I think people don’t really have much hope that they can get ahead any other way, and their expectations about how they should rightfully be living is still shaped by the rest of our society.

Unlike in bangladesh where you consider yourself lucky if you don’t drown in the annual monsoons, and even luckier if you get some food some time, over here, you feel cheated and bitter if you don’t have a 42″ LCD TV.

So there are 2 problems… 1, setting reasonable expectations (and I can’t see that changing, since the rest of us still want our TVs), and 2, having some hope of being able to get ahead.

That’s where people need opportunities. Opportunities to make a decent crust, meet their expectations, and do something worth while. I don’t think even hardened crims want to think of themselves as bad people.

In the end, I think many don’t realise is the people they hurt a huge amount is themselves. Damaging your self image can be a life-long hurt. It’s not like you’re ever going to see someone else looking back out of the mirror at you. If you grow to consider yourself a bad person, you’re in real trouble.

They need to teach that lesson in schools – why it is important to not compromise yourself. Why you shouldn’t do things you consider bad. What happens to you if you do think you’re a bad person etc etc etc…

Continuing the theme:

Crime… tends… to… be… recidivist…
This is simple maths and physics – you can’t be committing a crime if you’re already in jail. I’ll accept that this sometimes doesn’t hold true, and should perhaps be modified to “You’re much less likely”.

Suporting… longer… sentences… does… not… mean… you… always… want… to… throw… away… the… key.
This isn’t a zero sum game, and like all law enforcement needs to include a variety of tools. To paint the argument as such (ie; you’re either for longer sentences, or for rehab, but never both) is deliberately misleading from you.

Let me start by stating that Farrar’s friendship with a known pornographer is very revealing and makes me dislike the little turd even more than I already did but that has nothing to do with actual porn but everything with the way porn seems to be perceived in this country.

This is what I have gleaned so far from the previous discussion.

To some of you, it seems, porn=rape.

And some of you pointed out there are women who enjoy porn.

And this gets a funny “male” response. Steve delegates those women to the freaky site of the sex spectrum and this is taken up by other males.

What is telling is the total absence of women in the discussion.

As you know I am from Holland, in fact I’m from big bad Amsterdam.
The big bad super tolerant dope smoking, red light toting, gay, hetero porn capital of the world.

I have been surrounded with “porn” in abundance my entire live and by the reasoning of some of you, rape should be a fixture in the live of Amsterdam women far in excess of anywhere else in the porn free world.

But it isn’t. Does rape never happen in Amsterdam? Sure, but I have seen more rapes and more violent ones being committed here than in a comparable time frame in Amsterdam which like Auckland has more than a million inhabitants but unlike Auckland is build far denser and on perhaps 1/4 of its territory.

There are only 4 million people in this country and in Holland on an area the size of Northland 17 million people have made their homes but contrary to what some of you assert Hollanders would be well and truly shocked with the behaviour of those policemen and their raping orgies.

It would be totally incomprehensible to us that men in places of such delicate power would use that power to subdue and debase women like that, so clearly our exposure to abundant porn has not caused us to think that it is OK for women to be raped or debased, in fact there is less tolerance and exposure to the possibility of being raped.

My whole live, from the tender young age of 14 until the time I left I have as a good Tulip is wont to do bicycled and or walked all over Amsterdam and when the time came that I could decide my own bedtime which was at the tender young age of 16 I did the same at any time of the night. In fact some of the hottest porn free haunts were right in the middle of the red light district and although I have certainly had my moments of fear it was never there and I have always been free and unharmed in my nightly exploits in that big bad city.

(Yeez, I just remembered were I spend my first years. My bohemian artist parents had an apartment next to one of the most beautiful old houses on the oldest canal of Amsterdam, right in the middle of the red light district. In fact my pram came from one of the prostitutes next door. LOL. God see what you guys do to me? That way back down memory lane)

In Amsterdam a group of students researching the function of porn, and whether porn was actually exploitative to women and they decided to do a test. The hypothesis? If porn was exploitative to women than women by and large should be massively turned off by watching it.

They organised two groups. One male and one female. All volunteers but carefully screened to be of the most average middle class/ working class (Not a big distinction in Holland) background.

One by one the members of these groups were exposed to hardcore porn.

They measured the physical sexual response by attaching sensors to their genitals.

After they had watched the movies they gave the participants a questionnaire.
The questions were about what they thought of the movies, how they felt they reacted physically etc.

The result was predictable. The man had mostly enjoyed them and the women rejected them as exploitation and suppression of women.

