Individual subjects exist, though? We don't need to -- and indeed shouldn't -- always talk about all forms of exploitation all at once.
There is also the fact that the social context of porn is somewhat unique. It's pretty unusual for college guys to get someone intoxicated in order to coerce them into working at a lumber mill, film it, and post it online under false pretenses for ad revenue, with no regard for how the coerced person may have been given long-term physical and psychological harm from the event.
I think that's more of a distinction of how the exploitation is performed or enforced rather than what the act is. We do have similar things that happen for other forms of labor -- IIRC, children that end up enslaved on cocoa plantations are often sold by their parents to human traffickers under false pretenses that they'll receive an education.
The part that I'm really objecting to here is the notion that pornography is categorically bad. It makes as much sense in my mind as saying agricultural labor is categorically bad because of what I described with human trafficking and child slaves. I agree that human trafficking in sex work is distinctly worse than wage labor and that we must do everything we can to make sex work safe for those who wish to engage in it. But if it is taking place in a form similar to wage labor, or the person is just posting it freely because they like doing it, then I don't think it's uniquely worse than anything else.
It is exploitative for the same reasons all wage labor is, which is why it is very suspicious when sex work is singled out.
Individual subjects exist, though? We don't need to -- and indeed shouldn't -- always talk about all forms of exploitation all at once.
There is also the fact that the social context of porn is somewhat unique. It's pretty unusual for college guys to get someone intoxicated in order to coerce them into working at a lumber mill, film it, and post it online under false pretenses for ad revenue, with no regard for how the coerced person may have been given long-term physical and psychological harm from the event.
I think that's more of a distinction of how the exploitation is performed or enforced rather than what the act is. We do have similar things that happen for other forms of labor -- IIRC, children that end up enslaved on cocoa plantations are often sold by their parents to human traffickers under false pretenses that they'll receive an education.
The part that I'm really objecting to here is the notion that pornography is categorically bad. It makes as much sense in my mind as saying agricultural labor is categorically bad because of what I described with human trafficking and child slaves. I agree that human trafficking in sex work is distinctly worse than wage labor and that we must do everything we can to make sex work safe for those who wish to engage in it. But if it is taking place in a form similar to wage labor, or the person is just posting it freely because they like doing it, then I don't think it's uniquely worse than anything else.