One critical study, the attitude of male students to rape after viewing rape style pornography seems to be central to the argument in the mini-thesis. Male students tend to be young and being young inexperienced, full of hormones and usually somewaht frustrated (if memory serves me correct). What has this to do with rape? Well the common thread in rape is power.
That is if a person is insecure, they feel powerless and downtrodden, but also fearful. A quick cure for this is to place oneself in an imagined or real position of power. I daresay young males feeling they are getting no-where near their sexual ambitions, out of their depth in social interactions with females and having had their attempts at sexual contact rebuffed on a fairly regular basis - feel a certain resentment against females (I know I did at the time). In short, they are in the main insecure and feeling the underdog.
Any wonder then, at any excuse they should fanatise their power over the opposite sex.
What about real rapists. The good doctor of the mini-thesis would do well to become acquainted with some convicted rapists and asses them on the basis of their pathological insecurities. I had the experience of knowing a young boy, a bully who beat me up on numerous occassions when at school, who graduated to become a notorious serial rapist. He specialisied in climbing balconies and trapping women in their flats, heavily disguised and a slipping away after making numerous threats and delivering a beating (which I think was the real point of his actions in this case). I can say I have rarely met anyone as insecure and frightened as this bully-rapist, nor in terms of personal devlopment anyone quite so pathetic.
Is this true of rapists as a whole? I don't know but I suspect so.
The role of pornography in all this? Well I suspect it has very little to do with anything directly, though no doubt it is sought-out by would be rapists and used to by them to ready themselves - but so what? Donning the disguise as the rapist above did, probably had a more stimulating effect then anything he had watched.
Sorry to take such a cursory approach to an important subject, but the role of power in rape is well known (if not through psychology then through literature and history). The causual relations do not need pornography and the secondary nature of this has to be emphaisied - then of course you don't get a thesis out the other end either.
As for "PORNOGRAPHY AS A CAUSE OF RAPE" someone will have to point out within it something substantial that I have missed for me to take it seriously. Meaningless statistics like:
"Research indicates that 25% to 30% of male college students in the United States and Canada admit that there is some likelihood they would rape a woman if they could get away with it. In the first study of males' self-reported likelihood to rape that was conducted at the University of California at Los Angeles, the word rape was not used; instead, an account of rape (described below) was read to the male subjects, of whom 53% said there was some likelihood that they would behave in the same fashion as the man described in the story, if they could be sure of getting away with it (Malamuth, Haber, and Feshbach, 1980). Without this assurance, only 17% said they might emulate the rapist's behavior. It is helpful to know exactly what behavior these students said they might emulate:"
Says very little to me, especially bearing in mind the probable age of the students.
I must say that Dr. Diana E.H. Russell's favoured definition of pronography, is somewhat niave:
"Sexual objectification is another common characteristic of pornography. It refers to the portrayal of human beings -- usually women -- as depersonalized sexual things, such as "tits, cunt, and ass," not as multi-faceted human beings deserving equal rights with men."
Yes I can well imagine how turned-on males might become to portrayals of romantic evenings, quiet chats by the fireside and female protagantists of worldly intelligence and culture. I feel however this might well be missing the point of viewing pornography. True, most pronography (even from limited experience) is poorly produced and ridiculous and could well do with improvement (especially in terms of cinematography, and concise scripts would help, along with someone who actually knows how to edit) but aside from this I believe the attraction lies expressly in 'depersonalized sexual things, such as "tits, cunt, and ass,"' I could be wrong of course, but it seems that a multi-billion industry can survive on just this despite the fact that the actual product is so-often poorly, shot, edited, plotted, written, and acted.
Understanding human sexuality is not helped with a bible-belt mentality even when it is wrapped up in feminism.
Greg
--- Message Received --- From: "michael pugliese" <debsian at pacbell.net> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 13:30:58 -0800 Subject: Re: TV & violence & studies
http://www.dianarussell.com/porntoc.html
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all
Lestec's MAID and LTMailer http://www.lestec.com.au also available at Amazon.com ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________