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

Should we shut it down?

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dann said:
I don't think a court of law would accept coerced consent as actual consent, but I don't know.
I think a court of law would consider the shoplifter scenario as a version of rape.
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Exactly. Except I know a court of law would consider it rape. (At least in the US) Consent is impossible if it involves coercion. Consent must be freely given.
 
Porn showing choking to be banned in the UK
Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones said it was not about "criminalising harmless sexual preferences".

But she said "porn can shape what people think a healthy relationship looks like, especially young people". Content which "normalises, or even glorifies" violence against women can "blur the line with what is acceptable in real life", she said.

"If you've got this material, delete it. If you're sharing it, stop," Davies-Jones added.

"It's not as harmless as you may think, and after 6 November, it is criminal."
 
Does it mean actual depictions -acted or real - of choking or one performer putting their hands on another's throat/neck will be illegal? I've learnt a lot about porn and some new stuff about sex thanks to this thread and I've learnt that some people like hands on their neck - its apparently quite a common secondary erogenous zone for people, but want to emphasis that is not any form of choking at all.
 
Darat said:
Does it mean actual depictions -acted or real - of choking or one performer putting their hands on another's throat/neck will be illegal? I've learnt a lot about porn and some new stuff about sex thanks to this thread and I've learnt that some people like hands on their neck - its apparently quite a common secondary erogenous zone for people, but want to emphasis that is not any form of choking at all.
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Exactly. Like most government interventions it's far too vague and will require numerous test cases, which will generate contrary case law.
Ah, Pandora....
 
arthwollipot said:
I've given you my ideas (#6288), but ideas do not a curriculum make. You need experts in education and pedagogy to translate ideas into a legal, functional curriculum, and I am not one of those.
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Right, so this:
arthwollipot said:
Only because their parents and teachers are letting them down due to misguided moralistic repression.

I say again the thing I have been saying all along, and which I have said many times in this thread: Good education is the silver bullet that will solve all of the problems you bring up.

Teach the kids. Don't hide things from them. Teach them what sex is and what it's for, and why there are so many different ways of doing it. Teach them that people use it for more than simple reproduction. Teach them that the hormones it produces can be a very effective way of promoting strong familial bonds, but also that people can do it just for the simple pleasure of it without any kind of obligation if all parties consent. Teach them about consent and why it is so important. Teach them about consent and why it is so important!

Teach them that porn exists and what it's for. Teach them that Porn Performers are Paid Professionals, and that what you see in porn might, but certainly does not always, depict what natural human sexuality is like. Teach them why some people like to create their own amateur porn. Teach them about safe and consensual kink, and teach them about unsafe paraphilia and why it is unsafe.

And teach them as early as they are capable of understanding. Teach them that the laws that our society have developed say that they will be able to engage in sexual activity only once they reach a certain age, and teach them that we made it that way to protect them from people who might try to harm, exploit, or take advantage of them.

When they understand all of these things, they will be ready to approach the subject of sex with maturity and as much caution as is warranted. They will be able to enjoy safe and consensual sexual activity with whatever partners they make a connection with. They will be able to form a family if they so choose, or they will be able to choose not to. Their choice, whatever it is, will be informed and with as much support from their loved ones as we can give them.

That's how you fix society.

Here endeth the lesson.
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If you got to page 12 of the UK government's RSHE (updated July 2025), you will find a summary of the curriculum for secondary (11-16) pupils. It covers your points.

You say:
arthwollipot said:
A lie. I think children have a right to responsible and comprehensive education about sex and reproduction. They shouldn't be getting that from porn. They should be getting it from parents and teachers who aren't repressed bigots.
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but you present nothing substantive to ensure they don't. Your framing of the 'solution' (education) is a de facto acceptance that adults access is more important than children's safety. It's virtue signalling. We have saturated the internet with porn and are applying a useless 'plaster'. The right thing to do would be to make sure they cannot access this stuff.
arthwollipot said:
Oh, so your answer is "I haven't accidentally stumbled across porn, but I'm sure those young people have." What is your evidence that a young person's experience of the internet is fundamentally different from yours, and what changes as they age so that they no longer accidentally stumble across porn?
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The evidence has been presented but you rejected it - like when a child renamed X as XXX. Whether they stumble or search - it doesn't matter. Everyone signed up to the UNCRC; we have a duty to keep them safe online.
 
catsmate said:
Exactly. Like most government interventions it's far too vague and will require numerous test cases, which will generate contrary case law.
Ah, Pandora....
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You mean like the same problems governments would face at the other end of the continuum - if all porn were to be banned?

