Chalk it up to having posted on the day when a few idiots got their mod points.
Nah... this is the kind of modding experience I get every time there are posts about porn. I've had some prior experience with the Slashdot community's response to porn. And I don't mean to come off as complaining. I mean what I wrote: it's pathetic. It gives me the impression that a lot of people would rather down-mod me than respond with any new information/argument, which calls into question (in my mind) the existence of said questions/arguments. As you can see it's not like I'm unopposed - a lot of good contradictory viewpoints have been given, but unlike other topics it seems as though a lot of people are incapable of expressing their disagreement in anyway short of the all-mighty-mod.
I'm still highly suspicious of the study - personal experience
It's funny. Some of the time people refuse to believe that I don't look at porn because in their universe every male human being does. The rest of the time it's assumed that not only do I not look at porn, but I think sex is dirty and gross and I'm probably in need of a long talk with a shrink to work out my issues with sexual repression because I'm a Mormon. The truth is that I don't look at porn, and that originally the decision was made based purely on religious dogma (when I was like 12... I was just not very rebellious as a kid) but at 25 and married with a kid I'm happy with my decision. Of course I've seen porn a few times in my life, but I just choose not to look because it goes against my personal philosophy on life. I've also never smoked and never drank alcohol. I suppose in the eyes of some that makes me unqualified to talk about smoking and binge drinking, but honestly I think it means that I've got a unique viewpoint to bring to the discussion. Not that I have a better view point than those who watch porn, but certainly a valid different opinion.
No link handy right now, but "some guy" (helpful I know) who had never fired real guns before went to the range with his video game skills and managed to do DRAMATICALLY better than people who had never fired video game guns or real guns in the past.
Well, to contrast your "some guy" I present: me. I'm a pretty avid FPS player and I've shot rifles and shotguns, but I can tell you that my first trip to the range to shoot some 9mm and 40cal handguns taught me that a handgun is a lot harder to aim accurately than a rifle. The kickback is hard to adjust for as well. Just my own experience, however, and I certainly don't think playing an FPS had anything to do with shooting a gun in real life.
Light gun games are also some of my faves these days:)
I could see how that might help in theory, but weight and recoil are part of what make accuracy with a handgun different - especially for repeated shots. You don't get that with light guns.
He was laying the fucking smack down. Guess those skills go both ways...
Hahahahahahaha... it's possible. In any case, however I think there's a fundamental difference. To the extent that an FPS is a good trainer for shooting, it's about motor skills, hand-eye cordination, etc. That's not what you need to make the jump from simulated to real kiddie porn, so I'm not sure that it's a "trainer" in the same sense of the word. The connection would be if you saw everyone that played FPSers develop a need to see snuff films. I don't think you do. You don't play an FPS to watch someone die or imagine killing someone. (If you do... then I think you should stop playing FPSs). But you do watch porn to get the same biological response you do from having sex - or a very similar one. (No, that's not the *only* reason to watch porn and not everyone masturbates every time they watch porn, but let's be real here - the connection is there).
So I'm not even saying you go from kiddie porn to child rape, I'm saying you go from simulated kiddie porn to real kiddie porn because the point of it is to get aroused and you don't get aroused by the same old stuff anymore. The analog with FPSs, I think, is simply going from an xbox to an xbox360. You get tired of the graphics, and you need more. Needing better graphics is innocuous in and of itself, needing specifically better kiddie porn graphics is not (to the extent that it leads to use of the real stuff).
If you honestly believe that a survey of 160 students, all likely within the same county and state, accurately represents the views of 240,132,887 children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults, and senior citizens, then you truly are a fool.
That's not what I'm saying at all. But two things are relevant here.
1. This is not a poll. This means demographic impacts may or may not be as relevant. I'm not saying that you can extrapolate from the reaction of college kids to the reaction of senior citizens (and certainly not children), but I am saying that the emphasis was not on "what do college kids think (as opposed to some other group)" but was on "how watching porn causally impact attitudes of college kids." Your quite right, there may be some important differences. But we don't know, and we're not allowed to do the studies. This is all we have, and I'm not saying it answers the question with finality, but the results are very strong.
2. Kind of a repeat of what I just said. This isn't supposed to be like "the ultimate answer that says how porn impacts every living human being in the country". A statistically valid poll for a voting involves what - 1,200? 1,600? You can ask that few people and get results that extrapolate to the opinion of the entire nation. Now again, this is not a poll. It was a test to determine how porn impacts people. It's an experiment, not a poll. But the comparison is there just to indicate that you can get powerful results from a small sample. Note that I said "powerful", not incontrovertible.
There were 4 groups. The control group was shown nothing. They may or may not have watched porn on their own, but would have reflected normal porn usage. The other 3 groups were should 6 8-minute videos once a week for 6 weeks. The "massive" group saw 48 minutes of porn, the intermediate 24 (and 24 of other programming) and the no-porn group saw 48 of no-porn on a weekly basis.
Also you call 100 maximal support, yet the female control group scores 119, and another group over 140, so I'm not so sure I understand your numbers.
There are two tables (that I copied over). The first has units = months (of imprisonment) so there's no upper bound. Averages vary from 49.8 to 143.6. The second has units = support for liberation movement on a scale of 0 - 100. The averages range from 25.0 to 82.0.
This is very interesting to me - I'd like to know exactly how the measurements were taken and exactly what was being measured.
I can't just hand-type the whole study over!:-D I know that it was based on questionnaires at the end of the 6-week study, but I don't know what the specific questions were.
Of course, outside statistics people will argue whether or not shorter prison sentences really count as condoning rape. Perhaps that's what punishment they believe the crime merits. I don't condone murder, but I don't think every murderer should be locked up for 30 years or executed by the state, for example.
