Delphin wrote:I found something in my social psychology book (Brehm & Kassin: Social Psychology, 3rd ed.), but it's really old.

Apparently there is a difference between non-violent and violent pornography.

Non-violent pornography

Brehm & Kassin wrote:After seeing [non-violent] pornography, participants who had been exposed to a large number of pornographic films were less aggressive than control participants in response to provocation by a same-sex confederate. That's the good news.
But now here's the bad news. In the second follow-up session, participants read about a rape trial; they also expressed their opinion of the women's liberation movement. Those who had previously been exposed to a large number of pornographic films recommended a lighter sentence for the rapist and indicated less support for the women's liberation movement than did control participants. These results were obtained for both male and female participants. In addition, men who had been exposed to the large amount of pornography reported more negative attitudes toward women than did the other participants. Once again, we see that habituation effects both arousal and attitudes. Prior exposure to large amounts of pornography can reduce arousal-based aggression but increase the risk of insensitive attitudes that could promote acceptance of future aggression [(Zillmann & Bryant, 1984)].

Problems:

1. The conclusion presupposed that the porn-watchers' recommendation for the rapist's sentence was wrong, and the non-porn-watchers was right. (ie, whatever is different in the minds of those who have watched the porn is a morally bad departure from the "normal" minds of those who haven't, and who can thus be presumed to make morally correct decisions). How can we possibly know this, without being told the details of the rape trial and what sentence the two groups of people recommended?

2. "Negative attitudes towards the women's movement" means nothing without telling us what those attitudes were, and which particular areas of the women's movement they were directed towards. Again, the study seems to start with the presumption that absolutely everything about "the women's movement" is good and right (which is not just philosophically dubious but logically impossible, given that that "movement" contains within itself a large number of conflicting voices holding incompatible opinions). It then draws the conclusion that any departure from that judgment of absolute rightness is a degree of wrong.

3. The conclusion that these dubiously measured "insensitive attitudes" could "promote acceptance of future aggression" is entirely theoretical. As always, in lieu of any empirical evidence, once could just as easily claim that for the men who had watched porn, speaking bluntly about the fact that they don't like Andrea Dworkin was the expression of aggression itself, and they would have less need, not more, to take their sexual assertiveness any further.

Well, this was a wrap-up from a text book that came into my mind, when I read this thread. I cannot really say anything about the design of the studies without having read them. But I don't think they are saying that

1. The conclusion presupposed that the porn-watchers' recommendation for the rapist's sentence was wrong, and the non-porn-watchers was right.

I think they are just saying that watching non-violent porn doesn't make more aggressive but changes the attitude of people, such as to recommend a lighter sentence for a rapist when compared to people who didn't watch porn. But they are not making a judgment which sentence was more appropriate. Whereas violent porn does seem to increase male-to-female aggression. So when looking at the results of other studies and whether they find an increase or decrease of aggression, it might be important to consider the kind of porn that was shown.

The studies done in that book suffer from the same problems as those still done today, they are conducted in quite an unnatural setting, and their is no evidence that these feelings supposedly engendered by watching porn in any way carry into the subjects life outside of the lab trials.

crank wrote:I fail to see how I read Mr. Samsa's post incorrectly. Can either of you point out how? It implies that expressing an emotion reinforces that emotion, I countered that the exact opposite happens when one masturbates. Then I hear, no you are misreading it, it is deeper, it reinforces the desire for that behaviour overall, long term, is that it?

Yes that's basically it, the law of effect (behavior that is followed by a 'pleasant' consequence is more likely to occur again in the future). Especially troublesome when combined with certain cues such as violent pornography, although that link is more tenuous and speculative.

crank wrote:And there is an analogy made to anger, well, WTF, really, so anger and sexual desire are similar? I must be a real freak, then.

I don't understand? Emotions are qualitatively dissimilar yes, but the process of learning is the same for all behaviors - different emotions don't have different effects on our underlying learning processes. Plus, it was an analogy, the fact that it was imperfect sort of comes along with the fact that it was an analogy.

crank wrote:Now, as to masturbation increasing desire, how strong an effect is that, really? The sex drive is a very deep, primal urge, can it really be substantially increased by masturbation?

