Chapter 12 Sex  Additional notes: Pornography and Rape

Pornography

Most pornography is not illegal and so scarecely features in the main text. However, despite the sex industry’s repeated claims that ‘adult’ material does no harm there is strong evidence that its damaging effects may be hiding behind averages. Most people seem to be immune to its sexual stereotyping, while a few are inflamed by it. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen gave 100 men and 100 women personality tests to measure hostility, suspicion and antagonism and then randomly showed them either a nature documentary or nonviolent pornography. After that the volunteers were asked about their attitudes to women. Those who had watched The Blue Planet showed little sexism, as did most of those who had watched blue movies. But there was a difference for the minority (both men and women) who had scored highly on latent hostility. Those who had watched porn gave more misogynistic answers than their counterparts who had not. (Gert Martin Hald, Neil Malamuth and Theis Lang, ‘Pornography and Sexist Attitudes Among Heterosexuals’, Journal of Communication, Vol 63, Issue 4, pp 638–660, August 2013).

In fact the very term ‘adult’ is often a euphemisim for puerile steretypes. Experiments have shown that pornography consumption is significantly associated with less egalitarian attitudes toward women and more hostile sexism. Even for people who do not have hostile personalities sexual arousal in the presence of sexual sterotypes appears to strengthen sexist attitudes.

A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

We should not underestimate the problems police face in dealing with rape. One of the best policing blogs (motto: I moan, therefore I am a police officer) provides an insight.

I think I can best describe this by outlining the last three rape allegations that have occurred in my area. The last one came from a young woman of 20 who met a 17 year old boy in a pub. They had been drinking and had been acquainted for an hour when they went outside into the pub car park to have consensual sex. The young woman wanted the boy to use a condom but he didn’t have one and they had sex without. She then reported the rape. I fully understand that at any point this woman can say no and she was quite sensible insisting that he wore a condom. The problem is that what jury is going to convict a 17 year old boy of rape in these circumstances?

The second case was a University student who got very drunk at a University function and woke up in bed with another student in the morning. She believed that she had had sex with him but could not remember. She reported this two days later. The boy was arrested and claimed consensual sex had taken place. He was by no means a sexual predator and was in fact pretty meek and mild.

The third case was an estranged husband and wife. The husband would come round the house to visit the children and then the couple regularly had a drink and smoked cannabis. They also regularly had sex. On one occasion the woman claimed that she was raped as they had had sex and she had not consented to it on that occasion. The husband was arrested and claimed they had had consensual sex with his wife at least 20 times since he had left the marital home and he had never had sex with her against her will.

None of these cases resulted in a charge. I believe that in every case a thorough and proportionate investigation took place and in every case the woman’s allegation was accepted and that she was treated appropriately as a victim. I would ask though, have we really failed any of these women? Should any of these men have been charged with rape in these circumstances? In my experience these types of allegation are the majority and extremely difficult to deal with. We generally do a pretty good job even though a charge has not been preferred.

From The Thinking Policeman: a police officer’s blog [http://thethinkingpoliceman.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/conviction%20for%20rape]

When their aim is to secure convictions police officers face similar problems with domestic violence.

Christmas Day wasn’t too bad this year, a bit like a Sunday. We only had three domestics to attend. These were all at, dare I say, social housing. Very sad really but a product of the society we live in. In every case we have a woman who is quite inadequate in many respects. There are children and there are the current ‘partners.’ In all three cases the current partner is not the father of all or any of the children in the house. The ‘partners’ have their own issues and inadequacies. Only one of them was working, for example. In every case there has been excessive alcohol consumption and petty arguments. The sort of arguments that only these children in adults bodies can have. In two cases there are allegations of assault and so off to the cells two of the ‘partners’ go.

The next few hours the children’s Christmas is taken up with the police completing a 12 page risk assessment and the mother making a statement to police. A statement they will withdraw in the morning when they realise the inadequate waste of space they have given a roof in their taxpayer provided house, will not be coming back if charges are pressed. And after all, they do love them really.

From The Thinking Policeman: a police officer’s blog [http://thethinkingpoliceman.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/wasting-police-time.html]

Further notes

In any case it is hard to see what police could do other than prevent rows, or injuries, from getting worse. Most households seem to settle down without further calls for help, but that leaves a third with chronic problems, most of which seem resistant to intervention. Some places have tried ‘second responder’ programmes where perpetrators are warned and victims are advised about the cyclical nature of family aggression and are helped with strategies to improve their safety. This makes intuitive good sense and is formally endorsed by the US Department of Justice, but sadly it doesn’t seem to work. A systematic review of ten ‘high quality’ north American research programmes found no diminution of violence, and only a very slight increase in reporting rates to the police^[i].

Such repeatedly warring couples seem to have problems which transcend relationships. In the case of men engaged in recurring domestic violence they are often not just aggressive to their partners but are chaotic or antisocial in a wider sense. One of the largest surveys ever undertaken of men arraigned for beating up their partners found three-quarters had robust offending histories outside the home, half of them for violence^[ii]. Some of them also seem to have acquired a misogynistic view quite early on. They learned as youngsters that girls are often attracted to male superiority: given the choice, most girls choose boys who are older, taller and more successful. And however much heterosexual women may one day want to settle for a kind and decent man, when they are in their teens they often fancy Jack the Lad (as many meeker schoolboys learn to their dismay). It is easy for boys to misinterpret masculinity for muscularity^[iii].

Women who are consistently involved in intimate aggression can also have a repertoire of behavioural problems. But while studies like the Dunedin one show females initiate violence as frequently as males, other researchers have proposed important gender differences in the dynamics of some disputes. They put his down to physical strength. They suggest that while a man can learn to get his way through force, an unarmed woman quickly discovers she is less likely to win in a pitched battle. So while both partners can goad and lose their cool a female may experience higher levels of fear-related inhibition^[iv]. Such women are more likely than men to displace their anger to explosive acts like throwing objects, or to defusing acts like talking to a third party^[v]. They may also resort to non-physical aggression.

In fact a further problem for law enforcement is that the symptoms are not always visible. Bruises can often be concealed, even broken bones can be explained away. But also, and importantly, emotional wounds are hard to pin down and are harder still to cite to prosecution lawyers as a cause for bringing charges. There is a whole array of abusive behaviours which might be described as ‘emotional abuse’ which has received far less attention but can be as corrosive as physical violence. Here too women seem to give as bad as they get. The biggest study of the problem, using US data, found that:

Non-physical partner abuse is more common than physical and that non-physical abuse does not show striking sex differences, as is commonly believed. There is strong evidence that some types of non-physical abuse serve as clear risk factors for physical abuse and may increase risk of more frequent violence among those already being abused. These relationships do not, however, differ by sex.

And when women are obsessive they can be just as fanatical as men. A supplementary study for the British Crime Survey found that almost equal proportions of British men (7%) and women (8%) had been stalked to the point of causing distress or alarm[vi].

There has been a small but vehement revisionist reaction to the prevailing dogmas about domestic violence. In a diatribe against political correctness a former Home Office whistleblower, Steve Moxon, claims that women are, “quite literally getting away with murder[vii].” They are, he says, the most controlling, the main aggressors, and cause most of the serious injuries. His citations are as studiously selective as those of the feminists he reviles, but at least his is one small voice against the one-sided doctrines on domestic violence.