Does watching consensual porn that simulates rape change the way rape is viewed by the person watching the porn? Have there been any studies that show whether or not it affects a persons ability to judge whether it is right or wrong to rape? Since porn has become so prevalent due to the internet I was wondering about the the young side of porn viewers, as they are more easily influenced and could possibly misconstrue the events of what they are watching.
As far as I know what little evidence there is shows the opposite; more porn means less rape. I’m not sure how you’d separate out the effects of rape and not-rape porn.
My old doctor, 40 years ago, said that certain kinds of extremely violent rape porn causes harm to the minds of some sensitive people. It doesn’t make them go out and rape, but it makes them think less of women. It alienates some people from the reality of pain.
I don’t know if he was right. I don’t know if I agree with him.
I think (simulated) rape porn should be legal…but I’m not interested in watching it, and I will sneer at the degraded and repulsive tastes of people who do watch it. I know a guy who produces such movies; he’s a nice guy in person, but I hold his profession in disrespect.
I’ve played a lot of Skyrim, in which among other things your character can cannibalize people. Yet oddly enough I still have no desire to eat the neighbors. As far as I can tell these regular moral panics about entertainment making people go forth and commit crimes are fantasy. “Rape porn” isn’t going to make someone rape any more than my playing Skyrim will make me eat people or chop them up with an axe.
Well in fairness - I don’t think the incidence of cannibalisim is as high as rape - nor is their an innate drive to eat (people).
I don’t really have an opinion on the OP, but I don’t find this argument particularly convincing. Cannabilism in Skyrim is basically a game-mechanic, there isn’t much focus on the sensual experience of the act itself, and the point isn’t to spend time fantasizing in detail about being a cannibal/being cannibalized. None of those things are true with rape pron, where engaging in great detail with the actual fantasy is the whole point.
That said, I’m pretty sceptical that there is an effect. Rape was a popular fantasy long before porn became so ubiquitous. The only difference now is that people watch it acted out rather then just picturing it in their heads (or reading it in smut). I guess that difference might have an effect, but it doesn’t seem particularly likely.
But I doubt we’ll ever know for certain. Increased porn consumption came at about the same time as a lot of (generally, very good) changes in how rape is viewed and punished by society. Trying to disentangle those two effects to get some sort of cause and effect relationship with some sort of study seems like it would be totally impossible.
Yup. Absolutely nothing people see, read or learn has the slightest effect on them.
And because you just drove past a Budweiser ad and didn’t speed to the nearest 7-11 for a 30-pack proves it.
There’s a huge difference between something inspiring you to do something legal that doesn’t hurt anyone, and between being inspired to attack someone.
Yup. One’s legal.
Actually, *both *are legal; one has a legal outcome.
If the Japanese have more rape porn and lower rape than the US… well there are lots of confounding factors to consider.
Actually, there’s been some decent work done on this. High speed internet came to different localities at different times, and its spread wasn’t related to crime. So statistically there are a large number of before and after snapshots you can take, all the while controlling for general societal trends. You could have a general trend downwards simultaneously with the advent of high speed internet access leading to higher or lower rape reports.
As it happens empirically speaking porn prevents rape. That won’t tell us much about subcategories of the stuff though it is suggestive.
If there’s one niche form of entertainment or another that is truly toxic, IDing its effects might be difficult, as the samples involved would be pretty small.
And one is attacking someone; the other isn’t.
Ah, but you can’t deny The Beggar’s Opera must’ve increased crime in all of good London town ! Stands to reason.
Y’see, when the common people and particularly the impressionable youth go and see these, these… actors, singing their joyful songs while pretending to be held in Newgate prison as layabouts, criminals, felons even ; they naturally want to emulate them, even moreso that the songs are dreadfully catchy. I say, I say, someone should put a stop to this dangerous nonsense before the fabric of society is irreparably loosened. Down with the youth-corrupting opera !
Actual moral panic of the 18th century, BTW. Wiki sez :
But did you think of the children!?
And yes, there is at least one Skyrim mod (=made by some guy) that allows children to be killable. And IIRC there is a cannibalism mod (for more complexity than eating people for Namira or being a werewolf eating hearts). Wonder if those play well together?
