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It’s a very emotional subject for a lot of people, and while like you I see ersatz products as a good choice for people who would otherwise engage in the real t

It’s a very emotional subject for a lot of people, and while like you I see ersatz products as a good choice for people who would otherwise engage in the real thing, I also know that it’s a hard position to promulgate. For one, there isn’t a clear consensus as to whether or not (for example) fantasy underage porn/dolls acts to reduce or increase offender’s likliehood to offend. There is the argument that it can be a pressure relief valve, and an argument that it reinforces tendencies and like any addiction will tend to build tolerance. When the fakes stop being effective then maybe all they achieve is acting as a kind of practice. It’s known that poeple with violent, vivid fantasies for example, are at higher risk for acting out violently than people without them. Is it correlation or causation? We don’t know. So it’s hard to take this mass of uncertainty to a public that mostly wants to “hang them all” where sex offenders are concerned, and make a case for ersatz interactions. Part of this is moralizing, part of it is true uncertainty, and part of it is understandable revulsion.

JamesBarney 8y ago
This has been studied with pornography and sex crimes and it seems like there are two main findings. People who consume more pornography and more violent pornography tend to be more violent people. And when societies are exposed to more pornography the number of sex crimes stays the same or drops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography
- dragonsngoblins 8y ago
  "People who consume more pornography and more violent pornography tend to be more violent people." I feel like this is probably correlation than causation. It seems obvious to me that people who want to be violent are more likely to both fantasise about it and commit it. Further consuming any sort of vice to degrees well past the norm (pornography, alcohol, drugs, food, sex, video games, etc.) seems likely to be a sign of poor impulse control, which obviously means they are more likely to just be violent when they feel like it. When taken with the fact that overall pornography exposure within a culture seems to either not impact or reduce the amount of sex crime I'd argue that desire to do thing causes both fantasies and increased likelihood of doing that thing.

JamesBarney 8y ago

This has been studied with pornography and sex crimes and it seems like there are two main findings. People who consume more pornography and more violent pornography tend to be more violent people. And when societies are exposed to more pornography the number of sex crimes stays the same or drops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography

dragonsngoblins 8y ago
"People who consume more pornography and more violent pornography tend to be more violent people." I feel like this is probably correlation than causation. It seems obvious to me that people who want to be violent are more likely to both fantasise about it and commit it. Further consuming any sort of vice to degrees well past the norm (pornography, alcohol, drugs, food, sex, video games, etc.) seems likely to be a sign of poor impulse control, which obviously means they are more likely to just be violent when they feel like it. When taken with the fact that overall pornography exposure within a culture seems to either not impact or reduce the amount of sex crime I'd argue that desire to do thing causes both fantasies and increased likelihood of doing that thing.