Should pornography that is depicting rape be subject to censorship? We are not talking about actual filmed rape, but acted out rape?
Would violent porn have a causal relationship to inciditing violent sex crimes?
If so to what degree? Can pornographers include rape and murder in porn?
This is a sensitive subject. Any thoughts?
I think children who are not yet unable to distinguish fantasy from reality should not be allowed to watch this kind of porn.
Otherwise, I see it as psychological catharsis. At the core, the problem is not with pornography, but with restrictive environment that eventually leads to it (repressions). A person who is allowed and encouraged to express himself from the start will feel no need to engage in perversions later on.
Yes, kids should be kept from it but adults should watch whatever they want. I’m of the camp that watching violence doesn’t necessarily make you more violent. The arts reflect humanity, not the other way around.
Porn should be completely abolished.
One million people’s pleasure from watching porn is not worth risking the possibility that one man become conditioned by porn to have the desire to rape someone, and do so.
Okay here is another stipulation.
What if the characters in the porn-film actively encourage the viewer to go out and commit rape, and instructed the viewer on how best to get away with rape? Should this be censored? For harm prevention purposes?
Joel Feinberg says: Given that communication is a form of expression, and thus has an important social value, obviously it cannot rightly be made criminal simply on the ground that it may lead some others on their own to act harmfully.
Are you a utilitarian Manic…?
Let people do what they want, whatever it is they want, no matter how violent or injust.
If you want to stop somebody from doing what they want, then impose your will over them.
It’s that simple.
On some points I agree with Mill, on others I do not.
Very interesting. Societies don’t exist without some kind of laws or orderliness. I am guessing that you have an anarchistic viewpoint.
But, in anarchy, the powerful will undoubtedly emerge and create rules for the weaker. So, when you advocate total freedom, does this include the ability to impose laws on others?
all art that does not glorify the working man should be burned…
among others…
-Imp
I think there is a problem censoring porn, and censoring the kind discussed here. What if a movie is made about porn, like “8MM”, a movie starring Nick Cage a few years ago, or antoher that I cannot name at the moment, wherein Goerge C. Scott played a man searching for his daughter, who had run away and was making porn films.
The Cage movie was about snuff films.
What if the kind of porn depicted in the movie was about rape, and encouraging rape? What if scenes from such a film were depicted? Do you ban rape movies, and those that encourage rape, but alow them to be depicted in a mainstream movie about such films?
If we are made evil simply by exposure to evil, then are we made evil by exposure to depictions of evil? What is the difference? Aren’t they both depictions?
How about enemy combatants torturing and killing soldiers of a country where footage of this killing is shown? Are those enemy combatants not just as evil? These are not even fictional characters at all.
You see where I’m going with this?
This is the same dilemma as handing out condoms and needles.
Definitely.
That’s how modern society arose anyhow.
I think part of the problem is that any censorship is done by the governemnt. I think back to when I was hearing what a bad guy Eminem was, about how he was glorifying and encouraging violence, particularly violence toward women. This was before I ever heard Eminem.
And then one day I heard “Stan” on the radio, and immediatley realised that he was the best songwriter I had ever heard, and that the bruhaha was bunk. That he was not doing anything like glorifying violence, and that he was a pure musical genius, and that my life was enriched by his presence and his rhymes.
Censorship is not just about what is being censored - it’s also about governmental power. the ethics is one thing and the power to control ethics is another.
=D>
Yes, very much so. You bring up all great points. These are real problems for the censor. This is a really interesting issue because ethics and politics gets tied directly into aesthetics.
Even when the filmmaker’s intent is one thing, some ignorant viewers will interpret it in another way. I remember some teenagers wanting to wear neo-nazi gear after seeing American History X. This obviously wasn’t the message of the film.
But the ideas are still there, and people are exposed to them even though they are not necassarily encouraged.
I think in the philosophy of law there are number of distinctions drawn for this. Pornographic films can sometimes be called guilty of “incitement”. Violent pornographers usually do not solicit rape, or urge or advise rapes. The pornographer usually insists that if "some viewers some of the time find the images alluring, that is their own affair and their own responsibility. In incitement however, it needs to be proven that the intent of the work was to cause arm. Incitement can also be compared to shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater where there is no fire.
The personal responsibility stance is usually taken by the libertarian. However, liberals usually have no problem using censorship to prevent harm. Feminist Catherine McKinnon argues that pornography helps structure social reality. She argues that pornography does not harm in the one-on-one sense such as “Frank-hits-Mary” but harms women as a group. To her, pornography is thrust upon unwilling women in their homes.
If you let them censor porn, pretty soon they’ll want to censor something else, then something else and so on. It’s a bad idea.
Liberals have no problem using the power of government to accomplish whatever happens to be on their own personal agendas.
There is a difference between the incitement of yelling “fire” and any “incitement” a film may cause. Yelling “fire” is a separate and distinct problem because a reasonable person would likely believe that the motive of the yeller is the same as that of the listener - avoid immediate danger - and that the danger is immediate. Reasonable people should not be expected to believe the same of a film, fictional or documentary. A film does not alert us to an immediate, urgent circumstance. We have time to think. While impressionable, as well as unstable, people who might react unthinkingly do exist, we need to draw the line somewhere. A film depicting black people as a danger to white society is not claiming that a black person is right behind the viewer with a knife in his hand - it’s an assertion that no film can reasonably make.
Televised football games are sometimes thrust upon women in their homes. And everything helps structure reality.
I am not supporting porn here, although I do enjoy porn. I am arguing against censorship. I hope all women have the ability to keep everything they don’t want in their homes out of their homes. And men, too. I want everyone to be smiling and happy all the time. But the government is not the answer to all our problems.
There is no part of porn that is ethical, or moral, if you prefer that term. It is because, as the father of morality said: Knowledge is Virtue. We do not do good out of ignorence, but out of knowledge and forethought. What we do not know in regard to the making of porn and of the lives of the people involved for outweighs what we do know. We do not know if there is some, a little, or a great deal of coersion involved. We do not know if the wages are paid, or if force was threatened. We do know it is uncommon enough for people to make a public act out of what is most often a private act. We do know that the very cheapness of the product tends to devalue what is perhaps all that a wife or a husband has to give to their spouse, as an act of honor and intimacy, so we are all injured by it even if the particpants and the merchants of sleaze are not injured. Does that make sense to you? Sex without love is a form of violence, and it should be prohibited, and resisted.
It is not to censor that porn should be stopped, it should be stopped because we the people are injured by it. But, in a sense we are injured by all objectification of people. It does all people the greatest violence. And it certainly is the job of government to seek Good. Aristotle said it, and it has been often said, and it is true today. When people in power spout such nonsense as It is not the job of Government to be a moral policeman, it is to justify violence by inaction. If we do not know those people who do porn are not injured, or threatened in producing it, then we are accepting ignorence as a defense against the charge of injustice.
We do know that economic exploitation and sexual exploitation are like siamese twins. You cannot tell where one leaves off and the other begins. The facts of the matter condemn it. It is like any activity done without love. It is a form of violence. If it were done with love it could show a benefit, and demonstrate some caring. All sex without love can show no good result, which is only natural since good is not the aim, but only some hope of escape, or a theft of pleasure.
When some one makes public what is essentially a private act, -that is usual as a gift of intimacy shared by two people -as part of a process of bonding for life, they are stealing from all people. Sex with love is good as gold, and the peddling of sex for a token debases that gold with lead. So it is certainly within the power of government to protect my investment in my relationship by not letting anyone rob value from it.