As far as whether porn is a reflection of society or is something that is an influence on society, I believe that I would have to say (unfortunately) that it’s both. I think that it is a reflection of society in that if the stuff wasn’t profitable, it wouldn’t exist since there’d be no money in it. But I also think that it impacts society because people tend to get ideas from these mediums (porn, shooting games, etc) that they may not have had before.

Before the internet and other technology, people with certain sexual perversions may have believed that they were the only ones with those perversions and would have been isolated to themselves or a small group of friends. Also, society was exerting more pressure to keep those kinds of things in check. With technology, these people can now share their thoughts, create more people like them, organize, and practice their perversion. Now something that may have been repressed is expressed, and excited.

Whereas before a person with a child porn perversion would have to be content with whatever pictures he could get possession of in terms of photos, etc., now that same person can visit webcam girls to his heart’s content– interact with them, etc.

Since this behavior is one that continues to want more and more to get the same high– and since there is more to be had in this digital age– I believe that it is easier for it to result in rape, incest and other perverse actions towards others.

I think that if we did the study, we’d find porn in all of the backgrounds of violent rapists.

I’m sure that a majority of rapists do not know their target.

from everything i personally have read, this is incorrect.

i have to disagree with you on this, though i find much of porn misogynistic and gross. i don’t think men commit rape because of porn any more than kids shoot up their schools because of nintendo or violent movies. in my opinion, any cultural expression, whether it’s a pornographic movie, first-person shooter video game, or action movie, is a *reflection* of society rather than a true influence on it. there is nothing, in my opinion, about showing people having sex on video that is fundamentally, by definition, misogynist or related to rape fantasy–it’s the way pornography has been made that makes it reflect those things. rape and murder existed long before multimedia entertainment did, and so did the sicknesses that cause them.

just my $0.02.