Killing vs Sexual Violence: why is one more acceptable?

[integral]

In movies, we often depict killing all the time effortlessly in every horrific way possible killing and torture are shown in movies and none of us seem to take offence to it.

But sexual violence in any kind is normally avoided at all cost and great lengths are taken to remove this kind of material from book adaptations.

There’s always issues when race or sex is involved in a controversial way in movies, but killing in every horrific form of it gets no attention at all. It’s completely normalized.

Why do people have such a resistance to sex but not to killing?

Why is sex offensive but not killing?

Edited Thursday at 12:39 AM by integral

[integral]

OK, so it’s about the context.

If a person is fighting to the death in a war scenario, then there’s justifiable reason for them to die and it can be exciting and interesting to watch

But sexual violence, it’s impossible to depict it in a justifiable way, making it uncomfortable for the viewer to watch

If killing is depicted in a violating way or something is being taken, then it can make the person feel uncomfortable.

So it’s the depiction of someone being violated that we are rejecting.

killing can be depicted as heroic while sexual violence can never be depicted that way.

The twist is: we don’t view killing as selfish most of the time, but we view sexual violence as always selfish in every scenario.

Edited Thursday at 12:52 AM by integral

[Eskilon]

@integral I think a factor is that we don't see sexual violence outside the human domain. While we do see a lot of killing happening in nature. So for us that feeds into our minds that killing, while ugly, it's justifiable because to survive we need to kill(meat eaters and stuff like that), but we do not need to abuse someone sexually to survive.

Edited Thursday at 01:11 AM by Eskilon

[Leo Gura]

A boobie is more offensive than a bullet to the head.

Puritan logic.

Edited Thursday at 01:36 AM by Leo Gura

[Letho]

@integral Both are forms of objectification, just with different philosophies.

It’s a fine line between defacing dignity and being reduced to pure utility.

We want the means and the end to align. When they don’t, we ask, did the end justify the means, or did the means corrupt the end beyond redemption?

Understanding this frames all future simulations of what we consider acceptable or unacceptable, assuming all things are equal.

A gun to the head, I could push out a formula. But if AI could do the same, would anyone care if I was gone?

[Shodburrito]

@integral

 

I believe it reflects our collective relationship with distance and intimacy. Violence in film allows us to maintain psychological separation—we process it as "happening to others" and thus comfortably distant from our personal reality, while sexual content breaches this boundary by connecting to our most vulnerable, intimate experiences that can't be easily compartmentalized.

This isn't coincidental but mirrors how our consciousness processes different types of human experience—violence reinforces our sense of separateness while sexuality threatens the dissolution of the boundaries our egos maintain. The resistance isn't to the acts themselves but to what they represent in our emotional landscape: we readily accept content that preserves our psychological defenses while rejecting that which might force us to confront our authentic vulnerability and interconnectedness.

[manuel bon]

 

9 hours ago, integral said:

we don’t view killing as selfish most of the time

When you're dead your family suffers, but you don't. It's easy to not get personified with an irrelevant character (or their family) that dies in a book or movie. Rape is more intimate, it's also a psychological kind of abuse, and even if it's an irrelevant character you still feel them cause it's so deep. 

I would prefer to be killed than being raped (I know it's selfish to some extent, but still).

[gettoefl]

The abused will speak and one day you will get your comeuppance.

The killed haven't a voice or a lobby so you are safe from them.

Moreover, to depict killing and/or violence means you are are somehow endorsing it.

Killing won't come back to harm you but violence may very well do so.

Seeing violence normalises violence.

The only people who can depict violence and get away with it and those who suffered at its hands.

Even they will often be terrorised. 

Watch oscar-nominated Black Box Diaries to see how a Japanese rape victim took to the big screen and has been made a pariah because of it.

Edited Thursday at 12:18 PM by gettoefl