| LurkerJ said: I mean… just bringing problems and linking to easily accessible porn is kind of a weird way to approach the issue at hand. Erectile dysfunction? Maybe because America is fat? The quality of food has deteriorated? More estrogen and estrogen-like materials in food and food containers? Maybe the younger generation has no hope of owning a home and starting a life without having to work in competitive field make them stressed all the time? The reality is that unless you’re a super working hard individual who goes to medical school, engineering school or chooses a very relevant speciality, you’ll end up struggling saving up. Even if you end up with a relevant degree, you’ll still need to compete with locals and foreigners giving how open the market is right now. Long gone the days in which working as a seller in a shop 5 days a week, 12 hours a day, was enough to live a life with dignity (owning a house). I’d say all of this has a much bigger impact on someone’s well-being and ability to perform than watching porn. Even if porn is responsible for making sex less appealing, is that a really problem? It’s not like you’re not getting any joy out of porn or masturbating? If you prefer to have a fuller sex experience and you’re convinced porn is the reason, stop watching porn and see how that affects your sexual life overall? Also, I imagine in a porn-less society, one would still close their eyes and masturbate anyway…. As for porn portrayal of women and lesbians, that is a problem with the entertainment media as a whole. Women and minorities only recently started to get a proper presentation in movies, TV, etc. So recent that Harvery’s abuse was public knowledge, a subject of comedy for many sitcoms (BoJack and 30 rock), until someone decided to “hmm…. This isn’t good”. The answer to these problems is to correct them, protect women and minorities, and provide them with the ability to perform without having to be victims. But again, most here are pointing fingers without providing solutions, me including I don’t know about rape and pornography, but it would be interesting to look at the numbers you brought up and dissect them. Maybe rape has gone up because population has increased magnificently? Genuinely curious. Also the definition of what is considered rape has changed, hasn’t it? It wouldn’t surprise me if rape in the past was a much bigger issue. Again, talking out of my ass here, but I am on a hurry and a in-depth look at the numbers would help. I honestly don’t know about rape statistics, but the general theme in this thread has been “porn consumption has increase, so mental health issues and rape. A connection must be there!”…. No? |
*shrugs*
I'd respond further but you've just said an awful lot of nothing. It seems to me that you're basically just reaching for explanations for each development I pointed to that are not linked to pornography. I sourced my claims.
As to the topic of rape specifically, the 2013 changes in the legal definition of rape can only potentially explain an sudden statistical increase for that specific year. It doesn't explain similar upticks for all the other years in question, does it?
The question of what precisely has caused this recent uptick in the reporting of rapes is assuredly multifaceted, involving factors as superficial as the six-month impact of the Me Too movement in late 2017 and early 2018 resulting in more people feeling emboldened to come forward with their stories and to report surviving sexual abuse and mistreatment in general... stuff ranging from as superficial as that to surges in criminal activity in general in specific years, like in 2015-16, corresponding to waves of Black Lives Matter protests and riots over police killings of unarmed black men and the consequential temporary pullbacks in policing in general. There are still periods unaccounted for by any of this though; periods wherein crime rates overall were falling, but rapes were increasing anyway, for example. At that point realistic explanations have to include cultural factors, like an increase prevalence of porn use. In fact, I'd go as far as to suggest that the "Trump effect" was likely also a factor; that his election shortly after the infamous Access Hollywood tape came out likely signaled to some people that sexual assault is now okay the same way that his election resulted in a substantial increase in hate crimes.
My point though is that the argument that pornography reduces rape the same way it reduces sex overall in society doesn't exactly hold up to the evidence. What we have today, as compared with a decade ago, is less sex overall, but more rape specifically. That is the picture. And it's not an improvement.
