General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Liberals and violent porn and rape simulation [View all]jeff47
(26,549 posts)As a hobby, I build furniture. As a result I'm able to tell the difference between "good" furniture and "cheap" furniture. Price is not a good indicator, btw. There is very, very expensive cheap furniture. And very inexpensive good furniture.
Those that buy cheap furniture just don't understand what they are missing. Good furniture is close to a work of art, but you will not find it in most furniture stores these days. Cheap furniture has displaced it because it is easier to make. It has leached out the truly good furniture, leaving a need for expensively-priced but cheaply-made furniture.
But lo and behold, we're not discussing the need to ban cheap furniture because the uneducated just do not understand what they are missing. Or how it demonstrates our society values the stupid over the educated.
But back to the subject at hand.
You've made a lot of assertions about porn that "just make sense" but are not born out by scientific studies. People do not devalue women more after seeing porn, for example. Watching BDSM porn doesn't make people believe that rape is good is another. Sure, it "makes sense" in that you can make a logical argument for it. But it's possible to test that argument, and the argument did not hold up to testing.
Just as a rough approximation, in all of human history there has never been more porn produced than today. And that porn has never been so easily accessible. At the same time, the rate of rape is down compared to the pre-Internet era. If porn caused the effects you claim, that should not happen - more porn should be causing more rapes.
"What about unreported rapes?", you ask. Well, why would the number of women not reporting their rape have suddenly gone up in the last 10 years? 30 years ago, life was much, much, much harder on women who reported their rape. So why would a massive number of women report their rapes then, but not report their rapes now? They wouldn't - the likelihood of not reporting a rape is at worse the same as then. But claiming that is a way to hide from results that do not match one's thesis.