Disturbed in Minnesota
Lydia Nickerson
Seven playmates are accused in the alleged gang rape of an 8-year-old
girl, and one of the seven is the girl' s 9-year-old brother, who is
accused of starting it.
After a police lineup today for the girl to identify all the boys, ages 6
to 13, police will meet with the Ramsey County attorney to discuss
possible charges.
Four boys are under 10, the minimum age for criminal prosecution in
Minnesota. Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner said a defendant under 10
could be placed in a treatment or rehabilitation facility.
*********************
You know, I don't know what to do with this. What's happening which
causes boy children, well before puberty, to behave in such a fashion?
I'm taken aback, and can't make sense of it. A prosecuter was quoted on
NPR saying that she was shocked, as were a number of other hardened
juvenile justice veterans. I'm not sure I've gotten around to shock, yet.
--
----
Lydia Nickerson ly...@demesne.com ly...@dd-b.net
Joel Rosenberg
At the risk of being considered culturally insensitive -- hell, at the
risk of being culturally insensitive -- I'll point out that the rumor is
that the children involved, all of them, are from the Hmong community,
and behavior toward women and children in the Hmong community is,
traditionally, quite different than what is considered right and proper
in the West. I'm reminded of the old Hmong man who said, in a somewhat
different context, "of course one beats a woman or animal who is
disobedient..."
I'm not saying simply that some Hmong people are evil -- of course
that's true -- or that all Hmong people tolerate rape and abuse of women
-- of course some don't -- but I am saying that different cultures see
different behaviors differently, and that much of morality, in practice,
(not in my belief -- I'm one of those secular humanist absolutists, who
believes that there are some things that are absolutely wrong) is
culturally defined. The traditional whipping boy of cultures, back when
I was in school, was the Yanomamo, a culture where the anthropologists
studying them never had to worry about "going native."
For my next trick, I'm going to point out that traditional Indian
culture often has widows thrown on funeral pyres...
I'm with the British ra, on this one, who said something like, "Her
Majesty's government does not seek to interfere with anybody's customs.
It is, apparently, the local custom to throw widows upon funeral pyres.
It is our custom that when men do this, we hang them by the neck until
they are dead. Let each behave according to his custom, and all will be
well."
Laura Burchard
Joel Rosenberg <jo...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>Lydia Nickerson wrote:
>> You know, I don't know what to do with this. What's happening which
>> causes boy children, well before puberty, to behave in such a fashion?
>> I'm taken aback, and can't make sense of it. A prosecuter was quoted on
>> NPR saying that she was shocked, as were a number of other hardened
>> juvenile justice veterans. I'm not sure I've gotten around to shock, yet.
>At the risk of being considered culturally insensitive -- hell, at the
>risk of being culturally insensitive -- I'll point out that the rumor is
>that the children involved, all of them, are from the Hmong community,
>and behavior toward women and children in the Hmong community is,
>traditionally, quite different than what is considered right and proper
>in the West.
I'd also suggest the unwisdom of taking the police version on faith. I'll
point out that the last time there was much weeping and wailing in papers
and on the Sunday talking head shows lamenting the modern awfulness of
young children was in the Chicago case where the police announced with
great noise and drama that two young boys (7 and 9, I think?) had raped
and murdered an 11 year old girl.
A few months later, with much less noise and no notice on said talking
head shows, it was revealed that in fact she had been raped and killed by
an adult pedophile (confirmed by DNA), and that the cops had in the
tradition of bad cops the world over extracted a false confession from the
nearest usefully pliable suspects.
There's actually a pretty conventional crime hiding under this, after all
-- the rape of an eight year old by a 13 year old. Ugly, but not
spectacularly unusual. I'll hold my judgement on whether all the 'gang
rape' and 'orchestrated by her 9 year old brother' enhancements are god's
own truth.
Laura
Laura Burchard -- l...@radix.net -- http://www.radix.net/~lhb
X-Review: http://traveller.simplenet.com/xfiles/episode.htm
"Good design is clear thinking made visible." -- Edward Tufte
Joel Rosenberg
>
> In article <37E96348...@bigfoot.com>,
> Joel Rosenberg <jo...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> >Lydia Nickerson wrote:
> >> You know, I don't know what to do with this. What's happening which
> >> causes boy children, well before puberty, to behave in such a fashion?
> >> I'm taken aback, and can't make sense of it. A prosecuter was quoted on
> >> NPR saying that she was shocked, as were a number of other hardened
> >> juvenile justice veterans. I'm not sure I've gotten around to shock, yet.
>
> >At the risk of being considered culturally insensitive -- hell, at the
> >risk of being culturally insensitive -- I'll point out that the rumor is
> >that the children involved, all of them, are from the Hmong community,
> >and behavior toward women and children in the Hmong community is,
> >traditionally, quite different than what is considered right and proper
> >in the West.
>
> I'd also suggest the unwisdom of taking the police version on faith.
I'll certainly second that emotion. On the other hand, given that the
police aren't talking about the ethnicity of the perpetrators, or the
victim, that's not where this rumor comes from. (In fact, I got it from
a couple of Hmong callers into one of the local radio shows --
apparently, it's widely believed in the Hmong community that all involve
were Hmong. Whether or not that belief is true, I don't know.) From the
way that one of the local prosecutors was careful not to respond to that
suggestion, it sounds like it's true.
Or, at least, it could be. Question: if it turns out that the rumor is
true, and given the past history of the Hmong community when it comes to
the treatment of young women, is it possible that there is something to
be learned from this?
I'll
> point out that the last time there was much weeping and wailing in papers
> and on the Sunday talking head shows lamenting the modern awfulness of
> young children was in the Chicago case where the police announced with
> great noise and drama that two young boys (7 and 9, I think?) had raped
> and murdered an 11 year old girl.
>
> A few months later, with much less noise and no notice on said talking
> head shows, it was revealed that in fact she had been raped and killed by
> an adult pedophile (confirmed by DNA), and that the cops had in the
> tradition of bad cops the world over extracted a false confession from the
> nearest usefully pliable suspects.
>
> There's actually a pretty conventional crime hiding under this, after all
> -- the rape of an eight year old by a 13 year old. Ugly, but not
> spectacularly unusual. I'll hold my judgement on whether all the 'gang
> rape' and 'orchestrated by her 9 year old brother' enhancements are god's
> own truth.
Absolutely. There's no reason to make any firm assumptions or
conclusions about the whole thing, other than that it was clearly
horrible.
But I think the rumor -- true or not -- points to some difficulties that
a multi-ethnic society is going to have to face, when different ethnic
ethics collide. I think it's important -- vital -- to respect the
legitimate differences between different ethnicities, and not to be
quick to argue that Middle American White Bread culture is innately
superior. But I think it's also important to accept that there really
are absolute standards -- not many, but some -- and to insist that those
be respected.
It's a very difficult thing. The Hmong kids in my daughter's school
are, like most kids at my daughter's (actually, that should be
daughters' -- Rachel just started kindergarten), just delightful. But I
think that has a society we have to deal with the fact that Hmong
culture will, if left unattended and un-interfered with, have most of
those cute little Hmong girls engaged at around ten, married by 14, and
with multiple children before they turn 18, and agree that that's not a
good thing. (It may, for obvious reasons, have been necessary for
survival in the environment that Hmong culture developed. But it isn't
here, and the standards can't be that much different for Hmong girls
than it can for girls of different ethnicities.)
Or so it seems to me. It also seems to me that pointing to some of
these difficulties is, politically, just this side of impossible in many
contexts.
Because if we don't except that there are absolute standards -- not
many, but some -- then we find ourselves being tolerant of female
genital mutilation, slavery in the Sudan, rape as a political tool in
the Balkans, and machine-gunning of schoolchildren as a form of
political protest.
I think that would be a bad thing.
Gary Farber
Just about every news medium on the planet, actually, so far as I can
tell. Unsurprisingly.
: Seven playmates are accused in the alleged gang rape of an 8-year-old
: girl, and one of the seven is the girl' s 9-year-old brother, who is
: accused of starting it.
[. . . .]
: You know, I don't know what to do with this. What's happening which
: causes boy children, well before puberty, to behave in such a fashion?
: I'm taken aback, and can't make sense of it. A prosecuter was quoted on
: NPR saying that she was shocked, as were a number of other hardened
: juvenile justice veterans. I'm not sure I've gotten around to shock, yet.
When was the last time you heard of such a thing happening? Not often,
which suggests that it actually isn't all *that* frequent, and thus hardly
a trend. On the other end, what makes you think this sort of wretchedness
doesn't happen every so often, somewhere on the planet, and always has?
In other words, I don't think anything's "happening" beyond a worldwide
reporting and news network. I may, of course, be wildly wrong.
--
Copyright 1999 by Gary Farber; For Hire as: Web Researcher; Nonfiction
Writer, Fiction and Nonfiction Editor; gfa...@panix.com; Northeast US
Rick Keir
>
>I'd also suggest the unwisdom of taking the police version on faith. I'll
>and on the Sunday talking head shows lamenting the modern awfulness of
>young children was in the Chicago case where the police announced with
>great noise and drama that two young boys (7 and 9, I think?) had raped
>and murdered an 11 year old girl.
>
>A few months later, with much less noise and no notice on said talking
>head shows, it was revealed that in fact she had been raped and killed by
>an adult pedophile (confirmed by DNA), and that the cops had in the
>tradition of bad cops the world over extracted a false confession from the
>nearest usefully pliable suspects.
Thank you for pointing this out; if you hadn't, I would have.
I only want to add a John Mortimer (Rumpole of the Bailey)
quote, which I often think of when allegations of crimes
against children come up:
"But Rumpole, it's such an extra nasty crime."
"Yes, Claude. That's why it's extra important that
innocent people don't get convicted of it."
Mortimer was talking about blackmail, but it applies
here too. All too often, both the police and the public
throw all standards out when a crime involves children.
Look at the various Ritual Satanic Abuse cases involving
daycare centers for examples.
mike weber
Sep 1999 05:25:11 GMT,
:
>I only want to add a John Mortimer (Rumpole of the Bailey)
>quote, which I often think of when allegations of crimes
>against children come up:
> "But Rumpole, it's such an extra nasty crime."
> "Yes, Claude. That's why it's extra important that
> innocent people don't get convicted of it."
>
>Mortimer was talking about blackmail, but it applies
>here too. All too often, both the police and the public
>throw all standards out when a crime involves children.
>Look at the various Ritual Satanic Abuse cases involving
>daycare centers for examples.
>
The Bucky (sp?) School case, forinstance?
To your Rumpole quote, let me add one that was going through my mind
as i typed on another thread about the accusation of Richard Jewell in
the Olympic Park bombing -- from the Pogues' "Streets of
Sorrow/Birmingham Six":
"God help you if ever you're caught on this shore
When the coppers need someone and they walk through that door ... "
--
"Life's a game where they're bound to beat you, and time's a
trick they can turn to cheat you -- and we only waste it
anyway, that's the hell of it..." -- Paul Williams
<mike weber> kras...@mindspring.com>
Ambitious Incomplete web site: http://weberworld.virtualave.net
Lydia Nickerson
>In <lydy.93...@gw.dd-b.net> Lydia Nickerson <ly...@gw.dd-b.net> wrote:
>: From the Star Tribune:
>Just about every news medium on the planet, actually, so far as I can
>tell. Unsurprisingly.
I assumed it would hit at some point or other. It's local news, here,
though.
>: Seven playmates are accused in the alleged gang rape of an 8-year-old
>: girl, and one of the seven is the girl' s 9-year-old brother, who is
>: accused of starting it.
>[. . . .]
>: You know, I don't know what to do with this. What's happening which
>: causes boy children, well before puberty, to behave in such a fashion?
>: I'm taken aback, and can't make sense of it. A prosecuter was quoted on
>: NPR saying that she was shocked, as were a number of other hardened
>: juvenile justice veterans. I'm not sure I've gotten around to shock, yet.
>When was the last time you heard of such a thing happening? Not often,
>which suggests that it actually isn't all *that* frequent, and thus hardly
>a trend. On the other end, what makes you think this sort of wretchedness
>doesn't happen every so often, somewhere on the planet, and always has?
>In other words, I don't think anything's "happening" beyond a worldwide
>reporting and news network. I may, of course, be wildly wrong.
Well, actually, I don't think much of anything about the issue, just at
the moment. I'm rather thoroughly taken aback by the whole thing. We
talk about rape not being about sex, but of course that's not strictly
speaking entirely true. Sexual aggression in kids well before puberty
plain old confuses me. What did they think they were doing, and why? Is
there a societal issue? Fuck if I know. My phrasing was off, a bit. But
we're talking about at least four boys under the age of 10. What happened
to them? I think it's a reasonable, if potentially unanswerable question.
I am vaguely concerned about the fact that I've been seeing several
different types of early sexualization amongst children, and that being
associated with violence. I don't know if there's anything significant
going on, but it nags at me. One of the school shootings, Jonesboro,
maybe, had as the chief instigator an eleven year old who was targeting
girls in particular. The proximate cause was a romantic rejection. An
adult who had known him previously said that this same kid had been
suicidal at the age of nine after another bad break up. I'm still
puzzling out what nine year olds are doing being that romantically
tangled. I find the pictures of Jonbenet Ramsay, which decorate the
tabloids every other week, eerie and frightening. There are other
instances as well, but those are the ones that stick in my head just at
the moment.
Even more disturbing is the way people react to this. Most of the
suggestions for dealing with the issue, and it's pretty clear they don't
know what the issue is any more than I do, revolve around further sexual
repression of children. They scold about how children aren't ready for
the emotional weight of sexual experiences, but don't seem to find
anything odd in romantic entanglements at younger and younger ages
provided it doesn't involve the dirty stuff. They tie pre-adolescent
sexual behavior to teenage pregnancy, and I suspect that's just plain old
rot. Sexual behavior before puberty is sufficiently rare that it can't be
a significant contributor to teenage pregnancy.
For one reason or another, this gang bang got past my usual blase cynicism
about the world. I'm not, I don't think, reacting with horror to the loss
of innocence. I don't think children are particularly innocent, actually.
Just because this one makes my skin crawl in unusual ways doesn't mean
there's actually anything going on, you're absolutely right. But it
doesn't seem to me that I was particularly out of line, either.
