dsi@unccvax.UUCP (Dataspan Inc) (01/16/85)
Actually, there was a half-decent (and methodologically correct) study
in the Journal of Communication about two years ago. Among reasonably street-
wise college students at a prominent university, it was shown that exposure
to even "non-hurtful" films with explicit sexual content (i.e. men and women
having typical heterosexual intercourse in an obviously 'non-hurtful' way-
draw what conclusions you wish) had the nonlinear result of changing the
students' attitudes towards certain sexual crimes and perfectly normal acts.
What really was amazing about this study is that the college women who
had the most exposure to these films actually 1) had the least support for
the E.R.A. and 2) would give the lowest sentence of any of the students for
a convicted rapist. There are some other seemingly "backwards" data too concerning
the prevalance of certain sexual practices, etc.
The authors go into an excellent analysis of the data and account for
the study's limitations.
I think it's called "Sex, Pornography, and the Trivialisation of Rape"
and was published in 1981 or 1982 (?). It's the only study I have seen thus
far not written in an inflammatory [sp?] way to prove one point or the other.
******
Those persons in Minnesota are way off the mark. Instead of trying to
legislate morality via force, why don't we teach people to respond with
appropriate sexual / nonsexual behaviour to sexual stimuli? The problem
isn't Johnny who finds Dad's copy of Penthouse in the socks and undies
drawer. For that matter, Bob Guccione isn't even the problem. Those of us
in mainstream America are so sick and d**n tired of having heaved at us
tons of sexual messages in general that it's difficult to think of much
else. It's not that one approves or disapproves of any particular human
relationship; but that one has to lock yourself in a Sonex-lined closet
or drive down the most distant rural road you can find, then get out and
hike 2 miles into the Boonies...to escape constant mental-sexual harrasment.
As creatures who are quite capable, thank you, of feeling sexual
pleasure without seeing that stupid Carolina Olds Network commercial showing
some overmade person pulling a cherry out of their mouth, there may be
moral justification for some act which the Minnesota ordinance would like
to achieve. (See "Critique of Pure Tolerance" by Herbert Marcuse.. rough
reading, a chore to plow through at times) If we are sick and tired and
simply burnt out from too much impersonal sexual stimulation, let's not
pin the problem on smut peddlers and kiddie porn. It may not be that the
reason to reduce impersonal sexual messages in society has anything to
do with Falwell (oooh, I detest that man) but rather to simply increase
the utils that Mr. and Ms. America get from personal and intimate relationships.
This is not to say that the free dissemination of ideas should be
sacrificed. What is beng advocated is for everyone to reduce the amount
of sexual communication they pitch at inpersonals about 5 % /year for 10
years. By moving the societal spectral distribution down in frequency,
some of the more personally disgusting thing like kiddie porn will decrease
because the same utils from sex would accrue to those persons using kiddie
porn at much less hurtful and disgusting levels of {no flames, please for
this word} "STATISTICAL deviancy."
dya