[QUOTE=Shawn1767]
I am also curious as to which fetishes are not addressed in US stores as opposed to European stores. And in which way are they catered to? Movies? Equipment? Clothing? Accessories? Here in New Orleans, I’d say we go a bit beyond “vanilla.”
[/QUOTE]
I have never seen beastiality, scat, water play, and very rarely does one see fisting in America. This is all very common in European shops. Not that I’m in to any of these things. Nope.
Acoording to this site , these are the statistics for per capita rape.
#1 South Africa: 1.19538 per 1,000 people
#2 Seychelles: 0.788294 per 1,000 people
#3 Australia: 0.777999 per 1,000 people
#4 Montserrat: 0.749384 per 1,000 people
#5 Canada: 0.733089 per 1,000 people
#6 Jamaica: 0.476608 per 1,000 people
#7 Zimbabwe: 0.457775 per 1,000 people
#8 Dominica: 0.34768 per 1,000 people
#9 United States: 0.301318 per 1,000 people
Surprisingly, Australia is coming in at more than twice the rate as the USA, even though In my experience, Australians are a lot less uptight about sex than Americans.
Granted, these statistics by nature must be reported, so these numbers are probably poorly correlated to actual numbers, not to mention the definition of rape (too drunk to remember if you gave consent in the USA, sometimes) varies from country to country. Since the penalty for being raped in Saudi Arabia is probably harsher than rape itself (Doesn’t sharia law demand 4 witnesses to the event?), I suspect that rape is underreported ( 0.00329321 per 1,000 people ).
[QUOTE=Darryl Lict]
#3 Australia: 0.777999 per 1,000 people
#5 Canada: 0.733089 per 1,000 people
[/QUOTE]
Interesting. I wouldn’t have guessed that any other modern nations would top the US. Perhaps the availability of seclusive spots in these countries?
Bestiality? I think the lack of accommodation there is possibly due to legal questions.
Scat? I don’t know what accessories would be involved, however, I have seen scat-themed videos at the adult shops here.
Fisting? I have seen dildos shaped like huge fists and fisting videos for sale.
[QUOTE=deanc2000]
I have never seen beastiality
[/QUOTE]
Well, I’m guessing (and hoping!!) they can’t sell you actual animals for sex purposes, but I’ve seen inflatable sheep and some rather interesting sexy-animal costumes at some sex shops (in Canada, not the US, though). Not cat ears-and-tail costumes, I mean more like a cow-costume-with-convenient-cutout sort of thing.
The sex shops I visited in Amsterdam didn’t seem out-of-the-ordinary to me at all, in that they looked and felt exactly like the ones I’m used to here in Montreal. There weren’t any big “fetish” sections - the usual vibrators and dildos in all colors and sizes, a bondage section, a section for anal play, lubes and oils, videos, books, costumes…
I know the OP’s question was more about the statistics on rape and teenage pregnancies and all, but I’m wondering what strange kinky little sex shops in Europe are catering to bestiality and scat fetishes, beyond videos and stuff. What, you walk in and they have a goat crap on you?
[QUOTE=Bill Door]
The main difference I’ve noted in Europe, and even Canada, is that the sex shops are not restricted to a “red light district”. You’ll be walking down the street, and on the same street they’ll be a church, then a bookstore, a nice restaurant, and a sex shop.
In the United States it seems that sex shops are zoned into the worst neighborhoods, with nothing around them but other sex shops and bars and flophouses.
[/QUOTE]
There’s a sex shop in Pasadena (California, not Texas) on Colorado Blvd. I believe it’s sandwiched in between a shoe store and a T-Mobile outlet, but clearly out there with all of the Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn, and other uppity-yuppity stores. It’s no doubt a legacy of the time when Old Town Pasadena wasn’t reimagined by the same people who think that the “It’s a Small World After All” ride at Disneyland is a primary attraction, but nobody seems to be zoning it out of existance, either. And while I haven’t been inside of it (or any other sex shop in memory, my person sex life being both pretty “vanilla” and fleetingly with extinction) I’ll note from the “Savage Love” columns of Dan Savage that there is a retail outlet for pretty much any kink you are into, a fact I can totally believe just by driving down Sunset Blvd.
