The effect of porn on teenage boys and young men

What are you wibbling on about now? What is the relevance of the "right to privacy" as you see it?

growapear nowhere on this thread have I said that women in porn are "degrading themselves". ( Which is a nasty misogynistic notion that invisibleizes the gendered nature of porn production and consumption and that of wider society).

The point being made is that pornography is degrading to women, all women and girls.

Hardly a subtle difference.

How can you hope that porn can be regulated around the world successfully, to the point where you can be happy that the chance of the woman involved being coerced is vanishingly unlikely?

Personally, I advocate the end of the 'right' to privacy, which is merely protection for corruption, abuse and a guarantor of injustice for rape victims. I recognise this as a minority view.

That visceral sense of rejection you probably feel at my radical ideology is no different to the one I feel for prescriptive, oppressive attitude to sexual expression.

Is not having enough money to pay your college fees a basis for material coercion?

Is a college degree equivalent to food and shelter?

Is not having enough money to pay your college fees a basis for material coercion?

Is a college degree equivalent to food and shelter?

Meph how can you hope that porn can be regulated around the world successfully, to the point where you can be happy that the chance of the woman involved being coerced is vanishingly unlikely?

And you still haven't provided a response to my own thought experiment, when I've gone to so much effort responding to yours.

Exhibitionist, video online, accessed by those who choose to, for the exhibitionists sexual fulfillment: Ban it?

If you can choose extreme examples to try and prove your point, I possess the equal right to do the same.

How do you define 'material coercion'?

Is not having enough money to pay your college fees a basis for material coercion?

Meph, the girl could have said no. An she was a legal adult. In fact, she didn't have to be a prostitute at all. So what's the problem eh? Just capitalism eh? Supply and demand?

She was materially coerced, a recognised crime that is banned by those who regulate porn.

And how do you know that the girls you see in porn videos are not girls just like that? You don't. Statistically, some of them are bound to be.

By assessing the quality of the regulator. Statistically some of your clothing was produced by an underage child in a sweatshop, but you hope that regulators limit the amount.

Verbal consent, without consideration of the context and the character of the people involved, counts for little.

Which is why signed contracts, registered with a legal authority designed to limit or eliminate moral coercion, counts for so much.

Beach, to clarify:

Are you saying that certain forms of erotic material should be freely available online?

You're saying porn inherently misogynistic, and it isn't. Black people are oppressed with physical violence and enslavement, but physical violence and enslavement are not inherently racist. Racism is just expressed through violence among other ways. If black oppression ended tomorrow there would be still be people getting beaten up in the world.

Misogyny is expressed through pornography, but pornography is not inherently misogynist.

Erotica is just a label liberals put to what is, when it comes down to it, pornography.

Feminists have this odd idea that if the world were equal or matriarchal then there wouldn't be any porn - only lovely, fluffy innocuous 'erotica' (presumably either in black and white or lit by candles with some ambient music in the background) and with no dark or disturbing themes. That suggests a strange, and actually very essentialist, crypto-patriarchal understanding of female sexuality.

We either take a stand against it all, or none of it all. 'Erotica' should not be online for children to look at.

Meph, the girl could have said no. An she was a legal adult. In fact, she didn't have to be a prostitute at all. So what's the problem eh? Just capitalism eh? Supply and demand?

And how do you know that the girls you see in porn videos are not girls just like that? You don't. Statistically, some of them are bound to be.

Verbal consent, without consideration of the context and the character of the people involved, counts for little.

Qwerty I'm going to quote Diana Russell again from this interview :

A.M.: How do you respond to people who point out that it is impossible to obtain a consensus on what is pornography versus what is erotica, that "one person's erotica is another person's pornography?"

D.R.: There is no consensus on the definitions of many phenomena. Rape is one example. Legal definitions of rape vary considerably in different states. Similarly, millions of court cases have revolved around arguments as to whether a killing constitutes murder or manslaughter. Lack of consensus should not automatically mean that pornography cannot be subject to opprobrium or legal restraint, or that we cannot examine its effects.

