🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug6.162859.27637@icd.ab.com> adnan@icd.ab.com
 (Adnan C. Yaqub) writes:
>Possibly it is a situation where some people are more adversely
>affected by pornography than others.

Your capsule summaries of the studies referenced do not appear to
support this causal link.  Studying the hobbies of sex offenders
doesn't support a porn->rape link, just a rape->porn link.  The two
non-criminal studies are not clearly explained in your summaries.

>Obviously, from this post and my previous post you can see that I am
>closer to the latter statement than, say, J. Greely.

...whose position on the whole thing is basically "put up or shut up".
I'll look up these papers when I get a chance, but I'm not holding my
breath.

>This study exposed subjects to no, a moderate amount, and massive
>amounts of *non-violent* pornography.  The subjects were then asked to
>recommend a prison sentence for a man convicted of raping a female
>hitchhiker.

An interesting study, which seems to have been designed to reinforce
the experimenter's bias.  Why this particular "test"?  How did he
choose his samples?  Were they given information on normal sentencing
guidelines for such a crime, or gauged for their previous knowledge of
common sentences for rape?  How were the subjects selected (general
population, volunteers, judges, parents, etc)?

>The results were something like:

Are these means, medians, or something else?

>>2) A high percentage of all sex crimes (rape, child abuse, etc.) have
>>pornography involved, during and/or immediately before.
>One result of the Silbert-Pines study is that of the women
>(prostitutes who had been raped) 24% said, without being asked, that
>their attacker had specifically mentioned his use of pornography as he
>raped them.

That does not support your conclusion that "pornography" was involved
during and/or immediately before the crime, only that they liked the
stuff.  I'd be surprised if they didn't also talk about tight pants
and deep cleavage.

>Similar, 22% who had been molested as children said that
>the molester either used pornography or mentioned it during the crime.

Did they define what the molester considered "pornography", such as
Sears catalogs, teen magazines, or (Bundy's favorite) cheerleader
magazines?

  This, of course, doesn't support your assertion that "pornography"
*causes* these behaviors, simply that people practicing these
behaviors are attracted to "porn".  At this point, you're still
arguing that flies cause garbage.

>Zillmann, D. and Bryant, J. "Pornography's Impact on Sexual
>Satisfaction", Journal of Applied Social Psychology", 1988.
>
>This study found that exposure to *non-violent* pornography diminished
>people's satisfaction with their sexual partner's physical appearance,
>affection, curiosity, and sexual performance.

Thank you for clarifying your remark.  What was their methodology?
Were they testing for short-term or long-term results?  I wouldn't be
surprised if the sight of a dozen nude athletes practicing the old
in-out-in-out temporarily made your current partner look a bit grubby,
but if there is a long-term effect, Sports Illustrated must be
breaking up a lot of marriages.

  Perhaps someone should buy a copy of Penthouse's subscription list,
and see how many subscribers have committed rapes or gotten divorced
after they started their subscriptions.  Of course, if it failed to
turn up anything, porn-banners would simply insist that rapists buy at
the newsstand...

>I have no statistics on hand about the amount of child pornography in
>the U.S.  I don't believe that the U.S. Customs Office "produces"
>child pornography.  They probably buy it for their investigations.

Nope.  They repackage it, advertise it, and send it out through the
mail, in attempts to arrest buyers.  I'll dig up my references on this
one.


			"The distorted images of animals displayed in
			 the media, language, advertising, and
			 cartoons, distorts and degrades animals. Is
			 this not another form of pornography?"
				-- Feminists for Animal Rights,
				   quoted in the _New Republic_.
-- 
J Greely (jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu; osu-cis!jgreely)