Pornography as a whole should just be banned, no reason to have it in a civilized society. Imagine all of the problems that Facebook has trying to keep illegal pornography off of it's website. Multiply those problems by 1000 for a website that has non-negligible portion of it's userbase that actively wants it posted.
The last thing we need as a "civilized society" is to vilify sex positivity.
There is nothing dirty (which your comment is implying) about porn. Are there some shady actors in the industry? Sure, but you can say that about any industry.
What we need is to stop being ashamed of the human body. I would call Germany very civilized and they don't have as much shame about their body because (like alcohol for European countries) it is normal from a younger age. It isn't uncommon to see bondage and other very sexual things just normally about. Which is a good thing!
People are openly admitting that they prefer to see people exposed to sexuality at younger ages, and to have more vile things normalized like bondage. Society is collapsing and rapture is coming. There is something extremely dirty about turning youth into dopamine slaves and robbing them of their innocence. The bible clearly states in Matthew 18:6 causing a little one to stumble is grounds for drowning
Please don't quote Bible quotes at me, all of those were written by racist sexist men a couple hundred years ago as a form of control.
I am an Atheist, your bible verses mean nothing to me.
Here is the thing, in America we have so much shame about sex. Yet we have an insanely high amount of childhood pregnancies. With schools preaching abstinence, that their desires are wrong, etc. It is no wonder that they have sex.
It has been proven time and time again that trying to say something is bad encourages people to use it. We have seen it with sex, drugs, alcohol, etc etc etc.
Bondage is not vile! It is just another act of sex/love (either or, depending on the situation) between consenting adult.
Youth have sexual desires! It is natural, for fuck sake we go through puberty in our youth. Instead we lie about where babies come from (because apparently "mom and daddy loved each other and you were inside your mom" is too much?).
To me, the flaw in your argument is that there were so many times and areas over the last 2,000 years that could just as easily be seen as “the end times, rapture is coming”
plague after plague after plague
debauchery, currently fringe sexual practices being glorified
massive conflicts
like, if 1918-1932 wasn't a leading indicator of the rapture what makes you think today is any closer? or is it paradoxically because it didn't happen the last 50 times this is always therefore closer?
there are lots of irrelevant prophecies that can have things retroactively attributed to them, which breaks their prophetic capability, hard to prioritize Christian death cults
> It isn't uncommon to see bondage and other very sexual things just normally about. Which is a good thing!
I remember when the rhetoric was "consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own bedroom", and now it's "people should be able to practice their sexual kinks in public, including in front of children [1], and if you disagree then you are a bigot!"
This is what a society heading towards collapse looks like.
Also, people don't have to take their kids to pride events if they don't want to. And really what goes on there is mild, it's not like people are going at it. At least not the ones I've been to.
I'm proud that people can embrace who they really are in this day and age.
I also have never seen anything (sex) actually happen at pride. It is always people being cheerful, maybe wearing some gear. If you think that gear is sexual you have already been exposed to it in an actual sexual manor.
If you really are upset about people wearing gear I hope you don't take your kids to the pool or the beach either. You see far more in those situations.
Wow, I thought jwond was being disingenuous by posting something indefensible but atypical and not representative of the whole. But you jump to unconditionally defend it so quick? Wew, what the fuck.
What you do on the street in public is for the whole of the public to comment on, you're not immune to criticism just because the parade is "yours". As soon as you do it in public, you are giving up any conceptual right to not be criticized you seem to think you are entitled to.
A bunch of people who encourage debauchery and insist that exposing children to it is good.
> When our children grew tired of marching, we plopped onto a nearby curb. Just as we got settled, our elementary-schooler pointed in the direction of oncoming floats, raising an eyebrow at a bare-chested man in dark sunglasses whose black suspenders clipped into a leather thong. The man paused to be spanked playfully by a partner with a flog. “What are they doing?” my curious kid asked as our toddler cheered them on. The pair was the first of a few dozen kinksters who danced down the street, laughing together as they twirled their whips and batons, some leading companions by leashes. At the time, my children were too young to understand the nuance of the situation, but I told them the truth: That these folks were members of our community celebrating who they are and what they like to do.
> […]
> We don’t talk to our children enough about pursuing sex to fulfill carnal needs that delight and captivate us in the moment.
No reason to have alcohol in a "civilized society" either.
People aren't logic automata and trying to make rules that treat a population as such will always end up in the way that prohibition did. You should punish/sanction very harmful expression of base-instincts of humans, but criminalizing all of those that appear even somewhat undesirable will just make the prison problem even worse.
The US homicide rate not using guns is also higher than many other country entire homicide rates.
Maybe the violence in the US is not simply guns?
We also jail our citizens vastly more than other countries, we have different social safety nets, we are a different age (more akin to all the Americas), and many other factors that show your view is missing relevant evidence.
In fact, gun ownership rates across civilized countries negatively correlates with overall homicide rates. Can you explain that also by your belief that guns are the main driver of violence? The same happens across US states, which have varying gun laws. And when analyzing violence before and after gun law changes across all countries, not simply poster child Australia, the picture is again much cloudier than you imply.
