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You're equating porn with sexuality. I'm a grown man and I find most of what's on the front page of PornHub to be deeply disturbing. I see racism, misogyny, inc

You're equating porn with sexuality. I'm a grown man and I find most of what's on the front page of PornHub to be deeply disturbing. I see racism, misogyny, incest, even simulated assault. In a world where sexual assault is so common I think we need to seriously reconsider what we're consuming and what we're normalising by calling this stuff harmless. And I don't get what you're suggesting in saying hiding stuff doesn't work. Like, I like to enjoy a bit of LSD sometimes but I definitely keep that out of reach of children.

ActorNightly 4y ago
You are totally right. While we are at it, lets ban video games because they obviously cause school shootings.
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  That's a strawman no? You're trying to colour my argument by associating it with another one. There are some notable differences though. If I play a violent video game then no one is actually being shot. If I watch a woman being choked and ejaculated on by 20 men calling her a worthless slut whore in a porno then I'm watching that genuinely happening. It's more akin to letting children watch videos from actual warzones. Even as an adult I find beheading videos to be disturbing.
  - ActorNightly 4y ago
    Except that you skip over the whole "Media contains certain content -> viewing this content leads to bad behaviour -> said media should be banned" argument as being valid, which is not. You have to demonstrate the causal link between the first two. Also, your subsequent argument is flawed. For the vast majority of popular porn, an actress in a scene where she is "abused" is doing so consensually. Part of having healthy romantic relationships in life is being able to navigate the aspect of consent. For example, a girl may have different standards for sexual intercourse when it comes to having a one night stand, where she may engage in kink or a fetish, versus a long term relationship where she may not want to do that. If you are unable to contextualize this, this means that your parents did a poor job of educating you about sexuality, which further reinforces my argument. This absolutely does not equate to ISIS beheading videos, where the people being beheaded are most likely not consenting to it.
    - AlecSchueler 4y ago
      I'm skipping over it because there are inherent differences in different types of media. A) Video games don't involve real people and B) Sexuality is wired in the mammalian brain in a unique way. We can't generalise so easily as you're suggesting. If I see an actress in a movie being shot, she's not actually being shot. If I see an actress in a porn movie being choked, she's actually being choked. That's not a question of consent, it's a question of content. But on that note, have you ever worked a shitty or degrading job and had to do things you found painful because you couldn't afford to say no? I have. It's painful to go through. I can't imagine coupling that with the complex layers of human sexuality. You're saying it doesn't equate because of consent but that's not the aspect I was equating. Take a look at the front page of PornHub now. There's a video on there showing a man flashing strangers. Yes, they must be actors, but it's filmed in a way that suggests they're not. There's absolutely nothing there that would promote the idea of consent in the mind of a young viewer. Yes, maybe parents could watch those videos and explain that it's normal to fantasise and play-act about assault. But I'd hope that at the same time we, as adults, would speak with qualified therapists and try to ascertain the roots of our attraction to forcing our genitals onto unsuspecting women. Final point: PornHub has only required verification from uploaders since relatively recently, after dozens of women took them to court for hosting their rape videos and after it was widely publicised that there was a good deal of underage rape videos on there. There are still other popular sites such as chatpic.org or videos that happily allow abuse content to circulate without any concern for consent. That's only what's on the open web.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    So, would you be okay with the same kind of porn if it was all 100% simulated (but realistically enough to be indistinguishable from real stuff)?
    - AlecSchueler 4y ago
