This will be interesting:
Japan has finally implemented a ban on the possession of child pornography, bringing it into line with other developed nations after years of international pressure.
The revised law means anyone caught with pornographic images of children will face a prison term of up to one year or fines of up to 1 million yen (£5,170).
Because as a result of this we would expect the rate of child sexual molestation to rise in Japan.
The point being that porn and the action itself can, or could be, either substitutes or complements. Do one and it sates the desire for the other, or perhaps sharpens it. The general assumption is that they are complements. Yet this seems to be wrong. Porn, of all kinds, seems to be a substitute. Yes, even child porn: when the Czech Republic (largely by mistake) legalised child pron in the 1990s the child molestation rate went down. When it was banned again it went back up.
In simple terms, people who wank themselves stupid over images tend not to go out and act on their impulses. If nothing else simply because of male recovery times.
In simple terms, people who wank themselves stupid over images tend not to go out and act on their impulses. If nothing else simply because of male recovery times.
I think more evidence is needed of this. Rape rates exploded in the 60s when all the criminals were let out – and porn became more available. They have dropped since DNA testing came in.
It may be that be sexualising images, people become aware of preferences they did not explore before.
But such bravery in choosing this topic. This is going to run and run.
There’s been considerable research here. As the internet rolled out (and we all know the role of porn in driving that demand) rape rates fell. And fell in those areas that got more internet more. as much as anything is ever really known in social science this is one of the things that’s known. Access to porn reduces sexual crime.
I can just hear the righteous indignation of the SJW of Twitter land now……
Good luck Tim!
SMSS: No correlation. General degeneracy was not allowed, then it was. Bad things happened.
My personal preference would be to put degenerates in the oven, then worry about porn involving the persons that normal heterosexual men have spent the past millions of years fucking. But in the mean time, as long as we’re allowing things that your great-grandparents would have rightly shunned you for considering acceptable, why not allow things that they, and practically all of human history, would have rightly considered normal- like fucking seventeen year olds, marrying more than one woman if you can get away with it, and throwing degenerates down the well?
Anthony Burgess, while a teacher in (prudish, muslim, 1950s) Malaya, once found a boy masturbating to a mediaeval woodcut in a schoolbook, and observed that if deprived of appropriate materials people will turn to inappropriate materials.
Your Japanese/Czech problem is that it isn’t possible to produce, er, “appropriate” materials without molesting children, which we would rather didn’t happen. You can argue, for the stock of said materials, that the abuse has already occurred so you might as well (with the consent of and compensation for the abused) use it. But I don’t think it’s going to be that easy to shut off production of new filth.
On a more serious note, it’s a shame the internet hasn’t penetrated Rotherham yet.
Presumably Pixar could set up an offshoot to produce as realistic-looking stuff they can without actually harming any children. That’s however equally illegal in a lot of places.
Tim Worstall – “as much as anything is ever really known in social science this is one of the things that’s known. Access to porn reduces sexual crime.”
Do you have a link?
Bloke in Germany – “Anthony Burgess, while a teacher in (prudish, muslim, 1950s) Malaya, once found a boy masturbating to a mediaeval woodcut in a schoolbook, and observed that if deprived of appropriate materials people will turn to inappropriate materials.”
I don’t know. There are mediaeval woodcuts and then there are mediaeval woodcuts.
“Your Japanese/Czech problem is that it isn’t possible to produce, er, “appropriate” materials without molesting children, which we would rather didn’t happen.”
A large proportion of Japanese child porn would involve cartoons. Which do not involve the molestation of any children. Still illegal. Treated as part of a ban on child porn that uses actual children. A large proportion of what is left is likely to involve just legal women pretending to be school children. At this stage the law really is an ass.
What do you do about a Japanese cartoon in which the original Japanese says the girl is 16 but the American dubbed version says she is 18? Is it child porn if you switch languages? The Japanese actress Sola Aoi won awards for Tsumugi – in which she played a school girl obsessed with her teacher. Child porn? She was 21 at the time. But then how about Traci Lords who made all but one of her films while pretending to be over 18? A child playing the role of an adult. Although it is possible in some of her films she was a child pretending to be an adult playing a child.
“On a more serious note, it’s a shame the internet hasn’t penetrated Rotherham yet.”
