(no subject)

[bzarcher]

I do believe I am honestly torn by this.

On the one hand, I do not like that stuff. Things like rape and the other cute ways to dress up descriptions of violently assaulting someone on a physical and emotional level will pretty much push me right into the anger zone. I don't really like the idea of what the product involves, but I'll admit that there's a million new fetishes every day in the naked city, and some actors pretending to do that sort of thing is far better than someone being attacked for real.

And, more importantly, this is one of those areas where a government is trying to outlaw material based on a REALLY wide category, but without describing the nature of what they intend to prohibit.

They're also forgetting the fact that A) Not everyone who likes violent movies (sexual or not) is a serial killer, and that B) All these products involve consenting adults from the performance to the purchase, and in no way should be connected to the actual crimes being commited by sick individuals who probably needed to be in psychiatric or medical care for far more reasons than their tastes at the porn shop.

I may loathe what they're selling, but so long as these people are trying to get their thing out in a safe and controlled environment, and then sell the product so that people with the same needs get their thing out in a safe and controlled environment, I think they've a right to sell it, no matter how much I hate it, when all is said and done.

Comments

[gigerlicious.livejournal.com]

I'm having trouble seeing where you have a crisis of character. Everything seems to shake out on the anti-censorship side of the debate in your list there.


I think it's pretty lame when folks go all out for the Nazi fetish look but stop short of putting on the swatstikas. They want to bang like a kinder, gentler Schutzstaffel. That said, you step out in public with that shit on at your own risk.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

What gets at me, I suppose, and I should have written it better, is that I can see EXACTLY where the pro-censorship camp is coming from on this, and part of me even starts to say that I agree with them, until the rest of my sense grabs hold.

[gigerlicious.livejournal.com]

To me, that's a bit of a subjective reach on your part. You understand merely because you also find said material objectionable. Forgive me for being amused, but this seems especially absurd when you use an icon of a man apparently murdering someone with an improvised club. Combine this with your interest in violent games, media and literature, I mean, come on.*

In the end, it is disgusting that there are those out there who will commit violent crime, but is the answer to begin blacking out the intellectual pool, the conceit being said criminals would never cross the line had they been ignorant? Is there really any credible argument for censorship to be torn about?


* Not that I'm singling you out. My own cinematic library, tastes in books, theatre and music would easily fall under the same scrutiny.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

I think, to me, it's about the damage.

Beatings and murders are horrible, but the damage is mostly physical in a beating, and unless you know of a way to murder someone twice, that's pretty much a one and done affair. Sexual assaults are as brutal as any beating, but tend to cause damage that can potentially never heal.

Plus, what can I say - I'm a raised on James Bond guy. Shooting people is Movie Stuff. Raping people is Evil.

And these games are, for the most part, very careful about the violence they display. Heck, look at games like MGS, where the least violence is the best ending?

I don't think there's ever a really credible way that censorship will ever work (aside from perhaps the Mythbusters style "This is how you rip off fingerprints/make a bomb/crack a safe, but we're leaving a step out...and not telling you where it was!" style to show cause and effect, but prevent people breaking the law easily.)

[gigerlicious.livejournal.com]

What?

I'm pretty sure I could rape 20 women and still get a lesser sentence than if I killed a quarter of that. Show me any society/culture/event where rape supercedes murder. If such a scenario exists, I'm certain it's a stark aberration.

By no means is rape some minor offense, but I get the sense that your aversion to it yet outright embrace of murder as entertainment directly tracks with America's issues with sex and love affair with violence. Show the beating, hide the nipple, right?

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

It's certainly possible. All I know is that seeing news about a murder will make me think, "That's tragic", and I'll move on, but seeing that someone was raped makes me think that was something worse than a murder.

[gigerlicious.livejournal.com]

If I can pull my analrapist's stocking over my head for a moment, I might have an explanation.


I'm pretty certain knowing you that there are probably dozens, if not hundreds of situations where you would feel murder is justified. By comparison, there are probably no real scenarios where rape would be given the same allowance. Although it does give me pause to consider where rape might be justified. Might have to chew on that one a while.