If you’re talking about violence, the current jury suggests that violent video games may affect children, but is not correlated with actual violence. Or to get on a soapbox about my 2nd least favorite type of psychology, a popular study cited is that people are more willing to put hot sauce in a stranger’s drink after playing GTA or whatever. And people seriously think that that proves a violence link. But this is a matter for a different thread.
Yeah, lots of confounds. It’s true they love their rape over there, and even the regular porn sometimes features girls who do not sound like they’re having fun. But I don’t think that’s evidence.
I am in favor of all porn being legal as long as it doesn’t involve someone who can’t consent (rape, underage). 4chan style naked young anime girl is not the same thing as actual child porn. And I believe that porn does not lead to violence, greatly changed attitudes etc. But too much porn is bad because it can change someone’s expectations about what is normal in sex (one session does not usually involve 12 positions in 3 holes in 5 locations in a house). If video games or porn does affect someone greatly, then there is something wrong already, and they will find a way to get what they want through other media.
Certainly research of any real validity would be very hard to do (especially as, to the best of my knowledge, only a tiny proportion of porn actually does depict rape), but I certainly think that it is plausible to think that even though greater availability of porn in general might tend to decrease the incidence of rape (which makes sense, actually), the viewing of rape-porn in particular, especially by those who might enjoy it, might have a tendency to make its consumers or fans more likely to rape. I would not be surprised if fans of rape porn were more likely than the majority of the male population to be rapists or potential rapists in the first place, and neither would I be surprised if the viewing of such porn actually made such men a bit more likely to attempt the actual deed.
I think I myself would be turned off by rape porn, as, I hope, would most men. (I don’t think I have ever seen the “real thing”, for which I am glad, but I have once or twice seen stuff that came close, depicting a contemptuous and “rough” attitude to the women involved which I found a distinct turn-off.) However, some of the apparently consensual and mutually pleasurable acts I have learned about from porn have made me want to try them, or even, when I could find a willing partner, actually try them.
My take on this has always been that while seeing something acted out is unlikely to encourage many [any?] people to go out and do it for real; regularly watching something like rape being acted out would desensitise the viewer to that crime, and for a younger and less intelligent viewer, may well lead them to see rape as normal, and to believe the fallacy that women actually enjoy being raped.
Or there’s the opposite possibility, which seems to fit the apparent facts for how entertainment affects people better; they satisfy themselves watching the fantasy, and are less likely to try it in reality.
“<insert unethical act> in works of entertainment makes people more likely to do it” is one of those “common sense” ideas that doesn’t seem to ever pan out in reality.
This study seems to suggest that pornography of any sort does not induce violent thoughts…
(but ‘laboratory aggression’ is one thing, …)
And this review says that there are no real links between porn and sexual offences…
Okay - but still, I’m a little uneasy about the whole idea of rape porn. Several questions arise here…
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What, for people who are into it, is the distinction between ‘pretend’ rape porn and an actual video of a woman (or man…) being raped? Would some be turned on by the former but repulsed by the latter? Would some prefer the latter, seeing the former as a low-grade substitute? Would some simply not care? (I suspect it’s all of the above)
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There is plenty of sexually aggressive porn out there, in which the women are clearly not having a good time (which is, I suspect, the point). Is this not worse than ‘pretend rape’ where the actress is just, well, acting? (I think it is)
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Do people watch rape porn for fundamentally the same reasons that rapists rape? Or, in other words, do the two things share the same psychological/sociocultural ‘root causes’? Or is the first simply a turn-on precisely because it is taboo (and, therefore, can be considered a harmless sexual fetish), while the second is a result of serious pathological mental issues? (I dunno…)
The fact that you would know that the rape porn is consensual is probably a big factor.
:dubious: The fact that it’s not real? That’s like asking what’s the difference between violence in a war or action movie and watching actual people being killed.
No, because one of the fundamental attractions of porn like other fantasy is that it’s not real. People have fantasies all the time that they’d never want to carry out in real life. And for that matter a great deal of “rape porn” is about the fantasy of being raped, not of committing rape. Just look at all those romance novels. I doubt that many rapists rape because they fantasize about being raped.
Most that I’ve come across is drawn, animated or written; it’s not even that real.
Really? So violence in movies may lead people to see violence as normal and believe the fallacy that people enjoy being beaten up and killed?