The sex "drive" is a deep primal urge? Ignoring the issue of drive theory (a defunct theory discarded about a century ago that suggested that certain 'drives' direct our behavior toward certain goals) why is sex more primal than anger? Yes, the whole selfish gene, evolution thing is reliant on organisms that reproduce - sure, I can accept that. But the evolution of sexual arousal is not "more evolved" than anger, happiness or sadness. All emotions have an adaptive function (or we can assume that for now, without getting into an adpationist/spandrel debate) so I don't see why we'd see sexual arousal as more important or deeper/primal than any other emotion.

Eating is a "primal urge" too but we can increase and decrease that to significant levels by manipulating the antecedents and consequences of people's behavior.

crank wrote:This idea "Performing those behaviors consistently won't reduce the behaviors because they are reinforced by the very act, thus actually increasing the behaviors. ", how well is that supported in the literature, and I mean literature on sex drive, not anger?

And as I stated above, the whole field of behavioral psychology which describes the basic processes by which humans learn is consistent with this idea.

crank wrote:And, this whole topic is about sex crimes, something that occurs now, not over time. Right now, if I masturbate, you guys are implying that makes me more likely to go and commit a sex crime, again, I say daft. If one is getting a sexual urge, the idea that masturbation will increase that urge, I would require heaps of very good data before I would believe that. Maybe masturbation has an increased desire overall(I don't believe it will be substantial), but overall ain't right now, show me real world data, not students watching videos and filling out forms.

I didn't say that masturbation will turn you into a sexual deviant, just that masturbation won't decrease your sexual arousal over time.

Beatsong wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:
No, the claim is sort of at a different level than what you're thinking. Whether consistent masturbation provides relief, or whether going to the gym to take your anger out on the punching bag calms you down or not, is besides the point. The argument is that if you masturbate a lot or take your anger a lot then you will desire sex less or get angry less. And this simply isn't the case. Performing those behaviors consistently won't reduce the behaviors because they are reinforced by the very act, thus actually increasing the behaviors.

But all you're showing here is that having a wank won't make you wank less. Not any effect that it may or may not have on your likelihood to commit a sex crime.

Of course, because that wasn't my claim.

Beatsong wrote:There are several levels of crossed wires here I think. But I have to agree with crank that it's a pretty straightforward bet that someone who has masturbated to orgasm within, say, the last 24 hours, is less likely to commit a sex crime - all else being equal - than somebody who has had no sexual release of any kind for a year.

Hmm.. but this all assumes that pornography and masturbation are even a causative factor in all this, and I don't think they are.

Beatsong wrote:No one is claiming that sexual release is permanent, or even cumulative. But as long as one gets a continuous enough supply of it - in whatever form one gets - that doesn't really matter.

But then another of the crossed wires is that masturbation doesn't equal pornography. The question of the effect of masturbation on sex crime levels is different from the question of the effect of pornography (particularly violent pornography) on sex crime levels.

I agree.

Beatsong wrote:But while I admit I haven't read the OP's link yet, I can well imagine that there could be some connection between religious condemnation of masturbation as a sin, and sex crime levels. Just look at the Catholic church FFS.

Potentially, but I don't think masturbation is the problem, it would be the psychological abuse etc that would cause the sex crimes in that situation. (Plus, I think the Catholic Church is a bad example as Catholics are encouragedto fuck as much as they like as long as they don't wear a condom. Catholic priests however would suffer the problem you're talking about though).

Beatsong wrote:
I don't quite get how your answer relates to the question, but we have to consider that the progression repressed anger > violent crime is not the same as the progression repressed sex urge > sex crime.

Well that wasn't really my argument, I was simply pointing out that I don't think someone who doesn't masturbate is more likely to commit a sex crime because of some "primal urge" to have sex. This does not mean that the reverse is automatically true - that those who masturbate more are more likely. It just means that I don't think they are less likely.

