Porn is bad folks, discuss
The porn industry is exploitative and creates social problems. So does every industry under capitalism, the cosmetic industry creates pressures especially on young women / girls and profits from unsafe work conditions in poor countries.
Your problem isn't porn, it's capitalism. Individually abstaining won't change that.
I think the way porn affects a persons psychology provides a strong argument for why individuals should abstain from porn. Especially for young men who are exposed to what is essentially a drug from a very young age, its a bit of a wilder take but I think the accessibility to porn plays a huge role in the docility of the imperial core.
You mean more as a personal advice instead of a moral imperative? Then I'd probably agree with you. Like I'd encourage someone to hit the gym / to eat healthy, but don't shame people for not doing those things.
Yeah I wouldn't go around pushing it like its a moral failure if you use porn, shaming is just counterproductive and wont lead anyone to better themselves.
The porn industry is exploitative and creates social problems. So does every industry under capitalism
Except the industry is full of creeps who do illegal things to these women.
Specific example I was thinking of was girls do porn, and that wasn't "technically illegal" it was rape and sex trafficking.
edit: "every industry under capitalism" is not an argument I like much. There are differences, and people should be able to recognize that the nature of porn and how it relates to society leave it very open for scummy people to take advantage in horrible ways.
-
In high concept, people recording themselves having sex should be as unremarkable as people creating any other form of art
-
Social alienation, competition, and hyperindividualization creates a dependency on pornography
-
The porn industry is exploitative, particularly to young people, and sets them up for social difficulties later on given the misogynistic nature of American society--add in the lack of organization, unionization, and the societal sense that anyone in porn is a second-class citizen unworthy of justice
So, the most ethical thing you can do is consume sexual art made by exhibitionists or others who freely provide it without any kind of coercion, until it gets to the point in the ideal future where the only people doing sex work are those who deeply enjoy it
Yeah from an ethics view that seems like the only acceptable option other than just abstaining from pornography entirely. I think that the porn industry also contributes massively to misogynistic culture and regulating or abolishing the industry as it is would be a critical victory for the left.
The thing is though that it doesn't so much contribute to the culture as replay it. Everything stereotypical about porn--jacked black dudes with huge dicks stealing your white women, women just needing be forced into it then they'll enjoy it, the boss/professor/authority figure taking advantage of a vulnerable girl, that sex is solely for a man's pleasure and his ejaculation is the most important aspect, the increasing spectacle of rougher and more demeaning sex, etc. etc. etc.--that came from the society itself. Instead of smoking cigarettes behind the gym and talking about which girls are willing to do what, you do it online now.
But it's a huge industry, and it's recently played up the progressive language and pretending to care about safe sex and sponsoring Youtubers/streamers and stuff to rebrand itself as somehow forward-thinking. So now they can dismiss any criticism as being sex-negative or a moral panic rather than about their actual practices.
Absolutely the way companies like porn hub try to act woke and nice while profiting from rape and abuse is just sickening.
I suppose with the culture question is a bit of a "chicken or the egg" thing; did misogynistic culture produce violent degrading porn or did violent porn produce a misogynistic culture? In reality its probably a mix of both.
did misogynistic culture produce violent degrading porn or did violent porn produce a misogynistic culture?
The first one.
Literally everything seen in porn that can be seen as misogynistic or cruel existed before it. The culture today isn't more accepting of brutality than it was fifty years ago, they're just more aware of it.
-
my friends, learn to draw and seize the means of your own porn production
Mass produced "mainstream" porn like the shit from Brazzers or anything like that definitely exploitive, but at the same time, there's not much wrong with a couple or some people sharing/selling pics and videos on only fans or whatever. If someone wants to sell their body, let em, consent, age of majority, all that stuff applies.
when people say porn do they mean like brazzers shit or just erotica in general, bc banning erotic material is some puritanical boomer shit.
well if 'porn' only includes that which involves exploitation of humans then ofc its bad i dont see the point on holding a struggle session over it
disclaimer im just voicing a popular talking point ive seen:
the issue is any sex work that is under the coercive fist of capital makes it exploitative is the issue. if its exploitative the work cant be consensual as there is coercion, thus porn is rape under capitalism essentially.
I stay outa the struggle sesh and just lurk tho its not for me to say im not a sex worker.
Amateur is the only close to ethical porn under capitalism (and also the best)
unless it's revenge porn dude, be careful. pornhub keeps lots of revenge porn videos despite takedown notices filed by the women featured on them, sometimes they're even underage.
also porn producers are keenly aware of amateur porn's appeal, they're no idiots, so they produce professional "amateur" porn
Yeah that is a very good point. I generally stay away from actual porn sites and mostly use reddit where revenge porn doesn't seem to be as much of a systemic issue (I think)
Except when its depicting underage girls.
"ummm shes akshually a 2000 year old dragon she just happens to have the body of a prepubescent child"
This isn't a Libertarian site, we're all libs here (except me, the one true leftist)
Yeah but the animators are getting their labor stolen, so you gotta stick with individual artists/doujins.
Sex under coercion is rape.
Work performed based on the requirement to do so in order to not die -- the need for money for food and shelter -- is coercive (and a core belief of socialism).
Sex work is therefore rape.
hmm.. I guess that's why the police arrest sex workers, because they are causing rapes. Gotcha
So then... rape is not that bad?
Or like, my wife and I take turns raping each other as our incomes switch between her or myself having more money to pay bills?
I know you're aware that it's silly to pose the equal situation where you and your partner have near equal incomes... But you should be aware that this very topic was a major aspect of first wave feminism and continues to be a major talking point against trad-relationship types who think a woman should not work.
I haven't had a paycheck on over a year from a job.