Now, it’s true that you’re probably not going to find a shop catering to “pegging” in Wichita, KS, and that is a direct result of the difference in attitudes regarding sex between the residents of Amsterdam and Wichita, but the same would be true between, say, New York City and Wichita. America is scarely a single country, much less a cohesive social grouping.
As for the O.P.'s question regarding rapes, teen pregnancies, prevalence of STD’s, prostitution, and divorces, the only appropriate response is to note that there are so many factors feeding into this that it would be essentially impossible to quantify the effect of one particular (and apparently auxillary) cause. Rape, in particular, has about as little to do with sexual freedom and availability of tools thereof as does a cat to a cabbage.
Stranger
You realize that attitudes about sex can vary wildly within a same country, even more within a continent, right?
From my own experience, I finished high school in 1986 so this was before AIDS:
my school. Nuns. We had occasional sessions of “sex ed”, the first one in 5th grade. It would be a whole day dedicated to slides about sex, talking about sex, STDs, anti-babies, etc. Some parents complained that we were being told about anti-babies in that 5th grade session; the nuns told them they agreed with the woman who gave it that one, it’s not like your daughters are going to refrain from sex just because “she’s your little angel”, two, boys need to hear about it and think about it and be responsible too, three, too many “first times” are completely unplanned (and often, during ovulation) so carrying a condom or having spoken with the obgyn doesn’t mean you’re a slut… or, say, no more of a slut than your grandmother who got married at 14.
Total number of teen pregnancies in my year, the three before it and the three behind: one, it was with her bf of five years and she was 18 at the time.
The Other Nuns School in town:
no sex ed at all. The nuns would giggle with the girls about boys. These girls thought that a tampon will break your hymen; the boys (all the schools in town were coed) didn’t know where can you buy condoms.
Total number of pregnancies in my year only: at least five. There were also three weekend trips to London which took place with amazing speed (hey c’mon, if anybody had been planning a trip to London, they would have been gushing about it for ages; abortion was illegal in Spain at the time).
The public schools:
sex ed similar to ours but condoms didn’t even get mentioned; the only antibaby they talked about was The Pill. Guys from those schools assumed that every girl (except their sisters, snicker) was on the pill.
Number of pregnancies: neither as bad as “the other nuns” not as good as ours. Skewing the stats we have that these girls were more likely to have no interest in college and get married at 18-20; I don’t think that a pregnancy at 19 and married counts the same as one at 15 and running to London, you know?
The public schools still weren’t talking about condoms in 2000 :smack: it took a right-wing councilor to get that changed.
I think that such a generalisation is generally unhelpful.
I would expect villages and towns to have far less sex shops and probably less sexual variety than cities. (I used to live in London, where there is an entire district devoted to the sex industry. I now live in an English country town, where one old farmhand told me he had never been more than 20 miles from his birthplace.)
I would expect religion to play a role, especially in what can be publically discussed and enforced.
I think US posters often underestimate the differences between European countries (though to be fair, the OP only named a few)…
In some European countries, prostitution is legal, though bounded with e.g. geographical restrictions (Holland, Germany).
In the UK, the law is pretty complicated. I think, for example, (I’m not a lawyer):
[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
Africa has a pretty insane rape rate from what I heard, admittedly. But, I’m not sure it’s really viable to compare uprest and instability (like Afghanistan) to general crime. I can’t comment on Rio De Janeiro, other than to note that it’s a city, not a country.
[/QUOTE]
But Africa is?
deanc2000 (and everyone else), could you please stop saying “Europe” when you mean “a very small number of European countries”?
[QUOTE=glee]
In the UK, the law is pretty complicated. I think, for example, (I’m not a lawyer):
It is also illegal for a woman to make money out of prostitution (running a house of ill repute), or even to make Luncheon Vouchers 
Basically it happens in the UK, but generally it is kept pretty low profile, you sort of get to know about places.
[QUOTE=Gorsnak]
Yeah, because if Pastor Bob sees John Smith in the sex district, he can’t admit it. 
