Unfortunately, the sickest, most twisted Vancouverite is now Premiere of the province. 
I found a fairly good article on censorship of pornography which touches on the depiction of rape:
I HAD been planning to write some kind of legalistic brief elucidating my position on this issue, as promised. Then I saw this. I have admit, looking over this thread, I don’t see too many people with what I would call a genuinely “open” mind. An open mind does NOT mean that you look at something and say “I don’t like it, but someone else might, therefore it’s okay.”
I’m positive that last sentence will spark a new round of outraged half-wits telling me my arguments are “illogical” or that I am a twit, but like Space Vampire said, whatever. Some people are impervious to any argument that doesn’t appeal to a worldview to which they already ascribe. With that in mind, I quit this thread for good. Y’all can have your rape porn. Enjoy!
All I will say to this is that it will be a cold day in hell when I admit that Dopers represent an accurate cross-section of mainstream thought ANYWHERE.
I’m going back to the example mentioned in the OP:
Rape porn presented on the internet, advertised as being 100% real rapes. Several people in the thread have said “it’s obviously not real” (a very probably true statement), but others have compared it to Hollywood movies. The comparison to a Hollywood movie is obviously flawed. When I go see a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger blowing up the bad guys, I don’t see something at the beginning of the scene saying “The people in this film were actually murdered. The brains you see splattered on the screen were the real brains of a dead person.” So they are not advertised as being true.
Do some people believe that the rape porn pictures are real? I think the reasonable assumption is that some people believe it. Look at the glurge that floats around the internet, that people honestly believe are true. I remember someone arguing in another thread that the “monkey-brain eating scene” in one of the “Faces of Death” movies was not faked, even though several people tried to point out reasons showing that it was obviously faked.
Concerning the comparison with child pornography - several people have said “it’s not possible to make convincing child pornography.” With the state of computer animation rapidly advancing, it is becoming closer and closer to being possible every day. I remember that when I first saw a preview of Final Fantasy (a computer-generated film), for a few seconds I was unsure whether or not the actors were real people or not. In 10 or 20 years the difference may be undetectable to the casual viewer. Assuming this is possible, does that mean realistic depictions of child pornography, advertised as being real, should be allowed too? Like the site that would say “100% real 9-year-old girls giving blowjobs! See pictures here!” In that case the argument “it’s obviously not real” may not even apply. I have attended events organized by a local activist who is trying to raise the issue of sexual slavery of children in Southeast Asia. She has many true stories of girls younger than 13 being forced into brothels. Why couldn’t someone take a picture of one of those girls engaged in the sex act and post it on a website?
So, for those of you that support the legality of rape porn (e.g. women being beaten and then brutally raped) - would you also support the legality of realistic child porn? (I am assuming that those opposing rape porn would also oppose realistic child porn.) How about child rape porn? (computer-generated)
P.S. I’m not saying that rape porn should be illegal. On the other hand I’m not convinced that a fundamental right would be infringed upon if displaying it and advertising it as real were forbidden.
**
Ahem. I don’t believe anyone in the thread has supported “women being beaten and then brutally raped”, so I can’t address this as phrased.
If you don’t mind my rephrasing it as “Images of actresss made up to look like they’ve been beaten and brutally raped”
then:
**
Yup. I think both “rape sex” and “virtual kiddie porn” are gross and a major turn off, but if no-one’s hurt, how can there be a crime? Child Porn laws are there to protect children, not to stop some sicko from getting his rocks off.
If you can’t arrest him for writing a story, I don’t see how you can get him for creating a realistic 3D image. You can’t hurt a 3D rendering, so I don’t see how it’s different than writing a story. And I’m not prepared to start banning books Lolita, however little I like it.
Or would you have the government ban “erotic”* stories about child-rape, etc?
Fenris
*not to me, mind you!
“I’m not saying that rape porn should be illegal. On the other hand I’m not convinced that a fundamental right would be infringed upon if displaying it and advertising it as real were forbidden.”
I addressed this a while ago in this thread…
*"So if the rape-oriented porn was advertised as ‘simulated rape,’ you would no longer have a problem with it, as it is accurately informing the public about a lawful activity (that is, the depiction, rather than the actuality of rape)?
If your primary objection is the misrepresentation of these files (or movies) as ‘real rape,’ then I have no quarrel with you. If it’s the concept of rape fantasy porn in general that offends you…shrug…I think that’s a personal choice."*
My remarks were not addressed by the OP, even though I popped BACK in to note that he hadn’t. Twice.
