests the depiction of minors - but is the porn industry being held to account? No, they are not. They are indeed a gargantuan monolith riding roughshod over whatever and whomever comes up against them.

And your point is?
 

The dirty secret that drives new technology: it's porn.

"Camcorder and VHS video machines were pioneered by porn barons anxious to find a cheap way to mass market blue movies. Take-up of DVD players was driven by pornographers and their customers because the technology enabled users to skip to and from their favourite scenes."
This is true, but also not true. Home video recorders were pioneered by Sony with their Betamax system, released in Japan on May 10, 1975. JVC released their incompatible VHS system over a year later, on September 9, 1976. So Sony was the pioneer and JVC was just a copycat.

But what has this got to do with porn? The porn industry was quick to take advantage of this new technology, just like it had with photography and cinema film many years before. VHS had significantly worse image quality than Beta, but it had several advantages. Firstly the mechanism had fewer parts making it cheaper to manufacture. Secondly JVC carefully avoided Sony's patents and freely licensed the design to other manufacturers. Thirdly the larger cassette gave it a longer recording time. All these things made VHS more attractive to porn producers. Cheaper recoders meant more potential customers, and they could squeeze more onto a tape (porn consumers weren't so concerned about image quality).

Now the perverse part. Video hire shops rented out regular movies as well as porn, but porn was inially a large part of their business. Porn producers 'standardized' on VHS, which helped to make this format more popular. Video stores also stocked Beta movies for 'normal' customers who had Beta recorders. Initially the split was fairly even, but porn pushed the needle towards the poorer quality VHS. Eventually video stores stopped offering Beta because there weren't enough customers to justify stocking both formats. By this time porn was only a minor player in the video hire industry, but it contributed to the worse technology taking over the market.

Another interesting titbit is that Video CD, a format that failed in the West, was a popular format for porn in Asia. This was tied in with general piracy, particularly in countries which had strong anti-porn laws.

These are just examples of how the porn industry uses whatever technologies are useful for it. Computer porn started even before they had graphics, but the develpment of powerful PCs with photographic quality displays made it commercially viable. The internet then provided a more convenient distribution method. The final key was online payment via credit card. Therefore I expect you will now be riling against Visa and Mastercard for their part in it.
 
The dissolution of the nuclear family,
According to AI the family unit was pretty healthy in the 60s:
In the 1960s, 73% of children lived in a family with two married parents, but by 2023 that number had dropped to 46%.
the advent of cheap and effective birth control,
The pill (Gregory Pincus) was first introduced in 1960 in the USA and was being used by 1.2 million women by 1962.
and the sexual revolution. Which, in case you forgot, preceded the explosion of porn. Porn is a side effect, not the primary cause.
I'm not clear that that is so based on the above figures.

1959: Playboys monthly sales reached nearly 1 million.

According to https://www.statista.com/statistics/485332/playboy-circulation-worldwide/ Playboy had a circulation of over 3 million in 1965.

According to Sex, Society, and the Making of Pornography
The first signs of the post–World War II “sexual revolution” appeared in the mid-sixties. In January 1964 Time magazine announced the arrival of a “second sexual revolution,” signalled, in the magazine’s view, by an increase in what it called “Spectator Sex”—representing a heightened degree of sexually explicitness in books, movies, and theatre.
 
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That's not really how it works. Advertisers pay for traffic, but they pay at a rate that depends on conversions. If conversions are low (and unlike with many consumer goods, an online provider can measure this VERY directly), then they will only be willing to pay a low rate. If conversions are high, they will be willing to pay a higher rate. Spiking traffic with views that don't convert can increase ad revenues in the short term, but only in the short term, because that drops conversion rates and will drop the per view rate advertisers will pay. Long term it does nothing, because ad revenue isn't some magical font of money. It has to come from people making money on those advertisements. Which minors viewing porn doesn't do. In fact, it's worse than doing nothing, because those minors still contribute to their bandwidth/capacity costs.
Can't argue with this.
Porn providers don't target children because children aren't profitable.
They are when they turn 18 (or if a minor is added to an adults account). Pornhub make no serious effort to block children and know that they are criminally cultivating the next generation of paid users.
The problem is simply that they don't want to erect barriers that would stop any potentially paying adult customers turned away by inconvenience, and that makes it easy for children to access porn.
It's not a problem for responsible people - it's as Rachel De Souza says:
...how many times are we going to let children be the victims of tech companies’ inability to put protection before profits?

