Moral Panics

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Re: Moral Panics

Postby wildrose » Sat Oct 12, 2013 7:03 am

Is Streaking A Sex Offense? | 15-Year-Old Streaker Suicide :curse:
This type of story angers me to a point where I can barely contain myself. Public nudity should at most be a misdemeanor and something like this shouldn't even be a misdemeanor! Each and every public employee who had even the slightest involvement in persecuting this young man should be fired and put in prison.
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Re: Moral Panics

Postby a2z » Mon Oct 21, 2013 9:46 pm

Streaker Killed by Zero Tolerance
It's time to have ZERO TOLERANCE for idiots who make ZERO TOLERANCE laws and who redefine concepts like sexual harassment or rape so that just about anything that any guy does can be considered one or the other!!!
:curse:
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Re: Moral Panics

Postby desertrat » Wed Oct 23, 2013 8:31 am

Great post a2z! The expansion of what counts as sexual harassment and rape has turned a lot of normal people into sex offenders. It has ruined the lives of many good people and driven others to suicide as we heard about in the previous posts regarding the 15 year old streaker. I say enough already! It is time to go back to sensible definitions of legal terms!
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Re: Moral Panics

Postby cactuspete » Sat Nov 02, 2013 7:06 am

The Teenage Brain on Porn
Take equal portions of melodrama and misinterpretation of scientific evidence and you get this sensationalized presentation masquerading as a legitimate journalistic report. Maybe someone should make a follow up called "The Airhead Brain on Fake News" just to put things in context. The reality is that very few teens develop compulsive sexual behavior disorders. These teens would develop these disorders regardless of the availability of porn. Some guys (and a few girls) just become compulsive masturbaters and the availability of porn is not the issue. Porn might be a trigger, but remove porn and another trigger would work just as well. And then there is the girl who proclaims that today's teens are the pioneers. What total and complete horse crap! Porn in magazines has been around and available for decades and porn on the internet isn't that much different. It's more available to some degree, but it's not that big of a change.
:smack:
Blowing things out of proportion distorts and exaggerates a problem. This leads to idiots deciding that "something needs to be done" and that leads to unnecessary laws which then leads to situations like the one shared by A2Z about the boy who committed suicide. Porn simply is not a big deal and 99% of teens never have issues regarding porn. They may see it and be curious, but it doesn't interfere with their normal development. Porn is the ultimate non-issue which some people like to construe as a social problem, but the real problem is people who make a big deal about it!
:mad2:
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Re: Moral Panics

Postby shadylady » Sat Nov 02, 2013 8:13 am

Nice post CactusPete! People always want to blame something in the environment like porn or gambling or whatever, but the real problem is that some people are just compulsive by nature. There's always going to be something for them to be compulsive about and pretending that the problem is with the object of their compulsion is to completely miss the point. The brains of compulsive individuals are always searching for a trigger to stimulate and excite them. It doesn't matter what it is and a million different things will work just fine. The problem is that some people decide that it's the fault of the external trigger and not an internal issue. Of course, religion is a very common trigger and religious people want to eliminate competing triggers so they can hang out with other people who share their obsession. But all sorts of obsessions exist, for instance, lately there has been a lot of obsession over Obamacare!
:laugh:
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Re: Moral Panics

Postby deathvalleyjake » Fri Dec 06, 2013 7:52 pm

panamint_patty wrote: Bill Maher On Child Predators
As long as you're restarting the moral panics thread, then we might as well include this video. It's one of the most insightful tirades on this topic that I've ever seen!
:prof:

Most awesome rant ever! :bow:
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Re: Moral Panics

Postby CoolChick » Sun Feb 02, 2014 9:00 pm

Dylan Farrow’s Story
It's too bad that this woman has to resort to such a ridiculous method to get a little attention. The case was investigated and dropped because of lack of evidence long ago. Bringing it up again is just vindictive bull crap. That's the really unfair aspect of accusations like this. People need to learn to be more skeptical of accusations, but this thread pretty much explains why they aren't. It's called a MORAL PANIC and during a moral panic people don't think with their heads. They just let their emotions get out of control and so we wind up with cheap publicity stunts like this one.
LINKS:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/opinion/sunday/kristof-dylan-farrows-story.html
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/an-open-letter-from-dylan-farrow/
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Re: Moral Panics

Postby wildrose » Mon Feb 03, 2014 9:23 am

CoolChick: I read the article and the letter and I've seen a few news clips on this story too, and I'm not convinced that the young woman is telling the truth. The details aren't there and what she says is the kind of thing that anyone could have just made up. It's horribly unconvincing, but what remains to be discovered is why she's engaging in this stunt at this time. Hopefully, some reporters will poke around and figure out what she's up to.
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Re: Moral Panics

Postby desertrat » Sat Mar 29, 2014 6:51 am

A Lesson in Stupid Moral Panics: The History Of Dungeons And Dragons Bans :prof:
This article focuses on D&D, but also provides good information on moral panics in general. The good news is that most moral panics are exposed as frauds within a few years, but in the meantime they serve to crush rational thought and replace it with stupid emotionality. Interesting social phenomenon or just persistently annoying foible of human character? Probably both, but it's hard to see an upside to this tendency towards hysteria and emotionality.
...a brief history of all the things society has crapped its tighty-whities about, including the waltz, comic books, rock and roll, romance novels, the telephone, and movies. What folks my age may remember, however, is when it seemed like half the country was insisting that Dungeons & Dragons was a satanic cult ritual causing children to off themselves in record numbers.

LINK: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140327/06552226703/lesson-stupid-moral-panics-history-dungeons-dragons-bans.shtml
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Re: Moral Panics

Postby mrgreen » Fri Apr 18, 2014 1:40 pm

a2z wrote:The False Allegation Epidemic
There are a huge number of rape cases that are overturned each year as a result of DNA analysis of evidence. The problem is that often these men have been in prison for several years before their cases get reviewed. Somewhere between 40% and possibly as many as 75% of reported rapes (and molestations) are actually false accusations. Law enforcement sorts some of these out, but nonetheless the public is duped into believing that sex crime is a major problem when exactly the opposite is true: the false accusation of sex crime is the real problem.

False Rape Accusations Are Real
Your stats are actually pretty much right on. It appears that at a minimum that 20% of rape accusations are false, but that it's probably about 50%. Of course, you were talking about rape and molestation allegations and from everything I've heard false molestation allegations are actually quite a bit more common than false rape allegations, partially as a result of messy divorces. Nevertheless there is the belief that sexual assault accusations are likely to be true, which relates to the moral panic idea of this thread. Only during a moral panic can there be such a disconnect between belief and reality.
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