Well, I’d argue that there’s a qualitative distinction. People don’t watch violence in action films and* become sexually aroused by it*. Well, I’m guessing and hoping that most people don’t. Even when we (as an audience) are cajoled into celebrating or supporting a violent act (say…the death of a baddie), we are lulled into a sense of legitimisation; it’s okay to enjoy watching that person suffer/die, they *deserve *it! And when goodies are killed in fiction, this serves a narrative purpose: to rally us against the antagonist(s).
Watching someone be (fictionally) raped doesn’t tick any of those boxes. I agree that ‘the fact that it’s not real’ is probably what allows most rape-porn enthusiasts to get into what they are into without serious cognitive dissonance. And, I’m not suggesting that *all *rape-porn enthusiasts ‘secretly wish it were real’ on some level when they watch it . Nonetheless, there’s a distinct likelihood that some watch rape-porn videos and are genuinely turned on by the idea of a woman being aggressively sexually violated; her suffering being the entire focus of their sexual attention. In that case, surely, a ‘real’ video would be simply better than a ‘fake’ one? I doubt it’s up for debate as to whether or not such people exist, what I wonder is the percentage of rape-porn enthusiasts that this accurately describes. Possibly, and hopefully, a tiny minority…
(The question of people who fantasise about being raped is a whole other thing…)
But does the “rape porn” that exists portray women as *enjoying *being raped? From what I’ve been able to gather, one of the criticisms of contemporary “assault porn” is that rather than the old trope from the 60s or 70s loops where the girl would gradually “get into it”, the current crop rolls with unabashed degradation.
I believe with this as with a whole slew of other porn tropes in the Web age, what we have is what was once an undergorund fringe niche being now accessible to just about anyone, anywhere.
Wouldn’t take much to make it “more” – since the mid-80s American Mainstream Commercial Porn (Vivid, VCA, etc.) won’t touch a credible rape scene with a 10-foot pole (sorry). (And BTW, similarly, no American adult comic or animation/gaming shop who aspires to ever sell something in the open market will even *think *of publishing lolicon). I often wonder if we get a skewed view of the Japanese porn/hentai ecosystem just because in the USA they are the go-to source for such unusual variations, and Vanilla porn would be really overwhelmingly predominant in both markets.
I would expect that the point of the rape porn being discussed here is that the women emphatically don’t enjoy it. Else it’s just regular porn of the “NO no no hm oh yes yes YEEES” variety, which has existed since about forever.
Besides, I don’t expect even “younger and less intelligent viewers” to expect housewives to open the door in their unmentionables, then suck their pizza deliveryman’s cock off at the drop of an innuendo involving phallic toppings, do you ? And how is this or that kind of porn different ?
I guess because rapes ACTUALLY happen fairly regularly IRL, whereas housewives sucking off delivery guys penises is not known to have any real basis IRL.
Though I gotta say, I find the choking, etc., that goes on in American porn more disturbing and degrading than Japanese rape porn (which is generally pretty tame stuff).
I dunno. Everyone I’ve known who has lived in Japan has their tales to tell of weird perversions encountered. One theory I’ve heard a lot is that being so isolated for so many centuries and not having any Christian baggage to carry around, they’ve developed an amazingly guilt-free outlook toward sex.
The theory I heard was that Japanese obscenity laws forbid displaying actual genitals in film. As a result, Japanese pornographers couldn’t just display straightforward sex, and so had to be more…creative what they filmed.
Well, yeah, with the stuff on film. But I’ve heard some amazing tales of kinkiness in person. (The wife was not keen on me investigating when we were there this past April. :()
The “theory” I have seen is that, yeah, either they blur it, or Japanese people are born with blurred crotches :). You can still find non-blurred porn, presumably made for other markets.
That’s indeed the reason behind stuff like bukkake or the prominence of tentacle porn, but Japan has been unburdened by sexual guilt for much longer than that. And the first instance of Japanese tentacle porn is a bit older than the 1910s (when those obscenity laws were drafted) :).
Nope, urabon (uncensored porn) is made for Japanese audiences, who just like anyone else kinda want to see through the mosaics since what’s under them is the whole fucking point, god dammit ! It’s just technically illegal and “underground” (if open distribution on the internet can be called underground )
I know this is really getting off topic, but “urabon” just refers to uncensored books/magazines, not porn in general (though the word “ura” is still used in other contexts such as ura-DVD).
It’s still possible, though, that most people know better, or have zero inclination in the first place, to rape (or be violent, or cannibalize, or whatever), but that a relative few easily impressionable people might not. The question isn’t whether rape porn makes everyone who watches it more inclined to commit actual rape, but whether it has that effect on anyone who watches it.
But I got the impression that the OP was asking about realistic, live-action depictions of rape.
This thread makes an interesting juxtaposition to the recent IMHO thread Can men be “taught not to rape”? since they’re both about our ability (or not) to influence people’s attitudes and actions.
That’s a big “if” though, because there’s reason to suspect that rape in Japan is badly underreported. I used to live in Japan and anecdotally I’d say it seems like non-rape sexual assaults such as men groping women on commuter trains are much more common in Japan than in the US and that the victims are often too embarrassed to do anything about it. I had a coworker tell me that when she was a high school student in Kobe she got groped on the train practically every day. (FWIW two or three other coworkers said nothing like that had ever happened to them, although they were from smaller towns.) In some places there are even designated women-only cars on trains that are intended to help women avoid gropers, although this doesn’t help women who wind up in mixed-sex cars.
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