Lydia Nickerson
>Lydia Nickerson wrote:
>>
>> From the Star Tribune:
>>
>> Seven playmates are accused in the alleged gang rape of an 8-year-old
>> girl, and one of the seven is the girl' s 9-year-old brother, who is
>> accused of starting it.
>>
>> After a police lineup today for the girl to identify all the boys, ages 6
>> to 13, police will meet with the Ramsey County attorney to discuss
>> possible charges.
>>
>> Four boys are under 10, the minimum age for criminal prosecution in
>> Minnesota. Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner said a defendant under 10
>> could be placed in a treatment or rehabilitation facility.
>> --
>At the risk of being considered culturally insensitive -- hell, at the
>risk of being culturally insensitive -- I'll point out that the rumor is
>that the children involved, all of them, are from the Hmong community,
>and behavior toward women and children in the Hmong community is,
>traditionally, quite different than what is considered right and proper
>in the West. I'm reminded of the old Hmong man who said, in a somewhat
>different context, "of course one beats a woman or animal who is
>disobedient..."
I think this is nonsense, Joel. Patriarchal cultures don't, as far as I
know, typically demonstrate this particular type of dysfunction. I
believe incidents like this are pretty rare. I'm not hung up on the
gender of the victim, I'm confused by aggressive sexual behavior in
children well below the age of puberty. I didn't know they were Hmong
until you mentioned it, though. Being poor immigrants may have some
bearing on the situation, as well as the ways in which Hmong culture and
American culture mix, but I know almost nothing about it. All very
strange.
Doug Wickstrom
excited the ether to say:
>Sexual aggression in kids well before puberty
>plain old confuses me. What did they think they were doing, and why? Is
>there a societal issue? Fuck if I know. My phrasing was off, a bit. But
>we're talking about at least four boys under the age of 10. What happened
>to them? I think it's a reasonable, if potentially unanswerable question.
What I don't understand, is where did they learn _how_? I was
still pretty vague on the mechanics at that age. I recall being
squicked by the whole idea when I finally figured it out at
around 12 or 13. AFAIK, this information is no more available to
10-year-olds now than it was 35 years ago. If I'm wrong, please
correct me.
And what happened to older brothers _protecting_ their younger
siblings, especially sisters?
You ain't the only one "Disturbed in Minnesota."
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom
are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
--Justice Louis Brandeis
Laura Burchard
Lydia Nickerson <ly...@gw.dd-b.net> wrote:
>For one reason or another, this gang bang got past my usual blase cynicism
>about the world. I'm not, I don't think, reacting with horror to the loss
>of innocence. I don't think children are particularly innocent, actually.
>Just because this one makes my skin crawl in unusual ways doesn't mean
>there's actually anything going on, you're absolutely right. But it
>doesn't seem to me that I was particularly out of line, either.
Mmmm. Part of the reason I'm holding judgement (and any sense of horror)
in abeyance is that I'm very wary. I recall vividly the flights of horror
that were indulged in over the Ryan Harris case (the 11 year old who 7 and
8 year old boys were falsely accused of raping and killing); the current
ones sound much the same. And, like the Harris case, there's something
here that tickles my sense of being off. In the Chicago case, it was the
fact that I had a great deal of trouble envisioning how a 7 and 8 year old
could physically overcome an big 11 year old girl. The disparity in
strengths between those two groups is just too extreme; cast your memory
back to third grade and remember just how big and scary the sixth graders
seemed.
In this case, what tickles my suspicions is that a nine year old is
supposed to have been ordering a thirteen year old around. It's not
*always* the older that is in charge, but those two age groups -- how
often are eighth and ninth graders directed by fourth graders? In my
childhood, the big kids like that wouldn't have nothin' to do with us
little ones.
It's not *impossible*, there are some nine year olds with very strong
personalities and some very passive thirteen year olds; same as with the
Harris case, I could envision freakish circumstances where they somehow
managed to knock her unconscious. But the stated circumstances make me
suspicious.
If this does turn out to be a true and accurate rendering of the
situation, there's one overwhelming cause of premature and aggressive
sexuality: being sexually abused yourself, especially long term. I'd take
a hard, hard look at the family.
Avram Grumer
<jo...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
(I'm assuming "except" is a typo for "accept.")
I disagree. I'm not tolerant of slavery, rape, mass slaughter, or
non-consensual mutilation. In fact, I may be less tolerant of infant
gential mutilation that you are. But I don't for a minute believe that
there are truly absolute moral standards, any more than I believe that
there is an absolute language.
--
Avram Grumer | Any sufficiently advanced
Home: av...@bigfoot.com | technology is indistinguishable
http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/ | from an error message.
Beth Friedman
>In article <37E9A205...@bigfoot.com>, Joel Rosenberg
>
>I disagree. I'm not tolerant of slavery, rape, mass slaughter, or
>non-consensual mutilation. In fact, I may be less tolerant of infant
>gential mutilation that you are. But I don't for a minute believe that
>there are truly absolute moral standards, any more than I believe that
>there is an absolute language.
Joel and I disagree on an awful lot of this stuff, so I don't presume to
speak for him. But I don't see anywhere that Joel was talking about
absolute _moral_ standards; you were the one who introduced that word. Is
it Sturgeon who talks about the difference between ethics and morals?
I believe in certain standards (I'd say "absolute," but just about
everything has a dash of relativism in it), but they're more pragmatic than
moral. At the very bottom, I guess I'd have to say that I really don't like
the flavor of societies where such things exist -- but I don't want to have
to say "you shouldn't do that because God told you not to" because I neither
believe it is true nor sufficient.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Lawrence Person
Nickerson) wrote:
> You know, I don't know what to do with this. What's happening which
> causes boy children, well before puberty, to behave in such a fashion?
"Kiss it!"
"You're a smart women. Let's keep this between ourselves."
"I did not have sex with that woman..."
Gee, I have no idea.
--
Lawrence Person
lawr...@bga.com
Lame Excuse Books Now Online at: http://www.abebooks.com
Nova Express Website: http://www.delphi.com/sflit/novaexpress/
Avram Grumer
<b...@wavefront.com> wrote:
> Avram Grumer wrote in message ...
> >In article <37E9A205...@bigfoot.com>, Joel Rosenberg
> >(I'm assuming "except" is a typo for "accept.")
> >
> >I disagree. I'm not tolerant of slavery, rape, mass slaughter, or
> >non-consensual mutilation. In fact, I may be less tolerant of infant
> >gential mutilation that you are. But I don't for a minute believe that
> >there are truly absolute moral standards, any more than I believe that
> >there is an absolute language.
>
> Joel and I disagree on an awful lot of this stuff, so I don't presume to
> speak for him. But I don't see anywhere that Joel was talking about
> absolute _moral_ standards; you were the one who introduced that word. Is
> it Sturgeon who talks about the difference between ethics and morals?
Right, Joel didn't use the word "moral." I don't believe in absolute
ethical standards either. I don't think Joel was talking about things
like technical standards, but I could be wrong.
It might be Sturgeon who talks about such a distinction; I first
encountered it in something Damon Knight said on GEnie -- morals are
things like "Don't go naked in public"; ethics are things like "Don't go
around killing people." This is certainly not a distinction recognized in
American culture at large as far as I can tell. And I also have a bit of
trouble seeing how this isn't just boil down to "The things you (or that
guy over there) think are wrong are just arbitrary prohibitions, but the
things I think are wrong are really wrong."
If Sturgeon drew some other distinction between the two terms than the one
Knight drew, I'm unfamiliar with it.
> I believe in certain standards (I'd say "absolute," but just about
> everything has a dash of relativism in it), but they're more pragmatic than
> moral. At the very bottom, I guess I'd have to say that I really don't like
> the flavor of societies where such things exist -- but I don't want to have
> to say "you shouldn't do that because God told you not to" because I neither
> believe it is true nor sufficient.
I think some sets of standards are more likely than other to be stable in
the long term. And I think some sets of standards are more likely to
produce societies that I'd find pleasant to live in. Certainly standards
exist, because we create them, and perhaps there might even be a set that
I'd say ought to be followed absolutely, but "accept[ing] that there are
absolute standards" strikes me as the sort of language that encourages
people to think about the standards as something that exists apart from
the realm of human endeavor, as something that we serve rather than
something that serves us.
Mike Kozlowski
Avram Grumer <av...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>It might be Sturgeon who talks about such a distinction; I first
>encountered it in something Damon Knight said on GEnie -- morals are
>things like "Don't go naked in public"; ethics are things like "Don't go
>around killing people." This is certainly not a distinction recognized in
>American culture at large as far as I can tell. And I also have a bit of
>trouble seeing how this isn't just boil down to "The things you (or that
>guy over there) think are wrong are just arbitrary prohibitions, but the
>things I think are wrong are really wrong."
Richard Garriott (a computer game designer) makes the distinction that
ethics are based on reason, and morals on faith. I'm not sure if that's
what Knight was getting at or not.
Nevertheless, most people use the terms interchangeably, including the
author of the introductory ethics textbook that I used in my philosophy
class.
--
Michael Kozlowski
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~mkozlows/
Lydia Nickerson
>I'd also suggest the unwisdom of taking the police version on faith. I'll
>point out that the last time there was much weeping and wailing in papers
>and on the Sunday talking head shows lamenting the modern awfulness of
>young children was in the Chicago case where the police announced with
>great noise and drama that two young boys (7 and 9, I think?) had raped
>and murdered an 11 year old girl.
>A few months later, with much less noise and no notice on said talking
>head shows, it was revealed that in fact she had been raped and killed by
>an adult pedophile (confirmed by DNA), and that the cops had in the
>tradition of bad cops the world over extracted a false confession from the
>nearest usefully pliable suspects.
Now there's a useful and timely reminder. Thanks. The way the coverage
is falling out, it doesn't look quite like the above case, but it
certainly still could be.
Here's another question: Thirty years ago, when I was almost eight years
old, such a story would not have been believed. The unlikelihood of an
eight year old rape victim combined with the unlikelihood of such young
attackers would have caused it to be instantly adjudged a lie. What's
changed that any number of people, myself included, can find such a story
credible. It can't just be that we've learned enough about child abuse
that we now can credit such a young victim, I don't think, since the
shocking thing is not the age of the victim but the age of her attackers.
On 'tother hand, I mind me of the Floridian four year old that they wanted
to try as an adult because he'd shot and killed his playmate with malice
aforethought. I found that perfectly credible, and it didn't shock me the
way the rape case shocked me. Another example, I suppose, of sex clouding
men's minds and interfering with their rational processes. No wonder
repressive governments work so hard to control sexual behavior; what a
powerfully manipulative device it is.
Well, if naught else, I'm learning some strange stuff about myself. Oh,
no, another learning experience.
Nancy Lebovitz
>to try as an adult because he'd shot and killed his playmate with malice
>aforethought. I found that perfectly credible, and it didn't shock me the
There's nothing analogous to puberty for anger.
>way the rape case shocked me. Another example, I suppose, of sex clouding
>men's minds and interfering with their rational processes. No wonder
>repressive governments work so hard to control sexual behavior; what a
>powerfully manipulative device it is.
>
>Well, if naught else, I'm learning some strange stuff about myself. Oh,
>no, another learning experience.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com
Calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>Well, actually, I don't think much of anything about the issue, just at
>the moment. I'm rather thoroughly taken aback by the whole thing. We
>talk about rape not being about sex, but of course that's not strictly
>speaking entirely true. Sexual aggression in kids well before puberty
>plain old confuses me. What did they think they were doing, and why? Is
>there a societal issue? Fuck if I know. My phrasing was off, a bit. But
>we're talking about at least four boys under the age of 10. What happened
>to them? I think it's a reasonable, if potentially unanswerable question.
A couple years ago in the elementary school my neighbors' kids attend,
a six-year-old boy forced a six-year-old girl against the wall and
started thrusting his pelvis against her, telling her that she was his
"bitch," and to "give it up." The teacher separated them and told him
he was wrong, but that was it. There was a great outcry about how he
should have some counseling because he was attacking the girl, but he
didn't get any.
--
Marilee J. Layman Co-Leader, The Other*Worlds*Cafe
relm...@aol.com A Science Fiction Discussion Group
Web site: http://www.webmoose.com/owc/
AOL keyword: BOOKs > Chats & Message > SF Forum > The Other*Worlds*Cafe
Marcus L. Rowland
<mkoz...@guy.ssc.wisc.edu> writes
>
>Richard Garriott (a computer game designer) makes the distinction that
>ethics are based on reason, and morals on faith. I'm not sure if that's
>what Knight was getting at or not.
I'm not sure whether this comes under ethics or morals, but "Designer
X", a not-very-well disguised Greg Costikyan, has written an RPG called
"Violence: The Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed"
(Hogshead Publishing), in which the adventurers are urban criminals
specialising in home invasions. It's extremely funny, but also thought-
provoking in the way it strips away all the "we're the good guys"
bullshit that wraps up the combat in most RPGs.
--
Marcus L. Rowland
http://www.ffutures.demon.co.uk/ http://www.forgottenfutures.com/
"We are all victims of this slime. They... ...fill our mailboxes with gibberish
that would get them indicted if people had time to press charges"
[Hunter S. Thompson predicts junk e-mail, 1985 (from Generation of Swine)]
lee...@my-deja.com
think the Hmong community need to come together and solve these issues
that is destroying our community. We have too many people running
around calling themselve leaders and building their empire versus
building the community. They are too busy being leaders and not
parents.
Another issue is how do we get the support and assistance that is
available from the county, city and the state. We are, afterall,
citizens of this nation. We all pay taxes. Shouldn't also be entitled
to the millions of dollars that are given out to non-profit and
government agencies. When something like this comes up, elected
officials as well as the police turn around and say, what is the Hmong
community going to do about this? Crime is an issue of the community,
regardless of what community we are from. We need to deal with these
issues as a community and not let it divide us further.
The second paragraph may contradict the first one, but we do need to get
our act together and start being more involve and inform about
children's lives.
I am sadden by many of these things. Until we take control of our
families, come together as a community and stop the empire building,
these sort of things will continue.
I remembered 10 years ago telling my good friends at the police
department that now kids are stealing cars, next they will start robbing
and killing people. I told them that if we don't do anything about it,
we will eventually have a crisis on our hand. Now it is 1999.
Please take time to visit kids in jail, read to a child, take them to
the park, and tell them you love them. And most important of all, take
the violent Chinese movies off the shelves of Hmong stores and from the
homes. This is where kids are picking up their bad behaviors.
