Such a surprise, another Lieberman against video games.

I find it hard to believe that porn reduces rape. Rape generally isn't someone who just really needs to get his rocks off, it's about power and pain. If it weren't, only decently attractive people would be raped.

Violent videogames may or may not encourage violent crime, but I would not want to share my life with someone who enjoyed that sort of entertainment.

Did she interview some rapists and ask about their habits from smoking, to porn consumption, to tv and video game usage. Would that have been so hard!

Is it even true that rapes in the U.S. have increased? If so, that would be going against the general trend of violent crimes decreasing since about 1990... Ah, here we go. I looked back through the FBI's year-by-year comparisons from 2009 (the most recent year for which they have complete data) to 2005, and the reported rape rate has decreased about 1-3% each year over that span. If you go back and look at the 2002 number and compare to 2009, reported rapes have decreased by 17.4%.

So Lieberman's entire thesis is based on a premise which turns out to be false. Video games can't be the cause of something that isn't actually happening.

Hilarious, Brian.

Rape generally isn't someone who just really needs to get his rocks off, it's about power and pain.

And actually, momof4, that's the well-tread myth about it. The evidence says otherwise: A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion

Here's an article by Thornhill and Palmer, both researchers I know and respect (save for Thornhill's weird talk at the last Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference when he was supposed to be eulogizing the late Linda Mealy).

http://iranscope.ghandchi.com/Anthology/Women/rape.htm

CHALLENGING OLD IDEAS

We want to challenge the dearly held idea that rape is not about sex. We realize that our approach and our frankness will rankle some social scientists, including some serious and well-intentioned rape investigators. But many facts point to the conclusion that rape is, in its very essence, a sexual act. Furthermore, we argue, rape has evolved over millennia of human history, along with courtship, sexual attraction and other behaviors related to the production of offspring.

Consider the following facts:

" Most rape victims are women of childbearing age.

" In many cultures rape is treated as a crime against the victim. s husband.

" Rape victims suffer less emotional distress when they are subjected to more violence.

" Rape takes place not only among human beings but also in a variety of other animal species.

" Married women and women of childbearing age experience more psychological distress after a rape than do girls, single women or women who are past menopause.

As bizarre as some of those facts may seem, they all make sense when rape is viewed as a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage.

Here we must hasten to emphasize that by categorizing a behavior as "natural" and "biological" we do not in any way mean to imply that the behavior is justified or even inevitable. Biological means "of or pertaining to life," so the word applies to every human feature and behavior. But to infer from that. as many of our critics assert that we do. that what is biological is somehow right or good, would be to fall into the so-called naturalistic fallacy. That mistake is obvious enough when one considers such natural disasters as epidemics, floods and tornadoes. In those cases it is clear that what is natural is not always desirable. And of course much can be, and is, done to protect people against natural threats. from administering antibiotics to drawing up emergency evacuation plans. In other words, the fact that rape is an ancient part of human nature in no way excuses the rapist.

I put claims such as Dr. Lieberman's at about the same level as those finding hidden messages in Led Zeppelin records played backwards, or in discovering the word "sex" in ads for Ritz crackers. This comment applies equally to the next post (the Pepsi one).

"that's the well-tread myth about (rape)."

It's not a myth, it's a mantra. It's the line we've had repeated to us since the seventies - Rape isn't an act of sex, it's an act of violence. It's how those GOPers tried to get away with redefining rape recently.

I can't even reply to the video game haters anymore - they exist only to fill the 24-hour news cycle, not a one has made any measurable headway in years, and there's simply too much money being made to let them ever do so. Comics were a fringe business in the fifties, so it got hit. None of the Reasons Your Kid Is Bad have been taken seriously in a decade or two.

Playing Dungeons & Dragons makes you suicidal or a satanist. Porn makes men rape. Violent video games, t.v. shows and movies make people violent. Artificial sweeteners are safe, WMD's are in Iraq, Bill Clinton did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky and Anna Nicole Smith married for love.

All the above statements have one thing in common. They are all complete and utter bullshit.

