If the answer you’re trying to back me into is “BECAUSE WE LIVE IN AN INSANE REPRESSED SOCIETY!” I’m not biting. I thought I had addressed this somewhere, but maybe not.
Violent action movies are absolutely not real, ever. Outside of stunts gone bad, nobody ever gets killed making them. As I’ve said, I really don’t think anyone can be sure that nobody is ever raped in rape porn. A lot of porn starring professional porn stars looks a lot like rape to me, personally. But anyway, movies are also advertised as just that, movies. Not reality. MAYBE a really good movie will give you genuine escapist thrills for a couple hours. But most of the time, there is no real identification with the baddy-slaughtering action hero, or the illusion for anyone over the age of 8 that it’s “real.” Rape porn is consistently hawked as “authentic,” and attempts are made to make it look to be so. There may be “soft” stuff out there that has dangerous elements in what is obviously a studio situation, but that’s not my impression of all of it. As I’ve said, I am not willing to do research on this. I can only comment on what’s fallen into my lap.
Surely ANY feature film has more merit than a porn clip. Doesn’t the legal definition of obscenity state that obscenity has no artistic value? True, I can think of a lot of shoot 'em up films that I don’t consider of any particular value, but I think just the presence of a storyline and some kind of context sets a violent movie apart from a violent sexual video clip. Sometimes movies might go too far with gratuitous violence, sex, or sexual violence, and those films I might not like. They could even be harmful to an impressionable audience. But obviously I’m not going to go as far in condemning violent movies as I will in condemning violent porn. That somebody might bring this argument up occurred to me early on, but it seems like an awful stretch to me. There may be people who feel as strongly about violent movies as I do about rape porn, but I think anyone who’s being honest can see there’s a big difference.
I think this is where some of our disagreement lies. I do not believe that rape porn is consistently hawked as auuthentic. Perhaps some of the crap that you get spammed with it, but the vast majority of rape erotica I have seen emphasized that it is fiction and fantasy. They tend to publish warnings like the following:
“This was just a story and nothing else. The models in the pictures above are consenting adults and both are above the legal age. The **** Network and Its Authors do not promote the raping of young
girls. Rape is a horrible crime. Those who commit this act should be punished.”
“These stories deal with rape and torture of a
non-consenting nature, These are fantasy and not to be confused with reality or construed as an endorsement of the activities depicted.”
“Nonconsensual fantasies should only be read by consenting adults. Although the archive has stories pertaining to nonconsensual sexacts, we DO NOT condone such acts. This category is provided as unusual adult entertainment only.”
“This story was written as an adult fantasy. The author does not condone the described behavior in real life in any way shape or form.”
Maybe that reads like a bunch of CYA to you, but it’s clear that at least some authors and webmasters are NOT going for the “authentic” but are openly in the realm of fantasy.
You think, but you have presented exactly zero evidence that this is true.
Which shows you are not exactly the best judge for this sort of thing.
Really? I’ve never seen a disclaimer in a commercial or on a movie poster that explicitly states that the movie is a work of fiction. There is the occasional “not based on actual events or persons” tag at the end of the credits, but that hardly counts. On the other hand, I’ve seen any number of movies advertised as representations of real events, from The Perfect Storm to Black Hawk Down to The Mothman Prophecies.
Absolutely true. Why does this apply to mainstream movies and not to porn?
All porn is hawked as authentic and all movies, adult and otherwise, strive to look as realistic as possible. Why is this bad only when applied to rape porn?
Since you’re now admiting that you have no basis for your opinion, I think everyone else can safely ignore it from now on.
Purely a subjective consideration. Give me a ten minute porn loop over the entire Pauly Shore ouevre any day.
I’ve got my own set of beefs with the current legal definition of “obscenity.”
So, as long as the rape porn follows the three act structure, I assume you have no problem with it?
Why not? Why is murder more okay than rape?
Yes, there is a big difference. As bad as rape is, you can get over it. I don’t care for the idea of ranking evil, but I think killing someone is marginally worse than raping them. I would even go so far to say that the callous disregard for human life displayed in your average Schwartzenegger film is twice as offensive as the most realistic rape porn. Except that I’m not the sort of person who gets offended over movies. There’s too much stuff to get angry about in real life to waste time with the made up shit.
space vampire, since you say that you have not and will not research this, i did it for you.
i put “real rape” into google and clicked the first page or so of sites, following links from there. as far as i could tell (what with the million windows opening all around me) every site that i visited that claimed to have photos of “real” rape, also had a disclaimer stating something to the effect of:
if anyone really thinks they are seeing pictures of actual rape, they have the mentality of a grape.
What I want to know is this: Where the heck is all this “Authentic” rape porn???
