There is no need for me to defend a position I’ve never stated.
My position is that if you’re going to be naysayer and expect to be treated seriously, bring some credibility to the table. Qualifications. Bona fides. Experience. Or some cites from people who have these things. Bring something other than assertions pulled out from one’s rear end.
I’m sure that she meant exactly what she said: she does not think that pederasty is inherently exploitative, and she thinks that it is terribly unfair for researchers to assume that any given instance of pederasty is problematic.
Sorry to you and Piers Anthony, but I’m gonna have to take the researcher’s side on that one, dawg.
As for your other “debunking”, I frankly don’t give two bits of a shit if Ashton Kutcher overstates the number of child prostitutes that exist or some such thing. None of that has anything to do with backing up your assertion that legalizing prostitution will decrease abuse rates. So please get cracking with that. Thanks in advance.
Well you sidestep the fact that the study has been thoroughy debunked, duly noted.
I actually have no personal interest in the “age” debate since I’m sexually attracted to women closer to my own age. You can thrash that out with Maggie if you like. It’s a total side issue, in any event. But thanks for playing!
Now as to getting cracking on “my” assertion that legalized prostitution would reduce sexual assault, not gonna happen, as I’ve already explained, it’s not MY assertion to support. I merely debunked a poor argument against it.
Somewhere, in a parallel universe far sicker than this one, anti-rape activists are arguing that the reason rape figures haven’t declined despite legalization of prostitution is because prostitutes are way too expensive for the poorest men in society. The obvious solution? Government subsidies. If you are income-eligible, you can receive a set of vouchers (HoBucks[sup]TM[/sup]) every month, to be used at participating service providers. Because only when everyone gets the vagina they are entitled to will people stop raping.
And activists are also fighting for improvements to the quality of hookers available to the common man. They argue the reason why rapists preferentially target normal-looking women is because these women are underrepresented in the whore market. For instance, a minimum wage laborer can typically only afford bald-headed, crack-addicted, one-legged women. To be fair, these are all hard-working women who are doing their best, but come on now. Men deserve better. And why should a poor bloke be stuck with the ugliest women of society? They see all these stunning women on TV and in the movies, but then have to endure the humiliation of having sex with the Crypt Keeper. They will continue to rape until society provides hot bodies and beautiful faces for all men!
That is not what you “merely” posted.
The claim that sexual frustration drives rape was advanced by someone making unsubstantiated WAG assertions. You have taken this WAG assertion and opined that legalized prostitution might be just the solution we need to reduce rape. Why now act as though it’s unreasonable to ask you to support this opinion with facts and figures? We are in GD, not IMHO.
In another parallel universe, the government is issuing PSAs advising women to “just say yes”. The intended outcome of the campaign is two-fold. 1) It will give men currently victimized by sexual discrimination a better chance at scoring, thus relieving them of all that frustration that is causing them to rape currently and 2) by banishing “no” to the outer limits of female speech, this campaign will transform what would have previously been scary rape situations into sexual adventures which feature post-coital pancakes and everything.
Just say yes!
Agreed.
This argument about how rape is a result of sexual frustration and if prostitution was legalized seems to be SDMB’s version of “if women didn’t dress like sluts they wouldn’t get raped.”
I’m reminded of how whenever polygamy comes up a bunch of posters always start squealing about how polygamy is discriminatory against men because “surplus men” get rejected even though this hasn’t happened in any society where polygamy is actually practiced.
I just want to address the point that prostitution being legal might reduce rape.
Here in England prostitution is legal. Going from Wikipedia, in 2010 there were 28.8 rapes per 100,000 in England and 27.3 per 100,000 in the US. Surely this suggests that legalizing prostitution will not make any difference to the rate of rapes committed?
I’m a big fan of legal prostitution but to suggest it would help reduce rates of rape seems odd to me.
The blogger who you linked to probably believes that at least some minors should have the right to decide that they would like to go into the sex trade without being legally penalized for this decision. Presumably, her position on the matter has very little to do with the extent to which she herself is attracted to underage prostitutes. This is to her credit!
It really seems to me, however, Evil Captor, that the impetus behind your position on prostitution legalization has nothing at all to do with any kind of informed belief on your part that it will reduce sexual assault, as evidenced by the fact that you don’t seem to be willing or able to argue the case. Might I gently suggest, then, that this thread is not a great place for you to discuss your feelings about how you’d like prostitution to be legalized?