This is a de facto assertion that such companies are showing porn to kids. It indicts the consumers too...she's being diplomatic in not explicitly saying so .
Which is a problem, sure, but it's not quite the problem you're portraying, and I don't see you proposing solutions which don't create problems of their own.
It is the problem Ziggurat. Profits BEFORE protection.

The solution is quite simple - ban porn until children are 100% protected (I doubt they ever will be based on their business model). De Souza rightly asks where the moral compass is for these people.

Trivializing this is part of the definition of rape culture of course. Yes, i know....people don't like hearing that.
 
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That's not really how it works. Advertisers pay for traffic, but they pay at a rate that depends on conversions. If conversions are low (and unlike with many consumer goods, an online provider can measure this VERY directly), then they will only be willing to pay a low rate. If conversions are high, they will be willing to pay a higher rate. Spiking traffic with views that don't convert can increase ad revenues in the short term, but only in the short term, because that drops conversion rates and will drop the per view rate advertisers will pay. Long term it does nothing, because ad revenue isn't some magical font of money. It has to come from people making money on those advertisements. Which minors viewing porn doesn't do. In fact, it's worse than doing nothing, because those minors still contribute to their bandwidth/capacity costs.
I said I couldn't argue - but, actually, one can according to Fight The New Drug:

It is incredibly lucrative for MindGeek to use its proprietary algorithms to keep the tens (and hundreds) of millions of users who consume the ‘free’ content on Pornhub watching and coming back for more. As users do that, MindGeek captures and harvests their data. That data and user profiling is then monetized by MindGeek as it sells advertising opportunities which are processed through…TrafficJunky.
 
Innocent young kids who stumble upon porn or search it up as a shock activity are not gonna be interested enough to hang around and become commercial conversions. That 'market' would be older kids who actually do want to view porn on purpose for the normal reasons and have or are about to have their own credit cards.

Porn is just not that titillating to an actual innocent little kid. It's not really relevant to a porn site's financial interests to care whether it's out where a kid can see it or not. That it is, is purely a side effect of the site's commercial interest in visibility to potentially paying customers, full stop.

Again I am not against a bit more of a barrier to access than we have now but requiring personal ID is, imo, a huge invasion of privacy and so I'm ag'in' it. Any time you create this sort of data there's an opportunity to misuse it.

Not to mention that whatever barriers we end up enforcing, they will only apply to legitimate sites. The ◊◊◊◊◊◊, fly by night ones that already care the least about appropriately targeting ads (and have the nastiest content) will still operate, exactly the same way that all the spam email screaming v1@gra c1@llis does. Half the reason legit sites resist barriers is that they are competing with sites that will never have any.

And I too would prefer if nasty, mean porn wasn't out there, but censorship is a nasty, mean beast itself, and I don't like to unleash one on the other.
 
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I said I couldn't argue - but, actually, one can according to Fight The New Drug:

It is incredibly lucrative for MindGeek to use its proprietary algorithms to keep the tens (and hundreds) of millions of users who consume the ‘free’ content on Pornhub watching and coming back for more. As users do that, MindGeek captures and harvests their data. That data and user profiling is then monetized by MindGeek as it sells advertising opportunities which are processed through…TrafficJunky.
Why do you think that changes anything I said? It doesn't. That data and those profiles are only useful, and only worth paying for, to the extent that the users can be coaxed into buying things. Which minors generally can't be online. You can drive up the numbers short term, but long term you're just diluting the value.
 
This is a de facto assertion that such companies are showing porn to kids. It indicts the consumers too...she's being diplomatic in not explicitly saying so .
She's being a coward by not saying so. The primary problem with kids isn't the porn, it's the parents. But that's not an easy problem to market, because it's hard to make money off selling a solution to it.
Trivializing this is part of the definition of rape culture of course.
Your definition of rape culture is garbage. We've been over this before. Any definition of rape culture that applies even in the absence of ANY rape isn't a definition that's worth taking seriously.
 
Your definition of rape culture is garbage. We've been over this before. Any definition of rape culture that applies even in the absence of ANY rape isn't a definition that's worth taking seriously.
Your argument remains, as posted previously, with the Oxford dictionary:

a society or environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault and abuse.

(Google’s English dictionary is provided by Oxford Languages. Oxford Languages is the world’s leading dictionary publisher, with over 150 years of experience creating and delivering authoritative dictionaries globally in more than 50 languages).