Right, but these are problems of an absolute nature. The point of the study wasn't that porn viewers thought that rape didn't deserve an adequate punishment. The relevant fining is that watching porn changed the punishment from the norm. So it's the differential between the control (93.7) and the no-porn group (94.6) to the intermediate porn (78.0) and finally the maximal porn (49.8) that's relevant (those are the guy numbers). Regardless of whether 94.6 is too much or too little (or any other) you took a group of students, assigned them to the groups randomly, and those watching porn became twice as lenient on rapists.
And it sounds like you're grasping at straws because you don't like what you hear to me.
What types of porn?
"All erotic films depicted heterosexual activities, mainly fellatio, cunnilungus, coition, and anal intercourse. None of these activities entailed coercion or the deliberate infliction or reception of pain."
The assumptions the study uses is that more prison time means more hatred/whatever for rape.
Right, and it seems valid in contrast to the control group. Do you have an alternative interpretation? Cultural and other differences are out: the difference was caused by the exposure to porn (that's what the randomization proves) and therefore how could watching porn and being caused to give a rapist a lighter sentence based on the exact same information indicate anything other than lenience towards rape?
Randomization is meaningless with such a assumption
No, it is vital to ensure against selection bias. Without randomization, you'd have people that wanted to watch the porn in the porn group, and people that didn't want to watch the porn in the less-porn groups. It is randomization that allows you to start to get at causality.
they may all share the same ideals of the legal system
How is this a flaw? It may limit the relevance of the study, but it certainly doesn't indicate a flaw in the study itself.
The assumption made by the researchers may not match the assumption of the students in the groups, so while they may only give someone 10 days in jail, they may think they did a horrible crime.
This would not explain the difference between the groups of students. Which is kind of the point of the whole study.
Also, they seem to assume this only applies to porn and rape. What if similar studies showed the same things in other areas, such as, violence in various degrees?
what if it did? That would in no way impact the study. If watching porn changes your attitudes about rape, and another study shows that eating pixie stix has the same impact, this in no way changes the impact of the first study.
Also, by the same logic used in this study, one would expect the same to hold true for guys, that porn that depicts the guys as the lessers would causes a callousness towards men.
So what if it did? Is treating women like objects OK as long as we treat men like objects too? That would essentially result in a world full of sociopaths. Not the best outcome, in my opinion, even if it's no longer a question of bias.
Also, the ethics boards may not disagree with my assertion at all. They may just feel that it's not an ethical study to run, kind of like an ethics board having people pretend to be electrocuted in front of other people also doesn't indicate their opinion on the cultural basis of that matter either.
OK, do me a favor and explain exactly what your assertion entails. I'm saying that the study showed a causal link between pornography and attitudes about women. What societal change are you suggesting that would make people impervious to pornography now in ways that they weren't 20 years ago? Do you mean the same people are impervious, or that the rising generation is impervious?
As far as I can tell you haven't stated anything specific at all just a generic "culture changes" imperative that's supposed to wipe away the results of a study because it is 20 or 30 years old.
Furthermore, if the ethics boards continue to refuse to allow a study to be done decades after it was found to be harmful or dangerous then one can only suppose that they continue to believe it is likely *still* harmful or dangerous. They don't consider things unethical without a reason. So either they have the same reason that they did 25 years ago (that the study demonstrated porno had a detrimental psychological impact) or there must be some new ethical consideration that did not exist 25 years ago.
Since you clearly think that the old reason is no longer valid, what is the current ethical problem with a controlled, randomized study on pornography?
DRM did not merely happen upon it's bad reputation by the luck of the draw. It wasn't some mistake of nomenclature, some mere happenstance of naming convention. DRM started out as just another unknown acronym and it got to where it is today by one means and one means only: hard work.
It is just plain insulting to imply that DRM got where it is today by winning some kind of naming lottery. Don't replace DRM - it deserves the reputation it has, and deep down no one can ever take that away.
There were 160 students total, so 40 per group. Before you go "you can't tell anything from so small a sample" ask yourself how much you know about statistics and setting up randomized samples. If the answer is "a lot" let's talk, but if you really have no idea than just take it on faith that you can get statistically significant results from a study of that size (especially given that they were assigned to the groups randomly and there was a control group.)
I mean, better yet go and take some statistics courses and such. I highly recommend it. But assuming that's not an option, then just trust me.
And yet many of us who play Counterstrike do own guns. What's your point?
Not much of a statistician, are you? My point was that there is a strong correlation between simulating child porn and wanting to see real child porn, whereas the correlation between gun ownership and CS - if there is one at all - is likely much lower.
If no CS players owned guns there would be a very strong negative correlation. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying no strong correlation at all. Which means that roughly as many CS players will own guns as the general population (possibly adjusting by age, race, income, education, etc. if you want to get snazzy.)
My opposition to your citation of this study comes from the fact that it's about 20-30 years old. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't a culture's attitudes change over time? This very well may not be true anymore.
First of all, this wasn't a study about "attitudes". They showed porn to people and compared their reactions based. It was blind (at least, possibly double blind) and randomized. So it really was about the impact of porn on people, not just asking them what their attitudes were about sex and porn and rape.
Secondly, ethics boards seem to disagree with your flippant dismissal that "culture's attitudes change over time" since they seem unwilling to let anyone run the experiment again to see if it still holds true.
Sure, you can say "it's an old study" but without *any* positive evidence to suggest that culture has changed in such a way that we will have a psychologically different reaction I think simply saying "it's old" is just sticking your head in the sand.
In a way that's not the point. The point is that - regardless of the starting point - porn desensitizes people to rape. So yo could argue that if we were oversensitive to begin with we end up in a better place, but rather than debate what the correct response to rape should be, I'd just point out that anything that cuts that response in 1/2 is probably not great. And the other issues you bring up aren't really relevant in this particular case because it wasn't a question of rape in general, but a specific case of a woman who was raped by a hitchiker. Not a date-rape scenario, but the traditional forcible rape scenario. Furthermore the question didn't ask about burden of proof, but merely about sentencing once the guy is found guilty.
