Edit: I should preface this by saying I am approaching the question from the perspective of whether or not it is ethical due to the systemic abuse of women in the industry.
I have mixed feelings and would argue professional porn is, at least as it exists in the here and now, is completely exploitative on a systemic level.
If we move past that and limit the confines of the question to amateur/self-owned type paid porn: I would say it requires a society with healthy sex-ed in order for people to have a healthy relationship with porn on a societal level.
On the individual level, context matters a lot.
Personally, I think it should be temporarily banned until we fix the social problems that drive people into it.
I know it sucks for the people who have a healthy and consensual relationship with the industry, but as it is now sucks worse for the people who get exploited and abused.
uh oh. This is one of those 'not under capitalism things'.
As someone else put it perfectly in another comment: it's just porn. It's not going to affect the life of the person viewing it unless said person lets it.
IMO, tho, as with most things things in life, just doing as the Greeks did is a good rule of thumb: you doing this in moderation? you're good.
Why doesn’t the alcoholic put down the bottle? He is letting it damage his life and should simply choose to stop.
The alcholic is already in a habit. What i put was not written with the idea of an addict in mind, simply that the act (porn) is not some evil, rotten thing that should be avoided like the plague, but should instead be treated as a neutral thing and viewed with moderation--should a normal, non-addicted person decide to do so at all.
Also, that you used that specific example for your comment, considering I actually did put the bottle down a while ago because yeah, boiling it down, it pretty much was destroying my relationships and not doing my already weak ass immune system any favors, made me crack a smile NGL
You're speaking about a compulsive habit at that point, so no. That's a completely different animal than what i meant.
I wrote the above along the lines of "Is the action bad in of itself? No. CAN it turn into a bad habit and hurt a person? Yes. All depends on the person interacting with it"
Like, as a former (recovering? Don't drink anymore, besides, at best, 1 bottle at gatherings, if even that, and sometimes during hangouts) alcoholic, yeah I'll call out when companies and other people try to enable someone with a drinking problem to keep going...but I'm also not gonna go around and say "all alcoholic beverages bad" because I recklessly abused something that is known to hurt the body if used without restraint and paid for it. Maybe it's a poor comparison since porn can't physically hurt you the way alcohol can (tho it can mentally warp a person in some ways, especially if they're younger/have nobody to teach them properly about sexual education) but that's the only example I can give and i hope i got my point across.
So we're basically saying the same thing about the subject then. Wonderful. Dunno how you got me saying "It's not going to affect the life of the person viewing it unless said person lets it" to mean "it applies to people who damned themselves down this road willing and people who has an actual problem with it" in the context of OP's question
Now, "Ungenerous interpretation of what [you] said" where, exactly?
You asked "does it include compulsive gamblers?"
And I answered No, because I answered the OP's question from a general perspective--not asking as someone who already has a compulsive urge to masturbate/drink/gamble/whathaveyou. The first one can be affected either positively or negatively by something, if they let the habit control them vs the other way around, while the other's already affected in a negative way, so i didn't bother bringing them up. (Not even touching on the fact that it should be obvious, or well, at least it is to me, you CANNOT advise or help an addict in the same way you're going to advise a person whose curious/a bit green on something they wanna try)
Wait, was it in my anecdote about me deing a drunk? If that's the case, then there was a failure to communicate on my part and I apologize. I didn't mean to imply that you said "all porn bad", i said it to point out how distiling something that to a basic category like "all alcohol is bad" without the nuance of "it's less the thing and more the different people interacting with the thing" to be....well, bad, and reductive because context matters.
I don't think it's inherently bad. But if you're a person with a tendency to become addicted to certain "vices", then it can become problematic.
It's probably not healthy for the viewer, but that doesn't mean much to be honest. I'm more concerned for the participants. Sure, some is fine, but it's hard to know the level of exploitation for any given film. That's why I only watch hentai.
It sounds like you're having difficulty w porn and you should seek help; for the rest of us, it's a non issue
As an addict I'd say that it can't be used in a healthy way. What I mean by that is that there's no benefit to watching porn. That doesn't mean it's always going to be bad but that at best it's neutral. If you can keep it under control and it doesn't negatively affect your life in other ways then I don't think you need to worry about it but it's a slippery slope. If you take 100 people and give them access to porn I'd bet that the total effect is going to be a net-negative even though most of them are going to be more or less unaffected.
