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The Great Porn Debate
Storm Rider:
On top of all that, even if you banned pornography that depicted 'rape', it's not like it would really prevent people who wanted to see it from finding it. I think we all know as people who are Internet savvy just how pervasive pornography is. Does that make it acceptable? No. But at the same time, it makes the efficacy of any legal action on a tricky subject questionable in the first place.
Tom:
If only everyone in society could differentiate between simulation and reality but not every one can. This is the major problem with rape fetishes (?). Some people will take what they see and re-enact the simulation, turn it from a realistic expression into a total reality.
Patrick:
--- Quote from: 0bsessions on 05 May 2008, 11:21 ---(pic)
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I hate you so much right now.
And I am totally sticking to my guns on that argument, I don't care what kind of shit it gets me from devil's-advocate types.
Elizzybeth:
--- Quote from: n0t_r0bert_b0yle!! on 06 May 2008, 03:27 ---If only everyone in society could differentiate between simulation and reality but not every one can. This is the major problem with rape fetishes (?). Some people will take what they see and re-enact the simulation, turn it from a realistic expression into a total reality.
--- End quote ---
Again, couldn't the same thing be said of depicting murder? I honestly believe that most people are able to differentiate between simulation and reality and that we should not have to be playing to the lowest common denominator. Rape is already illegal, and rightly so--I understand wanting to catch potential rapists before things happen, but I think this is exactly the wrong way to go about it. There isn't a 1:1 ratio of rape porn watchers and rapists. It's not unlike the post-9/11 American practice of detaining people of middle eastern heritage at airports. So what if we make a bunch of healthy, intelligent, contributing citizens criminals? It's okay, because SOME Muslims are terrorists, and we're SURE to catch them this way.
jimbunny:
(hmm, beaten to it)
--- Quote from: n0t_r0bert_b0yle!! on 06 May 2008, 03:27 ---If only everyone in society could differentiate between simulation and reality but not every one can. This is the major problem with rape fetishes (?). Some people will take what they see and re-enact the simulation, turn it from a realistic expression into a total reality.
--- End quote ---
Making allowances for the mentally ill (also small children), I can't really agree with either part of your statement. Because, I think, in the vast majority of cases, what's being simulated is not "real life" at all. Even in porn. Especially in porn. Just because it's displayed "realistically" - low-quality picture, no flying saucers - doesn't mean that what's happening on screen could conceivably happen in a non-artificial environment. Successfully-created realism takes a kind of talent and effort that I guarantee is extremely rare in the porn industry. And even if it does succeed at realism, part of our definition of "rational adult" is being able to accept the discontinuity between simulation and reality.
I'm not ruling out the possibility that watching violent things may have some effect on people, especially children. But it doesn't have the same effect on everybody. I'll draw an analogy to alcohol consumption laws. You can draw a pretty firm relationship between alcohol abuse and some really terrible things (many instances of rape, for example), but you can't say that drinking makes everyone do bad things. So you (try to) regulate it based on age, which you assume is a marker of basic mental development, and prosecute the instances in which it does lead to bad things.
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