May we have peace in our community.
Lee Pao Xiong
In article <7sc6a4$qj0$1...@saltmine.radix.net>,
l...@Radix.Net (Laura Burchard) wrote:
> In article <37E96348...@bigfoot.com>,
> Joel Rosenberg <jo...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> >Lydia Nickerson wrote:
> >> You know, I don't know what to do with this. What's happening
which
> >> causes boy children, well before puberty, to behave in such a
fashion?
> >> I'm taken aback, and can't make sense of it. A prosecuter was
quoted on
> >> NPR saying that she was shocked, as were a number of other hardened
> >> juvenile justice veterans. I'm not sure I've gotten around to
shock, yet.
>
> >At the risk of being considered culturally insensitive -- hell, at
the
> >risk of being culturally insensitive -- I'll point out that the rumor
is
> >that the children involved, all of them, are from the Hmong
community,
> >and behavior toward women and children in the Hmong community is,
> >traditionally, quite different than what is considered right and
proper
> >in the West.
>
> I'd also suggest the unwisdom of taking the police version on faith.
I'll
> point out that the last time there was much weeping and wailing in
papers
> and on the Sunday talking head shows lamenting the modern awfulness of
> young children was in the Chicago case where the police announced with
> great noise and drama that two young boys (7 and 9, I think?) had
raped
> and murdered an 11 year old girl.
>
> A few months later, with much less noise and no notice on said talking
> head shows, it was revealed that in fact she had been raped and killed
by
> an adult pedophile (confirmed by DNA), and that the cops had in the
> tradition of bad cops the world over extracted a false confession from
the
> nearest usefully pliable suspects.
>
> There's actually a pretty conventional crime hiding under this, after
all
> -- the rape of an eight year old by a 13 year old. Ugly, but not
> spectacularly unusual. I'll hold my judgement on whether all the 'gang
> rape' and 'orchestrated by her 9 year old brother' enhancements are
god's
> own truth.
>
> Laura
>
> Laura Burchard -- l...@radix.net -- http://www.radix.net/~lhb
> X-Review: http://traveller.simplenet.com/xfiles/episode.htm
>
> "Good design is clear thinking made visible." -- Edward Tufte
>
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Rick Keir
says...
>
>In article <lydy.93...@gw.dd-b.net>, ly...@gw.dd-b.net (Lydia
>Nickerson) wrote:
>
>> You know, I don't know what to do with this. What's happening which
>> causes boy children, well before puberty, to behave in such a fashion?
>
>
>"You're a smart women. Let's keep this between ourselves."
>
>"I did not have sex with that woman..."
>
>
>
>Gee, I have no idea.
>
We've had people blame it on violent Chinese movies
on the patriarchical traditions of their culture
and you seem to be blaming it on President Clinton
how many of us are humming the tune to this lyric:
"The trouble is he's lazy
the trouble is he drinks
the trouble is he's crazy
the trouble is he stinks
the trouble is he's growing
the trouble is he's grown
Krupke, we've got troubles of our own..."
I'm waiting to hear that some reporter has found
that Gothic music may have played a part.
Doug Wickstrom
ether to say:
>At the risk of not being seen as judgemental or blaming the community, I
>think the Hmong community need to come together
So, are you a fan, or have we been grepped?
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Tsuyu to ochi, tsuyu to kienishi, waga mi ka na?
Naniwa no koto mo, yume mo matayume." --Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Gary Farber
: Here's another question: Thirty years ago, when I was almost eight years
: old, such a story would not have been believed. The unlikelihood of an
: eight year old rape victim combined with the unlikelihood of such young
: attackers would have caused it to be instantly adjudged a lie.
By naive ordinary folks, perhaps so, but certainly not by many folk who
dealt with sex crimes as part of the criminal justice system. Such
horrible crimes have always been around, even if details were not always
in the press.
[. . . .]
Gary Farber
<rdk...@facstaff.wisc.edu> wrote:
[. . .]
: Let's see.
: We've had people blame it on violent Chinese movies
: on the patriarchical traditions of their culture
: and you seem to be blaming it on President Clinton
I blame the Gang of Four. They're always handy. Death, smeth, death will
not release them from guilt.
"Hold high
the great banner of Deng Xiaoping Theory and put forward the cause of
building socialism with Chinese characteristics into the 21st
century!"
That'll take care of the problem.
Zandy Hemsley
>Just about every news medium on the planet, actually, so far as I can
>tell.
Beware of such comments. This story has not, to my knowledge, filtered
through to London based radio news programmes. As for written or
televised media, I'm not sure. This thread is the only mention I have
come across so far.
--
Zandy Hemsley
`How will it end?' - The Truman Show
Lydia Nickerson
>In article <lydy.93...@gw.dd-b.net>, ly...@gw.dd-b.net (Lydia
>Nickerson) wrote:
>> You know, I don't know what to do with this. What's happening which
>> causes boy children, well before puberty, to behave in such a fashion?
>"Kiss it!"
>"You're a smart women. Let's keep this between ourselves."
>"I did not have sex with that woman..."
>Gee, I have no idea.
This is patent nonsense. You're more than entitled to hate Clinton if you
like (though the irrational hatred of Clinton confuses me every bit as
much as tha adulation of Reagan did), but attempting to blame the ills of
the world on his indiscretion is absurd and not a useful contribution to
serious public discourse. My question may be misguided, but it was
serious.
joelrose...@my-deja.com
"Beth Friedman" <b...@wavefront.com> wrote:
> Avram Grumer wrote in message ...
> >
> >I disagree. I'm not tolerant of slavery, rape, mass slaughter, or
> >non-consensual mutilation. In fact, I may be less tolerant of infant
> >gential mutilation that you are. But I don't for a minute believe
that
> >there are truly absolute moral standards, any more than I believe
that
> >there is an absolute language.
>
> Joel and I disagree on an awful lot of this stuff, so I don't presume
to
> speak for him. But I don't see anywhere that Joel was talking about
> absolute _moral_ standards; you were the one who introduced that
word. Is
> it Sturgeon who talks about the difference between ethics and morals?
>
> everything has a dash of relativism in it), but they're more
pragmatic than
> moral. At the very bottom, I guess I'd have to say that I really
don't like
> the flavor of societies where such things exist -- but I don't want
to have
> to say "you shouldn't do that because God told you not to" because I
neither
> believe it is true nor sufficient.
>
On the other hand, I don't think that there's a whole lot of difficulty
in arguing that -- regardless of what line of reasoning one uses --
toleration of the gang rape of a juvenile is a Bad Thing, and folks
just shouldn't do that.
hawj...@aol.com
> >At the risk of being considered culturally insensitive -- hell, at
the
> >risk of being culturally insensitive -- I'll point out that the rumor
is
> >that the children involved, all of them, are from the Hmong
community,
> >and behavior toward women and children in the Hmong community is,
> >traditionally, quite different than what is considered right and
proper
> >in the West. I'm reminded of the old Hmong man who said, in a
somewhat
> >different context, "of course one beats a woman or animal who is
> >disobedient..."
>
> I think this is nonsense, Joel. Patriarchal cultures don't, as far as
I
> know, typically demonstrate this particular type of dysfunction. I
> believe incidents like this are pretty rare. I'm not hung up on the
> gender of the victim, I'm confused by aggressive sexual behavior in
> children well below the age of puberty. I didn't know they were Hmong
> until you mentioned it, though. Being poor immigrants may have some
> bearing on the situation, as well as the ways in which Hmong culture
and
> American culture mix, but I know almost nothing about it. All very
> strange.
> --
> ----
> Lydia Nickerson ly...@demesne.com ly...@dd-b.net
>
======================
Whomever concerned:
It'd be courteous if one doesn't generalize broadly when one only hears
one or two rumors about a particular group of people. It is nothing
about political correctness nonsense. As I've said along this line
elsewhere before, to ignorant people [ignorant in a nice way], it'd be
outrageous if I -- as a Hmong American -- were to make broad generations
about Italian, Irish, Scotish, or Polish Americans.
Now, you can say I know one Hmong man [or Italian, or Polish, or
whatever] or two or three and they told me they believe it's alright to
treat women/wives like animals. Just make sure it is not a
generalization in the tune of "Hmong men", blah, blah, blah. For I've
known and seen many, many White (of Caucasian stock) behaving very
extremely patriarchal, sexist, and outright cruel to women, too. Does
that mean _White men_ [meaning all] behave like neaderthals? No!
In short, all cultures have elements of patriachy, sexism, etc. That the
great majority of the Hmong, especially the elder men, came from a
simpler world doesn't necessarily or automatically make them -- us --
any more vicious or insensitive towards our mothers, sisters,
grandmothers, aunts and women in general. Sometimes we look at things a
bit different from Caucasians, not doubt. Some of White Americans ways
are pretty terrible in our eyes, too, just so you know,,,,,
But here's the upshot to all this: Some of us -- whether Asian, Black,
White, what-not -- choose the best traits from all cultures and people
and discard obsolete ideas, practices, norms, and mores, wherever those
ideas originally came from,,,and believe me, EuroAmerican men still have
plenty of baggages, too, insofar as their view towards their sisters,
mother, grandmothers, aunts, and women in general is concerned,,,,
Hawj Lauj
Kevin J. Maroney
>I think some sets of standards are more likely than other to be stable in
>the long term. And I think some sets of standards are more likely to
>produce societies that I'd find pleasant to live in. Certainly standards
>exist, because we create them, and perhaps there might even be a set that
>I'd say ought to be followed absolutely, but "accept[ing] that there are
>absolute standards" strikes me as the sort of language that encourages
>people to think about the standards as something that exists apart from
>the realm of human endeavor, as something that we serve rather than
>something that serves us.
The biggest problem I have with the idea that there are "absolute
standards", whether they be moral, ethical, aesthetic, or whatnot, is
that I have never even once encountered a convincing demonstration
that such a standard could be recognized if it did indeed exist.
We cannot even know what innocuous things we are doing now will be
viewed, a millennium hence, as unthinkable barbarity comparable to
chattel slavery or ritual mutilation.
--
Kevin Maroney | kmar...@crossover.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
http://www.nyrsf.com
Avram Grumer
> What I don't understand, is where did they learn _how_? I was
> still pretty vague on the mechanics at that age. I recall being
> squicked by the whole idea when I finally figured it out at
> around 12 or 13. AFAIK, this information is no more available to
> 10-year-olds now than it was 35 years ago. If I'm wrong, please
> correct me.
What level of detail do you mean? My parents told me where babies came
from, and gave me books on the subject, when I was old enough to ask and
read. The books were for children, and so fuzzy on the mechanical details
of sex, but I'm pretty sure I had learned those details by the time I was
ten. There were books aimed at adults, both the dry scientific kind found
in libraries and the wet pornographic kind found under the beds and in the
closets of the parents and older siblings of friends. This information is
certainly no less available to 10-year-olds than it was 23 years ago.
Lawrence Person
> What I don't understand, is where did they learn _how_? I was
> still pretty vague on the mechanics at that age. I recall being
> squicked by the whole idea when I finally figured it out at
> around 12 or 13. AFAIK, this information is no more available to
> 10-year-olds now than it was 35 years ago. If I'm wrong, please
> correct me.
>
The Internet.
The Starr Report.
About 1,000 others.
If I can be of further assistance to you on this topic, please let me know.
Patricia Novak
On Fri, 24 Sep 1999, Kevin J. Maroney wrote:
> The biggest problem I have with the idea that there are "absolute
> standards", whether they be moral, ethical, aesthetic, or whatnot, is
> that I have never even once encountered a convincing demonstration
> that such a standard could be recognized if it did indeed exist.
>
> We cannot even know what innocuous things we are doing now will be
> viewed, a millennium hence, as unthinkable barbarity comparable to
> chattel slavery or ritual mutilation.
I believe there's one ethical standard that has been fairly constant over
much of recorded history: Treat another person the way you would want to
be treated if you were in that other person's place. It's the essence of a
number of moral systems, such as the Golden Rule and of Jesus' two
principle commandments, for two examples.
People are always bounded by the laws and customs of their societies, and
later societies may judge those laws and customs harshly. But within any
cultural framework, the heroes will sacrifice to ensure the well-being of
others, the moral people will behave kindly and generously toward others
(without a great deal of self sacrifice), the amoral people will pursue
their own wants with no regards for the needs of others, and the immoral
people will actually enjoy hurting others. At least that's the way it
seems to break down for me.
Patricia
Gary Farber
:> What I don't understand, is where did they learn _how_? I was
:> still pretty vague on the mechanics at that age. I recall being
:> squicked by the whole idea when I finally figured it out at
:> around 12 or 13. AFAIK, this information is no more available to
:> 10-year-olds now than it was 35 years ago. If I'm wrong, please
:> correct me.
: What level of detail do you mean? My parents told me where babies came
: from, and gave me books on the subject, when I was old enough to ask and
: read. The books were for children, and so fuzzy on the mechanical details
: of sex, but I'm pretty sure I had learned those details by the time I was
: ten. There were books aimed at adults, both the dry scientific kind found
: in libraries and the wet pornographic kind found under the beds and in the
: closets of the parents and older siblings of friends. This information is
: certainly no less available to 10-year-olds than it was 23 years ago.
Yeah. My parents had THE KINSEY REPORT and Masters and Johnson, and
almost a dozen other texts and popular books on sex and sexuality on the
bottom shelf of the living room bookshelves, and didn't discourage me from
reading any of them. I was quite familiar with the fine anatomical
details of arousal, plateau, orgasm, and aftermath, and what practices and
positions to cause them with, from around seven or eight. Also with sex
in fiction, and a small amount of porn/erotica, fiction and pictorial.
And there's about fifty-thousand percent more available nowadays, just in
books, let alone magazines, cable tv, online, or in simple conversation,
etc. Sheesh, just turn on cable tv.
That's my input, at least, Lydia.
Lydia Nickerson
>A couple years ago in the elementary school my neighbors' kids attend,
>a six-year-old boy forced a six-year-old girl against the wall and
>started thrusting his pelvis against her, telling her that she was his
>"bitch," and to "give it up." The teacher separated them and told him
>he was wrong, but that was it. There was a great outcry about how he
>should have some counseling because he was attacking the girl, but he
>didn't get any.
