Erotic Manga to be Banned?

[haloOfTheSun]

Or you can actually respond to the points I made instead of pretending you don't have to because they're "logical fallacies" as you put it. This is clearly just a cop-out to avoid putting up a decent counter. You can't just decide that my argument isn't good enough by using a bunch of big fancy terms to describe it. You're supposed to respond to an argument. Just look at Zylos VVV

And if it's really as fallacious as you say, then you should have no problem punching holes in it.

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/12/13/mangaka-my-publisher-has-banned-school-uniforms/

And as you can see, this is affecting even relatively innocent content.

You obviously cannot even grasp the basic concept of making an argument.

[Irock]

Saying erotic manga causes sexual assault and other crimes is ls like saying violent video games cause violent crimes. It's pretty silly.

[Zylos]

Saying erotic manga causes sexual assault and other crimes is ls like saying violent video games cause violent crimes. It's pretty silly.

Not to sound like Thompson, but do you know for a certain fact that they aren't the cause for some crimes of violence?

[tSwitch]

Saying erotic manga causes sexual assault and other crimes is ls like saying violent video games cause violent crimes. It's pretty silly.

It is silly because it's Affirming the Consequent (if A = B, where A, there must also B or If they watch porn and rape someone, the porn watchers must be rapists)

It's also Cum hoc ergo propter hoc, assuming that the playing of games/watching porn and the behavior, since they are happening together, must be related.

I can see why they'd ban them, honestly.  It's offensive.  It's a sexual fetish that thrives on denying someone their rights and their humanity.  That alone is reason enough for me to dislike it. 

Banning something based on a fallacious cause/effect scenario, however, is not the right justification.

tl;dr - both Animefan and the politicians are using logical failure to justify their point of view.

[CartoonFan]

Screaming Mantis, you need to start using real arguments. You're not fooling anybody. Logical fallacies are not necessarily "wrong", just likely to be wrong.

For example. It's post hoc to assume that just because you held a lighter to a stick of wood and the stick of wood caught fire, that the lighter was the reason for the fire. And yet it WAS. A logical fallacy CAN be right. Therefore, you haven't disproved shit or nullified anything simply by stating "it's a logical fallacy". All you've managed to establish is that I could easily be wrong. You haven't proven that I am.

[Irock]

I can see why they'd ban them, honestly.  It's offensive.  It's a sexual fetish that thrives on denying someone their rights and their humanity.  That alone is reason enough for me to dislike it.

I don't think it should be banned. I don't see anyone arguing that media where characters are killed should be banned. All you must do is ignore it if you're offended. If everything that could possibly be considered offensive were banned, nothing would be allowed.

[Grafikal]

Screaming Mantis, you need to start using real arguments. You're not fooling anybody. Logical fallacies are not necessarily "wrong", just likely to be wrong.

For example. It's post hoc to assume that just because you held a lighter to a stick of wood and the stick of wood caught fire, that the lighter was the reason for the fire. And yet it WAS. A logical fallacy CAN be right. Therefore, you haven't disproved shit or nullified anything simply by stating "it's a logical fallacy". All you've managed to establish is that I could easily be wrong. You haven't proven that I am.

What.

o

and Hi halo. Long time no posting.

[tSwitch]

Screaming Mantis, you need to start using real arguments. You're not fooling anybody. Logical fallacies are not necessarily "wrong", just likely to be wrong.

For example. It's post hoc to assume that just because you held a lighter to a stick of wood and the stick of wood caught fire, that the lighter was the reason for the fire. And yet it WAS. A logical fallacy CAN be right. Therefore, you haven't disproved shit or nullified anything simply by stating "it's a logical fallacy". All you've managed to establish is that I could easily be wrong. You haven't proven that I am.

[Zylos]

Gotta agree with Irock. It shouldn't be banned just because of it being offensive. Only reasons I can think of for it to be possibly banned is again is dependent on how it affects sex crimes and how it effects the mentality of children exposed to it (I think most places have laws where you can't view / access it if you're under 18 anyway though).