Lieberman is just another hack with an agenda and again proves the old saw that:

"Figures don't lie but liars figure."

Two things.

When Ed Meese was AG under Reagan, he was directed to find a connection between "pornography" (in quotes because of differing definitions) and sex-related crime. He couldn't. I suggest that this is not likely to change as media went from print to video because of the deliberate nature of sexual crime. There is a case of a juvenile criminal shooting people, where he claimed it was no big deal, he did it in games, but there is much less premeditation involved in shooting.

Next, a consistency check: If there is no increase in rape because of {insert genre of video activity involving adults here}, then how can distributing pictures of minors encourage it?

"All the above statements have one thing in common. They are all complete and utter bullshit."

Except one.

Everybody thinks of a scene from The Ten Commandments when they think of Iraq. They forget it is an industrialized nation, preferring to argue as if the totally peaceful inhabitants only farmed dates and rode camels.

But that's another topic. Sorry about that.

"Everybody thinks of a scene from The Ten Commandments when they think of Iraq... preferring to argue as if the totally peaceful inhabitants only farmed dates and rode camels."

How I wish that were true when I was there. Any way, different topic from the one at hand.

I think that Amy's sources are correct. Rape is what it seems to be, coerced sex. Feminists want to portray rape as control so that they can claim that it arises from social conditions (i.e. Patriarchy). That's why they'll adamantly deny that it occurs among other species. It's hard to argue that chimps are being affected by human concepts of male dominance and control.

Rape happens in other species? Isn't most animal sex what we would call rape? It's not like the female really enjoys it, asks for it, or even consents. IN fact in many species, physical harm must happen for the female to ovulate (cats, for example). And yes, chimps are very much affected by issues of dominance. More so than humans, JJ. Bad choice of example, there.

I imagine women who could get pregnant from a rape, are a little more bothered by it. Can't see how that point is particularly salient to the rest of it.

WHy are elderly raped, then? I'm not saying I know more. But it seems, if it was about sex, then you would never see an elderly rape victim, or for that matter a really young one either. How does one explain male rape by heteros? You can't tell me EVERY guy in prison is secretely gay. And there are plenty of willing guys in prison if one did want the release, but they chose to rape. As punishment for the victim.

Chimps mate consensually, which is why you can define rape for chimps. And if they exhibit dominance, that undercuts claims that rape is a type of behavior inspired by Patriarchy. So chimps are a very good example.

and some stats from the DOJ..

* 29% are age 12-17.
* 44% are under age 18.
* 80% are under age 30.
* 12-34 are the highest risk years.
* Girls ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.

So yes, older women are getting raped, but not nearly as frequently. I suspect that the incidences of rape against geriatrics is proportionally very small.

This paper from Northwestern Law School says there was a dramatic decline in rapes from 1980 to 2004:

http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/Adobefiles/porn.pdf

The stats come from the DOJ National Crime Victimization survey, so they should include rapes that were not reported to police.

Saying that rape is not about sex is like saying robbery is not about money. The salient fact about rapists & robbers is that they're criminal scumbags. The guy who breaks into a woman's bedroom, steals her jewelry, and rapes her is using force to take things - her possessions, access to her body - that he has not earned & has no right to. Stealing is easier than working, raping is easier than persuading a sexy woman that you're a man worthy of sharing her bed. Ordinary people in bad neighborhoods are robbed more frequently than rich people in gated neighborhoods because they are better targets of opportunity. Most of those 12-30 year old rape victims were just ordinary women & girls going about their business, who had the misfortune to encounter opportunistic criminals.

I would not try to argue that rape has nothing to do with sex.

However, I am appalled by those who argue, more or less, that men practically ONLY rape when they can't find any consenting women. (Psychologist Bernard Chapin, among others, made that argument.) Haven't we heard enough stories of very popular teen athletes - and adult celebrities - who rape because they almost never hear "no" from any woman, so when they do hear it, instead of shrugging and moving on to the next woman, choose to "teach her a lesson" instead?