And finally the negative impacts went far beyond rape. Here's some stuff I grabbed from the article:
"Students were then introduced to a rape case, reading the newspaper coverage of a hitchiking that resulted in the sexual offense. The rapist's conviction was reported, but a sentene was not stated. Studnes were asked to recommend a prison term for the paticular offense. The length of th term was considered to indicate disapproval or condemnation of rape. Sexual callousnes toward women was expected to find expression in minimal prison sentences. Students also indicated their support for the female liberation movement on a scale ranging from 0 (no support) to 100 (maximal support). This assessment was included tolearn whether callousness, should it be created, generalizes from sex to gender."
Here's table 3 from the paper "Number of months recommended for rape, as a function of massive exposure to pornography (by gender)" (Massive, by the way, means like 48 minutes a week.)
Male Conrol: 93.7 No exposure: 94.6 intermediate exposure: 78.0 massive exposure: 49.8
And here's Table 4: SUpport for the women's liberation movement as a function of massive exposure to pornography (by gender) on a scale from 0 (no support) to 100 (maximal support)
Male Control: 66.8 No exposure: 71.0 Int. exposure: 48.7 Mass. exposure: 25.0
That's pretty damming evidence, in my opinion, of a causal relationship between porn (of the non-violent variety!) and callousness towards women and women's issues.
Source: "Pornography, Sexual Callousness, and the Trivialization of Rape" by Don Zillmann and Jennings Bryant, Journal of Communication 1982
If you can, check out the other article I found (but was unable to find full text so far). I think it may address some of your concerns, but I'm not finished reading the study (I was aware of it 2nd hand as it was referenced in another book.)
I think the article I linked to is about the same experiment, but just seems to go more in-depth (it's 13 pages long). It's worth noting that in this study the porn was 100% consensual (no rape porn or even sadomasochistic stuff) so we're evaluating non-violent porn here and still finding it to have a significant impact in attitudes about women.
This is the part about attitudes towards rape (I'm just typing it in by hand from the.pdf):
"Students were then introduced to a rape case, reading the newspaper coverage of a hitchiking that resulted in the sexual offense. The rapist's conviction was reported, but a sentene was not stated. Studnes were asked to recommend a prison term for the paticular offense. The length of th term was considered to indicate disapproval or condemnation of rape. Sexual callousnes toward women was expected to find expression in minimal prison sentences. Students also indicated their support for the female liberation movement on a scale ranging from 0 (no support) to 100 (maximal support). This assessment was included tolearn whether callousness, should it be created, generalizes from sex to gender."
Here's table 3 from the paper "Number of months recommended for rape, as a function of massive exposure to pornography (by gender)" (Massive, by the way, means like 48 minutes a week.)
Male Conrol: 93.7 No exposure: 94.6 intermediate exposure: 78.0 massive exposure: 49.8
And here's Table 4: SUpport for the women's liberation movement as a function of massive exposure to pornography (by gender) on a scale from 0 (no support) to 100 (maximal support)
Male Control: 66.8 No exposure: 71.0 Int. exposure: 48.7 Mass. exposure: 25.0
That's pretty damming evidence, in my opinion, of a causal relationship between porn (of the non-violent variety!) and callousness towards women and women's issues.
(If I'm quoting stuff you already read, at least it's informative for those who don't want to read the article themselves)
I think I've found the full-text of an article on this research, but I haven't found the full text publicly available where I can link it. I think the actual research may first have appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but the article I'm finding is here:
The purpose was not to be a good analogy to simulated child porn. Read my post again, I left that open-ended. The point was that it is a "thought crime" that we apparently have no problem with.
Do you disagree with that? If not - then clearly "thought crime" is not a very useful criticism. If you do disagree, please explain how it is not a thought crime.
You seem unfamiliar with the study. This wasn't the type where you have a bunch of people in to interview them, ask about their attitudes, and draw conclusions. This was a randomized, blind study with a control group (not double blind, I think). Students were selected and divided into groups and for 6 weeks saw either porn, 1/2 porn and 1/2 innocuous content, innocuous content, or no films at all. Those watching films were told the study was about film techniques.
So the issues you bring up - deliberately misleading interviewers - revolve around selection bias that randomized studies are designed to address.
In short, the study is academically rigorous and not the "pseudo-rational crutch" you describe. It's easier to attempt to dismiss it as such rather than confront the possibility that porn really is bad, however, especially on Slashdot were I'm sure practically everyone enjoys porn. See sig.
You lost me when you got to your last paragraph. This seems very prudish and perhaps the 'ethicist' who objected to any/all studies was a 'theologian'. Any links to these studies?
It was because there were observable, harmful impacts of watching porn and has nothing to do with theology. It's the same reason you can't do randomized studies in which you ask people to smoke: we know smoking is harmful.
I will try to find a link to the study. I have full citation at home, but I'm at work now. This may be it:
Zillman, D. & Bryant, J. (1984). --Effects of massive exposure to pornography," in Malamuth, NM & Donnerstein, E, (Ed), Pornography and sexual aggression,. Orlando, FL: Academic Press,
(I'm pretty sure it's Zillman and Bryant, and that's the right time period, but I'm not certain.)
Interesting point. IANAP (I Am Not A Psychologist), so, who (or which organization) dictates that it's unethical to expose people to pornography ala. actual scientific research?
I do know that all human trials have to be approved by college ethics boards, but I don't know if they have a united governing board or how the decisions compare at different colleges. However I'm fairly certain that since the study in question (and I'm really sorry I don't have the citation off the top of my head) no randomized porn study has been conducted in the use.