I'm currently selling blood plasma to be able to pay some of the bills. My wife's farm in come is now the majority of our income. She's kinda been wanting me to be home more to help her do farm stuff and take over doing domestic chores. Sooo.. technically, its my wife who wants me to not work.
So, I don't think its silly to apply the logic from the scenario described earlier in this comment thread to other scenarios to see if the outcome makes sense or not. Income is not guaranteed between partners through their lives. I'd imagine that you don't dump your spouse as soon as one of your incomes increases or decreases so that there isn't parity or when one spouse suddenly finds themselves in a situation of financial dependence.
Also, kudos for low key framing my comment as being anti-feminist. slow claps
I still do not see how a relationship that began equally that goes through fluctuations is in any way comparable to the issues in the porn industry.
I didn't frame it as anti-feminist. It was anti-feminist. The porn industry is an indefensible industry filled with rape. Any defence of it in favour of defending the individualist choice of the actors and actresses to perform the work instead of from the perspective of liberating them is anti-feminist.
Sex under coercion is rape.
Work performed based on the requirement to do so in order to not die – the need for money for food and shelter – is coercive (and a core belief of socialism).
Sex work is therefore rape.
You're logic is fine, i just don't find the conclusion as compelling as you do.
Porn is fine, I've been fantasizing about people for as long as I've had tingly underpants feelings. That's me, making porn for myself by myself. I've traded dirty pictures and stories with other people, that's porn between people who were consenting, I don't view that rape.
I agree, that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. The Porn Industry, is an industry. And as such, we will be able to find people who are overtly hurt and people who might be less overtly hurt, and people who aren't hurt or people being hurt that don't realize they are being hurt. So, I agree that there are victims found within the Porn Industry.
I don't think that anybody working within the confines of this system, who works in porn, its automatically involved in rape. I want to say that I am tracking where you're going and what you're arguing. But the word rape, and the crimes it describes means something to me other than what happens when you're just trying to pay bills. I'm not a legal scholar so I doubt I can find some silver arrow definition to make my point but I hope that I can at least let you know where my brain is at even if you don't agree.
Reading the above quote of your logic, leads the conclusion. 1) Rape can mean the horrible abuse of somebody else's bodily autonomy by others as well as well as a voluntary act between people within a larger system that is naturally exploitative.
Scenario, my wife and I need some money because jobs that work with what my spouse wants me to be doing are hard to come by. So we decide to make some videos and see if anybody will give us some Only Fans cash from it. Given we live in a capitalism, and there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. By the logic from the above quote from the original comment that I started replying to. Did my wife and just commit an act of rape?
I would say no, we might not have liked having to do porn instead of just being farmers to pay the bills, but just because we live within a capitalism I cannot justify labeling what we did as rape. I shouldn't have to make the this statement, but rape can occur within the Porn Industry, this is not up for debate.
In the Porn Industry, the need to make money is the coercive part, not the doing sex stuff for money. Coercion just for sex, is absolutely rape.
We don't have to agree, I'm not trying to change your mind, I'm pretty sure I get what you're trying to say. Also, I appreciate the back and forth and don't want you to think this comment thread was just me being needlessly shitty.
People that defend the porn industry do not understand the part of our ideology that is against the exploitation of labour nor do they understand that sale and destruction of your body is the most disgusting and extreme example of physical exploitation of labour that exists within society.
What is the basic foundational principle of socialist ideology? It is that we are not free, that the work we perform is performed under coercive conditions created by the capitalist in order to extract our labour, these conditions are but are not limited to the need to work for food and shelter.
If you agree with this principle -- that work under capitalism is work performed under coercion -- then you must agree that sex work, as sex performed under coercion, is therefore rape. It is not a consensual outcome that would occur without the individuals involved being coerced into the work based on the need for the money.
In the eventual end goal of a utopian communist society no pornography will exist anymore because we will have eliminated any and all social-ills that cause people to choose (or be forced to choose) to participate in it.
Sex workers should be supported. And by supported I mean "helped to escape the conditions that involve them performing sex work".
It is of course not going to go away under socialism, it's still an exploitative society even if it is vastly better than capitalism. Under socialism it should be heavily controlled at both ends, production and consumption. You can't prohibit it of course because that shit doesn't work but you can blunt and control its worst tendencies in the meantime to reduce its damage in society to the greatest extent.
There probably IS eventually some sort of sex-based entertainment form that can/will exist based on people’s actual fundamental desire to do it because it’s what they like doing and want to do. I think there are in fact forms of sincere amateur entertainment entirely without monetary exchange that are actually good. Unfortunately it is impossible to separate this from anything that is paid and it is impossible to determine under current conditions whether those desires are coming from a healthy or unhealthy place based on escapism from society, mental health problems making them seek affirmative attention or capitalist-ills. We simply can not tell. There are also definitely some arguments to be made around purely animated forms of entertainment however I’m confident in saying that nobody here uses any site with animated or drawn porn entertainment that doesn’t also contain things everyone would criticise as VERY problematic and is therefore taking part in helping those areas of the industry based on what and where they’re consuming this.
In the era of history when we were doing our hardest as a culture to repress women, sex work represented a path to economic independence that most women could travel - so of course we demonized the shit out of it and those who chose to do it.
That's why being anti-porn is so heavily associated with being conservative. It's all tied up with the idea of controlling women's bodies and forcing them into a subservient role.
But this it doesn't just go in one direction - the sex and porn industries in the modern world represent a different kind of control over women's bodies than a pastor preaching about abstinence, but it is a form of control nonetheless.
So that's why I think being blindly pro sex work is bad too, because you end up supporting a certain group of capitalists who profit off of the exploitation of poor women.
The synthesis of this dialectic is to destroy the porn industry and nationalize OnlyFans.