Ick. Six? Ick. I know that family and culture and social pressure and
community expectations mix together in complicated ways, so asking
questions like, what is his homelife like isn't likely to give a complete
answer. This stuff didn't happen in the schools I attended. That's a
real small slice of life, though. The only sexual harrassment I
experienced in grade school was in fifth grade when Mark Empree leaned
across the aisle and whispered that he wanted to put his thing in my slot.
I had no idea what he was talking about, and had to ask him to repeat it.
We would have been eleven or twelve, I guess.
As I believe I've said before, I Just Don't Know.
Lydia Nickerson
>In article <lydy.93...@gw.dd-b.net>,
>Lydia Nickerson <ly...@gw.dd-b.net> wrote:
>>
>>On 'tother hand, I mind me of the Floridian four year old that they wanted
>>to try as an adult because he'd shot and killed his playmate with malice
>>aforethought. I found that perfectly credible, and it didn't shock me the
>There's nothing analogous to puberty for anger.
It's the violence I found analagous. That and the fact that the actions
are dissonant with normal expectations of children that age.
David G. Bell
lawr...@bga.com "Lawrence Person" writes:
> In article <lVjqN+kXgk4QUw...@4ax.com>, nims...@aol.com wrote:
>
> > What I don't understand, is where did they learn _how_? I was
> > still pretty vague on the mechanics at that age. I recall being
> > squicked by the whole idea when I finally figured it out at
> > around 12 or 13. AFAIK, this information is no more available to
> > 10-year-olds now than it was 35 years ago. If I'm wrong, please
> > correct me.
> >
> The Internet.
>
> The Starr Report.
>
> www.persiankitty.com
>
> About 1,000 others.
>
> If I can be of further assistance to you on this topic, please let me know.
Even without all the modern sources of information, it's worth
remembering that hiding sex is a great deal easier in the modern
suburban world, safely away from farm animals, and with multiple rooms
in houses.
In some ways, the sexual ignorance of some cultures of this century is
harder to explain than the knowledge of these kids.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
Bernard Peek
<db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk> writes
>Even without all the modern sources of information, it's worth
>remembering that hiding sex is a great deal easier in the modern
>suburban world, safely away from farm animals, and with multiple rooms
>in houses.
I've just finished reading the first volume of Jack Hargreaves
autobiography[1]. He commented on the fact that farm kids knew some of
the mechanics of sex at an early age. He didn't realise that people did
it too, until he and his father were out walking across the farm and
noticed a gate left open. They went through and found a couple of
ramblers coupling.
Hargreaves Senior delivered a smart swipe with his walking stick to the
conveniently placed buttocks, said loudly "Remember to close the gate
when you leave." and strode on, his son's sex-education completed. Well,
almost.
[1] Jack Hargreaves presented a series called Out of Town for 25 years,
from 1959. He was brought up on a small farm before the Kaiser's war.
The programme was a mixture of his reminiscences about country life in
the early part of this century, interviews with those who remembered it
in the last century and interviews with people keeping the old skills
alive in the late 20th Century. To this townie it was fascinating.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
Vicki Rosenzweig
>In <7sf01t$126a$1...@news.doit.wisc.edu> Rick Keir
><rdk...@facstaff.wisc.edu> wrote:
>[. . .]
>: Let's see.
>
>: We've had people blame it on violent Chinese movies
>: on the patriarchical traditions of their culture
>: and you seem to be blaming it on President Clinton
>
>I blame the Gang of Four.
"Love will get you like a case of anthrax
"And that's one thing I don't want to catch."
Though love seems to have little to do with this.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@interport.net
r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.users.interport.net/~vr/rassef-faq.html
"I get by with a little help from my friends." -- Lennon/McCartney
Joel Rosenberg
<hawj...@aol.com> wrote in message news:7sgs94$pff$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
>
>
> > >At the risk of being considered culturally insensitive -- hell, at
> the
> > >risk of being culturally insensitive -- I'll point out that the rumor
> is
> > >that the children involved, all of them, are from the Hmong
> community,
> > >and behavior toward women and children in the Hmong community is,
> > >traditionally, quite different than what is considered right and
> proper
> > >in the West. I'm reminded of the old Hmong man who said, in a
> somewhat
> > >different context, "of course one beats a woman or animal who is
> > >disobedient..."
> >
> > I think this is nonsense, Joel. Patriarchal cultures don't, as far as
> I
> > know, typically demonstrate this particular type of dysfunction. I
> > believe incidents like this are pretty rare. I'm not hung up on the
> > gender of the victim, I'm confused by aggressive sexual behavior in
> > children well below the age of puberty. I didn't know they were Hmong
> > until you mentioned it, though. Being poor immigrants may have some
> > bearing on the situation, as well as the ways in which Hmong culture
> and
> > American culture mix, but I know almost nothing about it. All very
> > strange.
>
> Whomever concerned:
>
> It'd be courteous if one doesn't generalize broadly when one only hears
> one or two rumors about a particular group of people. It is nothing
> about political correctness nonsense.
True. But it's hardly "one or two rumors" that suggest that in Hmong
society, young girls are often married in their very early teens, and
expected to be pregnant multiple times before what is, in this country, the
age of majority. Do you need a reference?
> As I've said along this line
> elsewhere before, to ignorant people [ignorant in a nice way], it'd be
> outrageous if I -- as a Hmong American -- were to make broad generations
> about Italian, Irish, Scotish, or Polish Americans.
That would, perhaps, depend on the generalizations, and the fairness of
them, wouldn't it? Or do you think that, simply, because you are of Hmong
origin, it's improper for you to notice that, say, public drunkenness on
ethnic holidays isn't considered disgraceful in Irish-American society? Are
you forbidden to notice the particular sort of machismo that's
part-and-parcel of Italian-American male culture? Does the fact that there
are certainly many sober Irishmen and non-macho Italians make such
generalizations totally invalid?
Or are you simply claiming that only Hmong may criticize Hmong?
>
> Now, you can say I know one Hmong man [or Italian, or Polish, or
> whatever] or two or three and they told me they believe it's alright to
> treat women/wives like animals. Just make sure it is not a
> generalization in the tune of "Hmong men", blah, blah, blah. For I've
> known and seen many, many White (of Caucasian stock) behaving very
> extremely patriarchal, sexist, and outright cruel to women, too. Does
> that mean _White men_ [meaning all] behave like neaderthals? No!
>
I think, perhaps, you should be more sensitive toward Neanderthals, neh?
> In short, all cultures have elements of patriachy, sexism, etc. That the
> great majority of the Hmong, especially the elder men, came from a
> simpler world
I don't think that suggesting that beating of women and/or animals for
disobedience is appropriate has much to do with simplicity. Do you?
> doesn't necessarily or automatically make them -- us --
> any more vicious or insensitive towards our mothers, sisters,
> grandmothers, aunts and women in general. Sometimes we look at things a
> bit different from Caucasians, not doubt. Some of White Americans ways
> are pretty terrible in our eyes, too, just so you know,,,,,
>
I'm sure that's so. And that's part and parcel of the point I was trying to
make: that there are cultural differences. It is certainly awkward, in
this society, to point out (for example), the common Hmong practice of
having young women married and pregnant in their early teens. It's
difficult -- according to reports of some Westernized young Hmong women --
for Hmong women in their twenties to be treated as less than full adults if
they've remained unmarried, even when they've been educated as teachers and
social workers. (I listened to a young Hmong teacher complain quite at
length about the difficulty of being patronized by uneducated Hmong men --
to them, since she was an unmarried Hmong woman, she simply didn't count.)
If we don't discuss any of this, will it go away?
> But here's the upshot to all this: Some of us -- whether Asian, Black,
> White, what-not -- choose the best traits from all cultures and people
> and discard obsolete ideas, practices, norms, and mores, wherever those
> ideas originally came from,,,and believe me, EuroAmerican men still have
> plenty of baggages, too, insofar as their view towards their sisters,
> mother, grandmothers, aunts, and women in general is concerned,,,,
One doesn't have to defend the (largely mythical) "EuroAmerican" man in
order to point out that there are, indeed, cultural differences, and that
some of these are awkward to discuss, particularly those (like, say, child
marriage and other victimization of young women in the case of the Hmong, or
suttee in the case if Indians, or female genital mutilation in the case of
some African cultures) that are embarrassing. Yet, it seems to me, the
awkwardness of discussing some of the problems makes them more intractable
than otherwise.
Just to take a parallel example: because some Englishmen have murdered
their wives, does that mean that it was inappropriate to criticize (and try
to stop) the practice of suttee?
Joel Rosenberg
Kevin J. Maroney <kmar...@crossover.com> wrote in message
news:E6rrN2Y6zbbWhHUofykqc=Jm=J...@4ax.com...
> av...@bigfoot.com (Avram Grumer) wrote:
>
> >I think some sets of standards are more likely than other to be stable in
> >the long term. And I think some sets of standards are more likely to
> >produce societies that I'd find pleasant to live in. Certainly standards
> >exist, because we create them, and perhaps there might even be a set that
> >I'd say ought to be followed absolutely, but "accept[ing] that there are
> >absolute standards" strikes me as the sort of language that encourages
> >people to think about the standards as something that exists apart from
> >the realm of human endeavor, as something that we serve rather than
> >something that serves us.
>
> standards", whether they be moral, ethical, aesthetic, or whatnot, is
> that I have never even once encountered a convincing demonstration
> that such a standard could be recognized if it did indeed exist.
... and if we walk further down that road, we can wave away chattel slavery,
rape as a tool of war, FGM, suttee and droit de seignier as merely cultural
artifacts that it would be teddibly, teddibly narrow-minded of us to
condemn.
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>Yeah. My parents had THE KINSEY REPORT and Masters and Johnson, and
>almost a dozen other texts and popular books on sex and sexuality on the
>bottom shelf of the living room bookshelves, and didn't discourage me from
>reading any of them.
Years ago, I got a frantic call from a friend at Dulles -- he'd
forgotten to bring his passport and I had a key to their house, could
I run over and get it and bring it to the airport? I told him to call
me at their house in a few minutes in case I couldn't find it (and
this was good, because it wasn't in the place he said first -- or
fifth) but while I was going through all these filing cabinets and
drawers, in one, under their wills and such, was The Joy of Sex. I
commented on it and he said they weren't ashamed of having it, but
they didn't really want other people to know they had it. That always
seemed a lot like being ashamed to me.
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>Marilee J. Layman <mjla...@erols.com> writes:
Well, this is the school on the "wrong" side of the tracks in our city
-- before integration, it was the black school. These days it's
mostly minority low-income kids. I guess I was sexually harassed when
I was a kid, but I'm sort of sorry I told about it. The family next
door when I was 8-12 had a daughter my age and a son who was 15 when I
was 9. One day Karen and I were running around her house, and when I
came around a corner, her brother Mike grabbed me and tried to kiss
me. I just pushed free and kept running. When my mother asked what
we'd done that day, I mentioned it, and a couple weeks later, Mike
went away to an institution. He was mentally retarded and had
apparently hit hormones that he didn't understand how to control.
I've always felt kind of sorry he had to go away, although that was
what was thought best at the time.
I've definitely been sexually harassed as an adult, but I took care of
that myself. After two warnings in public, the next time he groped
me, I broke his foot and ribs.
Lydia Nickerson
>In <avram-24099...@manhattan.crossover.com> Avram Grumer <av...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>: In article <lVjqN+kXgk4QUw...@4ax.com>, nims...@aol.com wrote:
>:> What I don't understand, is where did they learn _how_? I was
>:> still pretty vague on the mechanics at that age. I recall being
>:> squicked by the whole idea when I finally figured it out at
>:> around 12 or 13. AFAIK, this information is no more available to
>:> 10-year-olds now than it was 35 years ago. If I'm wrong, please
>:> correct me.
>: What level of detail do you mean? My parents told me where babies came
>: from, and gave me books on the subject, when I was old enough to ask and
>: read. The books were for children, and so fuzzy on the mechanical details
>: of sex, but I'm pretty sure I had learned those details by the time I was
>: ten. There were books aimed at adults, both the dry scientific kind found
>: in libraries and the wet pornographic kind found under the beds and in the
>: closets of the parents and older siblings of friends. This information is
>: certainly no less available to 10-year-olds than it was 23 years ago.
>Yeah. My parents had THE KINSEY REPORT and Masters and Johnson, and
>almost a dozen other texts and popular books on sex and sexuality on the
>bottom shelf of the living room bookshelves, and didn't discourage me from
>reading any of them. I was quite familiar with the fine anatomical
>details of arousal, plateau, orgasm, and aftermath, and what practices and
>positions to cause them with, from around seven or eight. Also with sex
>in fiction, and a small amount of porn/erotica, fiction and pictorial.
>And there's about fifty-thousand percent more available nowadays, just in
>books, let alone magazines, cable tv, online, or in simple conversation,
>etc. Sheesh, just turn on cable tv.
>That's my input, at least, Lydia.
That was Doug's question, not mine, actually.
We grew up in very different worlds, though. I'll just note that at the
age of sixteen I was still entirely confused as to the actual mechanics of
things. Although the health textbook did have a dotted line of what an
erect penis looked like, it appeared to be so utterly unlikely that I
thought it was just one more of those odd lies that textbooks tell you.
And even if it were true, it still didn't seem like it would, well, fit.
After I lost my virginity, a month before I turned 17, I still wasn't
entirely sure of the mechanics. My parents hid _The Total Woman_* in the
underwear drawer. I can't imagine where they'd have tried to secrete
something like Masters and Johnson. A locked crypt in the basement?
* _The Total Woman_: Usually called "The Totalled Woman" by my father,
who was at that time the head of publications for the church, and so
filled orders for that book as well as many other publications. It was a
Christian sex advice book for women, which included such clever tips as
meeting one's tired husband at the door wrapped in Saranwrap as a method
of keeping one's husband interested in one. It had no actual information
about real world sexuality, his or hers, and the thrust (you'll pardon the
expression) of the book was that it is a woman's godly responsiblity to
provide sexual satisfaction to her husband, the head of her household and
her personal representative of Christ on earth.
Ray Radlein
>
> Rick Keir <rdk...@facstaff.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
> : Let's see.
>
> : We've had people blame it on violent Chinese movies
> : on the patriarchical traditions of their culture
> : and you seem to be blaming it on President Clinton
>
> I blame the Gang of Four.
Just don't blame The Mekons, or Dave will have to challenge you to a
duel or something.