[Sophist]

Animefan's fighting a losing battle argument here.

Regardless, nothing can be banned forever. There is nothing at all that is banned that you can't get your hands onto somehow.

[tSwitch]

I can see why they'd ban them, honestly.  It's offensive.  It's a sexual fetish that thrives on denying someone their rights and their humanity.  That alone is reason enough for me to dislike it.

I don't think it should be banned. I don't see anyone arguing that media where characters are killed should be banned. All you must do is ignore it if you're offended. If everything that could possibly be considered offensive were banned, nothing would be allowed.

Oh I entirely agree, up until that last point, dangerously close to a Slippery Slope fallacy :p

I was just saying I don't like them, and can see -why- they'd want to ban them so badly that they'd come up with illogical arguments to justify it.

[Irock]

Oh I entirely agree, up until that last point, dangerously close to a Slippery Slope fallacy :p

No. It's a "everything could be considered offensive to someone" deal.

[modern algebra]

There doesn't need to a violent result to justify criminalization. Laws are about how a nation defines behaviour and creates community. Like I said - I have no idea whether it causes sex crimes or whether there's any meaningful corollary at all. I do think it's likely that exposing children to rape images with the purpose of sexually stimulating them is likely to generate those fetishes. But, in part that's not the point.

It is perfectly valid for laws to work toward the betterment of society by discouraging attitudes and behaviours that are self-destructive or counter-productive. Take, for example, all drug laws. Drugs are criminalized because they harm the individual who takes them, and because we want to decrease exposure to them. In that case, even though legalization would probably decrease the violence associated with the drug trade, we justify its illegality for other purposes. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's a bad thing but the fact is that all criminal law is created because we want to discourage behaviours that are deemed bad for society, and "bad" isn't limited to violence, nor does it need to be. Nor, in fact does it include all violence. Just as we criminalize some behaviours that aren't violent, we expressly allow others that are - such as: use of force by police officers, or contact sports. Law doesn't have to be just about preventing or reacting to violence. We criminalize murder for the same reason that we universalize healthcare or make any other law - because it is how we want our society to be defined.

My point is that there is no need to find some causative link between sex crime and rape pornography before it magically becomes OK to make it illegal. It's about culture building, and no culture isn't causative of behaviour but it defines the context in which we can choose how to behave. There have been entire societies where pederasty was particularly normal and yet today, it is almost universally regarded as repugnant. Can we actually say that the culture in which we exist doesn't influence those views? Can we say that their culture didn't promote it or have a "causative" effect? I'm not denying free will; I am merely saying that our culture and our circumstances can put before us choices we would never have to make - inspires desires that we never would have had - if we lived in a culture that was different; if instead of being rich we were poor; if instead of having parents we were orphans. Culture can define the choices that we make, not by forcing us down a path, but by selecting which choices are put before us.

And ultimately, the law is about culture and society shaping. And the question is: do we want our culture to be one which encourages, enables, or tolerates the viewing of rape as a source of pleasure? There are few crimes as repugnant, and we can't keep pretending like our culture is blameless when it happens.

As for freedom of expression, it exists to protect values; it is not a value in and of itself. We protect speech that promotes political self-determination - to allow others to express views with regard to how we want to govern ourselves. Or maybe we will protect speech for religious purposes, or maybe sometimes even for commercial free market values. The point is, freedom of expression matters for the values it protects, and not on its own merit. A murder could easily be a form of political expression - we prohibit it because we value sanctity of life more. In that sense, expression can and should be restricted when permitting it would conflict with other values that our society holds more dear.

What value is that we protect when we permit rape pornography to exist? And does it outweigh respect for human dignity? respect for sexual autonomy? respect for women? Respect, indeed, for the whole human enterprise and the process by which life is created.

It's not some slippery slope. It's not about "anything that could be considered offensive." It's about finding a balance between the values that freedom of expression is meant to protect and the other values our culture wants to promote.

