09 June 2007

Yuck

The latest exhibit of a sick society:

"Courts have seen the number of sex offense cases involving juvenile offenders rise dramatically in recent years, an Associated Press review of national statistics found, and treatment professionals say the offenders are getting younger and the crimes more violent."

There's more of them, and they're committing ever-more heinous crimes. Like o.a.g. says, it's not your imagination; things are, in fact, getting worse. Wonder where they're getting their inspiration? Could it be related to the increased prevalence of, and increased violence in, pornography?

This nutjob doesn't think so; indeed, he sees pornography as a safety valve against rape and other forms of sexual assault. Relying on the vile intellectual foundation that all men are inherently predisposed to rape women, he suggests that: "The incidence of rape in the United States has declined 85% in the past 25 years while access to pornography has become freely available to teenagers and adults." This is what we, in the academic community, heuristically refer to as "bullshit."

Fact: the FBI reports that the number of "forcible rapes" (is there any other kind?) has increased in the past 20 years by almost 3% Unless men raped nearly a million women in the United States in 1982 (and who knows, maybe they did, but that number would be off the charts compared to all other years in the FBI's numbers), there is no way that his number can be accurate.

Fact: less than 1-in-5 (19%) of women who have been sexually assaulted by men report the crime against their person to the police. And yes, it is men who are doing it, overwhelmingly: the US government reports: "Most perpetrators of sexual violence are men. Among acts of SV committed against women since the age of 18, 100% of rapes, 92% of physical assaults, and 97% of stalking acts were perpetrated by men."

With these two facts alone, it is incomprehensible how one can arrive at the conclusion that rape has practically vanished since 1982. Given that the proliferation of porn has resulted in a global value that exceeds that of the Hollywood film industry, how this individual can say that porn acts as a cathartic release for men to stop them from raping defies all reason. My guess: he's a porn addict looking to create a false pretense so that he can feel better about himself and his use of sexual exploitation of women for his own gratification.

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