[/QUOTE]
Actually you may be suprised. A friend lives in a very religious city in West Texas(they have three, count them three, Christian universities in this town and they represent a student body of about 10% of the population in general). I went out there for a visit and we went to a strip club(of which I think there are three in the town) and my friend related an anecdote of when he was going to school at one of these unversities. He said one of the deans went to the strip clubs, wrote down the license plate numbers of the cars with university parking tags, and tracked those students down on campus to explain themselves. So sometimes “Pastor Bob” DOES talk about who he saw in the red light district.
Enjoy,
Steven
I recommend the doc Dildo Diaries to anyone who thinks American government has been booted out of the bedroom. Check out the late great Molly Ivins in a clip here, along with Texas sex shop owners who explain that, in their state, one can buy non penis-shaped personal massagers or penis-shaped teaching tools, but no dildos. (Butt plugs are okay, FYI). Watch the whole thing – Ivins has a hilarious punchline.
The smallish city where I live has one sex shop, and last time I checked they still didn’t sell even spanking videos. Plain old vanilla stuff is all they have.
[QUOTE=kellner]
Here are some of the statistics that you are looking for:
http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/PUBLICATIONS/factsheet/fsest.htm
Obviously that site has a political agenda but at least they give cites for their numbers and their results look very similar to those that I have seen elsewhere. Unfortunately the overview is based on data up to 2001.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, Holy Mother of Fucking Gods!
Look at the numbers for gonorrhea!
GOODBYE AMERICAN WOMEN!
[QUOTE=Antigen]
What, you walk in and they have a goat crap on you?
[/QUOTE]
Stop it, you’re distracting me…
[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
As Kellner’s link shows, the US is pretty much at the bottom when it comes to issues like you describe, but that doesn’t really answer your question. There are lots of other countries, for instance in Latin America, that are equally prudish, if not more so, than the US and they probably generally have lower rape, murder, underage pregnancies, etc. than most of Europe (just guessing.)
[/QUOTE]
I would guess the exact opposite. Most Latin American countries have substantially higher crime rates, across the board, than the average European country.
Teen pregnancy rates generally have little to do with how fashionable prudishness is at any given time.
And it’s a mistake to simply say “The US has higher crime rates that Europe”. Sure, our murder rate is higher. But other crime rates are lower. You’re much more likely to be a victim of burglery or property crimes in the UK than in the US. The fact that homeowners are frequently armed in the US might or might not have something to do with it.
And also note that the US is a huge place. Crime rates averaged for the whole country are one thing. But while the murder rate in Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, Detroit, and New Orleans is shockingly high, there are plenty of places in the country where the murder rate is damn low.
If I understand the premise correctly Americans aren’t as sexually liberal as Europeans because we don’t purchase bizarre sexual material? How is liberal being used in this context? I can think of a lot of adjectives but liberal isn’t one of them.
But sadly, You’d bust a gut laughing if you knew what some Americans thought farm animals were good for. Some people have no horse sense at all.
[QUOTE=deanc2000]
I was just wondering, which system worked the best.
[/QUOTE]
If so, why frame the question as a strict binary choice of Europe vs. America? It’s a big world out there, and if the thesis you wanna test is whether fetish shops lead to sexually healthy societies, look at all the evidence.
Korea is very conservative sexually (a lot of your fetish gear is probably outright illegal there, not just socially disapproved of), and their rape rates are lower than France’s.
Japan’s rate is lower yet … but good luck trying to nail down whether or not they are more or less “liberal” than the western nations. Both, I’d say.
And it looks like Saudi Arabia has the lowest rape rate of all, and I’ll bet they do quite well in “teen pregnancies, prevalence of STD’s, prostitution, or even divorces.”
Looks like their “system” works well…
[QUOTE=furt]
Japan’s rate is lower yet … but good luck trying to nail down whether or not they are more or less “liberal” than the western nations. Both, I’d say.
[/QUOTE]
Well, Japan’s rate is low because rape is unreported and covered up, which counts for much more than being liberal or not.