I’m sure that having an admin point this element out will make it more likely that it will be answered…but please don’t imply that no one’s mentioned it before.
“Some people are impervious to any argument that doesn’t appeal to a worldview to which they already ascribe. With that in mind, I quit this thread for good. Y’all can have your rape porn. Enjoy!”
I don’t buy it. You resurrect this thread after it’s been dead for a WEEK to say that we’re all closed minded idiots (O He Who Did Not Respond To That Stuff I Just Quoted Above), just to tell us fools that you’re never coming back?
That bears a resemblance to leaning out the window of your departing train and yelling, “And another thing…!!”
It’s la|/|3rz, yo. And doesn’t speak well of you as a person with a logical argument. Then again, ignoring rebuttal in the thread itself didn’t exactly give you points in that area either.
Such a pity. You seemed like a very sweet boy.
…athough, on second thought, one fun thing to do would be to go after the purveyors of “REAL RAPE SEX!” and get 'em on “Truth in advertising laws”. Can you imagine the court case?
Distrect Attorney: Mr. Filthmeister, your website took in over $5000.00 based on your advertisement of “100% Real rape!” Is that correct?
Mr. Filthmeister: Yuh. So?
DA: And, Mr. Filthmeister, didn’t your banner ads and pop-ups state “Real Rape! See real women get what’s coming to them?” and “See unsuspecting women kidnapped and and fucked?”
Mr. Filthmeister: Yuh. So?
Judge: Is there a point to this line of questioning?
DA: I’m just getting there, your honor. Mr. Filthmeister; are you aware that you’ve just admitted to a felony? You masterminded “real rapes” and profited from them. What with RICO laws, you’ll be sent up the river for a minimum of 20+ years.
Mr. Fithmeister: Wait! Dey weren’t real rapes! Nobody wuz hurt!
DA: So you’re saying you falsely advertised your product intentionally to defraud the public? And you made over $5000 on it? Oops! That’s a whole different class of felony!
Fenris
Sigh. Look, people (by people, I mean Lizard and Space Vampire), if you can prove - PROVE - that one of the models/victims didn’t consent, then you have an argument. Remember, the burden of proof is on the accuser.
Arnold Winkelried: Do you really think that laws about American kiddie porn will make a difference in overseas sex industries? For that matter, if Mr. Pervert ges off on seeing children raped, but said children are out of the jurisdiction of Unca Sam, what then?
Okay, Lizard. Up until this point, while I did not agree with your OP, it seemed as if you really were trying to intelligently make your point. Now, I’m seriously disappointed. Had you bowed out nobly, and conceded the point, or even politely said that it was obvious that you weren’t managing to convince the rest of us of your point of view, that would have been all well and good. Hell, even if you had let the thread, which was pretty obviously dead, stay dead, and just not bumped it again, it would have been fine. But no, you just had to bump it in order to tell us that we’re all close-minded, outraged half-wits. You’ll pardon me if I take exception to that. Let’s see here.
- You’ve told us what an open mind isn’t. Now please go on to explain to us what you think it is. I don’t see anybody who posted to this thread actually condoning rape. Or child pornography, which managed to get tacked on as an aside. Yet, according to your pseudo-‘definition’,
due to the fact that we disagree with your OP, we all condone rape, child-porn, incest, bestiality, and murder. Because it might be okay for somebody else. :rolleyes: Try again, hotshot.
- As for this board not representing
Well, if you take a look at the technique of probability sampling from the Gallup Poll FAQ .
If we narrow the issue down specifically to the issue in your OP…as I see it it would be Rape pornography on the internet, being advertised as real rape…and then we take a look at our target audience here on the SDMB…a group of mostly literate, intelligent people who have some interest in furthering their education, discussing and debating issues, current events, etc, whose primary link in common is that they all have regular access to a computer, and spend a fair amount of time on the internet, then we see that this is probably fairly close to the target audience that Gallup would use for a poll on the harms of rape pornography. Like most probability sampling, to make it truly accurate would require more work. Getting answers from more people. But on a board with
stats like this, it’s a fairly good possibility that you’re getting a good sample.
- Hi Opal.
4)You really haven’t bothered to respond to any of the well-reasoned arguments from many of the people in this thread. Leading me to believe that the excerpt from the article posted by Larry Mudd applies to your point of view, as well:
I have no choice but to believe it, as you haven’t managed to demonstrate any harm other than to your delicate sensibilities.