For example, the CDC study [1] done under Obama concluded that guns are used more often to deter crimes than are used for crimes. If this is true, it's entirely possible there is enough violence here regardless of guns that naive bans could cause more harm than not. You should read the study, not simply the parts you believe, to get a much better view on state of the art research on guns and violence in the US.
Easy to check yourself - find list of gun ownership by country, or by OECD, or by state. Find homicide rates for each, also easy. Put in excel or Google sheets, run a correlation.
>Well, no - they might have slightly different laws, but generally speaking firearms are wildly available everywhere.
Such a simplistic argument would then imply crimes, homicides with guns, etc., should be the same rate across states, and they are not. By your argument, no per state laws would have any effect, in which case they're useless. But this seems far from true.
So, if laws do have any effect, it should be detectable. Since the correlation for gun owner vs overall homicide rates point to the opposite direction, and it seems like that there are far more defensive gun uses, perhaps people are deterring some crime.
>Can you show me where it says that?
Page 15: "Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010)."
Also, somewhat related, p16, "Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies".
>Yeah, what it shows is the exact opposite to your claim.
Not according to my calcs - are you using gun homicides or total homicides? Most people mistake the former and ignore the latter. Across all countries, [1] and [2] result in a correlation between avg guns per 100 people and total homicides of -0.13. This means across all countries increased guns correlates with less homicides, which is what I stated. It also gives negative for OECD countries.
What data sets did you compare and what correlation did you get? I get similar answers to the above on many different places to find data.
>No, it would only work like that if it was the only variable.
Ah, but it works like that from your claims above. That seems a bit dishonest.
> Please read the methodology.
I did. I've also read most of the 19 surveys I could find. The sentence I quoted is exactly the conclusion on the matter from the report authors.
Of the 19, there is a range from 108k (with the problem listed - the report didn't even ask about the issue) to several with tens of millions. The majority landed around a few million.
Now, if there's a topic that you're not already decided on, and 19 different reports from over a dozen research groups report on some social topic, with a few extreme outliers and a significant number clustered around the same result, using multiple methodologies for the 19 reports, what would a be a reasonable conclusion?
The one the study reaches in this report: the middle of the road is the main claim directly stated, which I quoted above.
Or do you want to tell me that there is a different conclusion to the opposite effect in the report?
Also no comment on their finding that using a gun defensively results in less injury to the defender? Does that not seem a useful thing to know?
I get the feeling you picked a side and read evidence from that slant, instead of reading what is presented to make an opinion.
No, it's a trade-off. Just like free speech. Banning free speech would "work" exactly as well for "fixing" exploitation. I think flatly making both of those trades against freedom is a mistake, just the same as doing nothing to address exploitation and gun violence are mistakes.
At this point there's no reasoning with people on gun control. It's an emotional thing. I want no more infringement period. Handguns at 21 was over the line. From here on out, I hope to see more Wacos until people understand that the 2A is not to be tested.
The Chicago handgun ban was struck down over a decade ago. Concealed carry has been allowed there for quite some time too. And its super easy to bring in guns from neighboring states with very lax laws.
We have a lack of a common culture in the US, and places like the South Side of Chicago are the fruits of the allegedly well-intentioned effort to destroy what little was left. Families with both parents are important.
I can't speak for GP, but I do think there's some difference between different categories.
I don't think the comparison to the war on drugs when anyone argues that X should be banned is warranted. If pornography was banned I don't think it would be the same, especially now that pornography is mostly online. Authorities would be more inclined to target producers and distributors/hosts rather than individuals. Also, just because someone thinks something should be banned doesn't mean they think there needs to be perfect enforcement. The fact that something is illegal itself can be a societal deterrent even if the enforcement isn't strong (see internet "piracy", most people don't do it because those invested enough have to go to the "fringes" of the internet to do it).
Why? Lots of people enjoy it and it doesn't harm anyone. Except in situations (underage, revenge porn etc) that are illegal already anyway. Most people enjoy viewing and/or making it.
I don't think there's anything inherently bad about porn at all. Most arguments against it are religious in nature and as an atheist I'm not bound by religious rules.
Wouldn't those things be the same for people that have very frequent sex? What's distant on the physiological side between porn and sex? I'm sure you don't want to outlaw the latter?
> - Researchers have found that repeated porn use "wears out" the dopamine reward system in the brain.
For example some couples also lose interest in sex after several years and this is a cause for partners to start looking for affairs. It's the same effect.
> - A German study shows that some porn users become dependent on new, surprising, or more extreme porn to get aroused.
So? As long as it's not illegal, perhaps they will discover something that they get satisfaction from in real life too (e.g. S&M)
> - Some men report that their level of concentration and emotional well-being have been negatively affected by porn use.
Possible but not something the state should get caught up in. We don't live in a nanny state.
Also, none of these effects are serious enough on a societal level to justify banning it IMO.