- Ray R.
--
***********************************************************************
"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to RULE THE SEVAGRAM!"
Ray Radlein - r...@learnlink.emory.edu
homepage coming soon! wooo, wooo.
***********************************************************************
Doug Wickstrom
Grumer) excited the ether to say:
>In article <lVjqN+kXgk4QUw...@4ax.com>, nims...@aol.com wrote:
>
>> What I don't understand, is where did they learn _how_? I was
>> still pretty vague on the mechanics at that age. I recall being
>> squicked by the whole idea when I finally figured it out at
>> around 12 or 13. AFAIK, this information is no more available to
>> 10-year-olds now than it was 35 years ago. If I'm wrong, please
>> correct me.
>
>What level of detail do you mean? My parents told me where babies came
>from, and gave me books on the subject, when I was old enough to ask and
>read. The books were for children, and so fuzzy on the mechanical details
>of sex, but I'm pretty sure I had learned those details by the time I was
>ten. There were books aimed at adults, both the dry scientific kind found
>in libraries and the wet pornographic kind found under the beds and in the
>closets of the parents and older siblings of friends. This information is
>certainly no less available to 10-year-olds than it was 23 years ago.
You know, I was raised, more or less, on a farm. At nine, I was
helping out with the lambing, mainly because my hands and wrists
were still small enough to be somewhat less invasive than my
grandfather's. (It still hurt when the ewe clamped down,
though.) Still, I never made the connection between what sheep
do and what people do. Maybe I was slow. I just couldn't see
how "sleeping together" was going to accomplish the procreation
thing. Sheep certainly weren't asleep when they did it, and
moreover, they were standing up. I don't think sheep _can_ do it
lying down. And as nearly as I could tell, sheep never "love
each other very much." They just seem to get on with it.
It comes out today that pornographic videos were common in the
home of at least one of the boys. You have to wonder, though,
what were the parents thinking? There's a reason we label this
stuff "Adults Only."
--
Doug Wickstrom
"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions
and have a tremendous impact on history." --Dan Quayle
Doug Wickstrom
<Ber...@shrdlu.com> excited the ether to say:
>In article <938200...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk>, David G. Bell
><db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk> writes
>
>
>>Even without all the modern sources of information, it's worth
>>remembering that hiding sex is a great deal easier in the modern
>>suburban world, safely away from farm animals, and with multiple rooms
>>in houses.
>
>I've just finished reading the first volume of Jack Hargreaves
>autobiography[1]. He commented on the fact that farm kids knew some of
>the mechanics of sex at an early age. He didn't realise that people did
>it too, until he and his father were out walking across the farm and
>noticed a gate left open. They went through and found a couple of
>ramblers coupling.
What he said.
Doug Wickstrom
ether to say:
>Hawj Lauj
So. Are you a fan, or did you just grep this group?
Elisabeth Carey
<snip>
> It comes out today that pornographic videos were common in the
> home of at least one of the boys. You have to wonder, though,
> what were the parents thinking? There's a reason we label this
> stuff "Adults Only."
Any evidence that any of the boys saw the videos?
Lis Carey
Gary Farber
[. . .]
: It comes out today that pornographic videos were common in the
: home of at least one of the boys. You have to wonder, though,
: what were the parents thinking? There's a reason we label this
: stuff "Adults Only."
What do you think that reason is?
I presume you're not suggesting that watching porn encourages rape, in
either adults or kids. But what are you suggesting?
James Nicoll
Elisabeth Carey <lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
>Doug Wickstrom wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>> It comes out today that pornographic videos were common in the
>> home of at least one of the boys. You have to wonder, though,
>> what were the parents thinking? There's a reason we label this
>> stuff "Adults Only."
>
>
of meters?
I can't help but observe that my father had Playboy magazines
and other pornography around the house when I was growing up and I
haven't molested anyone in my life. Given how much Victorian erotica
centered around what would be considered today highly incorrect class
and gender role assumptions, you think it would be more world-view
damaging than current porn.
James Nicoll
--
"You know, it's getting more and more like _Blade Runner_ down
here."
A customer commenting on downtown Kitchener
Avedon Carol
wrote:
>It comes out today that pornographic videos were common in the
>home of at least one of the boys. You have to wonder, though,
>what were the parents thinking? There's a reason we label this
>stuff "Adults Only."
There is? What is it?
David G. Bell
pci...@otherworld.std.com "Paul Ciszek" writes:
> In article <OS3sN6Kl11L5ZS...@4ax.com>,
> Doug Wickstrom <nims...@aol.com> wrote:
> >>
> >It comes out today that pornographic videos were common in the
> >home of at least one of the boys. You have to wonder, though,
> >what were the parents thinking? There's a reason we label this
> >stuff "Adults Only."
>
> It is also believed that the parents of the boys had sex occasionally.
> Your point?
Before things get any more snarky, perhaps non-UK readers should be
aware that, in this country, the lawfully available depictions of sexual
activity on video tend to stop short of the sex. You have to go to the
Internet to actually see what fits where (and, since things have to be
arranged to give the camera a good view, I'm not sure that I'd want to
use Internet porn as a sexual road-map -- it's my back that gets stiff
these days).
Jonathan Guthrie
<some deleted>
> ...while I was going through all these filing cabinets and
> drawers, in one, under their wills and such, was The Joy of Sex. I
> commented on it and he said they weren't ashamed of having it, but
> they didn't really want other people to know they had it. That always
> seemed a lot like being ashamed to me.
Well, maybe. Consider that they might think that many of their friends
might tend to act differently towards them if they knew that they owned a
copy of that book. Not everyone is as enlightened as you are. Also,
some people are afraid that making knowledge of the sexuality public
would make some people treat them as if that sexuality was the ONLY
aspect of their being instead of just one aspect of their being.
Not that this necessarily has anything to do with sexuality. Other
closely held personal beliefs may have a similar effect. Religious
beliefs leap to mind and jump up-and-down demanding attention.
--
Jonathan Guthrie (jgut...@brokersys.com)
Brokersys +281-895-8101 http://www.brokersys.com/
12703 Veterans Memorial #106, Houston, TX 77014, USA
Patricia Novak
On 25 Sep 1999, James Nicoll wrote:
> I can't help but observe that my father had Playboy magazines
> and other pornography around the house when I was growing up and I
> haven't molested anyone in my life. Given how much Victorian erotica
> centered around what would be considered today highly incorrect class
> and gender role assumptions, you think it would be more world-view
> damaging than current porn.
>
> James Nicoll
And my mother has smoked cigarettes for nearly 40 years with no associated
health problems. In other words, it's seldom a good idea to use a sample
of one to make conclusions.
Studies have shown that rapists are far more likely than non-rapists to
have been exposed while very young (age 9-11 or so) to violent
pornography. Playboy wouldn't qualify but many videos would. Even at
that, exposure to only one or even a few violent pornographic video as a
child would probably not turn a budding Francis of Assissi into Vlad the
Impaler, but repeated exposures would quite likely have an effect on a
susceptible young mind.
Patricia
Rick Keir
Novak <duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
> Studies have shown that rapists are far more likely than non-rapists to
> have been exposed while very young (age 9-11 or so) to violent
> pornography.
It is far too late in the 20th century to have to be pointing
out to someone that correlation does not equal causality.
Gary Farber
[. . .]
: And my mother has smoked cigarettes for nearly 40 years with no associated
: health problems. In other words, it's seldom a good idea to use a sample
: of one to make conclusions.
Quite true. But not only has Playboy had a circulation in eight figures
over forty years, but the number of people who purchase porn is measured
in at least seven figures. What percentage do you estimate to be rapists
and molesters?
: Studies have shown that rapists are far more likely than non-rapists to
: have been exposed while very young (age 9-11 or so) to violent
: pornography. Playboy wouldn't qualify but many videos would.
Could you provide a cite for that, please? Could you also provide a
figure, or even a guess, as to how much pornography is "violent"
pornography?
: Even at
: that, exposure to only one or even a few violent pornographic video as a
: child would probably not turn a budding Francis of Assissi into Vlad the
: Impaler, but repeated exposures would quite likely have an effect on a
: susceptible young mind.
"A"? Or on someone who otherwise has problems? How many children see
movies and tv shows where guns are fired? How many actually go shoot
people, and is the exposure remotely the significant factor?
Vicki Rosenzweig
wrote:
>On Sat, 25 Sep 1999 03:06:19 -0500, Doug Wickstrom <nims...@aol.com>
>wrote:
>
>>It comes out today that pornographic videos were common in the
>>home of at least one of the boys. You have to wonder, though,
>>what were the parents thinking? There's a reason we label this
>>stuff "Adults Only."
>
>There is? What is it?
Fear of the police, of course.
Vicki Rosenzweig
<duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
>
>
>On 25 Sep 1999, James Nicoll wrote:
>
>> I can't help but observe that my father had Playboy magazines
>> and other pornography around the house when I was growing up and I
>> haven't molested anyone in my life. Given how much Victorian erotica
>> centered around what would be considered today highly incorrect class
>> and gender role assumptions, you think it would be more world-view
>> damaging than current porn.
>>
>> James Nicoll
>
>And my mother has smoked cigarettes for nearly 40 years with no associated
>health problems. In other words, it's seldom a good idea to use a sample
>of one to make conclusions.
>
>Studies have shown
Citations, please. To peer-reviewed journals, of course, not
the daily newspaper.
> that rapists are far more likely than non-rapists to
>have been exposed while very young (age 9-11 or so) to violent
>pornography.
Please define "violent pornography."
> Playboy wouldn't qualify but many videos would. Even at
>that, exposure to only one or even a few violent pornographic video as a
>child would probably not turn a budding Francis of Assissi into Vlad the
>Impaler, but repeated exposures would quite likely have an effect on a
>susceptible young mind.
"probably not"...."would quite likely"...."susceptible"....
I think you've constructed a thesis that cannot be refuted,
since any evidence to the contrary can be dismissed on the
grounds that you're talking only about probability, or that
the exposure was to only a "few" examples of what you're
opposing, or that the individuals in question are not
susceptible.
As such, this is not a scientific statement, and cannot be
backed by scientific studies.
Would you care to rephrase it?
Or to compare the number of rapists who have been "exposed"
(whatever that means--does it mean they watched with attention,
happened to walk through a room while someone else was watching,
or simply were in the same house as such a video?) with the
number of rapists who have been exposed to
(a) violent non-sexual television, such as cop shows and the
evening news;
(b) actual violence in the home; or
(c) the Christian Bible?
Doug Wickstrom
excited the ether to say:
>In <OS3sN6Kl11L5ZS...@4ax.com> Doug Wickstrom <nims...@aol.com> wrote:
>[. . .]
>
>: It comes out today that pornographic videos were common in the
>: home of at least one of the boys. You have to wonder, though,
>: what were the parents thinking? There's a reason we label this
>: stuff "Adults Only."
>
>What do you think that reason is?
>
>I presume you're not suggesting that watching porn encourages rape, in
>either adults or kids. But what are you suggesting?
I'm suggesting that such, in and of itself, without any kind of
parental guidance, left lying around, is a Bad Thing.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Tsuyu to ochi, tsuyu to kienishi, waga mi ka na?
Naniwa no koto mo, yume mo matayume." --Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Gary Farber
: I'm suggesting that such, in and of itself, without any kind of
: parental guidance, left lying around, is a Bad Thing.
Why?
Can't kids ask questions if they have them, and parental guidance be given
then?
Patricia Novak
On 25 Sep 1999, Gary Farber wrote:
> Quite true. But not only has Playboy had a circulation in eight figures
> over forty years, but the number of people who purchase porn is measured
> in at least seven figures. What percentage do you estimate to be rapists
> and molesters?
I'm an economist, not a psychologist. But I do know that psychologists
have put out a lot of literature relating pornography to rape. If you're
interested in the subject, you can do a lit search over one of the social
science data bases. Since this is not remotely connected with my own
research area, I don't save these articles in a file.
> Could you provide a cite for that, please?
Doing a quick web search, I found a mention of an article by Goldstein,
Kant, and Harmon with this thesis. There are certainly other works that
you could find in a library lit search.
> Could you also provide a
> figure, or even a guess, as to how much pornography is "violent"
> pornography?
I have no idea. I'm not a pornography user or producer. I've never even
been to an X-rated movie. The psychologists who study such issues will
surely have estimates on that, though.
> "A"? Or on someone who otherwise has problems? How many children see
> movies and tv shows where guns are fired? How many actually go shoot
> people, and is the exposure remotely the significant factor?
I find it hard to accept that children are not influenced in any way by
their environment, which is where your argument seems to be heading. If
children are exposed to a lot of violent pornography, it's bound to have
an effect on them and I doubt it will be good. Most of those so exposed
probably won't go on to be mass murderers or rapists, but deeply troubled
children can find in these movies an affirmation of their worst impulses.
Even those children who don't become criminals will likely suffer some ill
effects (a growing callousness, perhaps) from watching a lot of violent
porn.
People are not born with their values and ethical systems intact.
Children are socialized. They can be socialized in good or bad ways, and
I cannot see how tv and movies, which many children watch for hours every
day, can have no effect on them. The effect will be mitigated by other
factors in their lives, certainly, but it's part of the package. Our
corporate marketing strategists obviously believe in the efficacy of the
media.
Patricia
Patricia Novak
On Sat, 25 Sep 1999, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> Citations, please. To peer-reviewed journals, of course, not
> the daily newspaper.
It's not that hard to find peer-reviewed articles relating pornography to
other sex crimes. A decent library will give you a data base to search.
Since I'm at home now, and not at the library, I did a quick search of the
net and found that a Ph.D. psychologist has posted a review of some of
this literature. Here are some links to her pages:
http://www.mills.edu/ACAD_INFO/EMERITUS/RUSSELL/emeritus_russell.excerpt09.html
http://www.mills.edu/ACAD_INFO/EMERITUS/RUSSELL/emeritus_russell.excerpt13.html
Happy reading.
Patricia
Avedon Carol
<v...@interport.net> wrote:
>On Sat, 25 Sep 1999 15:50:24 GMT, ave...@thirdworld.uk (Avedon Carol)
>wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 25 Sep 1999 03:06:19 -0500, Doug Wickstrom <nims...@aol.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>It comes out today that pornographic videos were common in the
>>>home of at least one of the boys. You have to wonder, though,
>>>what were the parents thinking? There's a reason we label this
>>>stuff "Adults Only."
