On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Surabhi Tomar <[email protected]> wrote: > Isn't rape nearly all about power and very little about the sexual > >> act? Stopping or showing of porn is unlikely to deter a rapist. >> >> http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/3925/myths.html >> >> > The link says nothing about porn.
What I mean is - if rape is about power, then the problem isn't in showing porn or not showing it. We might as well allow it - because the rapist isn't going to stop for lack of porn, he will want the power that his act does. It's in the desire for power, which probably has much more to do with our violent TV/movies, our violent cartoons (Chota Bheem! and also Tom and Jerry) our violent Arnabs, our cops slapping people, parents beating kids, people getting away despite their obvious violence (like that phenomenal Hindu ad about parliamentary behaviour) etc. > Also, I don't think reasons for rape are the same in a country where there > is too much pressure to have sex vs a country there is a lot of pressure > not to have sex. Will be interesting to compare the actual statistics (not > just the ones that are reported) of rape per 1000 men from US and India. How can you compare statistics of something that hasn't been reported? Or do you mean reported as in FIR'ed? I would love to see the results or methodology of such a study. From my anecdotal surveys, nearly all women I've met (except a generation up, where I'm scared to ask) women in India have faced molestation by both strangers and people they knew. And it was much scarier when it was people they knew. But I don't know about formal surveys here. > Will also be interesting to see if the incidence of rape has gone up in the > last few decades, now that there are SO few women per 1000 men. Sex trade > has definitely gone up. Buying and selling of brides is now commonplace in > Haryana, UP etc. This is interesting. From 1991 the gender ratio has gone up from 927 to 940 (per 1000 males). Rape instances have gone from 10K to 22K in the same time. Yes, more reporting at play perhaps. Kerala is at 1084 or such. Haryana is 877. The "rate" of Rape (according to NCRB) is 2.9 for Haryana and a much higher 3.4 for Kerala (I think the numbers are per lakh population). If you assume they don't report rapes in Haryana, then Gujarat where presumably they do, the gender ratio is 961 but rape rate is 0.7. I don't know if it's just gender ratio at play. >>But a Dan Ariely study showed that people tend to make bad judgements > when sexually >>aroused. > > And, porn is a sexual release for an aroused man. So, I'd say it should > theoretically bring down the incidence of rape in a repressed society (as > opposed to an overtly sexual one) I suppose I'd agree with that. But the question then becomes more granular. If a woman says stop in the middle of the act, and the man doesn't (Assange case?) because he's aroused, it is still rape. (And to be honest, a situation where 5 year olds are not getting raped, and the element of discussion is something like the Assange case is a step up from our current state, I agree, though it still remains an issue )
