Robert: <"...a private space without visual aids (eg porn) is unlikely to reduce any physical pressures. There may be exceptions but I think most men do far better when flying solo with appropriate visual aids. I gather that's different for most women.">

What women prefer seems irrelevant to a discussion about whether use of porn can help reduce prison rape - unless we're including discussion of female prison populations (are we?).

Just a passing thought - how did blokes (who need "visual aids") manage before Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt and for that matter, the printing press ?

Anyway - if we follow the thesis that rape occurs because of unsatisfied sexual lust for the other person and pornography use can contribute to lowering prison rape, then the appropriate pornography to dispense to incarcerated people would be homosexual pornography wouldn't it ?

It is no secret that women are also consumers of pornography - although women (and many men) might say that their interest is more in the erotic rather than pornographic.

This was unfortunate, but it is an example:
"A seemingly healthy young UK woman died of a heart attack triggered by heightened sexual arousal while she was watching a pornographic movie.

Nicola Paginton, 30, was found dead in her bed in October last year with a vibrator beside her and a pornographic movie playing on her laptop, The Sun reported."

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/health/7926285/healthy-woman-dies-watching-pornography

Women are a growing market for 'pornographic' (that umbrella term needs definition!) products and it is possible that their undeveloped market results from previous hesitance to buy such products for fear of being judged by society and especially by other women.

R0bert

You have me very worried with your (as Pynchme describes) "vanilla" idea of rape. Apart from the obvious raped grannies and other not normally considered 'desirable', er, recipients of such 'ardour', how is rape not about power?

If as you claim, rape is the result of an unsatisfied sex life, please explain my ex-husband's attempt to rape me after I had left him. He was living with a girlfriend and therefore, one assumes having his 'manly' needs satisfied. At least that was what I thought when I agreed to let him visit me. Now the primary reasons I left him was due to his controlling dominating nature and the occasional physical bullying when he failed to yell me into compliance. I managed to escape him by running to my next door neighbour. It is not an experience I can readily forget and I am sure had everything to do with the fact that he no longer held the same power over me that he used to.

I agree with Pynchme there is a massive gulf of communication between us, when rather than decry the crime of rape you would rather request more "research". How much "research" is required before men will take a stand against the crime of rape, speak out against it to their friends who may have raped or attempted to trivialise a vile act of one human to another?

Severin, I was saddened to read of your terrible experience.
How anyone can think that rape is not a power experience for the rapist is beyond me.

We don't need any more research into that matter, because it is already a well established fact.

Unfortunately, many men still believe the women who are raped 'ask for it', by where they are, what they wear, how they act, or what they say. Rape still happens in countries where women are covered from head to foot, never go out of the home, and are not allowed to speak to unrelated males.

Clearly, rape encompasses many situations that are not affected by the above accusations. No one ever 'asks' to be violently raped.
What of the elderly women in their own homes who are raped?

We need understanding, intelligent men to stand up for women and take a stand against the crime of rape.

Thanks Suze

I didn't want to bring the memory back, but find attitudes like R0bert's difficult to understand.

People who cannot distinguish between rape and the act of pleasurable sex are worrisome. How can forcing oneself on a resistant person can be anything other than using a person like an object, mystifies me. If it was always just about sexual relief there are always prostitutes or one's own hand.

Frankly I don't see why RObert should be required to continually re-affirm his revulsion to rape and other crimes. That presupposes that men like RObert are unusual, not representative of men in general and that they are somehow accountable for crimes committed by others.

Statistics prove that loving, caring, responsible and law-abiding men like RObert are very far from unusual. In fact men like RObert are common and representative of almost all men and people generally. People who commit crimes are the odd men (and women) out. Some feminists do not appear to agree with this and probably there is some secondary gain in their intransigence, but as time passes they themselves have become the odd ones out in the sea of fair-minded and usually happy and co-operative humanity.

In terms of motivation there is no reason if ideology is set aside, to assume that sexual crimes, in particular rape, are always motivated by the offender's need for control and power over the opposite sex. There has never been any proof to that effect either and probably it is a case of a belief seeking proof. There is no science in that.

Possibly power is involved in some crimes, but sexual relief cannot be dismissed as a likely motivation. It would be more worthwhile to look at the particular offender and crime to arrive at some motivation. No normal man is motivated to harm any person and as is the case with women who commit antisocial crimes, their deviancy is usually not attributable to something as simple and direct as a consuming hatred for the opposite gender and a mission to dominate.

Maybe the bar could be raised at bit so that this discussion doesn't disappear up the usual dry gully where it is headed ATM. What was the subject again?