Beatsong wrote:Most people tend to get angry about certain things, and if those things can be dealt with in a more constructive way than violence then there is no need for them to commit violence. It's only a minority of individuals who are said to have various kinds of "anger problems", that lead them to seek out or be unable to resist the urge for violence in itself.

By contrast, virtually everyone has a sex urge, and there is no way to satisfy that urge except by some kind of sexual act. Telling someone to go and "ponder" what's causing their sex urge for a week is not the same - and not as wise - as telling them to go and ponder what might be making them angry. The urge is more innately physical by nature and not as subject to intellectual abstraction.

Not so. Both sexual arousal and anger are innate emotions, but they are both shaped and caused by environmental factors. The sexual arousal you feel when you see a pretty lady or a hunky dude walking down the street is not this purely innate reaction, it's the result of decades of learning and shaping through environmental events.

So whilst it's true that going home and thinking about your sexual arousal probably won't be all that useful (since the arousal was likely caused by those thoughts in the first place), it's certainly not true that the only way to reduce the sexual arousal is by some kind of sexual act. Go home and forget about it, the urge will go away just like anger fades, sadness fades, happiness, etc etc.

Beatsong wrote:Then there's the fact that while the urge itself doesn't imply anything to do with anger, the sheer fact of repressing it for long enough may well do, and bring with it feelings of resentment, entitlement etc that contribute to it being expressed through crime, that simply wouldn't have been there if it could be expressed as freely as necessary, as often as necessary.

But that argument requires you to demonstrate that 'repression' can produce feelings of 'resentment' and 'entitlement', and then that these feelings can lead to crime, and then demonstrate that this leads to more sexual crime than 'not repressing' it. If a kid has had it drilled into him that masturbation is bad, god will make him burst into flames if he does it, that razor blades fire out of your dick etc etc which prevents him from masturbating, and he then goes on to commit a sexual crime - are we really going to try to say that he committed the crime because he didn't have an "outlet" for masturbation?

Of course not. The obvious cause of the crime in that scenario would be the shit childhood he had.

Just to be clear; I haven't suggested that partaking in pornography or masturbation will result in you committing a sex crime. I have just been trying to counter the point that not partaking in pornography or masturbation will result in you committing a sex crime. The negation of one does not mean an automatic acceptance of the other.

There does seem to be a few people here equating rape with sexual frustration.

Personally I can't imagine any amount of sexual frustration would leading me to find the idea of rape exciting.

I have heard many times the soundbite "rape is not about sex, it's about power". Is that just a vacuous cliche, or is there any substance to it?

virphen wrote:There does seem to be a few people here equating rape with sexual frustration.

Personally I can't imagine any amount of sexual frustration would leading me to find the idea of rape exciting.

I have heard many times the soundbite "rape is not about sex, it's about power". Is that just a vacuous cliche, or is there any substance to it?

I read about the evidence behind this a few years ago but unfortunately I can't remember where or exact details so the following is basically opinion.

The claim that rape is not about sex but power was basically a battle cry of the feminists, and has little evidence behind it in the literature. (Some authors even go as far to suggest that all sex between a man and a woman is rape due to the "power inequalities" etc.) Basically, it's true that rape is not always just about sex but for the most part sex is the prime objective - evidenced by the fact that a number of rapists or 'sexual criminals' weren't aware that they had done anything wrong.

If I had more time I'd try to find actual data to back up my points here, but I remember reading an article about a survey done on college students somewhere where they were asked a series of questions - one of them asked something along the lines of whether they had had sex with someone that wasn't consensual, and then another question asked whether they had ever committed a sexual crime. The response to the first question was something like 30% Yes, and the response to the second question was around 5% Yes. So even though they had basically admitted to committing a sex crime in the first question (which was a rewording of the actual definition of sex crime), only a small percentage saw what they did as a crime.

Whilst that obviously doesn't prove that rape isn't all about power, I think realistically it does suggest that they were just trying to get their end away and didn't even realise they committed a crime, rather than them trying to exert their power or dominance.

