Porn

Sex is ultimately about human bonding and procreation.

Given that no form of contraception is 100% effective, porn can result in pregnancy. That is a pretty extreme result of a business transaction.

TBE... see my latest post. What makes sex different from any other kind of employment?

Why is drawing a contract up that involves sex different from drawing any other contract up? Why should a woman (or man) not be allowed to sign such a contract? Why should they be exempt from normal legal penalties for breaking the contract?

Carmen, your post makes me thing of the "casting couch" and things women AND men will do to achieve their dreams. Marilyn Monroe apparently "went there" and achieved her probable dream of everlasting fame! The price was a BIT high though.

Obviously sex is different to all other forms of human interaction. People who argue otherwise are being disingenuous. Nobody behaves as if sex is just like any other form of human activity, so I don't know why it is being compared to human labour.

My post was unclear. Here is my question:

Why is being paid for sex unethical, whilst being paid to write books or to run a marathon or to act in a play acceptable?

What makes sex different?

Carmen - I think that some women do need protecting, yes. Not from themselves, though, but from growing up in a country with a culture that tells them that it is perfectly ok to sell your body and to ignore any negative feelings about that. A culture that regards them as pieces of meat.

I am not saying that the are incapable, or feeble, just that the culture is putting them in harms way.

I would not take away their free will. I would wish to give them true free will by letting them live in a culture that doesn't see their bodies as a comodity.

Almost all employment is exploitative whether it uses your looks, body, mind, ideas or time. You're giving something you don't want to give freely in return for compensation.

In what sense is a woman raped if she has consented to the sex? She may not enjoy it but she has agreed to it in return for payment.

I will agree with you wholeheartedly that if drugs, blackmail, violence or similar factors are involved then that is wrong, immoral, illegal and unethical and I understand that those factors are very common in the 'pornography industry' to use your terms, but no-one seems to be willing to purify the argument down to say what is wrong with a woman consenting to sex in return for money if you remove all those extraneous factors. Other than an 'icky feeling' that it is wrong.

And you definitely CAN purify that transaction down even if it is very rare, it is not impossible.

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I think your analogy would also work better if you had some evidence that most feminists hate men. That would then match the evidence that most pornography shows physically punishing acts being committed against women, which is very well supported by peer reviewed statistical studies.

If you could actually demonstrate hateful things being said about men by most feminists, I would stop participating in feminism.

I don't think patriachy is at all synonymous with men as a group. I think there are as many women as men propping up a patriachical culture. Look at this thread!

I can't be bothered to go through and put all of those quotes in context.

What I would say is that I don't feel the need to justify or defend the comments of every feminist in order to feel that feminism is overwhelmingly a force for good in the world, and that many women including myself have far more rights and opportunities as a a consequence of it. This is despite feminists having very little power.

I do not feel that the sex industry has overwhelmingly been a force for good in people's lives, despite it having immense wealth and power.

It makes it far harder to overlook the hideous sexism, racism and homophobia that is rife in the most popular forms of pornography, when pornography as a whole is not really offering something amazing to society as a whole.

I really think you need to come up with a better analogy to pornography, because comparing an industry to forms of human relationship like homosexuality or to political movements like feminism doesn't really make sense.

Pornography is first and foremost about money. The obvious comparisons are other luxury good industries, that convince us to buy what we do not need.

Portofino - she's arguing with me because I said feminists don't hate men.

'So, you dug out some extreme feminist quotes to show that objecting to porn is unreasonable?'

No I am just saying that in response to what I wrote here:

Well many men are hated by certain supporters of radical feminism does that mean you will stop being a feminist?

and lifeissweet telling me that feminists dont hate men.

Well some do does that mean all do? of course no. The same applies to the sex industry some is radical and extreme but not all at all.

Well why for patriachy is the term men used so often as in men as a homgenous group. dO you agree with this then as a feminist?

"Compare victims' reports of rape with women's reports of sex. They look a lot alike....[T]he major distinction between intercourse (normal) and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so often that one cannot get anyone to see anything wrong with it." Catherine MacKinnon, quoted in Christina Hoff Sommers, "Hard-Line Feminists Guilty of Ms.-Representation," Wall Street Journal, November 7, 1991.

So, you dug out some extreme feminist quotes to show that objecting to porn is unreasonable?

Lifeissweet, so you are suggesting women need protecting from themselves? We should take away their free will because they may do something they regret later?

Patriachy love, not men, patriachy. It is actually a different thing. The culture we live in makes the gender differences. The culture teaches men a sense of entitlement. That is what most of what you have c&pd is saying.

Feministst don't hate men, they hate the system where men are the dominators.

I have been part of feminism boards and know a bit about this.