Liberals and violent porn and rape simulation

[Deep13]

16. Without knowing exactly what you are talking about, I can only generalize.

Yeah, media depicting the actual rape or torture of another person is a serious crime. The fictional depiction of those things with willing participants is another matter.

For most of the 20th c., the liberal position was to avoid government restrictions on free expression due usually to religious objections. Specifically, women did not need to be protected from their own sexuality by a paternalistic state that knew better than she did. Restrictions on free expression are almost always about social control and almost never about protecting people. The only exceptions are those that involve children and other non-competent people, and anything involving force.

If everyone involved made a voluntary and knowing choice to be involved, then it really should not be anyone else's business. Granted there are ways to be coercive in subtle ways. And apparently there is rape-porn out there that is so realistic that one really has to question just how voluntary it is. Recently, it has occurred to me that repeated exposure to fictional violence, including sexual violence, can normalize that violence in the minds of young people whose minds are still being formed. (I don't just mean under-aged viewers either).