      That's an interesting point and thank you for raising it. Indeed I would not. I think it does come down to a moral issue then, which is related both to the core messages communicated and to the audience. In terms of violent media I can think of 3 ways of categorising it: A) media with a moral message abut the use of violence (self defence, save the innocent) B) purely whimsical (something like Doom) and C) explicitly brutal material. Of those three only the first two have popular reach. It's easy for children to understand and it provides a structure for parents to use to educate their youngsters. When I compare that to pornography I feel that the stuff that would fall into category C is what the norm is, what's popular on the major channels. Therfore it takes on a difference socially for me. We need way way better education on what healthy sex looks like and why respect for women is important. But I honestly believe that we've passed a sort of critical point and do therefore support the introduction of age based restrictions.
      - salawat 4y ago
        Explicitly brutal material does have one educative characteristic. It educates one on the depths of human depravity. It is good to ensure the little ones eventually become aware of the shit we have to deal with. Hiding it helps no one.
        AlecSchueler 4y ago
        Eventually? At what point do you start showing your kids extreme brutality videos to help their education? Do you hide it for their first few years or do you begin as soon as they can grasp the content of the videos?
Aachen 4y ago
Then we should also ban any material that contains violence until there are no more homicides. Just watching, or even enacting (as in violent games), violence doesn't make them violent beings. Why would this other outlet lead to more real-world sexual assault? I understand why one might think it a priori (without having evidence either way), but we do have evidence: the reality we live in where, to my knowledge, it hasn't gotten more common despite porn having become 100x easier to get by, as well as the research on how virtual violence enactment relates to real-world violent behaviour.
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  Well it depends what you mean by "contains violence." There's a world of difference between stimulated violence in a Mortal Kombat movie and a video of Taliban members playing football with a human head.
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  To respond to your edit here are some general statistics about sexual assault in the US: https://legaljobs.io/blog/sexual-assault-statistics/ https://legaljobs.io/blog/sexual-assault-statistics/ In terms of increase with the availability of pornography, take a look at this chart: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible-rape-cases-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible... You can see that the number of rape reports have almost doubled since the invention of web pornography.
  - Aachen 4y ago
    Not sure why this got a downvote. I was going to say that this shows only reports without estimating the proportion of unreported rape over time (I tried for the last ~10 minutes to find it myself but no dice), but it's a constructive comment.
    - AlecSchueler 4y ago
      It got a downvote because I was speaking against pornography in a heavily male and internet dependant environment.
laserlight 4y ago
> In a world where sexual assault is so common I think we need to seriously reconsider what we're consuming and what we're normalising by calling this stuff harmless. There's evidence that porn reduces the rate of sexual assaults [0]. [0] Evidence Mounts: More Porn, Less Sexual Assault. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/201601/evidence-mounts-more-porn-less-sexual-assault https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/2016...
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  Your article claims that rape levels have deceased with the expansion of internet pornography but that's statistically untrue, as they've almost doubled: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible-rape-cases-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible...
  - laserlight 4y ago
    Yeah, just like how US spending on science, space, and tech increased suicides by hanging, strangulation, and suffocation [0]. The article I cited talks about natural experiments, which examine what happens before and after porn was legalized. [0] Spurious Correlations. https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
    - AlecSchueler 4y ago
      I understand that correlation is not causation but the claims in the article you linked me to rely on correlative factors that are demonstrably false.

