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The Forum > Article Comments > Incensed about censorship > Comments

Incensed about censorship : Comments

By Melinda Tankard Reist, published 5/12/2008

How many mistakes have the Classification Board made with porn magazines over the years? Someone needs to audit the Board.

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Dear undidly,

>Sex is legal,enjoyable and essential for the continuation of the species.

Not all sex is legal, not all sex is enjoyable (alas), & oddly enough sex is not essential for the continuation of the species.

>Violence is illegal,painful and often kills.

Not all violence is illegal or is experienced as painful, & very little of it in Australia is practised with the aim of killing.

>Free to air TV shows much violence but very little sex.

Free to air tv shows a lot of both.

>Censor TV not the internet.
Half of American films on TV begin with someone being violently assaulted or murdered and that is just the comedies.
Let us not go the American way.
Instead do as in Europe.
Sex is fun.

I'm sure women like Linda Boreman – or for that matter, Leigh Leigh, Anita Cobby, Tegan Wagner, & millions of other women (and men) would have a different opinion on this question.

>Most Americans are Christian so violence is OK but sex is taboo.

Last I noticed, Americans seem to be doing a lot of both, whether they are Christians or not.

Why not simply use the same test in regard to this question as we do with most others concerning people's actions, ie people should be free to act or speak as they wish unless they harm others. Why should porn have any immunity if there is harm? That is, the question is not whether we should be free, as we are all agreed on that. The question is what is to count as harm, & hence can be legitimately regulated.
Posted by isabelberners, Friday, 5 December 2008 4:17:16 PM
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I don't think that it is a good situation that children have access to violence, sex, porn and other stuff so easily through the internet. I definitely believe this is a bad development, however, censorship is a very strong action against that.
However, I believe that some other way has to be found in order to control internet content.
Posted by nochy96, Friday, 5 December 2008 7:46:29 PM
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So why is it that an increased availability of pornography in Japan is coincident with a reduction in sexual crime?

"Many men who commit crimes of sexual violence live on a diet of pornography. (Dr William Marshall, Use of sexually explicit stimuli by rapists, child molesters and non-offenders, Journal of Sex Research, 25, (1998): 267)."

However, according to this article:

http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/online_artcls/pornography/prngrphy_rape_jp.html

" The actual evidence in this report, however, seems at closer scrutiny, to indicate that pornography used by adult sex offenders is viewed immediately prior to their offense. Unstated, but contained within the Marshall study, is evidence that exposure to pornography was usually absent from the offenders' experiences during formative years.

This seems to be a crucial consideration. Most frequently, as it was found in the 1960s before the influx of sexually explicit materials in the United States, those who committed sex crimes typically had less exposure to SEM in their background than others and the offenders generally were individuals usually deeply religious and socially and politically conservative (Gebhard, Gagnon, Pomeroy, & Christenson, 1965). Since then, most researchers have found similarly. The upbringing of sex offenders was usually sexually repressive, often they had an overtly religious background and held rigid conservative attitudes toward sexuality (Conyers & Harvey, 1996; Dougher, 1988); their upbringing had usually been ritualistically moralistic and conservative rather than permissive. During adolescence and adulthood, sex offenders were generally found not to have used erotic or pornographic materials any more than any other groups of individuals or even less so (Goldstein & Kant, 1973, Propper, 1972). Walker (1970) reported that sex criminals were several years older than noncriminals before they first saw pictures of intercourse."
Posted by Fester, Saturday, 6 December 2008 5:37:09 AM
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This article confused me a lot. I've always observed that in countries where openess regarding sex was the norm sex-related crimes were very low. Studies back this up. I've always been a lot more concerned with violence and its impact than sex so must confess haven't kept up with recent dialogs or research in this area.

But the research cited in this article seems to argue that there IS a basis for assuming a link between marriage/relationship breakdown and sexually explicit content and, arguably, with sex/violent crime - at least in a measurable amount of cases.

If this is the case then why should Australian and American society function in a completely different direction to the Scandanavian countries, Japan and other countries where open access to explicit material has always been available and where such policy works to reduce sexual crimes? Is it because in Australia and America this is only a comparatively recent construct? Is it something to do with the influence of fundamentalist Christianity? Does anyone know of any research in this area (i.e. the opposing affects of the same policies in different countries?). I find it thought-provoking.

In re ISP filters etc. Living in China I can back up the comments of the computer tekkies who stated how easy it is to by-pass so-called firewalls. It was common prctice here before restrictions were lifted. However, most people - fanned by misinformation from foreign journalists - did not seem to realise that, by the time of the Olympics and with the advent of Internet chatrooms the CCP had slowly given up on controlling political content and the main body of restrictions pertained to kiddie-porn.
Posted by Romany, Saturday, 6 December 2008 11:58:42 AM
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Romany, the article isn't confusing, so much as selective with its facts. One piece of hard evidence that Tankard Reist cites is a study by Vega and Malamuth. I will quote myself from a previous thread in relation to this study. "According to that article, high porn use does correlate with high levels of sexual aggression in a tiny minority (approx %1) of the sample. High porn use is a risk factor in certain high-risk groups" In other words, for those predisposed to sexual aggression, heavy use of porn may correlate with increased levels of sexual aggression. But correlation isn't causation, as the authors are careful to emphasize. The abstract (can't find the full text) of the study is here http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:17441011 and a similar article is available here http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/malamuth/pdf/00arsr11.pdf

Not precisely sure of the value of "other researchers have found a clear relationship between sexually callous attitudes and histories of forceful, coercive, aggressive sexual conquests", ie callous people act callously. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Can't find the full text or abstract of the Marshall article, so I'm not sure about it.

I'd be interested to read the Michelle Evans article, but I can't find it. The abstract of her thesis is here, her "civil rights" approach is based on the work of MacKinnon and Dworkin. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/pubfiles/adt-MU20060502.151829/01Front.pdf

For more info on Tankard Reist, an informative (though biased) bio is here http://unbelief.org/articles/melinda-tankard-reist/

I don't know about you, but an alliance of Dworkin-style feminists with evangelicals and the Catholic Church doesn't much thrill me.
Posted by Johnj, Saturday, 6 December 2008 7:12:16 PM
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Romany I've got the impression from previous reading on the topic that it's a mix of selective quotations, possible use of advocacy research etc. There is some very interesting material from the USA which shows a clear drop in rates of sexual assault committed by teenage boys corresponding to rates of internet takeup in different US states. They've checked against other crime rates to ensure that the changes don't relate to improved policing. I've referenced the material previously but don't have the link handy. As far as I can tell the research was not sponsored by the porn industry.

Someone else (CJ or Col I think) has posted similar material from Scandanavia.

Some of the research I've seen which finds a link between viewing porn and increased levels of sexual aggression seems to involve getting Uni students to watch porn in a controlled environment and then having them interviewed by an attractive woman afterwards. Hardly a real world situation and I've not seen any indication that any of the subjects have assaulted the interviewer (or anybody else) after viewing porn.

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Saturday, 6 December 2008 8:54:16 PM
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