Your post is pointless.
 
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Poem said:
Right, so this:

If you got to page 12 of the UK government's RSHE (updated July 2025), you will find a summary of the curriculum for secondary (11-16) pupils. It covers your points.

You say:

but you present nothing substantive to ensure they don't. Your framing of the 'solution' (education) is a de facto acceptance that adults access is more important than children's safety. It's virtue signalling. We have saturated the internet with porn and are applying a useless 'plaster'. The right thing to do would be to make sure they cannot access this stuff.

The evidence has been presented but you rejected it - like when a child renamed X as XXX. Whether they stumble or search - it doesn't matter. Everyone signed up to the UNCRC; we have a duty to keep them safe online.
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Why do you have to dig so far into the past to make your arguments?
 
The sadly ironic (ironically sad?) thing is I think there are legitimate complaints about the overall effect porn has on our society which Poem never seems to go anywhere near.

Primarily body image issues - boys : most men don't look like that downstairs. Girls : natural women don't look like that upstairs. If you don't 'measure up', odds are you're just normal and there's nothing wrong.

Secondarily - it's entertainment, not an instructional manual. Just like shooting someone with a shotgun won't push them back 24 feet like it does in an action movie, trying most 'non-standard' acts you see in porn won't go off as awesomely/painlessly as you saw online.

But unfortunately we don't hear Poem complaining that "contrary to porn, anal needs a LOT of lube", but rather "porn leads to people wanting to bang children", or, occasionally "porn might turn people gay".

edit to add : the sad thing is that both of my main complaints could be done away with almost entirely with if we had a reasonably decent sex education curriculum in my country (USofA). Don't need to ban or restrict anything.

Instead I only got told what wet dreams were.
 
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It's been quite a while since I've stated what I think the problems with porn are, so I guess it's probably about time I did so again.

Porn gives young adults unrealistic expectations. Part of that is body image, yes, but part of it is also what kinds of activities are expected during sex. As an example, in porn it is always pretty much assumed that any female performer is bisexual. There are plenty of male performers in that category as well, but the number of women who do exclusively heterosexual porn is vanishingly small. This is disproportionate to the number of bisexuals in the general population, and it leads to the unrealistic expectation that as a young woman having her first sexual experiences, she will be assumed to be okay with having sex with other women. And this is just not the case.

This is just one example. There are others, but I don't want to get too explicit.

And this is why education (there's that word again) is so important. It's important for sexually mature young adults to know that the expectations of porn are not the expectations that they should have in real life sexual relationships.
 
arthwollipot said:
<...>

And this is why education (there's that word again) is so important. It's important for sexually mature young adults to know that the expectations of porn are not the expectations that they should have in real life sexual relationships.
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Hit you with a like already, but wanted to explicitly comment on the quoted bit : well said.
 
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arthwollipot said:
No, you're asking how much porn I watch. That's private and none of your or anyone else's business.
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No, I am asking you for your sample size relating to choking or strangulation porn. As things stand, your claim that:
arthwollipot said:
...Nobody is being choked. You can clearly see and hear the subject breathing. That's not choking, that's just someone with their hand on or near another person's neck.
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is worthless.
 
Poem said:
Please explain? You are dodging a response aren't you?
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I'm saying that you're quoting posts from way back in the thread, to ask questions that are already answered. Why can't you keep up with the thread along with the rest of us.

For a start, this is a bad habit because people are occasionally capable of changing their opinions about things, and quoting posts from six months ago might not reflect the current state of peoples' thinking.

Either respond to the things people say now, or don't respond at all.
 
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