[mikecaron]

I am only saying that my girls are growing up in an increasingly violent society and I want them to be ready to handle people that creep out of the shadows to attack them. I want my girls to be ready if someone deceives them and they find that they are in a very dangerous and unsafe situation.

I also want to educate them as to how to avoid dangerous environments, to be street-wise, to avoid frat parties, how to spot an abuser, how to know when a guy is manipulating them, et al. Education is my primary tool, self-defense and knowledge of how to use weapons is a secondary, but necessary, tool.

[Mz]

Unfortunately, you are teaching them violence as an antidote to violence. I have not found that more violence makes for a safer, more peaceful atmosphere. However, I will note that I think it is extremely likely that your remarks are not really giving adequate context for your personal choices and that your attempts to defend your choice are likely to only reinforce a particular framing. I have zero desire to go down that road with you.

[malandrew]

Society isn't getting more violent, despite the fact that the 10 o'clock news might lead you to think that. The incidences of violent crime have dropped steadily year after year since 1990, including forcible rape[1]. The internet was introduced in 1989, so the introduction of the internet coincides directly with the introduction of the medium which provides porn to most porn consumers.

This is only a correlation. No causation can be should. You could argue that the drop in rape incidents is attributable to better crime fighting technology that has put more serial rape offenders behind bars. It's anybody's guess as to the cause of lower incidents of forcible rape, but what you can't do is attribute greater incidents of forcible rape with the rise in porn because the actual historical figures simply don't support that conclusion, in fact they contradict it despite any self reports of hypothetical behavior might suggest.

I don't know the figures, but I imagine that most incidents of rape involve someone the victim knows and involves ambiguous circumstances such as both the victim and the accused being under the influence of alcohol or some other voluntarily consumed mind altering substance. For rape under those conditions, both the victim and accused are equally at fault, just like a drunk driver is responsible for a car accident. Driving your body into another under the influence is not really not that dissimilar from driving a car into another under the influence. Your approach of educating your daughters into making the right decisions and avoiding risky situations is the best weapon you have to combat the risk of rape.

[1] http://www.lowtechcombat.com/2010/12/50-year-trends-in-viole...