To my mind, respect for women, human dignity, and sexual autonomy far outweigh any value that could possibly be promoted by rape pornography (which I am at a total loss to even imagine - privacy perhaps? sexual gratification? As I've said earlier, I can see no value or benefit in encouraging or enabling other human beings to view women [or men] as mere objects for sexual gratification with no sexual autonomy of their own)

[tSwitch]

Well said, Modern.

[IAMFORTE]

oh no... the Japanese are at it again

[Irock]

I don't believe in social conservatism or trying to control behavior/culture via a government unless to protect others from probable danger, like intoxicated driving laws, murder laws, rape laws etc. If someone wants to smoke a joint and beat off to a cartoon character getting raped by an octopus, I don't care. He's not harming or endangering anyone, just doing what makes him happy.

[Sophist]

Tbh, I wouldn't mind rape based works being b&'d forever. All erotic manga? That'd be shit, but rape is one of the few fetishes that makes me sick to even think about.

[Grafikal]

Unfortunately there's a lot of ppl that would probably think otherwise :L

[Sophist]

Well yeah, if it exists, there's a fetish for it. I'm unaware of whether it's legal in japan to do such a thing, unlike it would be here, but it'd be for the better, or at least a large scale experiment.

[cozziekuns]

I can't see anything really bad happening by banning it...

[Irock]

I can't see anything really bad happening by banning it...

People lose a means to obtain personal happiness even when nobody is being hurt by it, and taxpayers have to pay for the enforcement of such a law.

[Arrow]

This topic has become boring and also stupid.

[Djangonator]

Man this totally killed my boner. I'm going to go watch some octopus rape hentai.

[Zylos]

MA, I'm sorry, I love you and all, but I gotta say that you're sounding a bit pretentious. It's true that countries do make certain laws at times around societal morals, laws to improve morality and define themselves as better humans or at least keep the appearance of having "standards". But you may also notice that a number of those tend to be based on personal beliefs rather than true justifications, and that they usually turn out to be a lot more controversial than other more rational laws. No one's gonna argue about a traffic light law or something similar designed with their safety in mind, but people sure are raising a shitstorm about gay marriage laws based on other people's beliefs. Probably an extreme example, but its the first that popped in my head.

Rape art may be sickening to you, and to be honest, I think it probably is for the rest of us here too (except maybe Animefan ). But it's not being made for you, it's not being made to specifically piss you off or gross you out. It's being made for people who feel a thrill at displays of dominance and power, men or women, but who for obvious reasons do not ever wish to deny someone their human rights in real life. Like I said before, it's just art. They should have the right to draw as they like without being censored by other people who don't approve of the content, unless there's legitimate ground for someone getting actually hurt by it (and I don't mean just hurt feelings, I mean mentally or physically damaging).

All that said, it's Japan; they'll do whatever the hell they want to despite what any of us say, and no one can really blame them either way for it given the content. I just don't like people hoisting themselves morally above others, or meddling with other people's affairs that aren't doing them any real harm.


*is off to bed now to see if he finds any stupid sleep-deprived errors in the morning*


Edit: Oh yeah, would anyone object to moving this to the debate board, or are we good just keeping it here?

[Arrow]

I personally have at least three friends who are very into rape fantasies. They're perfectly normal people. Matter of fact, they're some of the shyest and most introverted girls you'll meet. They'd never go after anyone like that. They get a cheap thrill off the porn, and when they're done? They're done. They go right on back to bein' normal people.

As for how it affects kids? Yeah, so does every other kinda porn. If a kid catches any other fetish it's likely it'll catch on too. It boils down to keeping track of what your kid is exposed to under your care. If they're able to get past you, well, it's on them isn't it? I've got a few fetishes of my own- my own damn fault, no regrets. I am what I am and I don't think I'm any worse off for it.

I'm not saying MA doesn't have something of a point, but I think overall Zylos has the right idea.