>>
>>There is? What is it?
>
>Fear of the police, of course.
Oh, right, I knew that.
Nancy Lebovitz
Gary Farber <gfa...@panix.com> wrote:
>In <N03tNwKAjDg2kt...@4ax.com>
>Doug Wickstrom <nims...@aol.com> wrote:
>[. . .]
>: I'm suggesting that such, in and of itself, without any kind of
>: parental guidance, left lying around, is a Bad Thing.
>
>Why?
>
>Can't kids ask questions if they have them, and parental guidance be given
>then?
>
As far as I can tell, I was exposed to so much Parenting by Pronouncement
that I pretty much decided that there was no point in asking my parents
about anything important. At this point, I think what they did was
emotionally and cognitively abusive, but not egregiously or maliciously
so--they just did the easy thing. It also seems to me that I gave up
awfully easily, and I wish it had occurred to me that I could have
looked for other adults that I could have talked with.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com
Calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
David G. Bell
> In <N03tNwKAjDg2kt...@4ax.com>
> Doug Wickstrom <nims...@aol.com> wrote:
> [. . .]
> : I'm suggesting that such, in and of itself, without any kind of
> : parental guidance, left lying around, is a Bad Thing.
>
> Why?
>
> Can't kids ask questions if they have them, and parental guidance be given
> then?
It depends on the parents.
I'd want to check what the presence of "violent porn" in a household has
to say about the parents, with the necessary note that such things as
BDSM play don't automatically imply bad parenting. A statistically
significant correlation between bad parenting, violent porn, and rapists
doesn't make the consequence inevitable.
Incidentally, it's been reported in the UK, in the last couple or so
days, that a lot of young men think that rape is OK. Looking past the
headlines, they seem to be thinking that a regular partner or wife can
be forced to provide sexual intercourse, which is rape in the eyes of
the law, but a different thing to the attacks on a stranger which many
people imagine when they see the word "rape". It's still pretty
disturbing.
The trouble is that strict interpretations of the law can make a lot of
us into rapists. I suppose that I could be classed that way -- I
remember an Easter Monday morning, when I didn't get consent, because of
how I was waking the young lady...
Further details can be left to your imagination.
But I think that shows the potential for a survey to be interpreted in
various ways, even if the data makes useful distinctions. It doesn't
need some of the extremist definitions for a press release to be
misleading.
Lydia Nickerson
>On 25 Sep 1999, James Nicoll wrote:
>> I can't help but observe that my father had Playboy magazines
>> and other pornography around the house when I was growing up and I
>> haven't molested anyone in my life. Given how much Victorian erotica
>> centered around what would be considered today highly incorrect class
>> and gender role assumptions, you think it would be more world-view
>> damaging than current porn.
>>
>> James Nicoll
>And my mother has smoked cigarettes for nearly 40 years with no associated
>health problems. In other words, it's seldom a good idea to use a sample
>of one to make conclusions.
>Studies have shown that rapists are far more likely than non-rapists to
>have been exposed while very young (age 9-11 or so) to violent
>pornography.
Cite, please? This contradicts the findings of Nixon's commission on
pornography.
>Playboy wouldn't qualify but many videos would. Even at
>that, exposure to only one or even a few violent pornographic video as a
>child would probably not turn a budding Francis of Assissi into Vlad the
>Impaler, but repeated exposures would quite likely have an effect on a
>susceptible young mind.
Again, cites, please? I know this is common knowledge, but I don't know
of any reputable studies that have shown a clear link. There are studies
which show that pornography viewed by adult males has little effect, but
that slight effect is a reduction in sexual violence, not an increase.
This is from, IIRC, the Nixon Commission's report.
Avedon Carol
<duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
>Studies have shown that rapists are far more likely than non-rapists to
>have been exposed while very young (age 9-11 or so) to violent
>pornography.
What studies are these? I've been reading the research for a very
long time, and I haven't seen such a study - indeed, the research
shows the reverse. Moreover, a fairly consistent factor in the
backgrounds of rapist is that they were raised in anti-pornography
environments, and a disproportionate number of them have been punished
for looking at pornography.
>Playboy wouldn't qualify but many videos would.
No, not many. Most hard core porn contains no violence.
>Even at that, exposure to only one or even a few violent pornographic video as a
>child would probably not turn a budding Francis of Assissi into Vlad the
>Impaler,
A "budding Francis of Assissi"?
>but repeated exposures would quite likely have an effect on a
>susceptible young mind.
*sigh* I should think you would be more concerned with the fact that
our society makes images of violence itself more acceptable than
images of just about any kind of recreational sex.
Avedon Carol
<duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
>On Sat, 25 Sep 1999, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>
>> Citations, please. To peer-reviewed journals, of course, not
>> the daily newspaper.
>
>It's not that hard to find peer-reviewed articles relating pornography to
>other sex crimes. A decent library will give you a data base to search.
>
>Since I'm at home now, and not at the library, I did a quick search of the
>net and found that a Ph.D. psychologist has posted a review of some of
>this literature. Here are some links to her pages:
I think I know what's coming just from reading your previous posts -
they bear all the tell-tale signs.
>http://www.mills.edu/ACAD_INFO/EMERITUS/RUSSELL/emeritus_russell.excerpt09.html
>http://www.mills.edu/ACAD_INFO/EMERITUS/RUSSELL/emeritus_russell.excerpt13.html
Yep, Diana Russell. This woman is an anti-pornography campaigner and
the mother of "feminist" anti-pornography analysis. Her misuse of
other people's work, not to mention her own distorted presentation and
lop-sided "research methodology" is a scandal.
Anyone who would like to read a good critique of Russell's work (not
by me) is invited to e-mail me for a copy.
Avedon Carol
wrote:
>The papers that I looked at tended to show that there was a negative
>correlation between exposure to violence and immediate violent activity.
>So pictures of violence seemed to have a cathartic effect. At the same
>time there seemed to be a positive correlation between exposure to
>violent images and violent activity measured over longer periods. This
>fits with the idea that violent images inure the individual to the
>consequences of violence.
From this one might surmise that the reason I like science fiction is
that my room mysteriously filled up with sf books and forced me to
like it.
The alternative could be that long-term exposure to violent images is
the result of going out and looking for them because you like that
stuff.
Avedon Carol
<v...@interport.net> wrote:
>>Happy reading.
>>
>>Patricia
>>
>
>Hardly. Not in white-on-magenta.
Maybe on your screen, but here, that's not magenta, that's just plain
purple.
Avedon Carol
<duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
>On 25 Sep 1999, Gary Farber wrote:
>
>> Quite true. But not only has Playboy had a circulation in eight figures
>> over forty years, but the number of people who purchase porn is measured
>> in at least seven figures. What percentage do you estimate to be rapists
>> and molesters?
>
>I'm an economist, not a psychologist. But I do know that psychologists
>have put out a lot of literature relating pornography to rape.
Yes, but few of them say that there's any causal relationship between
the two.
>If you're
>interested in the subject, you can do a lit search over one of the social
>science data bases. Since this is not remotely connected with my own
>research area, I don't save these articles in a file.
I usually like reading this newsgroup because I don't have to see this
argument, but since it _is_ my area of expertise, I do happen to have
a few citations. For example:
http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/harm.htm
Or perhaps you'd rather read a book:
http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/facpub.html
But perhaps it would be a good idea if _you_ did a search - and search
on names that aren't already associated with anti-pornography
activism.
>> Could you provide a cite for that, please?
>
>Doing a quick web search, I found a mention of an article by Goldstein,
>Kant, and Harmon with this thesis. There are certainly other works that
>you could find in a library lit search.
Goldstein and Kant's research showed that rapists saw pornography at a
later age, and less off it. They also found that convicted rapists
were vastly more likely to have been punished for looking at
pornography than other men in prison were.
However, I do know of one researcher who said much what you just did
about the same research: Diana Russell. She has a remarkable tendency
to read these studies with her own unique twist.
>> Could you also provide a
>> figure, or even a guess, as to how much pornography is "violent"
>> pornography?
>
>I have no idea. I'm not a pornography user or producer. I've never even
>been to an X-rated movie. The psychologists who study such issues will
>surely have estimates on that, though.
Well under 2% of actual pornography, according to most researchers,
contains any sign of violence or even the presence of something that
could be called a weapon. I think you will find this a pretty low
figure compared to most other fiction genres.
>> "A"? Or on someone who otherwise has problems? How many children see
>> movies and tv shows where guns are fired? How many actually go shoot
>> people, and is the exposure remotely the significant factor?
>
>I find it hard to accept that children are not influenced in any way by
>their environment, which is where your argument seems to be heading. If
>children are exposed to a lot of violent pornography, it's bound to have
>an effect on them and I doubt it will be good.
Children are affected by real violence in their environment, like
being beaten by their parents. They are also affected by their peer
group. Being raised with sex-negative values also has an ugly effect
on them. Kids know the difference between entertainment media and
reality; it's harder for kids (and most people) to distinguish between
reality and the crap that is fed to them as "fact" by sources such as
parents, teachers, priests, the news media, and anti-pornography
campaigners.
>Most of those so exposed
>probably won't go on to be mass murderers or rapists, but deeply troubled
>children can find in these movies an affirmation of their worst impulses.
>Even those children who don't become criminals will likely suffer some ill
>effects (a growing callousness, perhaps) from watching a lot of violent
>porn.
"Callousness". This term became common parlance in anti-porn rhetoric
after Zillmann & Bryant published a study in which they claimed that
watching porn caused "callousness toward women". But a reading of the
study itself shows they found nothing of the kind.
>People are not born with their values and ethical systems intact.
>Children are socialized.
Principally by the real people in their environment.
>They can be socialized in good or bad ways, and
>I cannot see how tv and movies, which many children watch for hours every
>day, can have no effect on them. The effect will be mitigated by other
>factors in their lives, certainly, but it's part of the package. Our
>corporate marketing strategists obviously believe in the efficacy of the
>media.
The assumption that media has "effects" is one thing, but you're
assuming you know what those effects will be, and that's more than
even marketing strategists pretend to know.
Avedon Carol
>In <N03tNwKAjDg2kt...@4ax.com>
>Doug Wickstrom <nims...@aol.com> wrote:
>[. . .]
>: I'm suggesting that such, in and of itself, without any kind of
>: parental guidance, left lying around, is a Bad Thing.
>
>Why?
>
>Can't kids ask questions if they have them, and parental guidance be given
>then?
I'm wondering who these kids are who grow up "without any kind of
parental guidance".
Doug Wickstrom
Carol) excited the ether to say:
In this particular case they are rapists, which is _not_ an
accepted Hmong family value. This does tend to cast doubt on the
idea that they had parental guidance.
--
Doug Wickstrom
Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle, and will
piss on your fanzines.
Patricia Novak
On Mon, 27 Sep 1999, Doug Wickstrom wrote:
> In this particular case they are rapists, which is _not_ an
> accepted Hmong family value. This does tend to cast doubt on the
> idea that they had parental guidance.
When I was younger, I worked as a volunteer tutor with children on
probation for various offenses -- mostly truancy. I met several children
in that program who had minimal to no parental guidance. In one case, the
girl's mother had run off with some man, leaving the child to the
custodial care of a father who worked two jobs to make ends meet. Although
I'm certain it was not this man's intention to neglect his 11-year old
daughter, he was simply not able to supervise her very well. (The state I
lived in then had very few support services for parents in this
situation.) In another case, a boy's father was in jail and the mother
seemed absolutely indifferent to the child's where-abouts or his
performance in school (they boy was 10). The mother was later arrested on
a drug charge and jailed, and the boy was placed in foster care.
Patricia
Patricia Novak
On Mon, 27 Sep 1999, Avedon Carol wrote:
> Children are affected by real violence in their environment, like
> being beaten by their parents. They are also affected by their peer
> group. Being raised with sex-negative values also has an ugly effect
> on them. Kids know the difference between entertainment media and
> reality;
Yes, children are affected by all these things. But they are also
affected by what they read, see, and hear. It's all part of our cultural
package. If we feed children a steady diet of violence as entertainment
(and yes I am more concerned about that than I am about pornography as
unneeded violence is far more prevalent in supposed "family" movies) what
are they going to learn from it?
As for children being able to tell the difference between fiction and
reality, it depends on the child's age and personality. Few very young
children make this distinction well at all. Some children even as old as
9 or 10 have a tough time separating a movie from reality. One doesn't
need a degree in psychology to know this. One only has to be around
children and watch their reactions to media.
Would you let your own eight-year-old (if you have one) watch a video in
which someone is violently raped? Or if you don't have children, would you
tell parents that allowing their eight-year-olds to watch such a movie
would be perfectly okay?
I'm willing to concede to your greater expertise in that most of the
research relating porn to violence against women was badly done, with a
pre-set agenda. This is not my area of expertise and I don't have time to
pursue it in any depth. But common sense tells me that violent porn has to
be a very bad thing for kids to watch. Even if it won't turn them into
rapists, it's bound to scare and upset them.
I am, by the way, glad to learn that only a small percentage of
pornography is violent.
Patricia
Mike Kozlowski
Patricia Novak <duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
>
>I'm willing to concede to your greater expertise in that most of the
>research relating porn to violence against women was badly done, with a
>pre-set agenda. This is not my area of expertise and I don't have time to
>pursue it in any depth. But common sense tells me that violent porn has to
>be a very bad thing for kids to watch.
Despite the strong body of research indicating that the Earth is round, my
common sense tells me that it's flat.
Nevertheless, I hold the research in higher esteem than my common sense.
As they say, common sense isn't.
--
Michael Kozlowski
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~mkozlows/
Vicki Rosenzweig
<duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
<snip much>
>
>I'm willing to concede to your greater expertise in that most of the
>research relating porn to violence against women was badly done, with a
>pre-set agenda. This is not my area of expertise and I don't have time to
>pursue it in any depth. But common sense tells me that violent porn has to
>be a very bad thing for kids to watch. Even if it won't turn them into
>rapists, it's bound to scare and upset them.
Common sense is what tells you that the Earth is flat.
So far, you've asserted that X is true, then when asked for
citations and offered evidence that X is false, said that
you'll yield to Avedon's greater expertise, but that "common
sense" tells you that violent porn is still a bad thing for
kids to watch, although you admit that it doesn't have the
bad effects you thought it did.