I figure the best way to keep things from getting settled is to tie the hands of researchers.
While true, the alternative would be to do things like determine the addictive power of cigarettes on children by getting a randomized group of 12-year olds to light up. We'd doubtless have been able to settle a lot of questions about how addictive nicotine is faster (randomized studies are far more powerful for this kind of research than observational analysis) but at the cost of getting a bunch of kids to smoke.
It's ironic that the apparently detrimental impact of porn is what has - more than anything else - shielded the industry from serious statistical criticism, but I don't really say any ethical way around it.
All this statistics shows is that people who are exposed to porn have different ideas about rape, not that their idea is 'good' or 'bad'. It could just as well be interpreted that people not exposed to porn have harsher views of any sex act outside of marriage.
W. T. F. You want to attribute laxer attitudes about rape as merely a product of having a more open mind to extra-marital sex?
Look, let's put this in perspective. The study group was given a newspaper story about a real-life rape and asked "what sentence does the rapist deserve?" In the control group (not shown any porn above and beyond what they may have watched anyway) the average was 94 months from men, 143 months from women. In the group shown porn regularly for a 6-week period the response was 50 months from men, and 78 months from women. (I may be off in the ones digits, but the 10s and 100s I'm confident on).
Are you seriously telling me that you think this is possibly a result of just being less uptight about extra-marital sex? We're talking about forcible rape here. Furthermore, the porn groups expressed less support of expanding women's rights (study was in the 70s or 80s) and exhibited other anti-women viewpoints with statistically significant margins.
The attempt to chalk this off as some kind of openness is exactly the kind of Slashdot mentality that led to my current sig.
The question ultimately becomes: Can fantasy involving only digital, or make-believe characters, be illegal?
If the answer is yes, I find that to be extremely disturbing in an Orwellian sense.
I consider this perspective sympathetic, but superficial and alarmist. Among the "though crimes" that currently seem rather uncontroversial I propose as an example: conspiracy to commit murder. Really if you are planning to kill someone, have you harmed anyone? Even if your intentions are genuine, they exist purely in your mind, right? This is, by strict construal of the term, a "thought crime".
And yet we not only consider conspiracy to commit murder an indication of an impending crime, but the actual intention itself is a crime. So either you have to decriminalize such thought crimes, or you have to come up with a better definition of "thought crime" - or at least some exceptions.
I'd say the simplest exception would be to willfully engage in activity that is directly linked to crime could, under some circumstances, be considered a crime. So while playing Counter Strike can not reasonably be considered training to murder people (I'd like to see your average CS junkie load and fire a handgun any better than your average Joe) it is possible that a simulated child porn may have a much closer connection to the real thing and fall into a gray area between Doom deathmatches and conspiracy to rape.
Note: I'm not saying "case closed: simulated child porn should be illegal", but I am saying the old "thought crime" siren is too infrequently criticized, an that there may in fact be a legitimate reason to ban even simulated child porn.
And yet, Japan enjoys the lowest rates of sex crimes of all 1st world countries. I'd say the ability for an individual to safely vicariously explore deeper and more sinister fictional sexual practices (as defined by society-at-large) definitely prevents a significant number of real crimes with real victims.
While certainly a valid point, I think this is hardly definitive. Like the gun-control debate, comparing crime statistics across nations is notoriously prone to confirmation bias. There are too many legal, cultural, economic, and social differences to really compare results in one nation with results in another. I do know, for example, that many people feel sexism is rife in Japan and that women are objectified to a much greater degree than in the US. Compared with other studies about porn, this would strengthen the old idea that porn leads to desensitization and objectification of women. The actual incidence of violent sexual crime, however, could very well not show an easily observable statistical change.
This is precisely how the connection between smoking and cancer was combated for so many years. The incidence of cancer is so low that it's easy to construct studies which reflect no statistical increase. It's similar to the lag in acceptance of global warming.
What we do know, however, is that pornography's impact on those who view it is considered so detrimental that you can't get randomized, control-group studies approved and that those studies which were randomized and controlled (and led to the conclusion that it was too detrimental to ethically get people to watch porn) found statistically significant connections between exposure to porn and a lower support of women's rights, a declining importance of marriage, and laxer attitude towards rape punishment.
The fact that you can pretty reliably guess that people who simulate child porn are probably also interested in the real thing, but that tens of thousands of people who go on shooting sprees in Counter-Strike don't even own guns should highlight some of the difference between the two.
If you want to look at something that is related to digital child porn, don't look at Counter Strike look at that Columbine FPS. How well did that go over?
If you can tell the difference between Halo, GRAW and Counter Strike vs. a game based on the Columbine shootings, than I think you ought to be to realize which category we should put simulated child porn in.
Although I think the distinction goes even further. The connection between playing violent video games and becoming violent (or other negative impacts) is tenuous, but the connection between pornography and misogyny is not. One study (complete with control group) found that men and women exposed to porn recommended a sentence for a rapist of about 1/2 what was recommended by the control group. Connection directly to rape? No. Connection directly to attitudes about rape? Definitely.
I can get a reference for this study (I read about it earlier this week) in a few hours after work.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for covering that.
Chalk it up to having posted on the day when a few idiots got their mod points.
Nah... this is the kind of modding experience I get every time there are posts about porn. I've had some prior experience with the Slashdot community's response to porn. And I don't mean to come off as complaining. I mean what I wrote: it's pathetic. It gives me the impression that a lot of people would rather down-mod me than respond with any new information/argument, which calls into question (in my mind) the existence of said questions/arguments. As you can see it's not like I'm unopposed - a lot of good contradictory viewpoints have been given, but unlike other topics it seems as though a lot of people are incapable of expressing their disagreement in anyway short of the all-mighty-mod.
