the pros & cons of CENSORSHIP

[Thorngrub]

sisyphus said:

Censorship is a fascinating issue, and when it comes down to it I think our viewpoints often seem to reflect how much we trust ourselves and the rest of humanity. I think censorship definitely speaks to something larger; human morality and intelligence. If our society is to evolve, I think there most likely has to a gradual sort of adjustment to various freedoms. I suppose debate naturally fuels this process.

Anyway, I think that the more freedom we allow ourselves, the more responsible we need to be for ourselves in order to cope with and handle that freedom; the more educated we need to be. Basically, we if we opened all the floodgates at once (anarchy), we might regret it because most likely everyone is not socially responsible enough to handle it. However, if we open the nozzle one step at a time, adjusting at an even pace, perhaps we'll eventually create a better society wherein victimization of our fellows in the forms of rape and child abuse, et cetera, does not even arouse or tempt anyone.

For example, 18 is currently the line that separates adults from adolescents. That seems kind of arbitrary and ridiculous. What if a 19 year old and a 17 year old who had plenty of sex-ed and knew how to avoid basic pitfalls (i.e.pregnancy, std's, ...) were to have a mutually consenting sexual relationship? Would the older of the two be carted of to jail? (Hopefully nobody would bother bringing such a case to court...) Still, maybe the law has been necessary. Perhaps we still have to protect ourselves from all the sexually repressed predators romping around, and, fumbling as it is, this law is all we've got. And perhaps it's time to tweak the law a bit so it makes more sense. One step at a time.

In an ideal world predatory behavior wouldn't be a problem. Adults would not feel the need to take advantage of children. Maturation levels would be more organically understood. Children could be more encouraged to ask questions and explore their own sexuality openly.

So back to censorship.... Hopefully we'll see less and less of it as the years go by. Hopefully we can consider it objectively and intelligently, rather than being blindly consumed by a morality that some religion might dictate. Let's learn where morals come from, on a humanistic scale. But let's take it one step at a time. Let's continue to study the relationships between thought and action without an agenda one way or the other, so that we don't get caught in a dialectic wherein we simply find what we're looking for. Let's be honest with ourselves...do more case studies...educate ourselves about ourselves.


If there's any place we need to fight against censorship it's education. I have an acquaintance who recently taught a workshop on sex-ed and aids. Due to censorship laws she was not allowed to use words like "penis," "penetration," "anal," et cetera, unless one of her 17 year old students used the term first. So instead of getting the truth, kids might instead have to turn to economically driven porn sites to figure things out. I think we need to bring everything out in the open and deal with it one step at a time. But we're on a pendulum, so for every positive move toward freedom we have to be prepared to accept negative repercussions.

I'd rather see prostitution legalized and regulated than run underground where prostitutes are far more likely to be victimized and drug addicted.

[sisyphus]

in that case i'll repost this:





www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/index.html

[chrisfan]

My gut instinct says that the chart is an example of taking two statistics and melding them together to find a correlation when none exists. It's like the claim that crime rates went down when abortion was legalized, therefore it's criminals who are being aborted. Since there's really not a cause and effect identifed to draw a connection between pornography and rape, I tend to believe the statistic is more coincedence than it is a true reflection on what the effects of making hard core porn widely available really are.

That said, I'd be curious to know how the line on that chart moves past 1969. Did it continue goind down?

[Proud]

Here are a couple things I'd be in favor of:

- Sticking a dagger in the butt-ugly (although we're obliged to say it's beautiful...) throat of political correctness.

- Revamping our education system so that honest sex-ed is available bright and early and with the correct prospective: Abstinence may be the way to go if you don't know what the fuck you're doing, but chances are you aren't going to stay abstinent, so... here's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Here's how our culture's fucked up: And here's how you can avoid fucking up in the future. And if you do fuck up... here's what you can do about it.


In short: The 2000s truly are the bizarro 50s. Both cultures were terrible: But can you figure out how they're entirely different?

