Ellynne wrote:
Third, however, is that I believe the studies that connect porn with various social problems. I live in the country that accounts for about 75% of the documented serial killers in the world, where stats on crimes against women have gone through the roof. Do you think I'm going to lightly dismiss studies about media's influence on this?
Not at all.
I would, however, like to point out that there are numerous countries where sexually explicit material is much more accessible than it is in the US, yet have much *lower* violent crime rates. Japan comes to mind. So does Germany, at least judging by some of the shop displays I saw when I was there. That was a long time ago though, so those who are more knowledgeable than I are welcome to correct me.
I think US crime rates have far more to do with the acceptability of violence in our culture, combined with the availability of firearms, as well as economic factors like the increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor than they do with smut.
Tiger M
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What happened to the space-city list??
--- The Doctor doctor@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca wrote:
What happened to the space-city list??
It's still around, under a new name and new management. Susan Beth, the original list-owner, decided to retire from the job about a year-and-a-half ago, and since Space City was run off her personal account, the list had to move. It's still basically the same community, though. :-)
If anyone is interested in joining, they just need to contact me (the current list-owner) with a statement that they are over 18 and legally an adult in the area where they live.
Tiger M
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----- Original Message ----- From: Tiger M tigerm1019@yahoo.com
I would, however, like to point out that there are numerous countries where sexually explicit material is much more accessible than it is in the US, yet have much *lower* violent crime rates. Japan comes to mind. So does Germany, at least judging by some of the shop displays I saw when I was there. That was a long time ago though, so those who are more knowledgeable than I are welcome to correct me.
I'd say yes, but that one thing that is often overlooked is the *social context* of violence and sex in that society, and also in what is considered sexually explicit. To take the German example, many non-Germans view the extensive nudity in German magazines, even mainstream ones, as examples of sexually explicit material-- ignoring the fact that Germans have a much more relaxed attitude to nudity than the UK or USA, and tend not to view nude pictures as sexually explicit (unless, of course, the nude people depicted are in fact doing the mattress dance).
Similarly, many people cite Japan as an example of a society with violent children's television but little violent crime-- ignoring the fact that, according to a Japanologist colleague, Japanese children are heavily socialised to view such behaviour as unacceptable at the same time that they are consuming it (which <personal soapbox> is one thing that irritates me about the no-violence-on-TV campaigners. Seems to me that they're trying to pass the buck by allowing their kids to watch violent programmes without guidance or context, and then blaming the TV instead of blaming themselves for not sitting down and Watching With Junior when their darling takes an AK-47 to school, having received little in the way of education about more constructive ways of dealing with bullies).
However, to drag this heavily back to the pornography thread, what I'd like to point out is that the consumption of pornography under discussion is apparently happening in the USA and UK, in which public attitudes and methods of socialising children are both very different from Germany and Japan. So I really don't think that the German and Japanese examples can be brought in to justify the "porn is harmless" argument.
ObB7: I'd like to claim the presence of characters named Dortmunn, Inga, Raiker, Dainer, Sonheim, Leitz, Muller, Keller and Klyn as the evidence for a possible German contribution to the founding of the Federation :).
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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Fiona Moore -
The Doctor -
Tiger M