Porn

[Bubbles01]

Am I being unreasonable for getting upset that my husband keeps looking at porn?

I truly hope that my 19 year old daughter isn't on some lad's mobile phone somewhere.

The 16 year olds' threesome activities are shocking and utterly repellant, no doubt drink was involved.

Mathan, they did, the Russians did it when they took Berlin and the Americans did it in Vietnam. There is an article about Berlin today, the older women gave the Russian
soldiers the younger girls to save themselves.

Thanks for that dittany, will read.

dittany, I think the Russian soldiers article reflects what really happens in extremis under war conditions. Drunk Russian soldiers would have raped anybody they could get their hands on. The older women, through fear, sacrificed the younger women, hoping that they would themselves would be spared. Terrible war conditions where there is no longer any protection or law, lead to behaviour that would never otherwise be seen.

I am saying that in war terrible things happen and people's normal behaviour changes. It was one of the biggest mass rapes in history, sanctioned from on high, with nobody held accountable, and yet we know little about it. I doubt that story was the only such incident. Another article that discusses it, is at
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1382565/Red-Army-troops-raped-even-Russian-women-as -they-freed-them-from-camps.html

I don't want to argue about such a serious subject, but you implied that the article was misogynistic, as if it may not be a reflectiom of the truth. All I am saying is that I can well believe that many similar incidents did happen under the terrible conditions of war, where women were raped to death, and other women did whatever they could to be spared.

I am sorry, I may have misunderstood what you were saying. I apologise.

The account is given by the young woman who was raped. She tells us how the older women handed the younger women over. I think she does that to tell us the facts and show us how terrible it really was. I think this is the type of human behaviour that will occur under those conditions, but I agree that that is my speculation. She also tells us about her mother's reaction to her afterwards

"She was reunited with her mother 15 months later in Hamburg but says her mother was cold to her when she tried to talk of her pain and shame."

I think this is also normal human behaviour, denial, since nothing could be undone. The woman's account of what happened and how people behaved is a warning to everyone about the horrors of war.

it goes without saying that the Russians were savages. No one is blaming the older women, the author understands why they did it, that is human nature. But it is better not to argue about such a tragic event.

I haven't read any of this war-crimes stuff (I have no wish to)

Dittany, do you mean to chase people away ?

Claig can bring another dimension into the discussion if she likes, ya know...

I was a bit offended by your view that the account of the young woman who was raped was misogynistic because she mentioned that older women handed over younger women to the soldiers. I thought that by mentioning misogyny that you were being disrespectful to the horrific crime of mass rape that had occurred. I wanted to explain that I didn't think it had anything to do with misogyny and was just a factual account of what happened to the young woman. I didn't want the enormity of the crime committed by the Russians to be undermined by any suggestion of misogyny on the part of the author. I don't attach any blame to the women, because but for the Grace of God, there go you and I. I think the author also understands why they did it. But I see that we are poles apart in our understanding of this, I don't think that we can understand each other's positions. You see it as an example of misogyny and I see it as a statement of fact and an indication of how horrific the situation was.

Well, I didn't mean for my comment to become a discussion of who was to blame for rape in Berlin, East Prussia, etc., during WW2. I actually had in mind Darfur, and the ongoing militia rape of women in former Zaire, even rape of women in Bosnia in the 90s. I think my point was that the nature of the acts of violence (that have been reliably reported and verified, incidentally) in recent times is similar to the level and nature of abuse directed against women in porn. The public humiliation that is often involved in rape as a means of war has echoes in the fact that porn is meant for public consumption.

I apologise if I misunderstood you. As you said before, we differ on the extrapolation.
I defended "the generalised claims about older women's behaviour with regards to the rapes" because I can well understand that things like that can happen and I attach no blame to them, because sheer terror will make people do anything. I bet older German women have admitted in the past that they did such things. I only tried to indicate to you that I think that these actions are very likely to occur and it is wrong to consider tales of them as being misogynistic. I felt that by mentioning misogynistic aspects, you were underplaying the enormity of what the Russians did. I tried to explain that what the older women did was not out of the ordinary in those circumstances, and that the important thing was to concentrate on what the Russians did.

We both agree that what the Russians did was horrific. I felt obliged to reply to your post because you said "That article sounds to me like a typical piece of misogyny" and I wanted you to concentrate on the real crime of what the Russians did. You hadn't actually read the article when you made that quote, so I think that is where our disagreement stems from.

The Abu Ghraib incidents demonstrate the links between public humiliation, sex and a complete power imbalance -- plus of course, a lot of the mindset of the abusers. It revealed quite clearly how robbing someone without power of their modesty is linked in an abuser's mind to taking away dignity, sending the message through humiliation that the prisoners were completely defeated, the property of the abusers, theirs to do with them whatever they wanted. It is worth noting also, in the Muslim context, that the involvement of American servicewomen in the humiliation of the prisoners, was a particularly egregious aspect of the abuse.

I'm not attacking anybody, but I can't make myself clear, so I give up.

Yes you make a very good point about Abu Ghraib. The spread of porn has desensitised people and made them lose respect for real human beings. It has made them depraved to such an extent that they torture people sexually for fun and film it. Both men and women were involved in this, which is an indication of how far the depravity has spread. That is why I think that porn is dangerous because it destroys humanity's morals and will eventually lead to barbarism and the destruction of society.