Nobody in this thread has stated that rape is the result of sexual frustration, except Ibn Warraq.
Nobody in this thread has stated that rape is the result of sexual frustration, except you with the face.
“Validation of a Typology for Rapists” classifies rapists based upon the evident motivations involved in their criminal behavior. It’s one of a series of papers, and here are all the relevant types (a handy figure):
Opportunistic:
Pervasively Angry:
Sexual:
Vindictive:
Maybe some of you who feel that it’s just about sex or just about power can help me to understand my problem with seeing many different motivations, with all being a mixing of sex and aggression: from one end of the spectrum where violent sex is used as a weapon to the other end of the spectrum where aggression is used as a means to an end - sex.
Incidentally, we could classify almost every human behavior involving aggression as being on a hostile to instrumental spectrum. Much like rape.
Apologies to you both, I didn’t realize what I had missed leading up to what you were saying about the ‘sexual frustration’ hypothesis.
I said “might” which also implies “might not.” I don’t know. Feel free to argue it with someone who wants to argue it with you.
I agree, that’s why I’m not arguing the point.
If pink elephants ever learn to fly, we might be able to capture one of them with a giant butterfly net.
I’m just saying.
There are several asides here which are off topics, so quick comments. I’m not a huge porn man, so I’m not the expert on it, but it seems that 99% of Japanese porn is insanely boring, and only the really weird shit gets picked up overseas. Most guys aren’t into that.
The part about people not fearing each other is not just related to rape, but also other crimes as well. Certainly, violent crime is less in Japan, but there doesn’t seem to be the same culture of fear. Whether that is justified in the case of rape isn’t something I know.
The *reported *rates are much lower for a number of reasons, among them many well outside the scope of this thread, but one huge difference is that date rape is pretty much never reported or counted in the statistics. The differences in how things are defined, reported and statistics are collected are so large that I believe that for the case of rape, it’s essentially meaningless to compare countries.
Incidences of date rape are much, much higher in Japan than in the States. Part of this is due to education and discussion of the issue in the States which isn’t happening in Japan. Women aren’t being given the message that it’s OK to say no, and that if you say no, and the guy does it anyway, that this is a rape.
There is also a much stronger sense that men can get away with all sorts of behaviors which would not be accepted in American companies. It’s slowly changing, though and I hope the progress continues.
It is not that the victims of groping were happy about it, or that it was something mildly irritating, but somehow having a stranger fondle their crotch is something that they somehow just don’t mind as much as these silly American women make such a fuss about.
That hated it. It was humiliating, traumatic and offensive. But the women were conditioned to “silently endure” this crime. They didn’t talk about it in mixed company, it was not brought up as a social issue.
That is changing. They now have special cars during rush hours set aside on the trains for women only. There are more public awareness campaigns, and more importantly, men are getting arrested and convicted for the crime.
Women have been subjected to bad behavior for far too long in Japan, and the reluctance to make waves always hurts those in the more vulnerable positions.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time today to respond more in depth, as this is a serious issue, but I did want to point out that your conclusion that the victims didn’t consider this to be an assault to be gravely mistaken.
When you look at statistics like these for the comparisons of rape reports per capita in OECD countries (Rape p.4), and you compare Japan’s lowest ranking to what is said in the thread, it becomes easy to believe that any particularly low rate for this type of crime is a function of its reporting and little else.
Turkey is in the lowest top 3 and that just has to be due to a generally lower rate of reporting crime, or keeping poor crime statistics. Overall, very few of the lowest rate countries are bastions of gender equality, and it is probably the case that gender equality is a major factor in reporting and prosecuting the crime but not much of a factor in reducing the crime rate.
The exception is Canada. They must have some other way of reporting rape because such a low rate does not make any sense.
Generally, any report of a strikingly low rate of sex crimes in any country or culture is just a function of sweeping it under the rug.
That’s generally correct, but are there any specific exceptions?
Let me rephrase: Any report of a strikingly low rate of sex crimes in any country or culture is just a function of sweeping it under the rug.
And most are men! This is why women should run the world (tongue in cheek) sorta