The bottom line for me and for other people who love porn is that as long as anyone hints that men or women are raped or maimed in order to make porn, no matter how unreputable or unresearched that opinion or fact may be, those of us who love porn will have to shoulder the burden in order to keep sex performers safe. Because otherwise, where is the porn going to come from?

I think that anytime we hear that anyone, man, woman, child, will or may get raped, maimed, exploited, violated, humiliated, for anything, we have an obligation to do something about it. I believe exposing and prosecuting abusive producers does work; I do not think that many of the people who actually watch dirty movies want the actors abused. I suspect reasonable measures to prevent abuse will get support from the pornographers’ audience.

I agree that this is something that would be a good idea. I think mostly, awareness is needed. Once an actor/actress signs a contract or agrees to be in a movie, I’m not sure if they really understand what they’re agreeing to. I’m not sure if they know that they can still prosecute whether or not they’ve been paid. This is something that needs to be addressed somehow, and I’m pretty sure that at least parts of the porn industry are trying to keep up the effort.

Thene, I have read Wendy McElroy’s XXX. I think it is a pretty good read, as well as pretty reputable. However, I think that most of the women she interviewed had already “made it.” In other words, these were the women with managers, handlers and support within the industry. They are probably much less likely to be abused because they’ve got a great network and are more confident.

The bottom line for me and for other people who love porn is that as long as anyone hints that men or women are raped or maimed in order to make porn, no matter how unreputable or unresearched that opinion or fact may be, those of us who love porn will have to shoulder the burden in order to keep sex performers safe. Because otherwise, where is the porn going to come from?

When I say that I fully defend people who are anti-porn, I mean that I stand up to people who attack those types of views. Its not a contradiction to say that I will stop defending an opinion/point-of-view if my own freedom’s are impinged upon. In fact, its not a contradiction. Its a statement of fact: I defend anti-porn views, but I will stop defending them if they impinge on my own way of life, which definitely includes porn. I can stop defending things if I want, that’s my right: I used to defend the Iraq War, but at this point, its so fucking ludicrous that I can’t even pretend that there was a logical reason for going there in the first place.

Have I mentioned that I’m a woman? Because I am, and I like porn. I’m not a big fan of raped and maimed women. But that’s something that can be changed within the industry and using law.

And nobody’s stopping me from accessing porn? Truly, that’s not a statement that I know how to answer without a long, long diatribe about laws. Let’s just say that in lots of parts of the US, the government can stop you from accessing anything in completely legal ways: porn, vibrators, birth control, condoms. And if you don’t believe me, you can search on Google. They can stop you from getting anything. And they can send you to jail for it.

I don’t dispute that mainstream pornography has a world view, and not a good one, which its writers and producers relentlessly promote. Although I don’t completely agree with you about some aspects of the “pornification” of culture (a glance at history, to say nothing of 19th century painting, shows that pornographers did not invent the idea of portraying women without pubic hair), I agree that pornography has generally had what I would call a bad influence on our culture.

But plenty of other cultural products have a similarly distorting effect on our perceptions. Social researchers have found, for example, that people who use police procedurals, by consuming TV shows such as “Law and Order” or NYPD Blue”, have a significantly distorted view of the prevalence of crime. Researchers found that police procedural users tended to assume they faced twice the threat of violent crime that they actually did. And those assumptions, of course, fueled a panic that helped drive the push for mandatory sentences and the boom in the prison industrial complex.

I part company with you over one word: subconscious. Unlike the discussion of pornography, the discussion of products like police procedurals assumes that the consumers have moral agency: we can reject the misinformation about the prevalence of crime, deal with the sadism (see Orwell, Raffles and Miss Blandish, for comments about that), and still consume “Law and Order” for its interesting plot twists and good acting. In short, the solution to the defects in most art, from opera to rap, fantasy to tragedy, lies with educating consumers. Somehow, in these discussions, the ideal response to pornography always end up sounding more like therapy.

None of this means we should not also work to protect the rights of the performers and models in pornography.

Also: what Banisteriopsis said about pubic hair.

SarahMC would you differentiate between “misogynist porn” and just plain “porn”? I’m not trying to be an asshole. I think it’s an important distinction about what’s being portrayed being the problem.

I think John has a point. For some of the guys I think the defensiveness comes from telling them what they’re feeling or thinking “deep down”.

Some of the comments go beyond “Own your shit, think about your habits”, to “If you consume porn at all you feel this way about women/your own masculinity/etc. and if you claim otherwise you’re either lying or in denial.”

But I have come, more and more, to reject that confluence of politics and therapy which suggests that a political movement can make us happy or make us good. If you want to address the effects of my actions, from owning a cell phone to drinking coffee to what I do online, we can talk about that. But the politics stops at my skin. I’ll account for the effects of what I do, say, and buy. But don’t talk about what I do or don’t feel or think. All our enlightenment freedoms begin with the freedom of individuals in our own heads, and I will not give that up.