I have never been one to shy away from anything pornographic that did not include farm animals(not that there’s anything wrong with that!). But I hear about this stuff, and maybe I’m wrong, but the implication is that it’s virtually ever-present. And yet, I never see it. And I spend a lot of time on the net.
And what I do see is never free, only a teaser and a prompt for a credit card #. Am I looking in the wrong places?
NOTE: I am not asking for porn IP addresses. Just making an observation.
Space Vampire and Lizard probably believe in the legendary “snuff” movie, too. Never mind that many decades of focused investigation by many law-enforcement agencies and officials has never, ever turned up anything even vaguely resembling a snuff ring. But noooooooooooo, won’t somebody please think of the chiillllllllldren? <gnashing teeth, beating breast>
Quick lesson in debating for Lizard and Space Vampire (not that they’ll listen. Um, read. You know what I mean.):
Either rape fantasy/pornagraphy is evil, degrading, hurts children, etc., or it does not. We have a sample of people here on this board that shows it does not. That means that the burden of proof is on you two to show how rape fantasy is harmful, or even immoral. Cites and statistics would be helpful.
P.S. If I made up a website that claimed to tell the definitive truth on this issue, would you believe it?
P.P.S. This is a minor hijack, but who is willing to bet that people’s opinion in rape fantasy is similar to their opinion on simulated kiddie porn?
I conducted the same experiment as Cessandra. I checked 10 “real rape” sites. ALL of them had a disclaimer stating the site didn’t condone real rape and that the movies/pictures were of consenting models. Some of these disclaimer were down the page in much smaller characters, but they were always there. It’s possible that some other sites don’t have such disclaimers, but at first glance, it seems it’s the rule.
I would bet there are many people who would accept rape fantasies/simulated rape but wouldn’t accept pedophile fantasies/simulated kiddie porn. The more offensive something is for the average individual, the more likely someone will throw out of the window his concerns about “freedom of speech”.
Okay. And here we go round (and around and around) again.
I think we’ve finally stumbled across the sticking point in your argument there, Space Vampire. In your opinion, rape pornography fits the definition of obscenity. Fortunately enough for you, as you’ve already mentioned being a porn afficionado of sorts, the definition that is currently implicitly incorporated into Federal legislation, from the court case Miller V. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973) is as follows:
I say fortunately for you, and for the rest of us who enjoy one form of pornography or another, because aside from child pornography, the government has determined that most of the rest of the common forms of pornography, on the 'net and otherwise do not fit this definition of obscenity. If you want to consider it obscene, so be it. You are entitled to your opinion. But in order for something like this to be judged as obscene and banned, a good percentage of the rest of us, representing the ‘average person’, would have to agree with you. Taking a rough estimate from those who have chimed in on this thread, that is patently not the case.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m not really much interested in rape pornography per se. I don’t much like most of it, it really doesn’t do much of anything for me. So why am I here sticking up for it? Because once we ban something like that, the rest of our pornography can be banned to. It’s just a hop, skip, and a jump from rape porn, to bondage porn, to any of the other ‘fetish’ porn, to banning porn all together. And I don’t particularly care to have that happen. So, I’m very much interested in keeping the status quo, i.e. freedom for all of us to enjoy whatever it is we’re into. But I don’t agree that any feature film has more merit than a porn clip. Comparing them on artistic merit as a whole is like comparing apples and weasels. They have two different entertainment purposes, and two different audience focuses. As for the merit of each piece, last I checked that was something left to be determined by the individual. That means I get to have an opinion, too. And so does everybody else. And if you don’t like it, nobody’s going to force you to watch it. But just because you don’t like it is insufficient reason to get rid of it. Not in my country, anyway.
I think the fact that this is not truly the case has been more than adequately demostrated by Cessandra and clairobscur. The few sites I bothered checking also had disclaimers of the same nature. So, we have this fact, that it is obviously not real rape we’re seeing, staring us in the face. Insofar as the rape porn vs. ‘feature film’ argument goes…most feature films these days have multi-million dollar budgets, in order to incorporate a vast array of special effects designed almost solely to enhance the realism of the film. I have no idea what the typical budget of a rape porn sequence or film would be…but I would imagine that it’s significantly lower. We’re talking enough money for actors, props, and some makeup, most likely. In that regard, I certainly can’t say that the realism compares. A feature film can show thousands of people dying, realistically. It can show people maimed, dismembered, tortured, realistically. A typical rape porn can show actors with the appropriate props and makeup having what is documented as being actual consensual sex. Made up to look like a rape scene. Personally it
to think that a rape porn, or any porn film is going to have anywhere near the same level of realistic violence, sexual or non, that a ‘feature film’ will have on a regular basis.
So, while we’re waiting for Lizard’s “Mother of all Rape Porn posts”, weren’t we supposed to be having an immoral gang-bang to pass the time?