_{The Fear Mentality (censorship and our current political state) + Watered Down and Staled Everything (PC) = The World of Today, and, Unfortunately, The World of Tomorrow}

[sisyphus]

chrisfan said:

My gut instinct says that the chart is an example of taking two statistics and melding them together to find a correlation when none exists. It's like the claim that crime rates went down when abortion was legalized, therefore it's criminals who are being aborted. Since there's really not a cause and effect identifed to draw a connection between pornography and rape, I tend to believe the statistic is more coincedence than it is a true reflection on what the effects of making hard core porn widely available really are.

That said, I'd be curious to know how the line on that chart moves past 1969. Did it continue goind down?

I'm not wholly convinced by it either, Chrisfan, but I thought it was worthy of note. I think we could at least consider the possibility that they're related and investigate further.

As for the claim that crime went down after abortion was legalized, from what I read in Freakanomics it seemed to make sense... I don't think it means all aborted babies would have been rapists or something, but rather by allowing people to abort unwanted babies economic situations were less dire, and therefore the number of violent crimes went down.

[sisyphus]

209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:GEvL2mcAQukJ:www.aic.gov.au/publications/proceedings/14/kutchinsky.pdf+numbers+of+sex+crimes+in+copenhagen+hard-core+pornography&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a

^Chrisfan, the above is an interesting article that seems to make a lot of sense..

www.google.com/search?q=numbers+of+sex+crimes+in+copenhagen+hard-core+pornography&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

^that's the link to the google search... it's the first option if you prefer pdf.

"The aggregate data on rape and other violent or sexual offences from four countries where
pornography, including aggressive varieties, has become widely and easily available during
the period we have dealt with would seem to exclude, beyond any reasonable doubt, that
this availability has had any detrimental effects in the form of increased sexual violence. The
data from West Germany is striking since here, the only increase in sexual violence takes
place in the form which includes the least serious forms of sexual coercion and where there
may have been increases in reporting frequency. As far as the other forms of sexual violence
are concerned, the remarkable fact is that they decreased

the more so, the more serious
the offence.
This finding is not so strange. Most other research data we have about pornography
and rape suggest that the link between them is more than weak. Our knowledge about the
contents, the uses and the users of pornography suggests that pornography does not
represent a blueprint for rape, but is essentially an aphrodisiac, that is, food for the sexual
fantasy of persons

mostly males

who like to masturbate.
The policy implications of this conclusion are, of course open to debate. But as
mentioned earlier, the mainstream attitude would seem to be a combination of two
movements:
to reduce the area of total prohibition and censorship to a minimum; and
to implement a variety of restrictions, suitable to each form of pornography, in
order to obtain maximum protection of children, and of adults who want no
confrontation with the material."

[Dwazee]

As for the claim that crime went down after abortion was legalized, from what I read in Freakanomics it seemed to make sense... I don't think it means all aborted babies would have been rapists or something, but rather by allowing people to abort unwanted babies economic situations were less dire, and therefore the number of violent crimes went down.

i read freakanomics too--it was really interesting but made a lot of sense once you thought about it. i also liked the analysis on the drug dealing too.

i dont really like the idea of censorship...i mean, if you say a little bit is okay, who is it that is allowed to decide? how do we know that the decision they make is the best without ulterior motives? it gets v sticky v quickly. im not sure....i hate to give racists and such a forum, but at the same time, i feel like cutting away is a slippery slope. hate speech...what is hate speech? obviously wishing death or bad things to someone on basis of race/gender/whatever...but beyond that, where do you draw the line? there are a lot of moral questions involved, and not everyone has the same moral code.