Maybe it would upset them. I don't know--I haven't studied the
question, and I suspect that few kids (which I'll take to mean
pre-pubescent children) have watched it, and few if any
reputable researchers would construct a study to test this--but
is being upset always a bad thing. Maybe they'd be upset and
vow never to do anything like that. Kids are upset when their
goldfish die--I know I was. That doesn't mean we shouldn't let
them have pets.
Matt Austern
> On Mon, 27 Sep 1999 15:31:57 -0500, Patricia Novak
> <duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
>
> <snip much>
> >
> >I'm willing to concede to your greater expertise in that most of the
> >research relating porn to violence against women was badly done, with a
> >pre-set agenda. This is not my area of expertise and I don't have time to
> >pursue it in any depth. But common sense tells me that violent porn has to
> >be a very bad thing for kids to watch. Even if it won't turn them into
> >rapists, it's bound to scare and upset them.
>
> Common sense is what tells you that the Earth is flat.
>
> So far, you've asserted that X is true, then when asked for
> citations and offered evidence that X is false, said that
> you'll yield to Avedon's greater expertise, but that "common
> sense" tells you that violent porn is still a bad thing for
> kids to watch, although you admit that it doesn't have the
> bad effects you thought it did.
I'm willing to accept that violent porn may be bad, but I'm much more
worried about violent cop shows (are there any nonviolent ones?),
violent war movies, violent toothpaste ads, and violent sitcoms.
Patricia Novak
On Mon, 27 Sep 1999, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> Common sense is what tells you that the Earth is flat.
My common sense tells me the earth is round. I've met a lot of people
from all over the world, and not one of them has told me they've seen the
edges of the flat earth. I've also seen an eclipse of the moon and
watched ship masts come up slowly over the horizon.
> So far, you've asserted that X is true, then when asked for
> citations and offered evidence that X is false, said that
> you'll yield to Avedon's greater expertise, but that "common
> sense" tells you that violent porn is still a bad thing for
> kids to watch, although you admit that it doesn't have the
> bad effects you thought it did.
My original post to you concerned Diana Russell's pages. As I've not
spent the time Avedon Carol has done reading Ms. Russell's work, I'll
concede this work may be biased or otherwise flawed and that Ms. Russell
also may not have done a good job summarizing the literature. I really
don't know if Russell's work is good or bad, but I am willing to accept,
for the moment at least, Avedon Carol's statement that it has problems. I
don't spend a lot of time carefully constructing my usenet posts, so if
you drew something else out of my remarks to Avedon Carol, I apologize for
lack of clarity.
I had not really wanted to invest the time in doing a lit search on this
topic, but after all this, I did a quick one on Ovid. There are indeed a
lot of recent articles relating pornography to rape and other sexual
problems (not all of the articles are by Diana Russell, either). Some
articles find little or no correlation, and others find a relationship.
I've put four references at the bottom of this post where the authors did
find a correlation. There were others where correlation was found, but I
didn't want to spend a long time reading all these abstracts and compiling
a list.
I did not find the original Goldstein, Kant, and Harmon study from 1973,
as it goes beyond the time limits of the database, but I will try and get
a copy sometime and see if it really does say that children exposed early
to violent porn are 15 times more likely to be sexual abusers as adults,
as I read in someone's internet summary of that work a while back.
The fact that research on a topic like this is mixed is not surprising,
given the inability of the researchers to conducted the kind of controlled
experiments that would be conclusive. And while certain feminist
researchers may be biased by their own attitudes toward pornography,
researchers who find no correlations could probably also be accused of an
oppposite bias. It's one of the things that makes any social science
research so, uh, interesting.
> Maybe it would upset them. I don't know--I haven't studied the
> question, and I suspect that few kids (which I'll take to mean
> pre-pubescent children) have watched it, and few if any
> reputable researchers would construct a study to test this--but
> is being upset always a bad thing. Maybe they'd be upset and
> vow never to do anything like that. Kids are upset when their
> goldfish die--I know I was. That doesn't mean we shouldn't let
> them have pets.
I assume you don't have children. If you did, would you really want them
at age nine or ten, say, to see videos where rape is presented as
entertainment? I know there is no way in the world I'd ever expose a child
in my keeping to such an item. Every other parent I know has a similar
attitude.
Patricia
Some articles:
Author
Mawhinney, V. Thomas.
Title
Behavioral sexual maladaption contagion in America: An applied
theoretical
analysis.
Source
Behavior & Social Issues. Vol 8(2), Fal 1998, 159-193.
_______________________
Author
Cramer, Elizabeth. McFarlane, Judith. Parker, Barbara. Soeken,
Karen. Silva, Concepcion. Reel, Sally.
Title
Violent pornography and abuse of women: Theory to practice.
Source
Violence & Victims. Vol 13(4), Win 1998, 319-332.
_________________________________
Author
Diamond, Milton. Uchiyama, Ayako.
Title
Pornography, rape, and sex crimes in Japan.
Source
International Journal of Law & Psychiatry. Vol 22(1), Jan-Feb
1999, 1-22.
____________________
Author
Allen, Mike. D'Alessio, Dave. Brezgel, Keri.
Title
A meta-analysis summarizing the effects of pornography: II.
Aggression after exposure.
Source
Human Communication Research. Vol 22(2), Dec 1995, 258-283.
Vicki Rosenzweig
<duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
>
>
>On Mon, 27 Sep 1999, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>
<snip much>
>
> > Maybe it would upset them. I don't know--I haven't studied the
>> question, and I suspect that few kids (which I'll take to mean
>> pre-pubescent children) have watched it, and few if any
>> reputable researchers would construct a study to test this--but
>> is being upset always a bad thing. Maybe they'd be upset and
>> vow never to do anything like that. Kids are upset when their
>> goldfish die--I know I was. That doesn't mean we shouldn't let
>> them have pets.
>
>I assume you don't have children. If you did, would you really want them
>at age nine or ten, say, to see videos where rape is presented as
>entertainment? I know there is no way in the world I'd ever expose a child
>in my keeping to such an item. Every other parent I know has a similar
>attitude.
>
You're right, I don't. And I suspect that if I did, I wouldn't
want them to see such videos. I also think I wouldn't want them
to see videos where violent murder is presented as entertainment.
That's a long way from thinking that if they saw such a video,
it would turn them into violent criminals. Or, for that matter,
thinking that what I, as a hypothetical parent, would want a
child to see should determine what other adults get to see.
I am fairly certain that some of the material I sought out
at 15 or 16 was stuff my parents would not have wanted me to
see or hear--but I don't think it did me any harm, and I am
not and never have been a violent criminal (nor even a violent
agent of the government or a participant in violent sports).
At 35, I think it would have been better if I could have
discussed some of that material with my parents, instead of
hiding it from them--but that's a very different matter.
Avram Grumer
> On Sat, 25 Sep 1999 14:20:53 -0500, Patricia Novak
> <duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
>
> >Even at that, exposure to only one or even a few violent pornographic
> >video as a child would probably not turn a budding Francis of Assissi
> >into Vlad the Impaler,...
>
> A "budding Francis of Assissi"?
Sure. How did you think saints reproduced?
--
Avram Grumer | av...@bigfoot.com | http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/
If music be the food of love, then some of it be the Twinkies of
dysfunctional relationships.
Doug Wickstrom
Kozlowski) excited the ether to say:
>Despite the strong body of research indicating that the Earth is round, my
>common sense tells me that it's flat.
>
>Nevertheless, I hold the research in higher esteem than my common sense.
>As they say, common sense isn't.
Wander on over to Lake Michigan and look east. Your common sense
may tell you different.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always
so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is
I who suffers, not the state." --Mark Twain
Bernard Peek
<ave...@thirdworld.uk> writes
>
>The assumption that media has "effects" is one thing, but you're
>assuming you know what those effects will be, and that's more than
>even marketing strategists pretend to know.
Not quite correct. There are a lot of marketing analysts and a lot of
them claim to know what effect certain types of media will have on the
market. But they certainly aren't going to put any of their hard-won and
very marketable knowledge into the public domain by publishing it in a
journal.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
Matt Austern
> On Sat, 25 Sep 1999 03:06:19 -0500, Doug Wickstrom <nims...@aol.com>
> wrote:
>
> >It comes out today that pornographic videos were common in the
> >home of at least one of the boys. You have to wonder, though,
> >what were the parents thinking? There's a reason we label this
> >stuff "Adults Only."
>
> There is? What is it?
Dunno about pornography (I imagine that your average five year old
probably wouldn't find pictures of naked grownups all that
interesting), but I'd probably try to keep kids away from something
that I thought they'd find extremely disturbing.
I remember reading _Dangerous Visions_ when I was 10 or so---some
librarian put it in the children's section of the library by mistake.
Definitely the wrong book for me at that age... I wouldn't recommend
_The Wasp Factory_ for most 10 year olds either.
Terry Karney
>I believe there's one ethical standard that has been fairly constant over
much of recorded history: Treat another person the way you would want to be
treated if you were in that other person's place. It's the essence of a
number of moral systems, such as the Golden Rule and of Jesus' two principle
commandments, for two examples.<
I think this is true, with a caveat; not all human beings counted as people.
There were whites in the south who would never have thought to beat another
white, but saw no moral wrong in flogging a black. The Scots would
cheerfully raise the hue and cry to bring in someone who had killed a clan-
member, but saw nothing wrong with offing the odd Englishman who happened
into their neck of the woods.
TK
-**** Posted from RemarQ, http://www.remarq.com/?b ****-
Real Discussions for Real People
Ruth Saunders
> <duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
> >I assume you don't have children. If you did, would you really want them
> >at age nine or ten, say, to see videos where rape is presented as
> >entertainment? I know there is no way in the world I'd ever expose a child
> >in my keeping to such an item. Every other parent I know has a similar
> >attitude.
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> You're right, I don't. And I suspect that if I did, I wouldn't
> want them to see such videos. I also think I wouldn't want them
> to see videos where violent murder is presented as entertainment.
There are a hell of a lot films where violent murder is presented as
entertainment - some of them aren't even recognised as such. When I
think of the number of 'murders' I've seen on TV, it must run into
thousands. In comparison, I've seen very few sex acts on TV and hardly
any where the sex act could be classified as violent. I think someone
did a study, (I know someone's going to ask for a cite, but I don't have
the time to look for it) in which the number of sexual encounters
portrayed on TV and the number of violent events were compared. The
violence outstripped the sex by a factor of about 100. Added to which I
am always very distrustful of people who link sex and violence, almost
as if it was one word. (Being unable to resist a joke, I'll throw in
here that in this respect it is rather like, "England's batting
collapsed." Don't worry if you don't get it, you have to watch
cricket...) The methodology of some of these people (and I've seen it in
this discussion) is to take the most extreme examples of pornographic
films and present them as if they were typical. Videos where "rape is
presented as entertainment" are very rare.
I think it's agreed (here and in the studies) that very little
pornography is violent, by any standards, and I actually have less
problem with a child seeing a sexual act than a violent act. I believe
they are likely to come to less harm from it, but that's my prerogative,
particularly as I won't have to live up to my beliefs as I don't have
children. It might be uncomfortable for the parent(s) to be with a child
when there is a sexual act on TV, or for the child, but that's a
different issue. I know I've watched TV with my parents when something
was being shown that I didn't particularly want to watch with them, or
they with me, but that's an issue of family dynamics. As I said before,
the jury seems to be still out on what people actually do take away from
TV, whatever is being portrayed.
If I can throw in an example here, the sociologist Kenneth Thompson in
his book "Moral Panics" (ISBN 0-415-11977-4) (borrow it from a library,
it costs a fortune) cites a report from the Policy Studies Institute on
the viewing habits of young offenders (pages 104 and 105). The study was
funded by the main (TV) regulatory bodies in the UK such as the
Independent Television Commission, the Broadcasting Standards Council
and the BBC. Its main finding was that young offenders *do not* have
significantly different viewing habits from non-offending children of
the same age. Interestingly, he also comments that because the study
came to such an unexciting conclusion it was misrepresented in the
media.
I highly recommend Thompson's book, it's a study of how moral panics
arise, and includes chapters on families, children and violence, sex and
AIDs, and sex on the screen. Most illuminating. In the back among the
references is a list of other studies of how moral crusades arise, and
having read a few of these books, it's seems to me that more than enough
research has been done to have one questioning the motives of some of
the people involved in them.
> That's a long way from thinking that if they saw such a video,
> it would turn them into violent criminals. Or, for that matter,
> thinking that what I, as a hypothetical parent, would want a
> child to see should determine what other adults get to see.
What she said.
--
Ruth S.
le...@redrose76.freeserve.co.uk
Red Rose Convention
(multi-media slash convention)
4-6 August 2000, Telford.
Webpage: http://members.aol.com/hbrown9628/britslash.htm
Nancy Lebovitz
Ruth Saunders <le...@redrose76.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>If I can throw in an example here, the sociologist Kenneth Thompson in
>his book "Moral Panics" (ISBN 0-415-11977-4) (borrow it from a library,
>it costs a fortune) cites a report from the Policy Studies Institute on
>the viewing habits of young offenders (pages 104 and 105). The study was
>funded by the main (TV) regulatory bodies in the UK such as the
>Independent Television Commission, the Broadcasting Standards Council
>and the BBC. Its main finding was that young offenders *do not* have
>significantly different viewing habits from non-offending children of
>the same age. Interestingly, he also comments that because the study
>came to such an unexciting conclusion it was misrepresented in the
>media.
>
>I highly recommend Thompson's book, it's a study of how moral panics
>arise, and includes chapters on families, children and violence, sex and
>AIDs, and sex on the screen. Most illuminating. In the back among the
>references is a list of other studies of how moral crusades arise, and
>having read a few of these books, it's seems to me that more than enough
>research has been done to have one questioning the motives of some of
>the people involved in them.
>
started?
Have there been any studies of what people who grow up to be moral
crusaders were exposed to as children? :-)
Laura Burchard
Gary Farber <gfa...@panix.com> wrote:
>In <lydy.93...@gw.dd-b.net> Lydia Nickerson <ly...@gw.dd-b.net> wrote:
>: Here's another question: Thirty years ago, when I was almost eight years
>: old, such a story would not have been believed. The unlikelihood of an
>: eight year old rape victim combined with the unlikelihood of such young
>: attackers would have caused it to be instantly adjudged a lie.