I'm still highly suspicious of the study - personal experience
It's funny. Some of the time people refuse to believe that I don't look at porn because in their universe every male human being does. The rest of the time it's assumed that not only do I not look at porn, but I think sex is dirty and gross and I'm probably in need of a long talk with a shrink to work out my issues with sexual repression because I'm a Mormon. The truth is that I don't look at porn, and that originally the decision was made based purely on religious dogma (when I was like 12... I was just not very rebellious as a kid) but at 25 and married with a kid I'm happy with my decision. Of course I've seen porn a few times in my life, but I just choose not to look because it goes against my personal philosophy on life. I've also never smoked and never drank alcohol. I suppose in the eyes of some that makes me unqualified to talk about smoking and binge drinking, but honestly I think it means that I've got a unique viewpoint to bring to the discussion. Not that I have a better view point than those who watch porn, but certainly a valid different opinion.
No link handy right now, but "some guy" (helpful I know) who had never fired real guns before went to the range with his video game skills and managed to do DRAMATICALLY better than people who had never fired video game guns or real guns in the past.
:)
Well, to contrast your "some guy" I present: me. I'm a pretty avid FPS player and I've shot rifles and shotguns, but I can tell you that my first trip to the range to shoot some 9mm and 40cal handguns taught me that a handgun is a lot harder to aim accurately than a rifle. The kickback is hard to adjust for as well. Just my own experience, however, and I certainly don't think playing an FPS had anything to do with shooting a gun in real life.
Light gun games are also some of my faves these days
I could see how that might help in theory, but weight and recoil are part of what make accuracy with a handgun different - especially for repeated shots. You don't get that with light guns.
He was laying the fucking smack down. Guess those skills go both ways...
Hahahahahahaha... it's possible. In any case, however I think there's a fundamental difference. To the extent that an FPS is a good trainer for shooting, it's about motor skills, hand-eye cordination, etc. That's not what you need to make the jump from simulated to real kiddie porn, so I'm not sure that it's a "trainer" in the same sense of the word. The connection would be if you saw everyone that played FPSers develop a need to see snuff films. I don't think you do. You don't play an FPS to watch someone die or imagine killing someone. (If you do... then I think you should stop playing FPSs). But you do watch porn to get the same biological response you do from having sex - or a very similar one. (No, that's not the *only* reason to watch porn and not everyone masturbates every time they watch porn, but let's be real here - the connection is there).
So I'm not even saying you go from kiddie porn to child rape, I'm saying you go from simulated kiddie porn to real kiddie porn because the point of it is to get aroused and you don't get aroused by the same old stuff anymore. The analog with FPSs, I think, is simply going from an xbox to an xbox360. You get tired of the graphics, and you need more. Needing better graphics is innocuous in and of itself, needing specifically better kiddie porn graphics is not (to the extent that it leads to use of the real stuff).
-1, Flamebait? That's just pathetic.
Slashdot may be all about first amendment rights, but the mods sure know how to stick their fingers in their own ears.
If you honestly believe that a survey of 160 students, all likely within the same county and state, accurately represents the views of 240,132,887 children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults, and senior citizens, then you truly are a fool.
That's not what I'm saying at all. But two things are relevant here.
1. This is not a poll. This means demographic impacts may or may not be as relevant. I'm not saying that you can extrapolate from the reaction of college kids to the reaction of senior citizens (and certainly not children), but I am saying that the emphasis was not on "what do college kids think (as opposed to some other group)" but was on "how watching porn causally impact attitudes of college kids." Your quite right, there may be some important differences. But we don't know, and we're not allowed to do the studies. This is all we have, and I'm not saying it answers the question with finality, but the results are very strong.
2. Kind of a repeat of what I just said. This isn't supposed to be like "the ultimate answer that says how porn impacts every living human being in the country". A statistically valid poll for a voting involves what - 1,200? 1,600? You can ask that few people and get results that extrapolate to the opinion of the entire nation. Now again, this is not a poll. It was a test to determine how porn impacts people. It's an experiment, not a poll. But the comparison is there just to indicate that you can get powerful results from a small sample. Note that I said "powerful", not incontrovertible.
How was exposure to porn controlled?
:-D I know that it was based on questionnaires at the end of the 6-week study, but I don't know what the specific questions were.
There were 4 groups. The control group was shown nothing. They may or may not have watched porn on their own, but would have reflected normal porn usage. The other 3 groups were should 6 8-minute videos once a week for 6 weeks. The "massive" group saw 48 minutes of porn, the intermediate 24 (and 24 of other programming) and the no-porn group saw 48 of no-porn on a weekly basis.
Also you call 100 maximal support, yet the female control group scores 119, and another group over 140, so I'm not so sure I understand your numbers.
There are two tables (that I copied over). The first has units = months (of imprisonment) so there's no upper bound. Averages vary from 49.8 to 143.6. The second has units = support for liberation movement on a scale of 0 - 100. The averages range from 25.0 to 82.0.
This is very interesting to me - I'd like to know exactly how the measurements were taken and exactly what was being measured.
I can't just hand-type the whole study over!
Of course, outside statistics people will argue whether or not shorter prison sentences really count as condoning rape. Perhaps that's what punishment they believe the crime merits. I don't condone murder, but I don't think every murderer should be locked up for 30 years or executed by the state, for example.
Right, but these are problems of an absolute nature. The point of the study wasn't that porn viewers thought that rape didn't deserve an adequate punishment. The relevant fining is that watching porn changed the punishment from the norm. So it's the differential between the control (93.7) and the no-porn group (94.6) to the intermediate porn (78.0) and finally the maximal porn (49.8) that's relevant (those are the guy numbers). Regardless of whether 94.6 is too much or too little (or any other) you took a group of students, assigned them to the groups randomly, and those watching porn became twice as lenient on rapists.
