Comments on: Return of the Sex Police: A Renewed Abuse of Science to Outlaw Porn https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16510 Announcing appearances, publications, and analysis of questions historical, philosophical, and political by author, philosopher, and historian Richard Carrier. Wed, 11 Dec 2024 17:54:48 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 By: Richard Carrier https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16510#comment-39654 Wed, 11 Dec 2024 17:54:48 +0000 https://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=16510#comment-39654 In reply to Ryan.

Once again, that’s not an excerpt. You just quoted the abstract. You were warned to stop doing that.

And once again, you didn’t read the study. It does not support any point you have been trying to make here—and for all the same reasons I have already explained here.

You were warned to stop doing this, too. So stop.

Do not post here again unless you (a) actually read any study you cite and (b) explain what that study actually says and found (in your own words, using the study’s actual contents, not just rephrasing its abstract) and (c) explain in what logical way those findings relate to any point you want to make.

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By: Ryan https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16510#comment-39644 Wed, 11 Dec 2024 01:17:21 +0000 https://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=16510#comment-39644 In reply to Richard Carrier.

Here’s another study proving why porn in problematic-https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2016.1142496?journalCode=hjsr20
Excerpt:

Sexually objectifying portrayals of women are a frequent occurrence in mainstream media, raising questions about the potential impact of exposure to this content on others’ impressions of women and on women’s views of themselves. The goal of this review was to synthesize empirical investigations testing effects of media sexualization. The focus was on research published in peer-reviewed, English-language journals between 1995 and 2015. A total of 109 publications that contained 135 studies were reviewed. The findings provided consistent evidence that both laboratory exposure and regular, everyday exposure to this content are directly associated with a range of consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater self-objectification, greater support of sexist beliefs and of adversarial sexual beliefs, and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women. Moreover, experimental exposure to this content leads both women and men to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity

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By: Richard Carrier https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16510#comment-38831 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 15:09:08 +0000 https://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=16510#comment-38831 In reply to Aryan.

Aryan, please stop ignoring me.

Once again, those kinds of studies like you just again cited are already addressed in the article you are supposed to be commenting on.

So, maybe read the article before commenting on it? You seem to keep ignoring me. Over and over again.

If you had paid attention to what I’ve said, in the article and again here in comments, you would have learned that you need to actually read a study before citing it. They tend not to prove what their titles and abstracts claim. For example, the study you just cited is yet another correlation study that presents no evidence of causation. In other words, that sexually violent kids like porn is expected. This is not evidence the porn caused their behavior; their behavior caused them to watch more porn.

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By: Aryan https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16510#comment-38826 Thu, 22 Aug 2024 23:55:21 +0000 https://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=16510#comment-38826 In reply to Richard Carrier.

Perhaps. This study shows that porn consumption is harmful in adolescents.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jora.12745#:~:text=Odds%20ratios%20of%204.2%E2%80%9314.4,who%20had%20not%20viewed%20pornography.

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By: Richard Carrier https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16510#comment-37145 Fri, 02 Feb 2024 15:03:12 +0000 https://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=16510#comment-37145 In reply to Aryan.

Did you read them?

Because the first one (the only link that works) doesn’t support your case. It only reports that violent men like violent porn; not that violent porn causes more men to be violent.

And you only linked to an abstract, which suggests to me that you didn’t even bother to read the actual study.

Note its actual conclusion, which simply confirms what I just said your previous list of studies said:

[Our] results highlight the role of individual differences as strong moderators of the association between pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women. Such moderation has now also been well documented in this research area with other dependent measures … More specifically, it has been consistently found that an association between pornography consumption and aggression is particularly likely for men who score high on other risk factors for sexual aggression

Otherwise they only found:

[A] consistent significant, but relatively small association between pornography consumption and attitudes supporting violence against women

It was small in the general population because the far greater number of men watching porn who aren’t aggressive are included. Hence almost all men are not affected by the porn they watch. When you narrow the observation to men who already have sexist and misogynistic attitudes, then the correlation spikes. Which indicates that even they are not made more aggressive by porn; they are made more obsessed with porn by being aggressive.

