dennis> Well, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, to cite two countries
dennis> where porn is illegal, have rather poor histories when it
dennis> comes to the treatment of women.
That's putting it more mildly than I would have, but sure.
However, this is only interesting or relevant insofar as someone claims that porn is the *only* causative factor in sexual violence towards women. No one, as far as I know, claims that. I certainly did not.
This causal link between
dennis> porn and sexual violence has never really been proven;
Well, that's a disputed issue, actually. There are social science researchers who claim otherwise. There was enough of such evidence by the early 80s that MacKinnon and Dworkin drafted legislation based, in part, on it (as well as testimony by abused women of the role porn played in *their* abuse -- certainly that testimony is not meaningless).
At least one judge (in somebody v. Gibson, as I recall...) found the scientific evidence compelling enough to suggest that it *warranted* the view that porn was protected speech. That is, *since* porn was 'efficacious' it was to be protected.
I wonder, though, setting the issue of 'causal link' (which seems a bit simplistic to me) aside, whether it would matter to you if porn were found to be a *contributing* or even *exacerbating* factor in sexual violence? Would that be sufficent to consider social policy against it?
and
dennis> while you will find porn mags and videos in the possession
dennis> of a rapist or wife-beater, you'll also find drugs and
dennis> alcohol, among other items (the history of the rapist/beater
dennis> is also a factor).
Dennis, I don't think *anyone* claims porn is the *sole* factor. But is that really the right standard or question? Some folks want to limit political speech in the form of paid political adverts, on the theory that they contribute to the decline of representative and electoral democracy. No one who supports that limitation suggests that paid political adverts are the *sole* cause of democratic decline.
Why hold porn and sexual violence to a higher standard?
Fact is, the vast majority of porn
dennis> consumers do not rape or beat women,
That's undisputedly true.
and porn itself does
dennis> not push a man who is not violent or abusive into becoming
dennis> so.
I don't know whether that is true or false; as an empirical question, I'd have to look at studies. I'm certainly not going to assume that it's true.
There is some research indicating that college-aged men with no pre-existing violent tendencies become *less* likely, after viewing porn (and what I recall to be not very much of it), to believe a women's account of having been raped than men who do not view porn. Surely *that* matters in a democracy in which men sit on juries and pass judgment on other men who are accused of raping women?
What if porn channels violent men toward viewing women as the class of persons constituting the target of their violence? Does that matter?
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