> From: "Upsdell, Louise" <LOUISE92@psy.soton.ac.uk>
> Date: Thu, 9 Mar 1995 16:35:26 GMT
>
> During the final few minutes of today's discussion, we were all talking
> about arousal during the viewing of pornographic films, both with and
> without violence. Arousal, as you mentioned, is measured by penile
> diameter, and in fact, this method is used in the assessment of sex
> offenders in Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight. These prisoners are
> shown clips of films, as you mentioned, but are also shown photographs
> of naked people. This includes pictures of little girls, as well as
> grown, mature women. In the case of paedophile sex offenders, they
> become more aroused when watching a rape scene (dominant male in a
> violent clash with a female) and also are usually at peak arousal when
> shown a picture of a small child.
There is a slight misunderstanding: In class we were discussing the
Thornhill/Thornhill target article in which the populations who saw the
violent pornography were (1) imprisoned sex offenders, (2) imprisoned
non-sex offenders (other crimes), and (3) nonprisoners. All were aroused
to some extent by violent porn and my point was that this need not mean
that the normal males were inclined toward rape; they might have been
aroused by the violent porn because it included erotic stimuli, like
naked bodies, DESPITE the fact that there was also violence, rather
than BECAUSE of it.
As an example, I had meant to add bestiality: Would you conclude that if
men are aroused by films showing sex with animals that they are potential
bestials? Or is it that sometimes cues are ambiguous, or overlap
between things that we do find arousing and would seek out, and things
that we do not and would not.
> You said in the lecture that all males will experience some sort of
> arousal when watching a sex video. That's a fair enough comment. But
> surely the average normal male will not be aroused by the sight of a
> pre-pubescent girl, or boy, for that matter...
Correct.
> So where does one draw the line between being
> healthily aroused by porn, and being perverted? And why is it that some
> men act on their fantasies and others don't?
Good questions. I have no idea, but that's what laws are for.
> I completely understand the difference between proximal and distal
> causes of why we do what we do...... in which case, what distal reason
> is there for a man to rape or sexually abuse a pre-pubescent girl, who
> cannot conceive anyway?
There is no distal reason whatsoever. It is proximal causes you should
be looking for. Beth asked about this (click here if you are reading
this from the Web archive):
http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Debates/0049.html
and I suggested some possible answers in my reply about amplified
asymmetries, superstimuli and developmental fixations:
http://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Debates/0051.html
> Also, is it not possible for the proximal and distal reasons to in fact
> be the same? What I mean is, if a couple are trying for a baby,
> admittedly, they'd be aroused and find the experience pleasurable, but
> their ultimate goal is to conceive, and this may be what is going
> through their heads at the time (I know that is a pretty unromantic
> account of love-making , but do you get what I mean).
Yes and no: The fact that you FEEL like you want to have kids is still
proximal! WHY do you feel like it? Remember, the distal forces are on
GENES, not on MINDS: Minds are shaped by genes.
Besides, until relatively recently (in terms of millions of years),
people did not know the causal connection between sex and reproduction.
(Some cultures, it is claimed, still don't.) So it is unlikely that we
had a direct motive to have a child, the way we have a direct motive to
drink water. Sex (and love) was probably the (proximal) mediator.
> Another example
> could be that a man in the desert is dying of thirst, and uncannily
> finds a bottle of water. Surely his first thought would be 'hoorah,
> I've found some water to drink so that I can rehydrate my self and
> live'. Perhaps what I am ultimately trying to say is that if you are in
> a life or death situation, your proximal and distal actions will be for
> one and the same reason.
The fact that it concerns immediate reproduction or survival still
doesn't make it distal, even if that is your explicit, conscious
concern. WHY do you have that concern? THAT was what shaped distally.
The rest is all proximal.
(These are tricky ideas, but you need to sort them out before you look
at the heart of it all: the causal role of our cognition in all this:
Remember what I said about rape in particular vs. crime in general. Are
we all potential criminals? Or is it just an option we might all resort
to in extremis -- like grabbing an oxygen tank that's not yours when
you feel you're suffocating... And what about the cognitive capacity we
all have? Clearly it had distal origins, adaptive value, etc., but then
what we are doing with it now, so far from the Environment of
Evolutionary Adapotedness that first formed it, is surely mostly
PROXIMAL...)
> My final comment is referring to the comment made today about men
> fantisizing about rape. It has also been said in the past that females
> fantasize about BEING raped. I think that these ideas boil down to
> domination more then anything else. The male has always been regarded
> as the stronger, more dominant sex, as well as the more aggressive. I
> reckon that these are behavioural characteristics of the male which
> help him to pass on his genes. However, whatever happened to the female
> in all of this? Does she not get the opportunity to pick and choose who
> her 'victims' will be, or who she wants to pass her genes onto?! Then
> again, some women like to be controlled, dominated and man-handled.
> Rape, though, is a completely different case.
Rape is about NOT having a choice. There's the basic conflict of
interest between the sexes. Males have little or nothing to lose from
indiscriminate of coercive sex (except, as I said, if that were ALL
there was, because both genders are ultimately in the same boat),
whereas females have a lot to lose. I do not personally believe
that there is a proximal attraction in females toward coercive male
sexuality, shaped by some distal advantage that might have had for them
-- it never had an advantage. Whatever appeal male aggressive sexuality
might have for SOME women is probably again related to the kinds of
dynamics decsribed in the reply to Beth: Strength and vigour in a male,
and ardent pursuit, may have been cues to fitness and commitment, but
they could be fixated upon and amplified into an exaggerated
(and maladaptive) superstimulus...
Chrs, Stevan
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