Jeff: That's part of what I'm talking about. It's such a bizarre, nonsensical concept that we're "too insulated from violence." But we keep hearing variations on that from both sides: either that we're getting too coddled and need to man up, or from the opposite end, the white liberal American guilt that says other places have to deal with violence all the time, so it's somehow bad that it's so alien to us.

Jamila: I'll defer to the child psychologist, of course, but doesn't that report keep repeating that it's not causing aggressive behavior as much as bringing it out in people already predisposed to it?

In any case, I'm not so much talking about very young children. I don't even know if you need a study there, since anecdotal evidence is more than conclusive. If you hand a five-year-old anything even remotely resembling a sword, he's going to start banging stuff with it. Personally, I strongly believe that parents should have complete control & responsibility over their kids' media until adolescence. (I kept mentioning "think about the children!" because that's always used as a crutch. I say yield control of kids to their parents, and turn the discussion back to one of our responsibility as adults).

I was thinking more about adolescence to adulthood. This was all partly in response to a kerfluffle over a webcomic about videogames recently. There were a ton of people who just refused to acknowledge a difference between fantasy and reality, and it got so overblown it was disturbing. So my point is just that sexual images are more relevant and realistic to almost all of us than violent images ever will be, and we need to acknowledge that.

That of course doesn't mean I'm going Zardoz-style "guns good! penis bad!" Just that sexual imagery is more powerful than people make it out to be, and that viewers are better able to distinguish fantasy from reality than they're ever given credit.