The study seems flawed to me.
And it sounds like you're grasping at straws because you don't like what you hear to me.
What types of porn?
"All erotic films depicted heterosexual activities, mainly fellatio, cunnilungus, coition, and anal intercourse. None of these activities entailed coercion or the deliberate infliction or reception of pain."
The assumptions the study uses is that more prison time means more hatred/whatever for rape.
Right, and it seems valid in contrast to the control group. Do you have an alternative interpretation? Cultural and other differences are out: the difference was caused by the exposure to porn (that's what the randomization proves) and therefore how could watching porn and being caused to give a rapist a lighter sentence based on the exact same information indicate anything other than lenience towards rape?
Randomization is meaningless with such a assumption
No, it is vital to ensure against selection bias. Without randomization, you'd have people that wanted to watch the porn in the porn group, and people that didn't want to watch the porn in the less-porn groups. It is randomization that allows you to start to get at causality.
they may all share the same ideals of the legal system
How is this a flaw? It may limit the relevance of the study, but it certainly doesn't indicate a flaw in the study itself.
The assumption made by the researchers may not match the assumption of the students in the groups, so while they may only give someone 10 days in jail, they may think they did a horrible crime.
This would not explain the difference between the groups of students. Which is kind of the point of the whole study.
Also, they seem to assume this only applies to porn and rape. What if similar studies showed the same things in other areas, such as, violence in various degrees?
what if it did? That would in no way impact the study. If watching porn changes your attitudes about rape, and another study shows that eating pixie stix has the same impact, this in no way changes the impact of the first study.
Also, by the same logic used in this study, one would expect the same to hold true for guys, that porn that depicts the guys as the lessers would causes a callousness towards men.
So what if it did? Is treating women like objects OK as long as we treat men like objects too? That would essentially result in a world full of sociopaths. Not the best outcome, in my opinion, even if it's no longer a question of bias.
Also, the ethics boards may not disagree with my assertion at all. They may just feel that it's not an ethical study to run, kind of like an ethics board having people pretend to be electrocuted in front of other people also doesn't indicate their opinion on the cultural basis of that matter either.
OK, do me a favor and explain exactly what your assertion entails. I'm saying that the study showed a causal link between pornography and attitudes about women. What societal change are you suggesting that would make people impervious to pornography now in ways that they weren't 20 years ago? Do you mean the same people are impervious, or that the rising generation is impervious?
As far as I can tell you haven't stated anything specific at all just a generic "culture changes" imperative that's supposed to wipe away the results of a study because it is 20 or 30 years old.
Furthermore, if the ethics boards continue to refuse to allow a study to be done decades after it was found to be harmful or dangerous then one can only suppose that they continue to believe it is likely *still* harmful or dangerous. They don't consider things unethical without a reason. So either they have the same reason that they did 25 years ago (that the study demonstrated porno had a detrimental psychological impact) or there must be some new ethical consideration that did not exist 25 years ago.
Since you clearly think that the old reason is no longer valid, what is the current ethical problem with a controlled, randomized study on pornography?
DRM did not merely happen upon it's bad reputation by the luck of the draw. It wasn't some mistake of nomenclature, some mere happenstance of naming convention. DRM started out as just another unknown acronym and it got to where it is today by one means and one means only: hard work.
It is just plain insulting to imply that DRM got where it is today by winning some kind of naming lottery. Don't replace DRM - it deserves the reputation it has, and deep down no one can ever take that away.
All I can tell you is that the study dates to around 1980 or 1981. So right around the time of the ERA.
Fair enough. Please let me know if you do find the study, however. If I'm wrong I'd like to know.
There were 160 students total, so 40 per group. Before you go "you can't tell anything from so small a sample" ask yourself how much you know about statistics and setting up randomized samples. If the answer is "a lot" let's talk, but if you really have no idea than just take it on faith that you can get statistically significant results from a study of that size (especially given that they were assigned to the groups randomly and there was a control group.)
I mean, better yet go and take some statistics courses and such. I highly recommend it. But assuming that's not an option, then just trust me.
And yet many of us who play Counterstrike do own guns. What's your point?
Not much of a statistician, are you? My point was that there is a strong correlation between simulating child porn and wanting to see real child porn, whereas the correlation between gun ownership and CS - if there is one at all - is likely much lower.
If no CS players owned guns there would be a very strong negative correlation. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying no strong correlation at all. Which means that roughly as many CS players will own guns as the general population (possibly adjusting by age, race, income, education, etc. if you want to get snazzy.)
My opposition to your citation of this study comes from the fact that it's about 20-30 years old. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't a culture's attitudes change over time? This very well may not be true anymore.
First of all, this wasn't a study about "attitudes". They showed porn to people and compared their reactions based. It was blind (at least, possibly double blind) and randomized. So it really was about the impact of porn on people, not just asking them what their attitudes were about sex and porn and rape.
Secondly, ethics boards seem to disagree with your flippant dismissal that "culture's attitudes change over time" since they seem unwilling to let anyone run the experiment again to see if it still holds true.
Sure, you can say "it's an old study" but without *any* positive evidence to suggest that culture has changed in such a way that we will have a psychologically different reaction I think simply saying "it's old" is just sticking your head in the sand.
Where do you draw the line on moral standards?
In a way that's not the point. The point is that - regardless of the starting point - porn desensitizes people to rape. So yo could argue that if we were oversensitive to begin with we end up in a better place, but rather than debate what the correct response to rape should be, I'd just point out that anything that cuts that response in 1/2 is probably not great. And the other issues you bring up aren't really relevant in this particular case because it wasn't a question of rape in general, but a specific case of a woman who was raped by a hitchiker. Not a date-rape scenario, but the traditional forcible rape scenario. Furthermore the question didn't ask about burden of proof, but merely about sentencing once the guy is found guilty.