[sub]If electricity comes from electrons,
that must mean that morality comes from morons.[/sub]
To those that have answered my hijack: Why is it different? If underdeveloped eighteen-year-olds want to dress up like little girls, should a web site be able to say that these are REAL TEENS, disclamered, of course? Is fantasizing about children different than fantasizing about rape? Note that I said simulated.
For the lawyers in the crowd: If an underage girl takes pornographic pictures of herself, can she be prosecuted?
Come to that, isn’t pretty much every teenage boy guilty of several hundred counts of molestation against themselves, being as they are underage to consent to ANY sexual activity?
Sorry to hijack, but I think we’re pretty polarized on the OP issue.
P.S. What the hell happened to burden-of-proof? If I have porn of girls of questionable ages, isn’t the job of teh government to prove that said depicted girls are illegal, rather than the other way 'round?
It’s not always possible. For instance, let’s assume you have some dozens of anonymous pictures depicting children who appear to be 11-12 y.o. engaged in sexual activities with adults. You could claim that they’re (or possibly are) actually very young-looking adults. Even though this statement is somewhat ridiculous or at least extremely highly unlikely to be true, there would be no way to prosecute you, since in most cases of picture traffic, there’s no way to find out where and when this pictures had been taken, let alone who is depicted. Especially when the pictures have been taken in some remote/corrupted/devastated by poverty country.
I’ve no clue about the US, but french law has been modified some years ago following several cases of kiddie porn movies/pictures international traffic. One would have now to prove that the models weren’t underaged if they appear to be so (not only if he sell such pictures, but also if he merely own them)
Basically, that means you’re guilty until proven innocent. I assume it’s fine as long as it’s applied to cases involving say 2000 pictures of people appearing to be 8 y.o. But what if you happen to own one picture of a former gf/bf who appears to be 16-17? I don’t know what the exact wording of the law is, but I strongly suspect, especially given the current witch hunt climate, that there are no guarantees that you won’t be prosecuted in this case.
On the other hand, without it, you could keep your 200 kiddie porn movies without worry. “You say she appears to be 5? Oh! I don’t know but perhaps she’s an adult with some weird growth problem. Can you prove she’s 5? Please give me back my films, officer”
So, I’m not sure what to think on this issue…
As clairobscur mentioned, it’s a difficult issue, clouded even further by the turnover in the courts on the simulated images. As it stands right now, barring changes in legislation due to that turnover, The Cornell Legal Information Institute has information on what constitutes child pornography. Basically, it’s left somewhat open-ended in that it heavily implies that the government must be able to prove that these are pictures of a real person who was underage at the time the photos were taken, and the individual in question is involved in some sort of sexual act. But they finish it off with the catch-all
So, effectively, yes, the burden of proof is on the government insofar as that they must prove that the images involved are really of real, live minors in real, live sexual acts. But they leave themselves an out by saying that they don’t actually have to discover the identity of the child involved. And the recent turnover clouds the issue even further.
As far as the fantasy aspect goes, no, it’s not any different than rape pornography. If you’re looking at pictures of consenting adults portraying children, then technically it’s perfectly alright, and I will stand by your right to view that kind of media. The problem here, I think, is that, unlike rape porn, where nobody really has any evidence that the stuff you see on the net is real…they have busted up any number of real and for true child pornography rings. It is a real problem, there is real harm being inflicted on real children. And that’s what they’re trying to stop. So from that frame of reference, I can understand the government being a bit more stringent about what is allowed, and how carefully it is researched and documented.
That doesn’t mean that I think it’s reasonable to ban even that, as there is still plenty of room for artificially created images, as well as legal portrayals in that kind of setting, with that kind of purpose. And those are okay. I won’t look at them, mind you…but those are okay. There’s no crime, no harm involved in those situations, so they should continue to be okay.
With the more particular issues you mentioned, those are even more difficult to determine. As far as the underage girl taking pictures of herself, I would think that it would be treated the same as a sexual relationship between two minors. The statutory rape laws do not apply. There is no adult involved. And again, no harm, at least not from the situation per se.
As far as the auto-erotic issues…I think it would be ridiculous to think that such a thing could be prosecuted. Especially with no statute of limitations. At that point, put a huge percentage of the American population on trial because they engaged in masturbation before the legal age of consent. The whole idea of prosecution is ludicrous, as I see it. But still, a valid point.
Don’t be too sure. I know of at least one case (here in Vancouver,) in which two minors were both charged with statutory rape after they were caught having sex in an unused school building. Most people could see that it was a ludicrous situation, but the charges stuck, if I recall correctly. I’m sorry I can’t find a link, but it was something of a nine-days-wonder around 1996.