5)For what it’s worth, I am, to some extent, in agreement with you. It’s really annoying that they advertise the stuff the way they do. But if they have disclaimers in place, etc, then they’re obviously following the letter of the law. Though, as Arnold Winkelried mentioned, it probably wouldn’t bother me if I didn’t have to see ads for things like this, or how I can take pills to get a 36" penis. But we have to be very careful how we restrict any form of speech, otherwise we fall into the situation where anything that offends is banned. In which case, we’ve lost our freedom of speech.
Not that I expect this will have a great deal of impact with you, as
That’s the one thing you’ve posted with which I can absolutely, unequivocally, agree.
-Stiletto
[sub]If electricity comes from electrons,
that must mean that morality comes from morons.[/sub]
Go right ahead, since that’s what I meant.
IANAL, but I believe that the distinction between written and photographic descriptions are already made in this country. Here is my understanding:
For me to possess authentic photographs of children engaging in sexual activities with adults is illegal.
For me to possess an authentic written description of the sexual acts between a pedophile and a child is not illegal. (How could I come by those? To give an example - I am in a pen-pal program with criminals on death row, and the criminal with which I correspond is a child molester and describes in a letter to me some of his acts.)
Hamadryad - I realize that you had addressed that issue before. On the other hand I got the impression some people didn’t think it was a grievous problem that those rape photos were advertised as real. in re your comment that an administrator gets more respect in a debate than a member does - as much as I would like everyone to recognize the excellence and superiority of my arguments, I don’t think that it’s necessarily true or even desirable. In any case in The BBQ Pit the more stringent rules of debate as practices in GD don’t necessarily apply I think. Of course The BBQ Pit mods will probably slap me upside the head for reviving a week-old thread (I didn’t notice the dates! honest!) and trying to debate in their forum.
Speaking for myself - Yes, rape fantasy porn offends me. If I had a teenage son and he told me “I fantasize about raping women”, yes, I would be worried and suggest therapy. Of course I should probably read up on the subject first - I am not a psychiatrist.
Yes I think that laws in the USA can affect overseas sex industries. For one thing, the US is a huge market, so if you cut off an area with high demand, there will be less incentive for someone to try and create those types of images. How many “fake” child porn sites can you find on the internet (with adult actresses supposedly representing teaenagers)? Now compare with how many “real” child porn sites? (Where the people in the photographs are actually children)
Second, national governments can potentially have an influence on what is distributed over the internet. I can’t find any recent articles, but let me cite as an example the case of CompuServe in Germany, where the German government told CompuServe “if you give access to the alt.sex hierarchy on usenet we won’t allow you to operate in Germany.”
Sample Article
If the US government told ISPs like AOL or Earthlink “we won’t allow you to sell Internet access in the USA if you give access to rape porn sites”, what do you think those companies would do? My bet is that they would do their best to restrict access to rape porn.
There was a movie, and not too long ago, touted as the actual footage of a group of college students who walked into the woods and never returned.
It was so heavily publicized as such that my own sister (until seeing one of the actresses from the movie in an interview after the movie’s premier) believed 100% that it was absolutely the real footage of these poor murdered college students.
There are still people who despite the fact that these actors have appeared in numerous locations since believe that they actually really saw three real people get really dead right in front of their eyes live to tape.
The Blair Witch Project fooled the shit out of them.
You might laugh your ass off and say it was obviously fake, much like most of us do about ‘rape porn’. But they believe it.
Agreed catsix. So we can posit that at least some of the people that view rape porn sites think the images are real and are titillated by those pictures. The questions raised by this in my mind are:
[list=A][li]Is the fact that the pictures are considered real by some people sufficient cause to ban that kind of pornography? IMHO No (but there might be other causes in addition that would justify making them illegal.)[/li]If a person is titillated by pictures of persons being violently raped, is this “normal” or “healthy”? IMHO No. If the viewer doesn’t act on it then there is no reason to imprison her/him but I would suggest that this is not the sign of a well-adjusted individual. However as I said before I am not a psychiatrist.[/list=A]
This is a very difficult difference to explain here, but I’d have to say it is possible to be aroused by literature and photos depicting nonconsensual sex without “fantasizing about raping someone” or “fantasizing about being raped.” I never, ever fantasize about being raped (the thought makes me ill) but that doesn’t mean that the erotica isn’t titillating (to me). It’s hard to explain.
