Data, Science, and Treachery
I wanted to link you all to a conversation going on in my comments over here. I felt it warranted its own post. It began with a discussion of the Penn & Teller Bullshit! episode on pornography, and the part of the show in which Gail Dines, exasperated, cried out "You keep badgering me for studies! There are NO GOOD STUDIES!!!" A commenter felt -- and I agreed -- that their badgering was over the line and made for a bad show. However, I felt that her eventual "admission" that there are no good studies was telling and worrisome.
IACB hopped in to link me to her rebuttal, in which she pointed out that what she'd said was not that there are no studies linking pornography to men having violent/bad attitudes toward women, but that there were no studies directly linking pornography to rape, specifically:The producers saved the best for last, when they talked about the lack of research on effects, and they edited my words down to: “there are no good studies.” This was a perfect ending for the show as it granted them the final word. The only problem is that the whole thing was a set up. The producer had asked me about studies showing a direct link between porn and rape. While there are no studies that show direct causation, I had told him about a wealth of research on the impact of porn on men’s attitudes and behavior.
Which is of course a concern, as is their blithe editing designed, if this is the whole story (not saying it's not), to make it sound like she conceded absolute defeat. But as IACB himself pointed out,she says that was what she had to say on the subject of porn and rape causation, but claims that there are good studies on the role of porn in shaping men's attitudes toward women. That's so reductionistic, its not even funny. There are an awful lot of things that influence the attitudes of men (both individually and collectively) toward women, and to reduce it down to porn or even media in general is ignoring a great deal, to put it mildly. That's why I don't think the "but for porn" arguments hold up in general.
To which I responded, in two comments, one rather businesslike and the other personal:Yes, exactly. And well, if she did give specific citations and they were edited out, then that does worry me. But I'd like to know what they were -- for example, if they were Malamuth. Because that seems to be the one and only, or at least the gold standard -- yet it's very old. (And I've heard, but the person who told me this hasn't yet emailed me to back it up, that even Malamuth didn't intend his research to be used quite in the way that it is by many APRFs.)
And the thing is that I've been saying for a LONG time now that I want to see studies from the era of 'Netporn. Because if what APRFs often say is true, and things have only gotten worse with the advent of "body-punishing" gonzo, then there should be an avalanche of new studies wherein the link is increasingly obvious.
Yet I see people citing the same old stuff from 1985.
It smells truly fishy to me. Maybe there's a good explanation, but I surely have never seen it.
and you know what I HATE? I hate how people on that side will see this and immediately wonder why a female, like me, is on the side of "the pornographers." I hate that they'll deem me a sellout or self-harming because I value scientific data and reserve judgment until I see it. I hate how that BY ITSELF supposedly makes a woman "deluded" about pornography, or desperate for male attention, or male-identified, or the enemy. Why is desire for information demonized by these people? Why do you get treated as if you've betrayed women because you honestly say "I haven't seen convincing evidence?"
And to add a bit more to this, the thing is... people could say that I'm angry only because I use pornography myself, and that I'm only working myself into a lather because I'm feeling defensive about my orgasms and how and when I have them -- despite that my pornography use has always been rather more complicated than staring and masturbating, thank you. Honestly, I'd much prefer people to talk about my masturbating, if they have any compelling reason to do so at all, with a little less reductionist nonsense (and a little more respect for my privacy) than that.
I don't think it's unfair to say to abolitionists, "I reserve my right to use this until I actually see evidence that convinces me." In no other field I can think of does it become required, or become the mark of a good person, that they change their ways when they're not yet convinced. So why is it SO TERRIBLE A BETRAYAL that I should continue to use pornography because I haven't seen any more firmly conclusive studies from, say, post-2002 or so? There's ignoring evidence for selfish reasons (as, say, some conservatives and some Christian fundamentalists do wrt global warming), and then there's tossing up your hands and going "where the hell IS the evidence?"
IACB hopped in to link me to her rebuttal, in which she pointed out that what she'd said was not that there are no studies linking pornography to men having violent/bad attitudes toward women, but that there were no studies directly linking pornography to rape, specifically:The producers saved the best for last, when they talked about the lack of research on effects, and they edited my words down to: “there are no good studies.” This was a perfect ending for the show as it granted them the final word. The only problem is that the whole thing was a set up. The producer had asked me about studies showing a direct link between porn and rape. While there are no studies that show direct causation, I had told him about a wealth of research on the impact of porn on men’s attitudes and behavior.
Which is of course a concern, as is their blithe editing designed, if this is the whole story (not saying it's not), to make it sound like she conceded absolute defeat. But as IACB himself pointed out,she says that was what she had to say on the subject of porn and rape causation, but claims that there are good studies on the role of porn in shaping men's attitudes toward women. That's so reductionistic, its not even funny. There are an awful lot of things that influence the attitudes of men (both individually and collectively) toward women, and to reduce it down to porn or even media in general is ignoring a great deal, to put it mildly. That's why I don't think the "but for porn" arguments hold up in general.
To which I responded, in two comments, one rather businesslike and the other personal:Yes, exactly. And well, if she did give specific citations and they were edited out, then that does worry me. But I'd like to know what they were -- for example, if they were Malamuth. Because that seems to be the one and only, or at least the gold standard -- yet it's very old. (And I've heard, but the person who told me this hasn't yet emailed me to back it up, that even Malamuth didn't intend his research to be used quite in the way that it is by many APRFs.)
And the thing is that I've been saying for a LONG time now that I want to see studies from the era of 'Netporn. Because if what APRFs often say is true, and things have only gotten worse with the advent of "body-punishing" gonzo, then there should be an avalanche of new studies wherein the link is increasingly obvious.
Yet I see people citing the same old stuff from 1985.
It smells truly fishy to me. Maybe there's a good explanation, but I surely have never seen it.
and you know what I HATE? I hate how people on that side will see this and immediately wonder why a female, like me, is on the side of "the pornographers." I hate that they'll deem me a sellout or self-harming because I value scientific data and reserve judgment until I see it. I hate how that BY ITSELF supposedly makes a woman "deluded" about pornography, or desperate for male attention, or male-identified, or the enemy. Why is desire for information demonized by these people? Why do you get treated as if you've betrayed women because you honestly say "I haven't seen convincing evidence?"
And to add a bit more to this, the thing is... people could say that I'm angry only because I use pornography myself, and that I'm only working myself into a lather because I'm feeling defensive about my orgasms and how and when I have them -- despite that my pornography use has always been rather more complicated than staring and masturbating, thank you. Honestly, I'd much prefer people to talk about my masturbating, if they have any compelling reason to do so at all, with a little less reductionist nonsense (and a little more respect for my privacy) than that.
I don't think it's unfair to say to abolitionists, "I reserve my right to use this until I actually see evidence that convinces me." In no other field I can think of does it become required, or become the mark of a good person, that they change their ways when they're not yet convinced. So why is it SO TERRIBLE A BETRAYAL that I should continue to use pornography because I haven't seen any more firmly conclusive studies from, say, post-2002 or so? There's ignoring evidence for selfish reasons (as, say, some conservatives and some Christian fundamentalists do wrt global warming), and then there's tossing up your hands and going "where the hell IS the evidence?"