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Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
I claimed nothing of the sort. I neither said nor implied that illiterates committed the majority of sex crimes. I am saying that if reading erotica leads to sex crimes, then we should expect to see that those who read erotica commit more sex crimes than those who do not. Illiterates obviously do not read erotica, therefore, we should expect to see that readers commit more sex crimes than non-readers.
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I never said that illiterates committed the majority of sex crimes. I said that there is no evidence that readers were more inclined to commit sex crimes.
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Fair enough. I misread your question. That's why I was trying to make sure I understood your claims. My mistake.
You're not claiming that folks who are illiterate commit more crimes. You're only claiming that "if reading erotic literature causes a person to commit sex crimes, then more sex crimes would be committed by people who read erotic literature than by illiterates." Sure. That's practically a tautology. No argument needed. If eating apples caused a person to float, then we could expect that more people who eat apples would float than people who don't eat apples. And actually, jumping back a bit, this argument doesn't hold. Perhaps there are other types of fruit that cause a person to float. In this discussion, you have specifically discounted other non-literary pornographic content that could be accessed by non-readers. I'll go back to this below.
Ultimately, that doesn't bear on what I was even claiming. I wasn't claiming that reading erotic literature made a person commit a sex crime. I claimed that consuming pornography affects a person and I believe that effect to be negative.
Do you think that reading a book like "To Kill a Mockingbird" could affect a person's views on racism? If you do, then do you not also think that reading "Letters to Penthouse" could affect a person's views on sexual activity? I'm not saying it would make a person go out and start raping their neighbors, I'm saying that it would affect them, and I believe it would affect them negatively. Specifically, I believe it would cause them to begin viewing others as means to their own sexual ends. It would cause them to begin dehumanizing other people in the way that they thought about those people. Naturally, if you stop thinking of other people as human beings and start thinking of them as objects meant for your sexual gratification, it will affect the way you interact with them sexually.
Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
I didn't say that the only method of communication was the written word. But it isn't reasonable to include cave paintings in a discussion of erotica.
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Why not?
Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
The point, which was clear enough was that video and magazines are quite recent inventions, and that erotica goes back much farther. It would be a mistake to limit ourselves to the current era which is merely a blip. My time period is not undefined, it's all of history. Except for the current blip in time, the only people who had access to erotica have been readers. But even without access to erotica, people have committed sex crimes. No evidence has been presented that readers are any more likely to commit sex crimes than are illiterates. Again, I'm not saying that illiterates are MORE likely to commit sex crimes than are readers.
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I might be misreading you again, but it seems like you're having it both ways in this paragraph. You seek to include "all of history" but seek to exclude historical, non-literary forms of erotica (like cave paintings, paintings, sculptures, dances, performances, oral storytelling, etc). This is not a fair way to evaluate the impact of pornography through history, as it eliminates the majority of pornographic content from the discussion.