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia lead the world in the google search for goat-related porn.
OK, mostly pieces by me but they have links to the evidence:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/30/smut_freakonomics/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/07/07/outrage-as-judge-tells-the-truth-about-child-pornography/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/06/30/child-pornography-reduces-child-abuse/
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/28803/title/Porn–Good-for-us-/
Bit like the evidence being heavily in favour of legalising prostitution – political death sentence so no ambitious parliamentarian will touch it.
@Bloke in Italy
I do not know about Italy, but in the UK prostitution is legal. You just have to be careful and read all the terms and conditions that the law stipulates. And watch out for the two Julies. Those two can be rather ferocious when you wave the red flag in front of their faces.
Salamander,
> in the UK prostitution is legal.
No, in Great Britain prostitution is legal. Our fuckwit lords and masters in NI just banned it.
It’s nonsense, Worstall. The kid pron (and the rape shit) normalises the behaviour. Your links to Forbes etc are cranky outliers. Anecdotes at best from dedicated pronners.
Before Ian B jumps in about the mythical puritan conspiracy, child pornography, in particular, is an enabler.
Consensual pronning is a slightly different bag. Watching nudey prod is only mildly deviant, but what red-blooded male doesn’t like a taste of (especially artful) stonk-operational-proclivities. Although the blokes are nearly always robotic meatheads. Some one the interned wrote that. Having it with ones lady or gent is much better. Of course.
I don’t know if any of you have bought it, but I’m told it leaves one empty and kind of ashamed. Unless you’re libertarian freaks with no compass or a misonygistical cock-fiend.
Ok, that’s obviously over the top. I just wanted to type misonygistical cock-fiend.
Viz letterbox
If prostitution is the oldest profession, how do the blokes earn the money at the beginning?
Selling is not the thread so ignore me. As usual. With venom.
Tim,
I don’t doubt the research over short timescales. Someone who has a prediliction has that prediliction, and will relieve themselves in ways that are available.
But for the same effect to hold true over the long term, you need to assume that people’s predilictions can’t be changed.
In other words, there are two questions about the effect of legalising child porn. First, what will the people who are already sexually attracted to children do? Will they switch from abuse to porn? It seems clear that a lot of them will. But secondly, will the greater availability of the material lead to a larger number of people who are attracted to children? And the Furries have demonstrated pretty conclusively that yes, we probably will.
So what is the net result of the interplay between the former decrease and the latter long-term increase?
In economic terms you saying yes, a substitute in the short term but it might (might!) be a complement in the long.
Child prostitution was entirely common in Victorian England. It ain’t common at all now. Pornography access has expanded quite a lot since then. The correlation at least states that it’s a substitute in the long term as well.
> it might (might!) be a complement in the long.
I don’t think it’s as doubtful as you imply. We have recent criminal cases involving people who were recently not paedophiles being turned into child-abusers by the careful application of porn by persuasive predators. It’s a normaliser and an enabler.
@ST
Correction, prostitution is still legal in NI. It is paying for sex which has been made illegal by your MLAs who are puritanical asshats (I’m looking at you, Lord Morrow, and you, Jim Wells) who think that the Swedish Model was a great idea.
There is no such word as “misonygistical”, no matter how often you type it.
I was actually really enjoying the word “misonygistical”, and intend to start using it. It would be great in a fantasy novel.
Clarissa,
Thanks for the clarification. I followed NI politics more closely before I lived there. Paying attention to the twonks in Stormont makes it a worse place to live. And encourages them.
That’s actually quite an interesting legal question. In what sense is your business legal if all your customers are, by definition by dint of being your customers, illegal?
If paying for sex is illegal, surely prostitution is illegal, even if being a prostitute is legal.
This is really bothering me now.
The amusing thing about outlawing paying for sex is that you can easily expand the definition of payment to include non-cash items such as dinner, jewelry etc should you wish. Can you imagine the outrage though? 🙂
As long as you did it in July, it wouldn’t register on the outrageometer.
SQ2: “But secondly, will the greater availability of the material lead to a larger number of people who are attracted to children? And the Furries have demonstrated pretty conclusively that yes, we probably will.“
You mean, as a result of (presumably) the Internet, we have more Furries than we otherwise would have done?!?