The test revealed something very significant. Their physical reaction did not support their words. While the bodies of the men supported their statements (Hard to lie about a hard on really)
it revealed that the bodies of the women betrayed their statements for without exception their bodies had exactly the same response to the hardcore video’s as the men. Their bodies were as much exited when they watched porn as the men.

women feel compelled to deny and or lie about how they experience sex in general.

What did become clear is that porn is perceived by both the female and the male body as sexually exiting but while men acknowledge that enjoyment women deny it.

I have met several young kiwi men in the last couple of years and in conversations with them gleaned some of the current youth culture in this country. These were not exceptional kids, they were your average kiwi youngsters, trying to learn a trade and make sense of a confusing world. In fact I really like these kids.
But talking to them about their male female relations proved very shocking to me.

Without exception, while actively pursuing sex as much as they could these kids referred to sexually active young women as slags and hoes and in fact one kid thought all sexually active girls were skanky hoes.

So while these kids acknowledged their own sexuality as totally normal they completely condemned the necessary reciprocal emotion in the other sex.

In fact I bet you that lots of males have a secret stash of hardcore porn somewhere in the shed while they would be appalled if their wives had a similar stash hidden away in her crafts room.

In light of the previous, I have to condemn Steve’s rejection of Farrar’s relationship with a pornographer because he reinforces the myth (as proven wrong by physical evidence) that porn is exploitative and I equally have to condemn his delegation of women who enjoy porn to the sexual fringe.

Both are as sexist as Farrar’s relationship with said Pornographer because both Farrar and Steve use porn as a way of marginalising and denouncing female sexuality.

Farrar by assorting with someone who films the human sex act ( in whatever setting of fantasy) in a country that by enlarge reject the normalcy of female sexuality and Steve for reinforcing the myth that women have to hide behind in order not to be thought of as slags or hoes and which inhibits them from enjoying their sexuality with or without the aid of porn.

(not to mention that it disables both sexes to deal with each others sexuality as a bonding, intimate act with ample space to explore and enjoy.)

One last note: This comment is not in defence of the porn industry which like many industries has it’s share of abuse and exploitation but also has its share of women making lots of money and enjoying a huge fan base while enjoying sex.

And no, I have never been in active in the sex industry and I am probably an exception to the rule as I have never strayed from any monogamous relation I was in and the one I’m in now has lasted 21 years and going.

I apologise for the length but I hope some of you will enjoy it anyway.

Captcha: the Femina. Awesome. I felt the force as I was writing this. Guess the captcha thingy felt it too. LOL.

Filling… prisons… with… people… who… have… nothing… to… lose… will… escalate… the… problem…

Perhaps we should just hang ‘em, cures problem, provides entertainment.

Let me type this slowly, so you can keep up:

When… someone… is… in… prison,… they… are… not… out… on… the… street… committing… other… crimes.

In order for your claim to be true, you have to believe that other criminals commit more crime, in order to keep up the averages.

A large proportion of our homes are cold and damp so that creates a moral hazard as they will be better off in prison.

“Tougher sentences and nastier prisons do not deter crime. In general crime (apart from “white collar’ crime) is committed by people who don’t plan ahead much, who don’t ponder consequences.”

On the other hand people gain an appreciation of the sort of consequences that their actions will provoke and they will have learned that they live in an environment where the state will do them no harm.

Not sure what part of the country you are living in but I find there is plenty of community spirit and altruism in NZ.

Poverty is a CONTRIBUTING FACTOR in some criminal behaviour but it is unfair to those millions (may billions) living in relative poverty throughout the world who are not criminals to say that poverty causes crime.

Agree with you though on those that many who commit crime are either unable to fathom the consequences of their actions or simply don’t care.

In my opinion if one would crack the problem of how to make them fathom the consequences (and make sure those consequences occurred) that would be a step in the right direction.

LOL

Tougher sentences and nastier prisons do not deter crime. In general crime (apart from “white collar” crime) is committed by people who don’t plan ahead much, who don’t ponder consequences.

The crime we face is largely a product of our liberal establishment.

The crime we face is largely a product of relative poverty. That explains why over the last years, while poverty has been decreasing (and aspects of our establishment getting more liberal?), crime has been decreasing too.

Just because the goal of those ads is to do something good, doesn’t mean they achieve it.

We can have the best intentions in the world but we will be judged by the results of our actions. It’s pretty common for an action to have the reverse effect of what was desired.