(Note that for many young men, coolly and politely moving on to the next woman after a sexual refusal can even be a sadistic pleasure, because it often leaves the first woman in shock and in tears. This is especially the case for teenage girls, of course, since it contradicts what they read in their favorite romance novels, where handsome, dashing cads decide to reform themselves when they meet even ONE woman who actually believes in waiting for marriage - or at least moving slowly.)

And, regarding what Thornhill and Palmer said, I think it's also important to remember what Katha Pollitt said in 1995:

""We need to stop thinking of male violence as some kind of freak of nature, like a tornado. Because the thing about tornadoes is, you can't do anything about them."

@momof4 -

How many ugly women are raped every year? A vanishingly small number.

Rape is about sex. If rape was about power, he'd make her paint his house.

Part of my job is to teach legal causation. I look forward, every term, to associating the constitutional amendment giving women the legal right to vote, with genocides and wars of the 20th century -- and my classes are predominately female.

I know better of course. But facts are hard to find and substantiate, and associations can just be a lot more fun if one's objective is to stir things up a little bit.

Orangs do not mate consentually, an interesting tidbit I picked up at the monkey sanctuary in San Antonio. The space chimps are there too, it was pretty cool. I never said anything about patriarchy and rape. I know testosterone creates rape.

I suspect teen girls are at most risk because they are most likely to get into stupid situations with a man they don't know well. Older women (which would be 20s and up for our purposes here) know better. Predators of all stripes and species go for the easiest prey.

Seriously, Brian? A lot. Not to mention the rapists who have beautiful wives at home.

No one taking on hetero male on male rape? No one at all?

One reason why prison rape is so prevalent may be that scumbag criminals tend to behave like scumbag criminals. Why would anyone expect otherwise? A maximum-security prison & a nuclear submarine at sea are both tightly confined all-male environments, but the characters of the men in each are not the same.

If robbery was just about money, then armed robbers would sneak in, steal some valuables, and slip out quietly, instead of terrorizing, assaulting, or murdering their victims, as they frequently do. But it is still about money.

"Violent videogames may or may not encourage violent crime"

It's pretty clear that videgames do not encourage violent crime. There is some correlation between bullying and such behavior among children who prefer to M rated games, but I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and say sixth graders who play the GTA series don't have great parents to begin with. But overall, violent crimes among juveniles (the most impressionable bunch) have been dropping to a 30 year low per capita. Incidently, Mario just turned 25, so there have been popular videogames for as long as the juvenile crime rate has been dropping. I'm not going to go out and say that videogames lead to a decrease in violent juvenile crime based on this correlation, but it's clear that there has been no rise in violent crime that can be pinned on games.

Now you do hear a lot about how violent offenders like to play violent video games. That's about as statisically relevant as saying they like chocolate. Close to 65,000 YEARS have been spent by everyone playing multi-player matchups in HALO 3 (as in that doesn't include how much time they spent playing the normal game or other HALO games). It would be more remarkable for a man under the age of 30 to *not* play violent video games. The VA tech shooter did not play videogames, despite being in the prime demographic for gamers.

(Obviously Mo4, it's your perogative to decide who you do or don't want to spend time with based on any criteria you like.)

I would love to know what games Lieberman thinks she's talking about. Even in the much talked about sex scenes in Dragon Age and GTA you don't see anything that would get it above a PG-13 rating. (Well maybe GTA. It's pretty clear the protaganist is getting a blow job.) The "Hot Coffee" scandal was the result of a mod that was not accessible in game play (you had to fiddle with the code and save files), not available in subsequent versions, and completely patched over. But even then, the gals remained clothed (unless you used a third party mod) and the sex was consensual with your girlfriends.

Now there are plenty of hentai games in Japan. Some of them (very few) quite horrific and centering on rape. But they are developed and sold to a very niche market in Japan. They aren't popular games even over there. And I can promise you that you won't find them on store shelves here in the US. (Until recently you needed to break into the hardware of your game console and install a special chip just to be able to play Japanese region games).

Anyway, here's a page with some good infographics on kids, violence, and videogames:

http://videogames.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=003627