Since 'rape' comes under the umbrella term 'sexual assault':

NHS.UK:
A sexual assault is any sexual act that a person did not consent to or is forced into against their will. It's a form of sexual violence and includes rape...

...then your refusal to accept their definition is...well, garbage.
 
Your argument remains, as posted previously, with the Oxford dictionary:
What, are they somehow forcing you to use their definition?

Are they holding your loved ones hostage? Blink twice for yes.

The irony, though, is that you aren't even sticking to their definition.
 
What, are they somehow forcing you to use their definition?

Are they holding your loved ones hostage? Blink twice for yes.
You have the same authority as Oxford dictionaries? What source are you citing that defines it otherwise...let alone as you do?

Since rape comes under sexual assault then what exactly are you protesting about?
The irony, though, is that you aren't even sticking to their definition.
Maybe...but where is your reasoning?
 
You have the same authority as Oxford dictionaries?
You don't have to use my definition. But you are absolutely responsible for your choice of definition. If you choose to use Oxford's definition, you are responsible for that choice. You can't pawn that responsibility off on them, as if they somehow required you to use their definition.
What source are you citing that defines it otherwise...let alone as you do?
I'm fairly flexible on what definition you want to use, so long as it actually involves rape. But you don't.

Nor do you even stick to the Oxford definition, because your definition doesn't actually require sexual assault either.
Maybe...but where is your reasoning?
Because you're applying it to stuff that doesn't necessarily even involve rape or sexual assault, under the tenuous assertion that it COULD sometimes involve portrayals of such.
 
You don't have to use my definition. But you are absolutely responsible for your choice of definition. If you choose to use Oxford's definition, you are responsible for that choice. You can't pawn that responsibility off on them, as if they somehow required you to use their definition.
Your definition? By which authority?

When Trump shoved his digit into E. Jean Carroll in 1996, it wasn't rape as defined by the state of New York's narrow penal law....but who cares - he did sexually assault her...the finger in the vagina was as unwanted as his penis.

What does this say about the US of A voting this man as president? The guy was 50 years old when it happened...it wasn't some teenage fumbling.
I'm fairly flexible on what definition you want to use, so long as it actually involves rape. But you don't.
You aren't trivializing non-rape sexual assault?
Nor do you even stick to the Oxford definition, because your definition doesn't actually require sexual assault either.
Because you're applying it to stuff that doesn't necessarily even involve rape or sexual assault, under the tenuous assertion that it COULD sometimes involve portrayals of such.
Sorry, but you will have to spell it out...if you don't mind....please.
 
When Trump shoved his digit into E. Jean Carroll in 1996
When it happened? If it happened.
What does this say about the US of A voting this man as president?
That they don't believe Carroll, and think she's a liar.
The guy was 50 years old when it happened
You're presuming that it happened. You only have her word for it.
Sorry, but you will have to spell it out...if you don't mind....please.
I do mind. You grow tiresome, and I don't find your efforts here honest. Perhaps I might come back to this at some point, but for now, I've spent enough energy and time on this matter, and don't intend to spend more.
 
Which website?

...but no citation.

Undemonstrated.
You badly misunderstand our relationship. I'm not trying to convince you. You're trying to convince me. You could start by assuming I'm being honest in expressing my reservations about your thesis and argument. Rather than looking for excuses to dismiss my feedback at every turn.
 
When it happened? If it happened.

That they don't believe Carroll, and think she's a liar.

You're presuming that it happened. You only have her word for it.
No, we have a civil court verdict and a recent federal appeals court that upheld the assault. Americans have voted in what most would define as a rapist.

Watch enough porn...violent porn...and you'll start to get hazy about what is and what isn't transgressive.
 
No, we have a civil court verdict and a recent federal appeals court that upheld the assault.
The jury had only her word. The jury decided that she was telling the truth, but we still only have her word for it, it's not like the jury saw what happened and came to some independent evaluation of events. Everything depended on her word, and her word alone. There was no independent evidence.

And do you think juries never get it wrong? You think people aren't capable of reaching independent judgments? As for the appeals court, I think you're confused about what they do and what they do not do. What they do not do is second-guess juries. They are not allowed to second-guess juries. But no such restriction is imposed on voters.
 
Yeah, I know a LOT of Trump voters whose pov seems to be, I'm a nice guy, I love Trump, Trump must be a nice guy like me and any story about him doing anything bad is down to mean nasty lying people who just wanna GET him.

They are lionizing their populist leader, not trivializing rape. They straight up don't believe the accusations even a little bit.
 
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