> Wouldn't those things be the same for people that have very frequent sex?
I don’t know, do you have a source to answer that or just trying to muddy the waters? Absolutely no one will ever be able to have as much frequent sex as there are sources of increasingly extreme pornography.
> Also, none of these effects are serious enough on a societal level to want to ban it.
If users become dependent on more extreme porn to get aroused, how long until they need the more extreme porn in existence. How is the presence of that porn, and the victims it requires, not serious enough on a societal level?
If some men report their concentration and well-being are negatively impacted by porn, and about 98% of men view pornography[1]…how can you not see how that will be bad for society?
> I don’t know, do you have a source to answer that or just trying to muddy the waters? Absolutely no one will ever be able to have as much frequent sex as there are sources of increasingly extreme pornography.
I have not done research on it but I recognise the effect in couples, that have even told me their sex life became bland. And that they were looking for more 'extreme' things themselves (involving other people, toys, ropes etc or just having affairs).
You focus very much on a drive to extreme porn but I don't really think this happens for everyone. For me I don't notice this, I don't like the more extreme forms of porn that come over from Japan for example. I don't find that arousing at all. I've come to appreciate the more well-produced camera work. From VHSes with grainy gonzo (that was all that was available back then) to more excellently lighted and seductive camera work. I don't think it's too different from people evolving in their enjoyment of regular movies.
Personally I think that people that gravitate towards ever more extreme things were always inclined to those things but just not engaging with them due to societal pressures. This is usually what I hear from people into bondage and S&M etc. I shared a house with someone really into that who was also pretty 'promiscuous' to put it mildly :) so I've had a lot of chats on the topic. They were always interested in it, but it took time to overcome the shame, and thus it seemed like they were evolving towards it. I'm not into it myself but it was enlightening and cool to talk about. People into these things seem to be very open to discussing it in my experience. I wish more people were like that. Just talking about sex more would make the experience a lot better for everyone.
I find this a very interesting discussion as well, by the way.
> If users become dependent on more extreme porn to get aroused, how long until they need the more extreme porn in existence. How is the presence of that porn, and the victims it requires, not serious enough on a societal level?
They're not victims unless they are doing it against their will. Some people enjoy extreme practices. The ones that are crossing the line are already illegal and don't warrant a ban on pornography as a whole.
But I think you're focusing very much on the extreme which is really a niche in pornography. Only some people gravitate to that and if they do, why is it bad in the first place, as long as they enjoy it?
> If some men report their concentration and well-being are negatively impacted by porn, and about 98% of men view pornography[1]… how can you not see how that will be bad for society?
Personally I think this is none of society's business. Whether it's true for myself I don't even know (I don't think so) but the label 'some' means it's not an effect everyone reports.
But in any case, as long as they can live their lives it is not up to society to interfere, in my book.
degenerating into filth is not something to say "so?" about, the whole "as long as its not illegal" is a line that gets thinner as people begin to approach it when they get into more extreeme things.
Years ago I would disagree with this, but seeing how easy it is for anyone of any age to access these sites, I think it would just be better for society to ban it as well. Young kids, pre-teens, are getting their first introductions to sexuality from the most extreme and depraved pornography ever made available - often before parents even have “the talk”. Even if you’re on top of it as a parent, it only takes one of their friends with a phone to show them. How are we OK with this? Everyone of these sites is full of videos of step-siblings, step-parents, etc., engaged in sex. “Water sports” is apparently mainstream now. None of this beneficial to society.
It’s also strange that in the era of MeToo, where even seemingly routine situations of consensual adult sex can be retroactively classified as acts of sexual violence, that we are accepting of these extreme and violent depictions of sex being normalized and widely available. The whole “sex work is work” push isn’t helping, as it’s only encouraging young people to embrace and participate in this type of content. How many young girls are waiting until they hit 18 so they can finally open an OnlyFans? We would all be ashamed at how low our society has fallen if we still had the capacity to feel shame.
This would actually just increase the amount of truly bad porn. If all of it is banned, no point in carefully making sure your actors are 18+. It all just goes underground. This is why places like Russia have _more_ CP, not less. It is well known that flat-out bans on porn are a huge boon for human trafficking wherever they occur.
One way anti-pornography advocates define pornography is by taking child pornography definitions and removing the child specific parts. I don't have formal legal definitions right now but one someone might offer, based on the definition of child pornography found on wikipedia [0], would be "any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct ~involving a minor~" (involving a minor struck out). I think this is a good way of defining it since it helps use court rulings to deal with the inherent ambiguity when on the edge of what is considered pornography vs not pornography.
What do you think of that from a definition standpoint?
por·nog·ra·phy
/pôrˈnäɡrəfē/
Learn to pronounce
noun
printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.
>should just be banned, no reason to have it in a civilized society.
The main problem with this line of thinking is that banning, and not having it are two very separate things. Seeing the effect of banning widespread things in societies, the only thing that such a ban ensures is a thriving black market. More suffering for the people involved, loss of power for the government, and the banned thing being practiced in harmful ways.
