Hacker News Reader

Comment by elestor | Hacker News Reader

I'd say it makes a lot of sense. It likely encourages pedophilia, meaning people that consume such things will often adopt a wrong idea of what's okay. It's similar to the way that regular porn affects the brain. I understand where you're coming from, though and I get your point, but I feel if someone consumes a lot of media of a certain type, they begin to 'embody' that media.

Just don't goon.

View on HN

Ah, yes, the gateway drug trope. Always a good one for asserting control indirectly. Inevitably results in increased profits for the purveyors of the gateway drug and no reduction in demand or consumption. Prosecutors and jailors get richer too. Follow the money.

Ah yes, the gateway drug straw man. Poster didn't say it causes that consequence, just that it normalises it. Just like video games normalise violence, gay porn normalises being gay etc. Doesn't mean it should be banned, but it does shift the winds about what is acceptable. And that is a worthy discussion when it comes to images of child exploitation.

Normalizes vs causes is a vacuous distinction here, and both of your examples deserve some proof that there's any difference

What's to explain? Seeing gay porn doesn't increase the number of gay people but can let gay people feel less abnormal. If cause equaled normalisation they would be synonymous.

> meaning people that consume such things will often adopt a wrong idea of what's okay.

I've been reading "illegal" manga for 20 years. I've never once thought that these acts would be okay to do in real life.

Same when I read the 1906 novel Josephine Mutzenbacher.

> It likely encourages pedophilia

It's like saying that pictures of gay people encourages homosexuality

Or saying playing violent video games makes you violent, which sounds familiar...

I like this parallel. No joke intended.

Of course pictures of gay people doesn't encourage being gay, but being gay is fine. Being a pedophile is not fine. If there is even a small chance that something will cause someone to be a pedophile, it's best to minimize it. We aren't talking about pictures of pedophiles, we are talking about what is, in essence, child pornography. Maybe 'encourages pedophilia' is not a thorough enough way to phrase it, but a 'dormant' pedophile is much more likely to become an 'active' one if they are consuming excessive amounts of media related to their interests.

> Being a pedophile is not fine.

You're not equating pedophilia with child abuse, are you? Because having an attraction to children (pedophilia) isn't in itself a crime.

> If there is even a small chance that something will cause someone to be a pedophile, it's best to minimize it.

I have this great idea. It involves clothes that completely cover up the people that could cause temptation, creating separate spaces for them, and so.

I am not sure there is evidence that this is the case. The argument sounds a lot like those made by conservatives against gay people. Somehow, in their view, homosexuality is also just a first step towards “anything goes”, including incest, pedophilia, even bestiality. Porn, in this view, should increase rape, right? But that’s absolutely not the case. People seem to calm down if they can satisfy themselves with just watching it on a screen, even if it’s not real, as in cartoons or AI generated content. Would you change your opinion if evidence pointed to this being the case, or so you have other motives for still thinking even cartoons should be made illegal if depicting such content?

> Porn, in this view, should increase rape, right? But that’s absolutely not the case.

What evidence do you have that it absolutely doesn't? How would you even scientifically prove this? There are a whole lot of factors that contribute to rape or rape prevention.

Does modern sexual objectification and gratification increase the likelyhood that men will seek to actualize their fantasies? I believe it does.

From my own experience growing up watching porn from around 11-12 years of age and being an incel, when I was 21 I finally took things into my own hands and went to prostitutes to try and recreate those porn movies I was watching. I did not rape anyone but because of porn I learned that sex should be aggresive, that women respond "positively" to aggresive sex. I was sexually aggresive with the escorts I frequented, because of porn.

Over the span of 10+ years of doing this I even noticed shifts in sensibilities of escorts. Like young escorts these days by default gag when doing oral because this is what the market required in the past how many years but wasn't so common 10+ years ago.

For the record, in my experience, not even most escorts actually ENJOY aggressive sex. You would think they get used to it but trust me they don't. Aggressive sex is a perversion and I say this from experience not dogma.

> What evidence do you have that it absolutely doesn't?

I think it’s very obvious when looking at the last 20 years. Porn availability increased ridiculously since around 2000 due to internet becoming widespread. But look at statistics on rape in most countries and you see its decreasing in the large majority. Does that not convince you that at least there seems to be no causation??

Surveillance has also increased, fear of not getting away with it is higher. Also society has been militant about this issue more with "believe all women" etc. Maybe men invest more in video games and relieve their aggression that way without risking prison. I don't know, I am no sociologist but again, there are too many variables to prove any sort of causation.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/283100/recorded-rape-off...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1464272/reported-sexual-...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1418831/sexual-offences-...

I realise I respond to a stupid argument. I'm just annoyed.

You cherry picked a few outliers. Here’s a chart showing many countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rape_in_the_Unite...

It’s clearly going down in most places, including the USA.

I googled my country, the USA, and the two European countries I have most experience of. I didn't cherry pick anything, I just stopped.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible...

I don't know what to tell you, except to say the messiness of the data goes to underline how poorly sourced your claim is.

Exactly, people will watch porn videos of girls being choked or whatever, will be with a girl and assume she will like being choked. Not okay at all.

> It likely encourages pedophilia

Throught the same mechanism that violent games encourage violence, I presume?

Porn became abundant over last two decades and somehow people are having less sex than ever. There are many clues that those kinds of things work in the completely opposite way than you imagine.

I hate that it exists. I hate that there are people who are seeking this. But I also hate when people state confidently things that might be completely wrong and write laws accordingly.

> Porn became abundant over last two decades and somehow people are having less sex than ever.

That sounds like an actual negative effect, if there is actually causation. But I'd argue social media has overall a much more general influence by putting our whole lives into a panopticon. It is very hard to escape its reach even if one is not a social media user.

I know what you mean, but do you not agree that if someone is, let's say, on the point of becoming a pedophile, discovers such media, it will become more and more of what they think about, and what one thinks about determines their actions.

I don’t think there is any evidence that there is a state meaningfully denoted by “on the point of becoming a pedophile” which can be tipped by exposure to media in that way, no.

To be fair, understanding of the etiology of pedophilia is not super strong, but what there is doesn't, AFAIK, seem to support the kind of naive media-driven modelling that people like to apply to all kinds of behavior (Satanic Panic approach to D&D, Columbine and violent video games, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum, ad infinitum.)

That's easily concievable scenario. Which doesn't make it true or overwhelmingly significant to the bottom line. Many untrue things are equally easy to imagine.

What about a scenario where a person that could be satisfied by such materials in absence of them discovers actual children and hurts them?

Many men, who don't have luck with women, lust for women, but very few actually go out and hurt them. For each one that develops violent tendencies through pornography there are probably many that have their violent tendencies kept in the realms of fantasy thanks to pornography (and awareness of laws that punish actual violence).

My point is that it's too important subject to rely on just guesswork. There should be research into this because there's a huge potential for eyeballed solutions to actually hurt the vulnerable more than they help.

> will often adopt a wrong idea of what's okay

I wonder who gets to decide what's okay.

Basic morality and human rights

How is it moral to claim "Murdering people (in fiction) is fine," then?

From a universal perspective, there is no such thing as "basic morality". Only what the most recent cultural norms of the largest (or strongest) group of people say.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com