[upinkzeppelin2]

"Hate speech" as well as "Hate Crimes" are the first step towards an Orwellian Government. Prosecuting based on what you were thinking when you did it rather than simply what you did will lead us to Orwell's 1984. Just give it time. The only time they (a person's thoughts when they chose to murder someone else) should come into play is in deciding on attempted murder charges whether or not there was an intent to kill. This whole, "but did they do it because they were black," or "did they do it because they were gay," or "did they do it because they wore an Auburn University shirt" foolishness is nothing short of, well, Orwellian. Caaaaaareful when starting down the road of prosecuting thoughts. "Thought crimes" anyone? But forgive me for that little rant because it has nothing to do with the subject of this board.

There is no way that what I just said about Hate Crimes could possibly contradict anything I wrote on the Movie Board. But my condemnation of labeling any kind of speech as "Hate speech" could possibly contradict something I've written in the last week, so I'll address that point. What the media refers to as "hate speech" is pretty much censored already. When the blonde mullet bounty hunter lost his whole career the other day because of his son selling him out to the media for using the N word, the tape was played of the speech he gave his son all over the news. The N word was bleeped out and they wouldn't even write it on the screen. Which is ok I guess since we all know what he said.

But my real concern with hate speech is the kneejerk homosexual rights organizations (GLAAD is the only one I can think of, forgive me) who bully people for everything from speech (that NBA player I can't remember the name of) to commercials (Snickers, during the Superbowl, which was hilarious), branding people as "homophobic" left and right, demanding apologies. This is where I see the words "hate speech" used the most, so I don't think it's far off to consider the term "hate speech" a destructive tool in the hands of politically correct organizations.

[upinkzeppelin2]

I should add that when Snickers backed down and made a public apology I decided I would never eat another Snickers bar. But then I thought to myself how utterly ruined they would be as a company if they didn't make a public apology and I understood. Don't f#@* with the Thought Police!!

[shin]

You know what the irony is, though? The *actual* definition of a hate crime is when you commit a crime against someone in order to intimidate the group at large. You don't just chain Matthew Shepherd to a fence because he's gay, you do it because you want everyone who passes by to know what happens when you come onto another man at a bar. In a sense, it's a form of social terrorism. Or, to use a term you used, "bullying".

So to recap, when Snickers demands an apology for making an ad that may or may not be homophobic, that's just downright Orwellian to you. But when people commit violent crimes with the intent to terrorize, that's to be defended at all costs.

Sorta like how Saw gave you nightmares, even though you haven't seen it, but you adore the most sadistic movie ever made, The Passion of the Christ, maybe.

[luke]

Personally, I found the Snickers ad highly homophobic, really stupid, and not funny at all. And I'm not the kind of guy with knee-jerk reactions to this kind of thing. But I do respect that since the puritanical Super Bowl police flip out at anything even remotely sexual, the next best option was to gay bash. Thank God for Prince's giant purple penis guitar.

And there's a huge difference between prosecuting thoughts and interpreting intent. Yes, I do think that the hate crime thing goes too far or not far enough at times, but to say that there's not a difference is just silliness.

[sisyphus]

shin said:

You know what the irony is, though? The *actual* definition of a hate crime is when you commit a crime against someone in order to intimidate the group at large. You don't just chain Matthew Shepherd to a fence because he's gay, you do it because you want everyone who passes by to know what happens when you come onto another man at a bar. In a sense, it's a form of social terrorism. Or, to use a term you used, "bullying".

So to recap, when Snickers demands an apology for making an ad that may or may not be homophobic, that's just downright Orwellian to you. But when people commit violent crimes with the intent to terrorize, that's to be defended at all costs.

Sorta like how Saw gave you nightmares, even though you haven't seen it, but you adore the most sadistic movie ever made, The Passion of the Christ, maybe.

The Passion (mel gibson's) is the most fucked up movie i've ever seen in my life. I was dragged there against my better judgment. The Last Temptation of Christ is the real gem.... amazingly brilliant ending.

[Proud]

*sets up a camera*
*whips Jesus for 3 1/2 hours*

*turns off camera*

And there ya go: One Passion of the Christ, comin' right on up...

[Thorngrub]

*Would you like that Supersized?*

[sisyphus]

heheh