>By naive ordinary folks, perhaps so, but certainly not by many folk who
>dealt with sex crimes as part of the criminal justice system. Such
>horrible crimes have always been around, even if details were not always
>in the press.
Yeah, I have trouble believing that big city cops at least would have been
surprised at an eight year old rape victim in 1969. Or even 1869.
Laura
Laura Burchard -- l...@radix.net -- http://www.radix.net/~lhb
X-Review: http://traveller.simplenet.com/xfiles/episode.htm
"Good design is clear thinking made visible." -- Edward Tufte
Avedon Carol
wrote:
>>On 25 Sep 1999 23:05:27 GMT, Gary Farber <gfa...@panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>>In <N03tNwKAjDg2kt...@4ax.com>
>>>: I'm suggesting that such, in and of itself, without any kind of
>>>: parental guidance, left lying around, is a Bad Thing.
>>>
>>>Why?
>>>
>>>Can't kids ask questions if they have them, and parental guidance be given
>>>then?
>>
>>I'm wondering who these kids are who grow up "without any kind of
>>parental guidance".
>
>In this particular case they are rapists, which is _not_ an
>accepted Hmong family value. This does tend to cast doubt on the
>idea that they had parental guidance.
On the contrary, rapists normally _do_ have parental guidance.
Unfortunately, it's not the sort you and I would be likely to approve
of. It's the content of that guidance, not the absence of any
guidance, that presents the real problem.
Ruth Saunders
> Would you be willing to sketch a little about how moral panics get
> started?
The first published reference in sociological literature appears to have
been by British sociologist Jock Young in 1971, when discussing public
concern about statistics apparently showing an alarming increase in drug
abuse. The interesting point about Young's argument is that it
highlighted the spiral effect produced by the interaction of the media,
public opinion, interest groups, and the authorities which gives rise to
the phenomena. Note that it is irrelevant to the study of these
phenomena whether the problem giving rise to the panic is founded in
fact or not.
Quick note for the non-sociologists: there is a big difference between a
social problem and a sociological problem. For example, poverty is a
social problem. How poverty may be measured is a sociological problem.
And if you've ever read any of the literature on the measurement of
poverty, you'll know that it's a particularly difficult and intractable
one.
The sociologist Stanley Cohen first systematically introduced the
concept of a moral panic when discussing the seaside fights of the mods
and the rockers in 1960's Britain.
Cohen (Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 1972) said this: "Societies appear
to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A
condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined
as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in
a stylised and steryotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral
barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other
right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their
diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often)
resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates
and becomes more visible. Sometimes the subject of the panic is quite
novel and at other times it has existed for long enough, but suddenly
appears in the limelight. Sometimes the panic passes over and is
forgotten, except in folklore and collective memory; at other times it
has more serious and long lasting repercussions and might produce such
changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way society
conceives itself."
Basically a moral panic arises when:
(1) someone or something is defined as a threat to values;
(2) this threat is depicted in an easily recognisable form by the media;
(3) there is a rapid build-up of public concern;
(4) there is a response from authorities or opinion makers;
(5) the panic recedes or results in social changes.
This can take place over days or weeks, or even hours.
Examples I can think of include:
the moral panic against welfare scroungers in the 1970's, which
occasionally re-emerges;
against so-called "dead-beat Dads", which gave rise to the Child Support
Agency in the UK;
the one about teenage single parents getting preferential treatment for
housing (this, BTW, can almost be catergorised as an urban myth);
the one about "spaghetti scroungers" arriving in the UK from Europe to
claim welfare benefits (this one really is an urban myth, as anyone who
knows in detail how the EU agreements on social security actually work
could tell you);
the one against moral degeneracy which arose from the James Bulger trial
(when two young boys were convicted of killing a three year old child) -
"video nasties" became mixed up in that one as well;
the one which keeps recurring about the effects of pornographic material
or videos;
the one which keeps recurring about porn on the internet;
the one about drugs which arose from the ecstasy related death of Leah
Betts; as well as the classic examples such as the mods and the rockers
and sex-and-AIDS.
Come to think of it, and not wishing to re-open the debate, the recent
shooting in Colorado was an American example of a moral panic.
> Have there been any studies of what people who grow up to be moral
> crusaders were exposed to as children? :-)
Not that I'm aware, though it would be interesting to find out!
Lydia Nickerson
>I assume you don't have children. If you did, would you really want them
>at age nine or ten, say, to see videos where rape is presented as
>entertainment? I know there is no way in the world I'd ever expose a child
>in my keeping to such an item. Every other parent I know has a similar
>attitude.
I would like to point out that you have permitted Diana Russell to reframe
the discussion. You are now consistently referring to "violent
pornography," rather than pornography in your arguments. The initial
discussion started with the statement that the boys in question were in a
home with no supervision and pornographic videos. No information about
the content of those videos, other than their sexually explicit nature,
has been stated. Furthermore, Avedon has stated that only 2% of
pornography features violence. Therefore, the initial discussion was most
likely about non-violent pornography and whether or not that contributed
to the difficult to believe case of rape by a number of minor children.
There are a host of arguments against conflating sex and violence,
especially for children. Letting Russell reframe the discussion like this
does precisely that. Treating all sexual behavior as if it were also
violent seems to me to also promote various forms of later sexual and
behavioral dysfunction. I grew up with sexually repressed people, and I
can tell you that that does a lot of damage, too.
Avram Grumer
<aus...@sgi.com> wrote:
> I'm willing to accept that violent porn may be bad, but I'm much more
> worried about violent cop shows (are there any nonviolent ones?),
> violent war movies, violent toothpaste ads, and violent sitcoms.
I don't remember seeing any violence on _Barney Miller_, but that's not a
current show. I've never watched a whole episode of _Dragnet_ or _Car 54,
Where Are You?_, but the from the clips I've seen I wouldn't be surprised
if those shows were non-violent.
--
Avram Grumer | Any sufficiently advanced
Home: av...@bigfoot.com | technology is indistinguishable
http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/ | from an error message.
Doug Wickstrom
excited the ether to say:
>In article <7sf7iq$64f$1...@news.panix.com>,
>Gary Farber <gfa...@panix.com> wrote:
>>In <lydy.93...@gw.dd-b.net> Lydia Nickerson <ly...@gw.dd-b.net> wrote:
>>: Here's another question: Thirty years ago, when I was almost eight years
>>: old, such a story would not have been believed. The unlikelihood of an
>>: eight year old rape victim combined with the unlikelihood of such young
>>: attackers would have caused it to be instantly adjudged a lie.
>
>>By naive ordinary folks, perhaps so, but certainly not by many folk who
>>dealt with sex crimes as part of the criminal justice system. Such
>>horrible crimes have always been around, even if details were not always
>>in the press.
>
>Yeah, I have trouble believing that big city cops at least would have been
>surprised at an eight year old rape victim in 1969. Or even 1869.
They'd have been plenty surprised by a nine-year-old rapist.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"The Internet is a great way to get on the Net." --Bob Dole
Jo Walton
v...@interport.net "Vicki Rosenzweig" writes:
> Maybe it would upset them. I don't know--I haven't studied the
> question, and I suspect that few kids (which I'll take to mean
> pre-pubescent children) have watched it, and few if any
> reputable researchers would construct a study to test this--but
> is being upset always a bad thing. Maybe they'd be upset and
> vow never to do anything like that. Kids are upset when their
> goldfish die--I know I was. That doesn't mean we shouldn't let
> them have pets.
It doesn't mean we should deliberately hand them goldfish at death's
door either.
This isn't anything like as easy in the specific as you make it sound.
For instance, I just decided that Duane's :Door: books aren't appropriate
for Sasha, despite his loving her Wizard books, and despite them being
now well within his reading level and interest level. And the reason I've
decided this is because (spoiler for :The Door Into Shadow:) of the rape
of Segnbora when she was a child. This is something essential to the book,
the book is better for it, it's sensitively handled, I'd not have a word
of it changed, but I think the degree of upset it's likely to cause in a
pre-pubescent child is inappropriate. How I'll feel when he's twelve is
different, but for now, that was a no. A censorship, even.
However, I wasn't at all worried by the very sensuous :A Midsummer
Night's Dream: we saw on Sunday, and I wouldn't have minded if there's
been less strategic petals, nor did I mind the mud-wrestling scene. I
can't see that being even slightly upsetting.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia; Poetry; RASFW FAQ; etc.
Patricia Novak
On 28 Sep 1999, Lydia Nickerson wrote:
> I would like to point out that you have permitted Diana Russell to reframe
> the discussion. You are now consistently referring to "violent
> pornography," rather than pornography in your arguments.
My understanding is that the term "pornography" is distinguished from
"erotica" by researchers. And that for something to be called
"pornographic" by sex researchers it normally would contain elements of
force or degradation. This is not my research area, but I have seen these
two terms use and assumed that was the distinction researchers were
making. Thus mere "erotica" shouldn't figure into the research studies of
the effect of porn, unless researchers are inconsistent in use of the
term. If so, that might explain the mixed results of the studies.
How Diana Russell uses the term "pornography" I do not know.
> The initial
> discussion started with the statement that the boys in question were in a
> home with no supervision and pornographic videos. No information about
> the content of those videos, other than their sexually explicit nature,
> has been stated. Furthermore, Avedon has stated that only 2% of
> pornography features violence.
No, we have no idea what was in those videos. And likely we won't find
out since these are juveniles and court records are likely to be sealed.
> Therefore, the initial discussion was most
> likely about non-violent pornography and whether or not that contributed
> to the difficult to believe case of rape by a number of minor children.
My assumption when the tape was labeled "pornography" and not some milder
term (sex video, for example) was that the tape did involve force or
degradation to women. That would also make sense in the context of what
the boys did. Young children do imitate what they see on tv and movies.
I would be interested to know where these boys actually got the idea for
the rape. (Although it is likely I will never find out.) Nine seems
ridiculously young for such a crime. I know a lot of nine year olds. It
just seems crazy that one would instigate a rape unless he himself had
been raped or had seen a rape, either in real life or on a video.
> There are a host of arguments against conflating sex and violence,
Oh, absolutely. But the term "pornography" in my mind involves material
that does just that.
Patricia
Patricia Novak
On Mon, 27 Sep 1999, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> You're right, I don't. And I suspect that if I did, I wouldn't
> want them to see such videos. I also think I wouldn't want them
> to see videos where violent murder is presented as entertainment.
Well, this is my view, also. Keep the stuff away from kids. Actually, as
a parent, I find it very easy to keep violent porn out of the house. It's
not on tv and it's not in the kind of movies shown at our local cinema.
It's much harder to keep an eye on other sorts of violence in media. And
it's not just a body count. It really depends on how the violence is
depicted. Movies like Gandhi, The Killing Fields, or Schindler's List
would be things I would think an adolescent should see. They are violent
movies, but they show how horrible violence. The heroes of these stories
are the non-violent people.
The rating system doesn't help much. A movie can get a PG-13 rating if
it's got a few "cuss" words, or a body count of dozens.
> That's a long way from thinking that if they saw such a video,
> it would turn them into violent criminals.
Seeing one such video, with all other things going well in a child's life,
would likely not have much effect at all. I think I agreed to that way up
yonder in this thread. But take a child from a background that is already
disturbed, and throw this sort of stuff at them and I can't help but think
it would be like putting a match to gasoline.
> Or, for that matter,
> thinking that what I, as a hypothetical parent, would want a
> child to see should determine what other adults get to see.
Well, no. We don't want young children to drink or smoke, either. That's
why those substances are illegal for them and legal for adults.
> I am fairly certain that some of the material I sought out
> at 15 or 16 was stuff my parents would not have wanted me to
> see or hear--but I don't think it did me any harm,
15 or 16 is a different issue. The boy who was reported to instigate
this rape was nine. I would really like to know why he would do it (if
the story is indeed true, which it looks to be from what I read). If
anyone has seen any alleged motives, I'd be appreciative if they would
post that news.
> and I am
> not and never have been a violent criminal (nor even a violent
> agent of the government or a participant in violent sports).
> At 35, I think it would have been better if I could have
> discussed some of that material with my parents, instead of
> hiding it from them--but that's a very different matter.
My mother was pretty good about such things. She let me read James
Baldwin's "Another Country" when I was around 12 and discussed it with me.
Women, by the way, are much less likely to turn out to be violent
criminals than men are. Although I believe the number of violent women
offenders has been growing in recent years.
Patricia
Doug Wickstrom
<duf...@mail.aburn.edu> excited the ether to say:
>Oh, absolutely. But the term "pornography" in my mind involves material
>that does just that.
I suggest you go out and rent some, then.
Because you are terribly wrong.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Tsuyu to ochi, tsuyu to kienishi, waga mi ka na?
Naniwa no koto mo, yume mo matayume." --Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Doug Wickstrom
<duf...@mail.aburn.edu> excited the ether to say:
>Women, by the way, are much less likely to turn out to be violent
>criminals than men are.
Did you have some reason for throwing in this non-sequiter?
--
Doug Wickstrom
"I don't think editors are any crueller than the general populace, they
just have more opportunity." --Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
Gary Farber
Patricia Novak <duf...@mail.aburn.edu> wrote:
[. . .]
: My understanding is that the term "pornography" is distinguished from
: "erotica" by researchers. And that for something to be called
: "pornographic" by sex researchers it normally would contain elements of
: force or degradation.
Cite? Of any sort at all?
[. . .]
: My assumption when the tape was labeled "pornography" and not some milder
: term (sex video, for example) was that the tape did involve force or
: degradation to women.
I believe that if you check this assumption against the reality of the
words commonly used by law enforcement and news media, you will find out
that your assumption turns out not to be the case.
[. . .]
: Oh, absolutely. But the term "pornography" in my mind involves material
: that does just that.
That's nice, but doesn't seem to relate to reality of usage on the planet
I live on.
In common parlance, you will find that PLAYBOY and PENTHOUSE are
"pornography," and thus not available for sale at many convenience stores.
The latest Stanley Kubrick film had to be digitally altered so as to not
be given an X rating, and thus not be allowed to be advertised in most
newspapers, because it would then be "pornography." And so on.
[. . . .]
--
Copyright 1999 by Gary Farber; For Hire as: Web Researcher; Nonfiction
Writer, Fiction and Nonfiction Editor; gfa...@panix.com; Northeast US