CrankyAsAnOldMan - I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, but here is the distinction I draw. In the romance novels, I am sure many of us have read the scene where the haughty and disdainful heroine is mastered by the rough-and-tumble handsome hero, and melts in sweet surrender in his arms.
Or to take an example from cinema: In Guy Hamilton’s version of Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger, when Sean Connery (James Bond) throws Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore) to the ground and has his way with her, in the process “converting” her from lesbianism to hetersexuality, I as a teenager was turned on by the scene. But in the back of my mind was the knowledge that our hero would never actually commit such a dastardly crime; and our heroine, halfway through, starts caressing the hero, to give the knowledge that she is consenting and enjoying the act. So even though the idea behind the whole scene (lesbians just need a man to show them what’s what, and when a woman’s lips say no, her eyes say yes) is offensive, I don’t view it as a real “rape” scene.
But from another movie, Jonathan Kaplan’s ‘The Accused’, Jodie Foster (Sarah Tobias) is gang-raped by a group of men, while she screams for help and pleads for them to stop (or if you have had the misfortune of seeing Paul Verhoeven’s movie “Showgirls”, think back to the scene in which Gina Ravera is brutally raped): if someone (even you) were to tell me “I find that erotic and I was turned on”, I would be nonplussed and a little scared. And I would think that this is not a “healthy” attitude. (Referring again to my disclaimer - I am not a mental health specialist.)
Well, I’ll admit that my fantasies are more “back ally” than “busted bodice”.
Yeah, I know it is all pretty wierd. But what can I do? I’ve had this sort of fantasy since I was a young child. They are a part of my sexuality. I’m not a danger to anyone. I’m not a danger to myself. I have really really healthy attitudes about sex, otherwise. I just usually end up cojuring up these images when I masterbate. I figure it is just some kind of quirk in my brain. Not a big deal, really…
Arnie: My point is that they are all assumed to be “fake” sites until proven otherwise, because if you want me to believe any ads, pruient or no, you better back that ass up.
Hmm, not the best choice of words, considering the topic.
At any rate, your blanket ban a) is horribly fascist and b) wouldn’t work. The availability of access to Internet sites would be affected not at all by a lack of news groups. Face it people, wether or not rape porn is bad, it’s here, metaphorically speaking, and it won’t go away. There is supply, both real and faked, and demand, both pervert and deviant. (Its the difference between using a feather and using the whole chicken.)
I prefer Mr. Winkelried. 
I never said that the sites were real. However it seems probable to me that some people will think they’re real. Reasons for my belief were given in my previous post(s).
I am flattered that you think I have enough influence to implement a ban of that sort, but I had little or no influence on the German government, so I would hardly call it my ban. I never even said that I would be in favour of such a ban, I was presenting it as an example of how a government could restrict access to (some forms of) pornography through legislation. Horribly fascist? That’s a matter of opinion. Are you referring to a ban of all pornography, a ban on rape pornography, or something else? What do you think of the ban on child pornography?
There I will have to disagree. Refer again to the article I posted. The German government managed to stop CompuServe from providing access to the alt.sex hierarchy. And I seem to have noticed that child pornography is not very easy to obtain in the USA. If you are saying “the determined individual will always find a way” that’s probably true, but the same could be said of anything a government tries to interdict.
Concerning internet access - the number of servers (forwarding the packets from other countries) is not infinite. If you place barriers on the servers you can effectively ban certain kinds of information. This is currently attempted in China for example.
Well, Winky, let me clarify. I meant that banning ISPs would represent the government going someplace it cannot legally (in the U.S.) and should not morally go. When I say wouldn’t work, I meant that it is incredibly easy to find kiddie porn on IRC. Or Kazaa. Or just with a google search. Heck, barring all else, get a buddy to email it to you. Try it: as crimes go, it’s very easy to destroy the evidence. Also, my burden-of-proof comment was meant to point out that trying to discriminate between “fake” and “real” kiddie porn is an exersize in futility, as we can’t prove that the 12-year-old “model” isn’t 18 with thyroid problems.
Also, you seem to assume that the banning of kiddie porn would be desirable. Assuming that Bob Page steps out of Deux Ex and into our world, and we can stop all internet-borne kiddie porn, what then? The harmless viewers will find other sources of entertainment, the stalkers will still stalk, and for every psycho “inspired” by the internet, you will have someone whose urges could be kept under control via said porn.