The evils of society run a lot deeper than the viewing of pornographic material. In the cause-effect relationship it's an indirect variable. It may contribute to wrong doings but it's not the problem.

As with the trafficking of human beings it's to my understanding that this is illegal. So I presume that banning pornography will simply compound legalities in the issue. It won't prevent trafficking of human beings.

Re ““rape porn” is typed into Google, the very first entry out of a mere 5,320,000”

Guess what, I googled “S_h_*_t for brains” and got 436,000 hits

Regarding Ted Bundy, I would not trust anything which a convicted psychopath/sociopath would say. Part of the disorder is the ability to lie convincingly. Another part (common to many psychological disorders) is the transference of responsibility from one self to anyone or anything, saying what ever is needed to ingratiate the psychopath with the interviewer/reader.

Example, Aileen Wuornos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aileen_Wuornos), in one of her TV interviews, blamed the police, saying they knew she was killing folk and did not stop her so she would become a serial killer.

That the article author does not like the outcome of the report is a matter of “so what”.

If she wants to convince us of a correlation between sexual abuse and pornography then she can go collect the factual statistics.

Considering anecdotal evidence is unreliable because

the sample sizes are too small to claim to be nationally representative

the qualitative considerations of the enquiry can be extremely broad and subjective, thus unless the correct questions are used in research, ambiguous and deceptive responses pervert the result.

In short, this article is dealing in emotions. It is pandering to the emotional supposition “it is bad, it must be banned”.

It is a criticism of someone else’s view. It adds nothing to the debate, other than criticisim of something the author has got her knickers twisted about. It fails to make any conclusion (beyond go read what Ted Bundy said), which reduces it to a “Rant”.

TLTR “Outside of child pornography, I can see no justification in banning any pornography, provided the depictions involved are just that (not actual rape).”

Your exclusion of those categories is reasonable, both would need to suborn illegal acts, each existing beyond the maxim of “consenting adults”.

I see several other posters correctly echo your view to respecting what amounts to the actions of “consenting adults”. May the voice of their reason sound loud over the hysteria of the pro-censorship lobby.

Dear James H, Also please give a source for this quotation:

"All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman."
Catherine [sic] MacKinnon

It is certainly not from MacKinnon. Also the sentence is a grammatical mess, so the person who did make it up should try harder next time.

I suppose one could blame the internets for these lies (or should one say "mis-speakings"?), but they circulated long before the web was invented.

Helen

Lev (on page 2) has already posted the relevant snopes article to that, Helen...

Antonella, I think you miss understand why the authors said "We’ve got numbers".

It is not always obvious when someone is getting upset at something real, or at something that they are imagining - ie a fantasy. For example, George Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and as a consequence he invaded Iraq. Now as it happened the number of weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq was 0. This number is not unlike the numbers the authors of the book were alluding to. It shows that Iraq having weapons of mass destruction was a fantasy. Unfortunately we didn't know that at the time, and as a result thousands if not millions of people have died unnecessarily.

The authors of "The Porn Book" want to ensure that thinking people knew they were not indulging in a fantasy. So they presented numbers. Numbers that could be independently checked and verified. Those numbers show that the porn does not lead to rape or violence. This is not to say the effect is 0, just that it is so small it can't be measured.

So if you have visions of men seeing porn and then committing atrocious action of violence upon women and children, be assured these visions aren't real: they are a fantasy. It doesn't happen. You and your children are not at risk because men read porn. You are getting worked up about an imaginary threat - not unlike a small child terrified by the boogyman under their bed.

It seems this particular fantasy is troubling you. As it is a particularly lurid and violent one, that isn't surprising. If it is troubling you, the best course of action isn't to scream at the top of your lungs that you are being persecuted by horrible imaginary daemons like you have done here. Try seeing a doctor instead.

Daphne Patai, Professing Feminism page 129

<Dworkin & MacKinnon have long argued that in a patriarchial society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women as a group are not in a stong enough social position to give meaningful consent.>

<Most feminists want have it both ways.. They would like retain the charge that rape is a terrible violation of human rights and at the same time stretch the legal definition of the crime beyond all reason.> pg 129.

Christine Hoff Sommers in "Who Stole Feminism" page 231 writes Catharine MacKinnon;

<"Sexual desire in women, at least in this culture is socially constructed.."

http://hereticalsex.blogspot.com/2007/05/my-favourite-feminist-quotes.html

For the other quotes.

Now I don't know how reliable snope is?