The Furries were created on an Internet forum. Started as in-joke, then became serious. It’s quite well documented, though I forget where.
This I don’t understand. Surely if ch1ld p0rn0graphy is a substitute then you would want clearly labelled drawings and particularly HD graphics (involving no children) to be legal so that you could gain from the substitution effect and hopefully reduce the market for photographs and movies and thereby reducing ACTUAL ch1ld p0rn0graphy.
It’s a bit like the war on drugs.
At least we haven’t mentioned squirrels yet.
@SMFS, I’d imagine an >18 yo doing porn pretending to be a 18yos wearing Japanese school uniforms? If as I presume not, can you make a law against them having sex while doing so, with or without cameras present?
It seems to be becoming a large minority trend in fact (without the sex as far as I know), with the cosplay stuff having also infected my current home town. It looks either cute or horrendous – but that’s determined largely by the person wearing the kit, rather than by than the kit itself.
Damn HTML tags.
Interestless
Duh, is it? It’s the sodding internet. I can make up words all I like. Pendant.
I bet you knew what it meant though.
Nah. Furries were always a minority part of the cosplay that went on at Comicon and Japanese Anime conventions. It’s become more open because of the 4Chan internet community where they are a regular feature. The actual number of practising Furries is vanishingly small and almost exclusively male.
The same is true of Bronies – teenage and adult males who are a cult following of “My Little Pony – Friendship is magic” a show aimed at small children.
Misonygistical. Misonygisticationaryness..
Shall I type it a bit more, Infesteded
SQ2:” I don’t think it’s as doubtful as you imply. We have recent criminal cases involving people who were recently not paedophiles being turned into child-abusers by the careful application of porn by persuasive predators. It’s a normaliser and an enabler.”
Have you a ref/source for these cases?
Forgive the trivial example but if you hate Marmite can you train yourself to like it? You can force it down. You can get used to it–but can you get to the point you have a house full of the stuff because you now can’t live without it? A freakish few might manage it. But most would have to go through a vast effort and displeasure just to reach the stage of grudging tolerance for the stuff.
Paedophillia is most likely the result of an early childhood imprint. Most long -term paraphillias are. No amount of enabling will turn someone without an particular imprint into someone who has one. Havelock Ellis, the pioneering sexologist had a paraphilia for watching women urinate. He not only considered this the height of erotic stimulation but also a “beautiful” experience of love. Does nothing for me and probably nothing for most on here. It is possible to imagine that some aged old Cassanova-type rake might try watching women widdling to see if it did something for him. And equally possible to imagine that it would not. How much more so with paedophilia where someone without the particular imprint would find the experience to have no sexual stimulation as well as being a morally abhorrent attack on an innocent child. In short your twig has to be specifically bent to be sexually stimulated by children. It is not something that can be acquired or enabled.
The few cases of Giles de Retz type child-killers who seem to have gone to paedophilia by degrees are best explained as sadistic killers who gradually moved on to those most vulnerable to being terrorised and tormented. Sadism was their sick thing and children could be made to suffer more.
Imprints are almost impossible to extinguish. The majority of paedos do not act on their desires and mainly look at photos.
Obviously children should not be abused so that paedophiles can have photos . I can see little reason that drawings/simulations could not be used.
Arnald: Even more disorganised rambling than before.
“Watching nudey prod is only mildly deviant, but what red-blooded male doesn’t like a taste of (especially artful) stonk-operational-proclivities. ”
While it is just possible to get a general sense of what that sub-Antony Burgess bollocks means, it is also possible to detect a definite tone of beery, leering very-non-pc lechery in there also. Do your female comrades know that you desire stonk-operational-proclivities with them? Are they aware of what lurks beneath your cut-price Che Guevara beret?
“Selling is not the thread so ignore me. As usual. With venom.”
Ok.
Ecks,
> Have you a ref/source for these cases?
The Litte Ted’s case. Vanessa George, Colin Blanchard, Angela Allen, Tracy Lyons, Tracy Dawber. George and Allen apparently had no interest in paedophilia until Blanchard got them into it; Lyons and Dawber, probably not either.
There have been other similar but less high-profile cases over the last few years, but I don’t remember enough details to look them up.
