The Pornography Thread
I've been thinking about the issue for quite some time.
Is it possible that our attitudes towards sex and nudity just need to change?
On the one hand, there is credible evidence that pornography is not harmful to individuals or to society.
On the other hand, lust just seems wrong. And taking acts so personal (the physical acts of sex) and making them public just seems wrong. And doesn't the porn industry just promote the idea that people are merely a means to an end?
Should harm be the deciding factor? What of moral intuition? Are there other forms of harm that haven't been considered (like the harm of treating people as a means to an end)?
Is it possible that our attitudes towards sex and nudity just need to change?
On the one hand, there is credible evidence that pornography is not harmful to individuals or to society.
On the other hand, lust just seems wrong. And taking acts so personal (the physical acts of sex) and making them public just seems wrong. And doesn't the porn industry just promote the idea that people are merely a means to an end?
Should harm be the deciding factor? What of moral intuition? Are there other forms of harm that haven't been considered (like the harm of treating people as a means to an end)?
Comments (349)
I've never heard of it, but I have seen evidence that says the opposite. Porn causes and/or exacerbates addiction to it, general Internet addiction, erectile dysfunction, the break up of relationships and marriages, and the exploitation of vulnerable men, women, and children.
Having sexual desires is wrong?
Quoting anonymous66
Why must sex be personal? Sex is often personal, but it need not be. Further, why is making actions public to consenting adults remove the personal aspect of sex? What is wrong with a couple who likes to do porn for others? What's wrong with an adult who likes to sexually arouse others?
Quoting anonymous66
There is nothing wrong with using people as an end, but solely as an end. Whenever I hire somebody to perform some task, I am using them as an end. When I get a musician to perform at a party, we are treating each other as ends. The musician wants to get payed and get a chance to perform in public, while I want to have live music to enhance a party. We are both using the other to achieve ends we desire. There is nothing wrong here, so long as we do not treat each other as solely means. We still have to respect the wishes of others. I cannot force the musician to play, withhold pay, or anything of that sort. The same goes for the musician.
If someone is not being forced to do porn and submit it to the public, then they are not being used solely as a means to an end.
The deciding factor for what? Virtually everything is harmful to some degree (trees are nice, but people are killed by falling branches; ladders help us reach otherwise inaccessible heights, but are a source of domestic accidents, etc.).
One could take a dim view of pornography, and yet maintain that the societal costs of squelching free speech and free expression outweigh the benefits of governmental censors clamping down on porn, which is likely virtually impossible anyway, at least without imposing the sort of controls which are incompatible with liberal democracy. Stamping out drug use via the "war on drugs" has been a dismal failure, and yet narcotics are less accessible than porn, as they require the acquisition of a physical substance which must be ingested in some fashion. Porn (as with any other data) can be transmitted purely electronically; it's just information.
So refreshing to hear someone take this very sensible view.
Quoting Thorongil
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/200904/does-pornography-cause-social-harm
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201601/evidence-mounts-more-porn-less-sexual-assault
What I see is that those who argue that porn is not harmful, or no more harmful than other things we allow, are met with the claim "people only want porn because there is something wrong with the way they view morality."
How to counter the claims about morality? Do moral intuitions about porn have any bearing on the issue? At the very least, the argument, "assuming that fornication and/or adultery is immoral, then porn is immoral", is plausible.
I think the reasons people want porn are rather different from the reasons one might invoke to justify porn.
In any event, such a response seems to be an ad-hom, and to beg the question ("porn is immoral because people who use it have a skewed morality").
I have no idea. Are moral intuitions dispositive of moral questions in general? Whatever the answer, I see no reason that questions surrounding pornography would be exempt.
Even granting the premise that fornication is immoral, it is a non-sequitur that watching fornication is also immoral, which is at issue here. Watching fornication is not equivalent to engaging in fornication, and thus whatever moral opprobrium may attach to the latter doesn't necessarily attach to the former.
I suppose one could say, "if you think it's immoral, then don't watch it." and then the argument goes back to proof of harm.
I don't believe that harm is necessary or sufficient to render something immoral. And even if it were, it doesn't follow that any and all immoral actions or behaviors ought to be regulated, outlawed, or otherwise be made a matter of public concern.
From that perspective, sure, I suppose one can agree with the apparent correlation (causation would be another story). But surely a lack of syphilis and gonorrhea is not the only thing that makes for a good, healthy society.
1) Porn does not "reduce" said things, it is correlated with their reduction, and 2) I never said I wanted to prevent porn. I'm actually on the fence about it. Sometimes I think it would be good to ban it, other times I think not.
Okay, you become aware that there is something that is correlated with a reduction in rape and other sex crimes, divorce, std's, teen sex, and that increases prosocial behavior... what doubts could you/do you have about said thing?
Perhaps I misunderstood you, then. My mistake. So, you are saying that your hypothetical interlocutor might say that if something is immoral (whether or not it is also harmful) or it is harmful (whether or not it is also immoral), then that would be sufficient grounds for regulating or banning it. And if the immoral disjunct is ruled out, the possibility that it is harmful is to be examined to see if there are grounds for banning it.
Surely.
http://www.theonion.com/video/use-of-n-word-may-end-porn-stars-career-14174
Out of curiosity, on what basis might you consider something to be immoral if not harmful?
In other words, if something is not harmful what makes it immoral?
