THE CASE AGAINST PORN

I quote from an excellent article on http://www.erasethedark.com/ourcase.html

"Every hour in America, sixteen women will encounter a rapist.  Since 1960, rape has risen 500%, and it is reported once every forty-six seconds.  One in eight women will be raped at least once.  Comparatively, in a study of convicted rapists, 86% of the rapists admitted to routine use of pornography, while 57% said that they would actually mimic specific pornographic scenes while raping a woman.

Pornography has grown into a thirteen billion dollar a year industry, and it exceeds the combined revenues of America’s foremost sport franchises--baseball, basketball, and football.

The dual proliferation of pornography and rates of rape in America are not coincidental.  Pornography, rape, and other acts of injustice directly coincide; it is time for the dark perception in society that says pornography is a victimless crime and harmless freedom to be erased."

Go to http://www.erasethedark.com/ and learn about the dangers of pornography to women.  Thankfully, there are great women out there winning battles for women, such as the recent ban on violent pornography in the United Kingdom (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/5297600.stm).

Pornography is vile and disgusting, degrades women, and further legal attention may be needed for women.  The notion that it is simply a 'victimless crime' or a 'harmless freedom' is a dangerous one.  Pornography is harmful to women and women's rights.  Women have the right to live free of the fear of being raped, and free of being regarded as mere sex objects. 

Pornography firmly entrenches in people's minds the notion that women are mere sex objects or hunks of meat.  If we are to have a future in which the sexes are truly equal and a future in which women are respected, pornography must go.

>>62

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." ~ Volaire

Free speech is important, if even if it's harmful. Entertainment falls under the protection of free speech and should be protected as such. I'm not saying todays culture embraces the equality of women as much as it should, but this is a far deeper reaching problem than simply porn.

The coorolation between an increase in rape and porn is weak at best. There are far more factors that can be attributed to this than just porn. But you dont care, because porn is your goal. it wouldn't matter if there was a bigger underlying cause for these violent sexual attacks, like possibly poverty, because you're monoptic in your goal. you remind me of the women who would go around bars back in the day and smash every bottle they saw, trying to push prohibition down peoples throats beause they beleived that less alcohol = less violent behavior = rise in morality. So prohibition happened, and yes, small time woman abuse and petty violence went dow, but as that went down, higher criminal acts rose, robberies, murders, the famous gangster Al "Scarface" Capone made his business out of the bootleg whisky business. If you ban all porn, not only will people end up making their own, but the distribution of it will be criminalized and we could see the rise of a whole new aspect of crime. not to mention, with the lack of porn, there would be far more sexual frustration, and that frustration could be taken out on women. nothing good has ever come from any sort of prohibition, it only ends up in underground distribution and more criminal acts where there once was none. Your efforts to protect women is misguided, and misdirected. instead of aiding women to defend themselves, and keep themselves safe from such attacks, you seek to take the lazy and more costly route of forcing our government to enforce such a ban, though the internet and through using up police resources in arresting these people. You're stepping over the greater underlying social and psycological problems that have a stranger coorolation between the rapists. your monoptic methodoligy represents unwavering zeal toward anything you personally find offencive. You're going to have to come up with a better argument than your few talking points:

coorolation between volume of porn and number of rapes (suspect to interperetation)
porn threaten women and women's rights (based on previous coorolation, so it suspect to interperetation)
women in porn are treated as mere sex objects or hunks of meat (this is an aspect of fantasy, and in no way reflects what women should really be treated like. it's a taste in which porn caters to, but not in every instance. softcore porn is such an example, showing more or less valid raltionships between the characters before sex. Those who cannot seperate reality from fantasy are doomed to see any act of sex or violence in a fictional setting as guidebooks for doing it in the real world. these people are a minority when put against the number of sane people who do not do this. so to make this statement is to claim the minority is the majority)

Violence against women must be stopped no matter what the cost (so would you push for an initiative to keep all women within a home working environment and instate a curfew to keep women from being out and about where they might be harmed? if you feel so good about putting our privacy and right to bare arms in the shredder, and because you've admitted women know no better, that it's perfectly acceptable to keep them locked within the safe confines of the home with very little freedom of their own. if you dont, then you dont really think that you must do everything to keep women safe, and you're real goal is simply a faux moral battle against porn with womans rights being a byproduct of your argument)
If even one woman is saved it will have been worth it (An individual will sarcifice his/her self if it means the betterment of the greater whole, not the other way around, and certainly not voulentarily. To say any individual diserves more freedom than another is rediculous, so to say the stripping of rights to the whole so that the few may live in peace is also wrong.)

Unles you're willing to elaborate on yuor claims and give difinitive proof that the lack of porn decreases rapes, or that rapes would not happen at all if there were no porn, i dont think you'll be convincing anyone anytime soon.