On Fri, 6 May 2005, snitsnat wrote:
> At 04:33 PM 5/6/2005, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> Although not at all anti-porn or opposed to sex work, I wonder what you do
> with research that, last I checked, does show that viewing porn makes young
> men more prone to believe that, if he takes a woman to dinner and pays, he
> deserves sex? Miles recently cited some stats on the effects of violence and
> I thought porn. Miles? Can't remember what you'd typed.
Yeah, that was a while ago. In experimental studies, male college students exposed to "hardcore" (sex + violence) porn act more aggressively against an innocent woman in a lab task than students exposed to neutral or "softcore" (sex without violent content) porn.
The upshot is that explicit representations of sex don't trigger aggressive thoughts or behavior against women; it's the explicit representations of women as victims of male aggression. (I guess half of a tip of the hat to Dworkin there.)
If we want to use that research to justify censoring or criminalizing (at least some) porn, we're logically compelled to advocate censoring any mass media representations that portray women as victims of aggression. --In other words, let's shut down Hollywood!
Miles