There isn’t much in the way of evidence that watching anything causes anything much. Watching murder as entertainment doesn’t make people murderers, etc. Human desires don’t really work that way.
The good argument for prohibiting child porn is that children must be harmed to produce it. This of course depends on what you count as child porn, and whether they’ve engaged in harmful acts.
The bad argument is that it causes paedophilia. It’s the same as arguing that seeing naked men will turn you gay, or watching people eat brussels sprouts will make you like brussels sprouts. But as I said, human desires don’t work that way.
The problem with all this is that nobody involved is interested in a rational discussion about it. Everyone’s like Ironman.
By the way, SMFS, porn didn’t become generally available in the USA until the early 1970s.
> watching people eat brussels sprouts will make you like brussels sprouts. But as I said, human desires don’t work that way.
If you had kids, you would know that you can indeed train humans to like certain foods by showing them other humans eating those foods.
Didn’t work for me with tomatoes. Nothing anyone did could persuade me to eat the ghastly insipid fruit that masquerades as a vegetable.
But this is not really the point; humans clearly pick things up from around us, however this is generally by the presentation of things as good or bad to the peer group the person is embedded in. Rather than simply seeing the thing. It’s quite different and an important distinction.
The same is true of Bronies – teenage and adult males who are a cult following of “My Little Pony – Friendship is magic” a show aimed at small children.
Bloody hell!
> this is generally by the presentation of things as good or bad to the peer group the person is embedded in
True — although what the Colin Blanchard case showed was that the definition of “peer group” here can be extremely loose. It can be a peer group of one other person. But anyway, granted that you’re right, if it is possible to make a person into a paedophile through the presentation of certain things, that is a good argument for limiting the supply of those things.
The German bestiality experience was instructive. (Ah, if I had a penny for every time I’d seen that on Tripadvisor.) I think I mentioned it here a few weeks ago. They repealed their bestiality laws in the Sixties, on the grounds that no-one was breaking them so they weren’t needed. If you assume that sexual predilictions are innate, that makes sense: if no-one’s breaking the law, there must be no faunophiles wanting to break it. And, indeed, short-term, it made no difference. Long-term, however, they reintroduced the laws a couple of years ago because holiday sex farms had turned into a growth industry. Apparently, llamas were particularly popular.
Now, me, I would have thought you either want to fuck animals or you don’t. If they repealed the bestiality laws in the UK, that would make no difference to my behaviour. “Hey, I got a new pig. Want a go? It’s legal now.” “No, thank you,” I would say, “and please get out of my house.” But what the German experience shows us is that there is a significant number of people who aren’t interested in bestiality when it’s illegal but, if it’s decriminalised, shrug and say, “Yeah, why not?” And that that number of people grows over time.
You always have to consider the marginal case.
(The place we go on holiday in Bavaria every year had a field full of llamas. The year the law was changed, the llamas vanished. Makes you look at the people around you a tad differently.)
If the pigs could talk, I’m sure they’d tell you they’d rather be rogered than killed and eaten.
Is that what you tell yourself?
It’s more sheep round here.
But returning to the libertarian principles, why the objection to bestiality? I can think of a few reasons why it’s not a good idea (disease transmission for one, farmers with shotguns for another) but if the owners of the animals are happy to pimp them out, where’s the harm?
How do you know people weren’t engaging in bestiality when it was illegal?
What proportion of the people engaging bestiality when it was legal in that country were from countries where it was illegal at that time?
BIW,
> why the objection to bestiality?
No idea. I didn’t ban it. Ask the Germans.
UKL,
> How do you know people weren’t engaging in bestiality when it was illegal?
I don’t. But the numbers involved moved from so small that literally no-one had been caught for years to so large that it became a fucking industry.
> What proportion of the people engaging bestiality when it was legal in that country were from countries where it was illegal at that time?
No idea. Ask Bloke In Wales.
I see I’m getting the Ian B treatment here, just for pondering ‘why?’…
Prostitution is legal in Australia. Just saying.
Hey, BIW. No offence intended. It was just too easy a joke not to make it. Although apparently it was also too crap a joke. My apologies.
S2 – I took the first response as a joke, and replied in kind. The second time I wasn’t so sure, and after seeing the abuse Ian got wanted to nip that in the bud.
Apologies for not getting the joke 🙂