And finally the negative impacts went far beyond rape. Here's some stuff I grabbed from the article:
"Students were then introduced to a rape case, reading the newspaper coverage of a hitchiking that resulted in the sexual offense. The rapist's conviction was reported, but a sentene was not stated. Studnes were asked to recommend a prison term for the paticular offense. The length of th term was considered to indicate disapproval or condemnation of rape. Sexual callousnes toward women was expected to find expression in minimal prison sentences. Students also indicated their support for the female liberation movement on a scale ranging from 0 (no support) to 100 (maximal support). This assessment was included tolearn whether callousness, should it be created, generalizes from sex to gender."
Here's table 3 from the paper "Number of months recommended for rape, as a function of massive exposure to pornography (by gender)" (Massive, by the way, means like 48 minutes a week.)
Male
Conrol: 93.7
No exposure: 94.6
intermediate exposure: 78.0
massive exposure: 49.8
Female
Control: 119.7
No exposure: 143.6
Inter. Exposure: 101.4
Mass. Exposure: 77.0
And here's Table 4: SUpport for the women's liberation movement as a function of massive exposure to pornography (by gender) on a scale from 0 (no support) to 100 (maximal support)
Male
Control: 66.8
No exposure: 71.0
Int. exposure: 48.7
Mass. exposure: 25.0
Female
Control: 76.2
No Exposure: 82.0
Int. Exposure: 59.2
Mass. Exposure: 52.2
That's pretty damming evidence, in my opinion, of a causal relationship between porn (of the non-violent variety!) and callousness towards women and women's issues.
Source: "Pornography, Sexual Callousness, and the Trivialization of Rape" by Don Zillmann and Jennings Bryant, Journal of Communication 1982
If you can, check out the other article I found (but was unable to find full text so far). I think it may address some of your concerns, but I'm not finished reading the study (I was aware of it 2nd hand as it was referenced in another book.)
.pdf):
I think the article I linked to is about the same experiment, but just seems to go more in-depth (it's 13 pages long). It's worth noting that in this study the porn was 100% consensual (no rape porn or even sadomasochistic stuff) so we're evaluating non-violent porn here and still finding it to have a significant impact in attitudes about women.
This is the part about attitudes towards rape (I'm just typing it in by hand from the
"Students were then introduced to a rape case, reading the newspaper coverage of a hitchiking that resulted in the sexual offense. The rapist's conviction was reported, but a sentene was not stated. Studnes were asked to recommend a prison term for the paticular offense. The length of th term was considered to indicate disapproval or condemnation of rape. Sexual callousnes toward women was expected to find expression in minimal prison sentences. Students also indicated their support for the female liberation movement on a scale ranging from 0 (no support) to 100 (maximal support). This assessment was included tolearn whether callousness, should it be created, generalizes from sex to gender."
Here's table 3 from the paper "Number of months recommended for rape, as a function of massive exposure to pornography (by gender)" (Massive, by the way, means like 48 minutes a week.)
Male
Conrol: 93.7
No exposure: 94.6
intermediate exposure: 78.0
massive exposure: 49.8
Female
Control: 119.7
No exposure: 143.6
Inter. Exposure: 101.4
Mass. Exposure: 77.0
And here's Table 4: SUpport for the women's liberation movement as a function of massive exposure to pornography (by gender) on a scale from 0 (no support) to 100 (maximal support)
Male
Control: 66.8
No exposure: 71.0
Int. exposure: 48.7
Mass. exposure: 25.0
Female
Control: 76.2
No Exposure: 82.0
Int. Exposure: 59.2
Mass. Exposure: 52.2
That's pretty damming evidence, in my opinion, of a causal relationship between porn (of the non-violent variety!) and callousness towards women and women's issues.
(If I'm quoting stuff you already read, at least it's informative for those who don't want to read the article themselves)
I think I've found the full-text of an article on this research, but I haven't found the full text publicly available where I can link it. I think the actual research may first have appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but the article I'm finding is here:
= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7174873&dopt=Abstract
b =true&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&ERICExtSearch_Searc hValue_0=EJ270965&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_ accno&objectId=0900000b80083931
j .1460-2466.1982.tb02514.x?journalCode=jcom
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
or here:
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfp
or here:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/
Like I said, though, no full text. Sorry.
This is a bad analogy.
The purpose was not to be a good analogy to simulated child porn. Read my post again, I left that open-ended. The point was that it is a "thought crime" that we apparently have no problem with.
Do you disagree with that? If not - then clearly "thought crime" is not a very useful criticism. If you do disagree, please explain how it is not a thought crime.
You seem unfamiliar with the study. This wasn't the type where you have a bunch of people in to interview them, ask about their attitudes, and draw conclusions. This was a randomized, blind study with a control group (not double blind, I think). Students were selected and divided into groups and for 6 weeks saw either porn, 1/2 porn and 1/2 innocuous content, innocuous content, or no films at all. Those watching films were told the study was about film techniques.
So the issues you bring up - deliberately misleading interviewers - revolve around selection bias that randomized studies are designed to address.
In short, the study is academically rigorous and not the "pseudo-rational crutch" you describe. It's easier to attempt to dismiss it as such rather than confront the possibility that porn really is bad, however, especially on Slashdot were I'm sure practically everyone enjoys porn. See sig.
You lost me when you got to your last paragraph. This seems very prudish and perhaps the 'ethicist' who objected to any/all studies was a 'theologian'. Any links to these studies?
,. Orlando, FL: Academic Press,
It was because there were observable, harmful impacts of watching porn and has nothing to do with theology. It's the same reason you can't do randomized studies in which you ask people to smoke: we know smoking is harmful.
