http://www.oneangrygirl.net/myth3.html

Melinda Liszewski

Of my input you wrote: “Spencer, I don’t know you from Adam. Your anecdotes don’t constitute ‘evidence’ unless independently verified in a proper study. Has that been done, and if so, where is it published?”

Would you please recommend an ethics committee at any Australian university that would agree to a student conducting empirical research with a control group that addresses this research proposal: “Investigate the impact on a group of 50 adult males who are exposed to 100 hours of viewing x-rated videos out of Canberra and freely available to all adults, as to their rate of sexually abusing children, youth and adults.”

The methodology would involve placing those men in a group for these 100 hours of viewing. There would be a control group of 50 men who had never ever viewed x-videos or any other pornography, and their rate of sexually abusing children, youth and adults.

Follow-up studies would be needed to confirm the results or otherwise.

Which Australian universities would give me permission to conduct this research with this kind of risk involved?

Of course, you don’t know me. This is a blog site. Here you are pressing the genetic logical fallacy again. What has knowledge of me to do with the information I am presenting? You are correct in identifying this issue because knowing my character (honesty, integrity) is an important issue in accepting or rejecting my evidence. Thanks for reminding me of this.

The same applies with my lack of knowledge of you and your character.

Sincerely, Spencer Gear, Queensland

Ewan McDonald, Victoria.

But your prejudices are again showing. It is clear for all to see that you won’t allow the facts to interfere with your pro-sleaze agenda. Thus as per my commenting rules, it seems pointless to continue with someone who has made up her mind and won’t let the evidence get in the way.

And the term which you are obviously unfamiliar with has a long heritage, being around since the Protestant Reformation, with Luther the first to employ it. And it does nicely describe where you are coming from.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

And I remind you that your view is also a “religiously motivated moral viewpoint”. Prove otherwise.

Ewan McDonald, Victoria.

I’m still only seeing rhetoric and opinion, not evidence. If there is any evidence of a connection between these videos and child abuse, why is it that successive Senate inquires have not found it? I have children, and I’m as concerned about child abuse as any parent, but I don’t see any evidence for the proposition. And I am talking specifically about the Australian X18+ classification, which is very mild compared with what other countries allow.

Spencer, I don’t know you from Adam. Your anecdotes don’t constitute “evidence” unless independently verified in a proper study. Has that been done, and if so, where is it published?

And if you are all really concerned about the abuse of children, why are none of you speaking out about the mental abuse involved in brainwashing children with the religious views of their parents? I assume the answer is that you are so convinced that you have the truth that you claim the right to impose your belief on your children. Do you therefore affirm that Muslim parents have that same right, and Jews, and atheists? Or should all children be educated about the claims of all religions, and left to decide for themselves once they reach their late teens?
I certainly subscribe to the latter view.

Amanda O’Hara, NSW

P.S. Bill, I suggest you don’t use big words like “antinominian” unless you know how to spell them.

The sexual content is abusive, unnatural and degrading, this has an impact on the viewer and therefore society in general who then tend to normalise such abusive and unnatural behaviour at the expense of women – that is a problem. Are rapes and sexual assaults increasing or decreasing? Is porn use and acceptance increasing or decreasing? I’m sure you can guess the answer to that one.

I don’t understand why something being a “moral issue” lessens the viewpoint of the person with the “issue.” I personally have a moral issue with rape and with child sexual abuse. X rated videos depict or skirt around the edges of both. I most certainly do object to the sexual content of x-rated videos because said sexual content depicts – not consentual intercourse between loving couples – but domination, control and abusive and degrading scenarios. As I have said earlier, if you look at the testimony of former adult stars they will talk about the need for muscle relaxants, local anaesthetics and lines of cocaine to cope with the demands of the scene.

Amanda you have repeatedly said that x rated depicts consentual sex between adults – do many people need to take drugs before they engage in consentual sex with their partners? Saying that pornography = sex is like hitting someone over the head with a frypan and calling it cooking. Porn is not about sex, it is about people obtaining gratification from the domination and humiliation of another human being.

“Conservative religion is far too concerned with the private behaviour of others and trying to force society at large to comply with your opinion.”

“Private” is irrelevant. The fact that we are concerned with child sexual abuse and online child porn (both “private”) shows that not only is it normal to be concerned about “private” sexual behaviour, but completely necessary. If men are abusing their wives in the ways depicted in porn, to the point where their wives need narcotics to cope with it then we should be very concerned and willing to take action. There are numerous studies demonstrating a link between pornography and sexual assault available online. The question that should be asked is not “is this having an impact on children” but “what sort of impact is this having on children.” I would argue that it is child abuse in itself to put children at risk of accessing porn. Don’t they deserve a childhood?

To ignore the evidence, anecdotal or otherwise is simply to put your head in the sand and pander to the interests of those that wish to see women abused, degraded and disposed of. Why do we want to protect sleazebags and their interests more than we do children?

Melinda Liszewski

You take me to task: “Regarding Spencer’s claims of ‘genetic logical fallacy’, I did not state that religiously motivated moral viewpoints disqualify anyone from having an opinion. I said that all of the correspondents here had ‘moral issues’ with pornography in general, based on their religious belief.”

Let’s examine your statement here, “I did not state that religiously motivated moral viewpoints disqualify anyone from having an opinion.” Agreed! But you were not objecting to their having an opinion. You were objecting to the origin of their views.

You don’t like the idea that I associated your earlier statements with a genetic logical fallacy. You were dismissing the arguments that many on this Forum were giving you, not based on what the statements actually stated (protecting people from the effects of x-videos), but based on something that you didn’t like about that person’s views. A genetic fallacy is perpetrated when the origin of a belief or idea is presented as grounds to accept or reject the idea.

From your statement again: ‘I said that all of the correspondents here had ‘moral issues’ with pornography in general, based on their religious belief.” However, you went beyond that to reject their views because of the origin.

Let’s go back to your earlier post from which I assessed that you were using a genetic logical fallacy. You stated: “It is clear that everyone on this list has a religiously-based ‘moral issue’ with X-rated material, so why not be honest and simply state that as the objection from the outset, instead of hiding behind the ‘protect the children’ mantra?”

You do not want us to present the evidence of the link between x-rated material and sexual abuse of children because we come from a position of a religiously-based, moral issue. You are discounting our present evidence because you object to our religiously-based, moral world-and-life view.

I say it again, and you don’t like it, you don’t want to accept the empirical evidence and anecdotal evidence that I presented to protect children, because you object to the origins of my belief. You have committed a genetic fallacy and you don’t like being called to account over what you have done.

“The Genetic Fallacy is the most general fallacy of irrelevancy involving the origins or history of an idea. It is fallacious to either endorse or condemn an idea based on its past—rather than on its present—merits or demerits, unless its past in some way affects its present value. For instance, the origin of evidence can be quite relevant to its evaluation, especially in historical investigations. The origin of testimony—whether first hand, hearsay, or rumor—carries weight in evaluating it” (Fallacy Files at: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/genefall.html ).

Sincerely,
Spencer Gear, Qld.