Still, that alone does not explain such a strong negative reaction you have to rapertainment, part of the feelings you express must be personal and subjective. The reaction itself is understandable - I have similar outrage at sitcom programming, things like Everyone Loves Raymond can boil at similar levels. Subjective interpretations are generally horrible places to enact policy. Would we ban any snippet of entertainment should someone use it as a template for evil? Surely the notion itself is almost funny.

A sense of scale is important, too. Even among rapes, this particular tragic event is far outside the nominal case. Most rapists need no fetish or motivation to commit terrible crimes, to conclude that banning esoteric material would lead to any decrease in the incidence of rape is foolishly incorrect, and in the end, punishing everyone and protecting no one.

[gigerlicious.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I can't wrap my head around the idea. It is unreasonable to say a rape survivor is worse off than someone who has been murdrered. I'm willing to bet an overwhelming majority of rape survivors would never trade in their atrocious experience to simply be murdered.

Clearly everyone agrees rape is a monsterous crime. However, to somehow push it past murder as not only something worse that losing a life, but to place it on some taboo pedestal of censorship, that's outright irrational. Of course rape affects more than the survivor - how is this different than the friends and family of a murder victim? How could it possibly be worse as a whole?

If rape is murder of the soul, what is that supposed to mean? If one believes in an afterlife and is raped, then that's it, end of story because their soul has already been murdered? You've got some abstractions out there.

[gigerlicious.livejournal.com]

Unless you're suggesting you wish he had died before any of those things happened, I don't see how it applies to the subject at hand. That's a pretty tragic story, but if you can tell me, as his close friend that you'd give up knowing him and any happiness he brought to your life in exchange for never knowing him, then I suppose you won't see where I'm coming from.

Still not sure what a crushed soul is, but it sounds artistic and meaningful.

[joriel.livejournal.com]

I think one of the main problems that truly makes this a morality gray area is desensitization. We are desensitized by media, there is a lot of psychological evidence of this. So how do we draw the line between those who just want to watch horrid things, and those who will eventually not get enough from watching and go on to do horrid things? They don't know from the start, don't really know until they hit the right stages.

Somewhere there has to be a consideration of the welfare of our society. I don't know where the line is personally, but there is mounting evidence that this type of media does cause harm. And how do you really tell between a good actor and the real thing on those movies? Sometimes the lines get really, really blurred, and most of the companies are paper blowing in the wind, changing names and po boxes almost weekly. Hard to track.

I don't know what the answer is, but I hope we find it as a society before people keep dying.

I think I'm kind of creeped out by the freedom of speech part that lets people depict violence on that level and illegal in our society acts in a glorified, meant to excite manner, rather than an educational or 'this is why we don't behave this way' manner.

And I would like to see a psychological study demonstrating the percentage of people at risk of copying vs. those not at risk who watch that sort of thing before I made up my mind personally.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

I did actually get linked to a study (which of course, I can't find when I want to see it), that said sexual assault crimes were at their lowest period during the big internet porn boom.

Now, that's not neccesarily proof of anything, but it's interesting.

[joriel.livejournal.com]

*Nodnod* I wish they would study both angles simultaneously,and find out if the correlation is the internet porn boom(and is it general porn or violent?) and increasing forensics that allow us to catch and prevent some repeat offenders.

[flaggerx.livejournal.com]

The statistical evidence is contradictory. For people who grew up on healthy homes with a violence free life are (mostly, because nothing is absolute in people) not altered in any meaningful way by depictions of violence, it is separate from their life.

For people who face violence on a daily basis, for example kids in gang-infested neighborhoods screen violence seems to have the opposite effect of reifying what the meet in every day life.

It hink you are correct that pornography has zero or a negative affect on sexual violence. Ir ecall a study where the legalization of all forms of prostintution and pornography in Demnark led to a drop in rapes and unwed pregnancies. Deal with sex as the normal part of life it is, and things get better,

A lot of this is simple. People don't want to have to supervise themselves or their children. They'd like big brother to constrain their choices even thoug it is done in the name of the others who would be affected negatively in a way they are not.

it's fear, they're afraid. I think in time this one's a winner. But we still need Parents who actually love their children enough to supervise them properly.