ActorNightly 4y ago

You are totally right. While we are at it, lets ban video games because they obviously cause school shootings.

AlecSchueler 4y ago
That's a strawman no? You're trying to colour my argument by associating it with another one. There are some notable differences though. If I play a violent video game then no one is actually being shot. If I watch a woman being choked and ejaculated on by 20 men calling her a worthless slut whore in a porno then I'm watching that genuinely happening. It's more akin to letting children watch videos from actual warzones. Even as an adult I find beheading videos to be disturbing.
- ActorNightly 4y ago
  Except that you skip over the whole "Media contains certain content -> viewing this content leads to bad behaviour -> said media should be banned" argument as being valid, which is not. You have to demonstrate the causal link between the first two. Also, your subsequent argument is flawed. For the vast majority of popular porn, an actress in a scene where she is "abused" is doing so consensually. Part of having healthy romantic relationships in life is being able to navigate the aspect of consent. For example, a girl may have different standards for sexual intercourse when it comes to having a one night stand, where she may engage in kink or a fetish, versus a long term relationship where she may not want to do that. If you are unable to contextualize this, this means that your parents did a poor job of educating you about sexuality, which further reinforces my argument. This absolutely does not equate to ISIS beheading videos, where the people being beheaded are most likely not consenting to it.
  - AlecSchueler 4y ago
    I'm skipping over it because there are inherent differences in different types of media. A) Video games don't involve real people and B) Sexuality is wired in the mammalian brain in a unique way. We can't generalise so easily as you're suggesting. If I see an actress in a movie being shot, she's not actually being shot. If I see an actress in a porn movie being choked, she's actually being choked. That's not a question of consent, it's a question of content. But on that note, have you ever worked a shitty or degrading job and had to do things you found painful because you couldn't afford to say no? I have. It's painful to go through. I can't imagine coupling that with the complex layers of human sexuality. You're saying it doesn't equate because of consent but that's not the aspect I was equating. Take a look at the front page of PornHub now. There's a video on there showing a man flashing strangers. Yes, they must be actors, but it's filmed in a way that suggests they're not. There's absolutely nothing there that would promote the idea of consent in the mind of a young viewer. Yes, maybe parents could watch those videos and explain that it's normal to fantasise and play-act about assault. But I'd hope that at the same time we, as adults, would speak with qualified therapists and try to ascertain the roots of our attraction to forcing our genitals onto unsuspecting women. Final point: PornHub has only required verification from uploaders since relatively recently, after dozens of women took them to court for hosting their rape videos and after it was widely publicised that there was a good deal of underage rape videos on there. There are still other popular sites such as chatpic.org or videos that happily allow abuse content to circulate without any concern for consent. That's only what's on the open web.
- int_19h 4y ago
  So, would you be okay with the same kind of porn if it was all 100% simulated (but realistically enough to be indistinguishable from real stuff)?
  - AlecSchueler 4y ago
    That's an interesting point and thank you for raising it. Indeed I would not. I think it does come down to a moral issue then, which is related both to the core messages communicated and to the audience. In terms of violent media I can think of 3 ways of categorising it: A) media with a moral message abut the use of violence (self defence, save the innocent) B) purely whimsical (something like Doom) and C) explicitly brutal material. Of those three only the first two have popular reach. It's easy for children to understand and it provides a structure for parents to use to educate their youngsters. When I compare that to pornography I feel that the stuff that would fall into category C is what the norm is, what's popular on the major channels. Therfore it takes on a difference socially for me. We need way way better education on what healthy sex looks like and why respect for women is important. But I honestly believe that we've passed a sort of critical point and do therefore support the introduction of age based restrictions.
    - salawat 4y ago
      Explicitly brutal material does have one educative characteristic. It educates one on the depths of human depravity. It is good to ensure the little ones eventually become aware of the shit we have to deal with. Hiding it helps no one.
      - AlecSchueler 4y ago
        Eventually? At what point do you start showing your kids extreme brutality videos to help their education? Do you hide it for their first few years or do you begin as soon as they can grasp the content of the videos?

Aachen 4y ago

Then we should also ban any material that contains violence until there are no more homicides. Just watching, or even enacting (as in violent games), violence doesn't make them violent beings. Why would this other outlet lead to more real-world sexual assault? I understand why one might think it a priori (without having evidence either way), but we do have evidence: the reality we live in where, to my knowledge, it hasn't gotten more common despite porn having become 100x easier to get by, as well as the research on how virtual violence enactment relates to real-world violent behaviour.

AlecSchueler 4y ago
Well it depends what you mean by "contains violence." There's a world of difference between stimulated violence in a Mortal Kombat movie and a video of Taliban members playing football with a human head.
AlecSchueler 4y ago
To respond to your edit here are some general statistics about sexual assault in the US: https://legaljobs.io/blog/sexual-assault-statistics/ https://legaljobs.io/blog/sexual-assault-statistics/ In terms of increase with the availability of pornography, take a look at this chart: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible-rape-cases-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible... You can see that the number of rape reports have almost doubled since the invention of web pornography.
- Aachen 4y ago
  Not sure why this got a downvote. I was going to say that this shows only reports without estimating the proportion of unreported rape over time (I tried for the last ~10 minutes to find it myself but no dice), but it's a constructive comment.
  - AlecSchueler 4y ago
    It got a downvote because I was speaking against pornography in a heavily male and internet dependant environment.

laserlight 4y ago

> In a world where sexual assault is so common I think we need to seriously reconsider what we're consuming and what we're normalising by calling this stuff harmless. There's evidence that porn reduces the rate of sexual assaults [0]. [0] Evidence Mounts: More Porn, Less Sexual Assault. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/201601/evidence-mounts-more-porn-less-sexual-assault https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/2016...

AlecSchueler 4y ago
Your article claims that rape levels have deceased with the expansion of internet pornography but that's statistically untrue, as they've almost doubled: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible-rape-cases-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible...
- laserlight 4y ago
  Yeah, just like how US spending on science, space, and tech increased suicides by hanging, strangulation, and suffocation [0]. The article I cited talks about natural experiments, which examine what happens before and after porn was legalized. [0] Spurious Correlations. https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
  - AlecSchueler 4y ago
    I understand that correlation is not causation but the claims in the article you linked me to rely on correlative factors that are demonstrably false.