Claims that it is too hard to tell what is sexist and degrading material just sound to me like an excuse for men to continue to make and consume pornography.

I see we have a poster trying the "consent and agency" excuse for the consumption of porn. Both of these are a get out of jail free card for porn makers and consumers, rapists and misogynists. What they often seem to mean is "she was asking for it".

If a woman consents (and consent is a problematic enough concept that it merits a thread of its own) to a degrading and or abusive, sexist, violent, painful, dangerous, etc act being done with her body it does not magically make that act no longer one of degradation, abuse, sexism etc. It doesn't magically make it no longer painful or dangerous. Misogynists like to pretend that consent has magical powers. It doesn't.

Xeno

A ban on people filming and distributing pictures of themselves with no clothes on is impossible.

So you can still watch women being degraded in various ways

Would you actually, sit in a room with Nina Hartley (I see her name was not Gina) and tell her she was degrading herself ? How do you think she would feel about that ? How has she lessened the value of herself ?

That's not consent, that's material coercion and illegal under most* regulators. I tend to judge those who exploit the inability of others to consent.

*All the ones I'm aware of.

I presented a thought experiment of my own upthread: If an exhibitionist made a video of themselves online, accessible to consenting adults, for the exhibitionists own sexual fulfilment, would you ban it?

sorry, two legal adults..

Sorry all, but I need to present a particularly horrible situation. Meph imagine this scenario.

A teenage girl has fled a conflict zone - say Syria or the Ukraine. Her entire family has been killed. She is eighteen, homeless, completely alone in the world, and desperate. One day a man approaches her and tells her she can make some money sexually servicing men. She agrees. One man she sees wants her to defecate and then eat her own faeces while he masturbates. She is desperate for money, food and shelter - so she drugs herself up to the eyeballs, and carries out his request. The man films the act on his phone. She offers no objection.

So here we have no legal adults engaging in an exchange that is technically consensual.

But are you in all seriousness telling me that no moral judgment should be passed on that man's conduct or character?

People consent to a wide range of things because of their cultural/moral/individual upbringings. It does not mean they are not being abused or degraded or harmed.
We have an obligation to judge that so we can change it.

no moral argument can be made for constraining her rights to self expression.

Anyone's rights to self expression should be constrained if what they're doing is harmful to others. We have no right to do exactly as we please if it impinges on others' liberty or health or well-being.

What kind of selfish creature would think otherwise?

Meph, are you saying that if two adults freely consent to something then no moral judgment should be passed?

I believe I cannot morally judge unless someones behaviour causes harm to the non-consenting.

Ashamedly I used to laugh at Mary Whitehouse back in the day, but looking back, the old girl had a point... Saturation of freely available porn just perverts the growing mind and normalises very questionable behaviour... The Internet revolution has a lot to answer for ..

It was a point that some things are considered a sexual taboo and this is borne out in law. Plenty of women involved in the sex industry don't consent or are damaged by it. And it's very difficult to tell the difference. The point that men don't really give a fuck whether they might be getting off on real filmed abuse shows up how misogynistic the porn industry is.

Meph, are you saying that if two adults freely consent to something then no moral judgment should be passed?

Ok, as a thought experiment...

Those of you who enjoy getting off to prostituted women being harmed on film porn...

Given that pretty much all credible research suggests that porn is becoming more violent with each passing year, and given the enormous amount of porn that is already available, how about there being a ban on producing new porn?

So you can still watch women being degraded in various ways, but no one can make any new stuff for you.

Would that be ok? And if not, why not?

a continuation of the old victorian moral prescriptions where men wanted sex, but woman had to firmly lock sexuality within the moral limits of procreation. Where any woman who expressed sexuality beyond the limits of the marriage bed, or for any purpose other than babies, was a fallen (degraded) woman.

I think you will find it was not women that locked sexuality, but religion, patriarchal misogynistic religion at that.
Because, y'know, how very fucking dare women enjoy sex and their sexuality? They are men's property, for the enjoyment and pleasure of men only.

That's because children aren't capable of consent.

Are you saying women aren't capable of consent? Because that lack of agency makes it questionable whether you consented to be a feminist.