Mr.Samsa wrote:If I had more time I'd try to find actual data to back up my points here, but I remember reading an article about a survey done on college students somewhere where they were asked a series of questions - one of them asked something along the lines of whether they had had sex with someone that wasn't consensual, and then another question asked whether they had ever committed a sexual crime. The response to the first question was something like 30% Yes, and the response to the second question was around 5% Yes. So even though they had basically admitted to committing a sex crime in the first question (which was a rewording of the actual definition of sex crime), only a small percentage saw what they did as a crime.

I'm familiar with surveys like that, but they've all placed the number of rapists at much lower than 30%. 30% is much closer to (though still slighly above, and I believe there's a downward secular trend) the percentage of women who report being raped (again, without using that language.) It's a small minority of men who commit all the rapes.

I don't see any sort of suggestion here that rape is not about power. Suppose your hypothesis was that Hitler murdered the Jews because he hated them. And suppose also that Hitler didn't see anything wrong with what he did. This has nothing to do with his actual motivations! The fact that rapists don't see themselves as doing anything wrong shows either that they're sociopaths or that rape is normalized in our culture.

Matthias Wasser wrote:I'm familiar with surveys like that, but they've all placed the number of rapists at much lower than 30%. 30% is much closer to (though still slighly above, and I believe there's a downward secular trend) the percentage of women who report being raped (again, without using that language.) It's a small minority of men who commit all the rapes.

Sorry I should have made it more clear that I was just pulling those figures out of thin air. My point was just to demonstrate that I remember there was a discrepancy in responses, rather than actually trying to show that 30% of males were rapists (which is ridiculous) - my apologies.

Matthias Wasser wrote:I don't see any sort of suggestion here that rape is not about power. Suppose your hypothesis was that Hitler murdered the Jews because he hated them. And suppose also that Hitler didn't see anything wrong with what he did. This has nothing to do with his actual motivations! The fact that rapists don't see themselves as doing anything wrong shows either that they're sociopaths or that rape is normalized in our culture.

I see what you're saying, but I don't think your analogy is entirely correct. The idea of rape being about power argues that sex is basically an irrelevant factor, and that it is only used because it is an effective way of asserting your power. So we're in a position where we can interpret this idea in two ways; 1) we're talking about some psychoanalytic theory where even though guys think they're having sex, they're actually acting out deep feelings of aggression and a lust for power, which is a bullshit explanation, or 2) we're talking about people who aren't looking for sex but who are going out to assault people and exert their power over them, in which case we wouldn't expect them to confuse sex with dominance since they are separate concepts (as defined by the power theory of rape).

Since option 1 is about as useful as trying to cure cancer with homeopathy, we have to take the position of option 2 where, whilst certainly not proof, the example I gave in my post above is evidence against the idea of power theory.

Mr.Samsa wrote:I see what you're saying, but I don't think your analogy is entirely correct. The idea of rape being about power argues that sex is basically an irrelevant factor, and that it is only used because it is an effective way of asserting your power. So we're in a position where [...] we're talking about people who aren't looking for sex but who are going out to assault people and exert their power over them, in which case we wouldn't expect them to confuse sex with dominance since they are separate concepts (as defined by the power theory of rape).

I wouldn't say the rapists are confused. Under the power theory, domination and sex are different concepts, yes, but the latter is used as an instrument to express the former. Obviously it's impossible to exert power without exerting it through something. And as far as means of expressing that brutality go, rape isn't a bad one, when it takes place under the same conditions that a consensual encounter might, because you're left with plausibility.

Federico wrote:
Absolutely not. Pedophilia is an incurable mental disease, and exposing pedophiles to child pornography would only arouse them. The only treatment for this paraphilia is castration, surgical or chemical.

Actually, I was discussing this kind of thing with my wife (social worker) the other day and she mentioned to me that as more data becomes available from states that practice chemical castration, that castration is not a "cure," as the perpetrator will continue to sexually abuse children in other ways (i.e. with fingers or implements) because the obsessive behavior seems to be tied to committing the act whether or not any personal sexual gratification is attained. I'll ask her for references to the data on this.