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By: Aryan https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16510#comment-37143 Fri, 02 Feb 2024 13:32:09 +0000 https://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=16510#comment-37143 In reply to Richard Carrier.

Hi Doc Richard, I found more studies supporting my case
1) https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.20328
2) https://doi.org/10.1080/10532528.2000.10559784
3) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1995.tb00368.

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By: Richard Carrier https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16510#comment-37109 Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:11:57 +0000 https://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=16510#comment-37109 In reply to Aryan.

That said, you and I agree on one thing: production of specifically objectifying (rather than subjectifying) media depictions of women (which does not just mean in porn, but everywhere culturally, in all arts and media) contributes to sustaining sexism and misogyny in a population. The solution is to switch more to subjectifying depictions. Which does not require getting rid of porn any more than it requires getting rid of magazines, wall posters, television dramas, or reality shows.

See Sexual Objectification: An Atheist Perspective.

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By: Richard Carrier https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16510#comment-37108 Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:05:21 +0000 https://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=16510#comment-37108 In reply to Aryan.

I’m assuming you didn’t read those studies.

The Wright-Paul-Herbenick study’s abstract: “Having been exposed to pornography AND perceiving pornography as realistic were associated with increased sexual aggression risk” but “A motivation to learn about others’ sexual expectations from pornography was unrelated to sexual aggression.” Thus, they did not find a correlation between merely watching porn and aggression (that correlation they found to be zero). Rather, they found a correlation between certain beliefs about porn and aggression. And they did not determine the causal direction of that correlation.

The Wright-Tokunaga study found the same: “associations between men’s exposure to objectifying media and attitudes supportive of violence against women were MEDIATED BY their notions of women as sex objects.” In other words, sexists consume porn and treat women poorly. Non-sexists consume porn and don’t treat women poorly. The mediating variable there is not porn. Indeed, their study wasn’t even of porn, but “exposure to men’s lifestyle magazines that objectify women, reality TV programs that objectify women, AND pornography.” So they found sexist men like that stuff. They did not find that stuff causes men to be sexists.

The Wright-Herbenick-Tokunaga study did the same thing: it only found a correlation between porn and aggression when the subject holds “the belief that sexual choking is pleasurable, the belief that sexual choking is safe, AND the disbelief that sexual choking requires consent from the person being choked.” In other words, these people already disbelieve in consent. There is no causality being claimed here, much less demonstrated.

You need to be more careful in how you use sources to form beliefs. You didn’t check what these studies even show. You just cited them in the false belief that they show causation between porn consumption and aggression. None of them even claim to show correlation between porn consumption and aggression. They all show only correlation between the combination of porn consumption and sexist beliefs, and aggression; and none show any causal direction.

Given that there is no general correlation (as one of these studies even showed), and none societally, the probability is that what they are observing are sexist men having a higher tendency to consume violent porn and engage in violent sex; not sexist men being caused by porn to do that.

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By: Aryan https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16510#comment-37101 Tue, 30 Jan 2024 22:49:32 +0000 https://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=16510#comment-37101 In reply to Richard Carrier.

Hey you asked me to refer studies support my statement that porn increases risk of perpetrating sexual assault. Here they are:
1)https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10410236.2021.1991641
2) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33625313/
3) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26585169/
I believe this will suffice.

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By: Richard Carrier https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16510#comment-37086 Sun, 28 Jan 2024 23:18:14 +0000 https://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=16510#comment-37086 In reply to Aryan.

Aryan, your statement makes no coherent sense. Those are outcome-identical statements mathematically.

Rather than try to ramble up some abstract pseudological statement like that, why not stick to empirical facts: can you cite any peer reviewed study of any kind that argues for anything you just said?

If yes, point me to it, and explain how it demonstrates something you intended to communicate by that otherwise nonsensical utterance.

If no, then you have no point to make.

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