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23/12/02
Torture Rape and Murder
"Why is Britain set to outlaw
cigarette smoking in films, but not torture, rape, murder or alcohol
drinking?" Denis
Prager
An interesting point!
And it is made even more interesting
by the fact that many children's charities and women's groups have often
argued that provided that the portrayal of torture, rape, abuse etc. is
done in a manner which reveals their truly gruesome nature (as, perhaps,
in the 'realistic' rape scene of a TV soap opera, or in a piece
depicting bloody domestic violence) then this is acceptable because it
will turn people off the ideas contained in them.
But surely, the more 'realistic' are
the portrayals of, say, brutal rapes, the more consistent must they be
with what was actually inside the minds of those perpetrators who
actually enjoyed committing such acts.
After all, they were there!
They brought about these situations!
They sought them!
And so it is that portraying sexual
abuse 'realistically' excites the very people who are most likely to
want to engage in it, realistically.
And it also sexualises the harsh
reality of those abuse situations in other folk who might simply be
close to fantasising about being in such situations - without them, perhaps, even
realising it.
And, even worse, it would also seem
quite likely to sexualise abuse situations in the minds of
millions
of ordinary, normal, people too.
And surely this means that
organisations that persistently thrust or induce - visually or
verbally - into the minds of people 'realistic' scenes of sexual
abuse or rape are, in fact, responsible for a great deal of the very abuse that they would
claim they are trying to counter.
Indeed, perhaps it is precisely
because the population is continually bombarded with images of abuse -
visual or verbal - that there is now so much of it about.
After all, the first brutal rape scene
that you see makes you feel sick. But by the time you've reached
the 50th one, you're beginning to think, Hmm, it doesn't look so bad.
Some kind of emotional desensitisation
to the suffering of the victim takes place.
And once this has happened, the sexual
components to a rape scene (well, those components that you
consider to be sexual) might be the only things that are left
to impact the emotional system inside your head.
The rest of the rape scene is just
desensitised to.
And so the next step toward actually
fantasising about a real rape is not that far away.
And, why not? After all, in your
fantasy, the real suffering just isn't there any more.
It's gone!
You have been desensitised.
It makes no impact.
And I am not talking here about
spanking bottoms, wearing handcuffs and leather gear, playing I'm the
doctor so hand me the speculum kind of stuff, I am talking about real
rapes and real assaults - deep bruises, broken bones and
real fear - that kind of thing.
And I am not just talking about
highly-emotionalised visual displays of such things,
because even relatively bland items on the News concerning sexual
assaults can inspire fertile minds with thoughts.
For example, watching a brutal rape scene for the
first time is probably like eating a hot meat curry for the first time.
The only thing that you notice is the
pain!
You wince and look away.
But by the time that you get round to
eating your 50th Chicken Vindaloo, you can actually taste the chicken -
and you begin rather to like it.
Smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky
are pretty revolting things to do when you first start out. But if you
push yourself along such pathways because, say, you want to 'be a man',
or you happen to socialise and bond together with those who do such
things, then, before very long, you actually 'acquire' a taste for such
things.
And then, before you know it, you are
desperate for your next smoke or drink.
The taste that you really hated at
first, you now enjoy most enthusiastically!
And what did you guys really think
during the very first time that you heard about oral sex when you were
young?
Oh. My. God!
There is no way that my mouth
is going anywhere that! How disgusting!
And then, only a few years later, your
tongue starts lolling out of your mouth at the very thought of going
down on that sumptious filly over whom you have recently started to
dribble and drool every time you see her.
You see. When certain things are
continually pushed into your consciousness, even though, at first, you
might find them repugnant and abhorrent, it doesn't take too long before
you actually 'acquire' the taste for them.
It doesn't happen with everything, but
it certainly happens with smoking, alcohol, certain foods, and sex.
And even with pain itself.
(Yes. Yes. I know that cigarettes
and alcohol are addictive, but that's not the point! The point is that
if one persists in taking them - for whatever reason -
then the actual taste of them gives rise to a pleasant
experience whereas previously it most certainly did not!)
Aha! You are
anti-pornography!
Nope. Not at all. But it all depends
on what type it is.
I have already talked about my personal attitude toward pornography in
my piece A
Question About Pornography, and, in summary, my attitude is that "anything
encouraging something likely to result in more than a week in hospital
is definitely out!"
One of the major differences between
pornography that is 'freely available' and images of abuse that are
continually thrust completely uninvited upon everyone by the mainstream
media (often in a naive attempt to discourage such things) is that with freely
available pornography (barring any stuff that would lead to
hospitalisation) people can at least select more wholesome pathways
through which their sexuality can develop and be enjoyed.
They can make a conscious choice as to
where they want to go.
But when they are continually
bombarded with particular sexual ideas and notions from the very ether,
they cannot really escape from them.
Also, there are some societal benefits
to be gained from pornography. For example, unpartnered and
sexually-frustrated men (and quite a few women) can actually get their
rocks off by using it without desperately and frantically having first
to find themselves a willing subject.
This 'facility' therefore reduces the
amount of sexual frustration and aggression in the real world by a considerable
amount. And it also cuts down massively on the quantity of
casual sex going on between people - which reduces the
number of unwanted pregnancies, unwanted children, and the spread of
sexual diseases.