I will try to find a link to the study. I have full citation at home, but I'm at work now. This may be it:
Zillman, D. & Bryant, J. (1984). --Effects of massive exposure to pornography," in Malamuth, NM &
Donnerstein, E, (Ed), Pornography and sexual aggression
(I'm pretty sure it's Zillman and Bryant, and that's the right time period, but I'm not certain.)
Interesting point. IANAP (I Am Not A Psychologist), so, who (or which organization) dictates that it's unethical to expose people to pornography ala. actual scientific research?
I do know that all human trials have to be approved by college ethics boards, but I don't know if they have a united governing board or how the decisions compare at different colleges. However I'm fairly certain that since the study in question (and I'm really sorry I don't have the citation off the top of my head) no randomized porn study has been conducted in the use.
I figure the best way to keep things from getting settled is to tie the hands of researchers.
While true, the alternative would be to do things like determine the addictive power of cigarettes on children by getting a randomized group of 12-year olds to light up. We'd doubtless have been able to settle a lot of questions about how addictive nicotine is faster (randomized studies are far more powerful for this kind of research than observational analysis) but at the cost of getting a bunch of kids to smoke.
It's ironic that the apparently detrimental impact of porn is what has - more than anything else - shielded the industry from serious statistical criticism, but I don't really say any ethical way around it.
All this statistics shows is that people who are exposed to porn have different ideas about rape, not that their idea is 'good' or 'bad'. It could just as well be interpreted that people not exposed to porn have harsher views of any sex act outside of marriage.
W. T. F. You want to attribute laxer attitudes about rape as merely a product of having a more open mind to extra-marital sex?
Look, let's put this in perspective. The study group was given a newspaper story about a real-life rape and asked "what sentence does the rapist deserve?" In the control group (not shown any porn above and beyond what they may have watched anyway) the average was 94 months from men, 143 months from women. In the group shown porn regularly for a 6-week period the response was 50 months from men, and 78 months from women. (I may be off in the ones digits, but the 10s and 100s I'm confident on).
Are you seriously telling me that you think this is possibly a result of just being less uptight about extra-marital sex? We're talking about forcible rape here. Furthermore, the porn groups expressed less support of expanding women's rights (study was in the 70s or 80s) and exhibited other anti-women viewpoints with statistically significant margins.
The attempt to chalk this off as some kind of openness is exactly the kind of Slashdot mentality that led to my current sig.
The question ultimately becomes: Can fantasy involving only digital, or make-believe characters, be illegal?
If the answer is yes, I find that to be extremely disturbing in an Orwellian sense.
I consider this perspective sympathetic, but superficial and alarmist. Among the "though crimes" that currently seem rather uncontroversial I propose as an example: conspiracy to commit murder. Really if you are planning to kill someone, have you harmed anyone? Even if your intentions are genuine, they exist purely in your mind, right? This is, by strict construal of the term, a "thought crime".
And yet we not only consider conspiracy to commit murder an indication of an impending crime, but the actual intention itself is a crime. So either you have to decriminalize such thought crimes, or you have to come up with a better definition of "thought crime" - or at least some exceptions.
I'd say the simplest exception would be to willfully engage in activity that is directly linked to crime could, under some circumstances, be considered a crime. So while playing Counter Strike can not reasonably be considered training to murder people (I'd like to see your average CS junkie load and fire a handgun any better than your average Joe) it is possible that a simulated child porn may have a much closer connection to the real thing and fall into a gray area between Doom deathmatches and conspiracy to rape.
Note: I'm not saying "case closed: simulated child porn should be illegal", but I am saying the old "thought crime" siren is too infrequently criticized, an that there may in fact be a legitimate reason to ban even simulated child porn.
And yet, Japan enjoys the lowest rates of sex crimes of all 1st world countries. I'd say the ability for an individual to safely vicariously explore deeper and more sinister fictional sexual practices (as defined by society-at-large) definitely prevents a significant number of real crimes with real victims.
While certainly a valid point, I think this is hardly definitive. Like the gun-control debate, comparing crime statistics across nations is notoriously prone to confirmation bias. There are too many legal, cultural, economic, and social differences to really compare results in one nation with results in another. I do know, for example, that many people feel sexism is rife in Japan and that women are objectified to a much greater degree than in the US. Compared with other studies about porn, this would strengthen the old idea that porn leads to desensitization and objectification of women. The actual incidence of violent sexual crime, however, could very well not show an easily observable statistical change.
This is precisely how the connection between smoking and cancer was combated for so many years. The incidence of cancer is so low that it's easy to construct studies which reflect no statistical increase. It's similar to the lag in acceptance of global warming.
What we do know, however, is that pornography's impact on those who view it is considered so detrimental that you can't get randomized, control-group studies approved and that those studies which were randomized and controlled (and led to the conclusion that it was too detrimental to ethically get people to watch porn) found statistically significant connections between exposure to porn and a lower support of women's rights, a declining importance of marriage, and laxer attitude towards rape punishment.
The fact that you can pretty reliably guess that people who simulate child porn are probably also interested in the real thing, but that tens of thousands of people who go on shooting sprees in Counter-Strike don't even own guns should highlight some of the difference between the two.
If you want to look at something that is related to digital child porn, don't look at Counter Strike look at that Columbine FPS. How well did that go over?
If you can tell the difference between Halo, GRAW and Counter Strike vs. a game based on the Columbine shootings, than I think you ought to be to realize which category we should put simulated child porn in.
Although I think the distinction goes even further. The connection between playing violent video games and becoming violent (or other negative impacts) is tenuous, but the connection between pornography and misogyny is not. One study (complete with control group) found that men and women exposed to porn recommended a sentence for a rapist of about 1/2 what was recommended by the control group. Connection directly to rape? No. Connection directly to attitudes about rape? Definitely.
I can get a reference for this study (I read about it earlier this week) in a few hours after work.