And that's quite an important list of
benefits!
In the western world, however, the continual
and uninvited bombardment of the population - and
this clearly includes those who are sexually frustrated - with
tales or images of serious abuse, simply leads to more people
desensitising to the real suffering of the victims on the
receiving end of it, and thereafter to them possibly even acquiring a
taste for it.
And this 'desensitisation' which
reduces the inhibitions to act in a 'bad' way does not only occur when
the drive that motivates the act is sexual. It occurs in a similar
manner no matter what the drive.
For example, take the 'drive' of
anger. One of the reasons that the European media have been so reticent
about reporting the details of why men kill their wives and children,
and about massacres like those carried out by Marc Lepine and Thomas
Hamilton, is that they do not want to encourage others to do the same
thing. Indeed, a few years ago, Belgium was even considering blocking
through legal means any publicity over family massacres
where, say, rejected men killed their partners and children and
sometimes themselves.
And yet, strangely enough, the very
same people are usually quite happy to promote the view that men are always beating up
women!
Do you see the contradiction?
Talking about men killing their women
might encourage men to kill their women. But talking about men beating up their
women does not encourage men to beat up their women.
Well, my guess is that it does.
And the evidence seems to suggest
that if there is a great deal of publicity concerning matters that
people are often 'driven' towards, then, quite simply, more people will
go there.
Another example would be the 'drive'
to be lazy. And so, for example, if the media keep making the claim that
men are lazy because they only do one-tenth of the housework, or
whatever, it doesn't take long before men say to themselves, "Well,
if most men are not doing the housework, then neither am I!"
The general point is that it is often
the case that the behaviour that is being castigated is quite likely to
increase as a result of the persistent attention that it receives.
Of course, a really bad
experience with the behaviour in question can take you the other way. If
the whisky makes you violently sick, you can be put off it for life! And
the same can be true with very shocking material or ideas. The trouble
is that the media cannot really promote effectively very shocking material or
ideas - well,
not any more, because people can easily turn over to view other channels
and read other newspapers and/or they can become desensitised - and so
they are not shocked any more.
(Indeed, people will just not watch for very long those things
that truly upset them.)
And the consequence is that, without conscious
intent, people gradually end up cosying up to - and being desensitised to - those things
that once did upset them.
Putting this more bluntly: When people
regularly watch Oprah or Jerry Springer discussing
appalling abuse, or when they watch soap operas that are filled with
aggression and sex-assault, or when they watch films that purportedly
depict 'domestic brutality' in a realistic way, they are not truly shocked
or repulsed at all - no matter what they might claim.
They are actually reveling in the
stuff!
If they were truly shocked or
repulsed, then they would simply turn away from it.
And when people stumble across such
programs and, thereafter, persist in watching them, they first start
desensitising to the pain of others, and then they start enjoying it.
The whisky now tastes great!
Now, I always like to hit my readers
hard. And so please imagine just a very simple news report
on the radio. "A 20 year old woman has been found dead in the
wood. Her body was naked and her hands were tied behind her back.
Detectives said that she had been raped and then killed."
Anyone aroused?
Well, let me tell you that if that
simple report was broadcast across the USA on the radio tomorrow - no
visuals! - there would be 500 men who would get a hard on at the whole
idea. 50,000 would think fondly of the rape without the killing. 5
million would salivate at the 'wood' part of the story. 10 million would
connect sexually to the idea of having sex with a naked girl in a wood.
5 million would cock their ears at the tying up bit. And 15 million
would say Goodness, I wish I was 20 years old again rather than an old-age pensioner
with a bad back.
And the point is that this popular
'uprising', this arousal, will take place in association with elements
that, combined together, describe a terrible situation.
And as news reports such as these keep
coming out, day after day, so it is that there will be increasing
desensitisation throughout the population to the bits considered to be 'bad' (the whisky isn't so
bad after all) followed eventually by a positive sexual association with
them - Hmm, the whisky now tastes rather
good.
And I must add most emphatically that
women would also be inclined to latch on sexually to such things - but
perhaps less so in this example.
And so it is that, yet again, we find
that those in the abuse industry cause far more harm
than good to the very people that they would claim to be trying to
protect when they keep immersing the population in thoughts of serious
abuse.
Now I am not suggesting that the media and the
abuse industry do not report on these events, because freedom of speech
and freedom of access to information are just far too important to
trample on.
But it is surely worth recognising
that the desensitisation to, and the sexualisation of, very harmful behaviours
can have serious repercussions, and that there are probably much better
ways in which the mainstream media, the abuse industry and the
entertainment industry should aim to deal with such things given that
they have so much influence.
And if the above analysis is close to
being a fair description of reality then my advice would be for these
groups to reduce considerably the bombardment of material describing serious
abuse - particularly that which relates to situations in which many
people could actually find themselves.
And, further, those who
would really like to reduce the amount of violence and
sexual crime that exists in our society and who keep complaining
about it would also benefit society far more if they devoted more time
to discussing objectively with the public why such things
happen and rather far less time highlighting and dwelling upon their
gruesome and/or sexual details.
The latter may well bring in the
customers and the donations, but they do so at a price that other people
probably have to pay.
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