I don't think I have a comprehensive theory of morality which will cover every possible case of moral vs. immoral action (and I'm skeptical that the world of human action can be so cleanly dichotomized; there may well be a spectrum of morality).
However, in saying that I don't believe harm to be necessary condition of immorality, I think there are a few examples of actions one would typically regard as immoral and yet not harmful per se, sometimes in part due to moral luck.
For instance, consider the situation in which a person is unfaithful to their spouse, and yet the spouse never learns of the affair, and thus suffers no harm (whether psychological or physical). I believe it is reasonable to consider the adultery immoral, and yet no one was harmed.
Also consider the case of driving while severely inebriated: one may be lucky and not harm anyone, and yet such an action may well be viewed as immoral because a person knowingly and unnecessarily put others at great risk by dint of his irresponsible actions.
Consider another instance in which one greedily pilfers money from a person who is so rich that he doesn't even notice the money is missing, and thus suffers no psychological or physical harm. Is not the theft immoral, even though no one was technically harmed (one could perhaps argue that more abstract entities such as his bank account or his estate were harmed)?
There's research (fringe research, not mainstream research) that points to porn being harmful to the brain:
https://yourbrainonporn.com/
There's also a lot of anecdotal evidence, within this online community, of the effects. It's certainly an addiction for a lot of people:
https://www.nofap.com/
Quoting Chany
There appears to be a connection between human trafficking and the porn industry. It's difficult to come up with hard data on the subject, since one industry is illegal, and the other is...well, porn. Most research is done, then, by advocacy groups, not by neutral parties. Which is understandable.
Quoting Arkady
On the one hand, porn should absolutely be legal for the reasons you gave, but on the other hand, the porn industry's potential connection to human trafficking needs to be further investigated. There's also the potential connection to child porn. What percentage of adult porn actors started their careers in child porn? The demarcation between trafficking, prostitution, child porn and adult porn is not at all so clear cut. It's a complex issue. Realistically, making porn illegal would have more damaging effects than not, I would guess, but that doesn't mean it's not having hugely detrimental effects on society as we continue to allow it. It's not black and white.
Sure. And labor abuses are also rampant in the agricultural and seafood industries. Perhaps something like a certification process for "clean" porn should be instituted (much as one can buy "conflict-free" diamonds).
There is also the troublesome phenomenon of "revenge porn," which does not involve consenting parties (if they consented to the original taping, they did not consent to its release online).
I assume that you're thinking specifically of female porn stars? Either way, I don't have the answer, and I suspect that reliable data is hard to come by.
I am skeptical that its effects are "hugely" detrimental (especially as compared to say, smoking, opioid abuse, high-calorie food consumption, etc), but no doubt it does have some problems associated with its use. But again, this could be said about virtually anything which humans engage in (some things more than others).
Perhaps a compromise position would be to ban the production of new porn, while not outlawing the consumption or sale of existing porn. The amount of pornography in existence is quite vast: even the most dedicated pornaholic would likely have trouble exhausting the current stock in his lifetime.
It's trivially easy to filter out porn sites on the level of domain name servers.
There are a lot of children, particularly but not only male, whose social and sexual attitudes are being shaped, or malformed, by the easy accessibility of any amount of porn. But almost every school-age child now has a smart phone, and a fair percentage have tablet devices, and the free porn services - porntube, redtube, etc - are all completely open to pubic, er, public view by anyone. I know damn well if that had been available when I was ten or eleven what I would have done. But in any case, I think continued exposure to the extravaganza of publicly-available porn at a young age can't help but be deleterious for the psycho-sexual development of children. It changes the definition of normal behaviour, by over-stimulating and presenting what would previously have been regarded as abberant sexual behaviours as normal. So when it comes to the reality of intimacy with a treasured other who is just an ordinary boy or girl, I'm sure there will be, shall we say, scope for considerable dissappointment, on both sides.
SMH
There's a lot of high-minded nonsense spouted about 'freedom of expression' but sex is a biological drive, mediated by the amazingly sophisticated forebrain of h. sapiens. But a great deal of it is a reflex. We're primed to react to certain stimuli and also primed for biological reasons to want to continually engage in sex. I think the upshot is bound to be a great deal of confusion, unhappiness, and frustration, masquerading as fantastic pleasure. You have to ask the question, 'what does liberty or freedom amount to'? I suppose, in the abstract, it has to allow for you to voluntary enslave yourself, but I don't think that is what freedom really ought to mean.
Governmental censor or prohibition almost never works: this has been shown time and time again, with the abject failure of Prohibition in the U.S. and the "war on drugs," which has led to widespread violence and sky-high rates of incarceration.
There is also a lot of high-minded nonsense about the dangers of porn, including anecdotes about 9-year-olds being hooked on it and dubious stats about it destroying marriages. Freedom of expression is arguably the highest ideal of a liberal democracy (and it also protects those modes of expression about which you may have particular interest in safeguarding, such as religious speech), and is not something to be sneezed at or dismissed in the name of the latest moral panic.
Porn has actually been shown to have the same chemical response in the brain as heroin.
And see Wayfarers comments above about the effect of growing up in the age of internet porn. The average age of exposure to porn is somewhere around 11, but I've seen different numbers. But all the numbers given now are well below the age of puberty, let alone sexual consent. The youth of today have literally grown up on porn. That is completely unprecedented. None of the pro-porn research seems to address this.
Quoting Arkady
I'm sorry to say, but this is totally unrealistic.
Again, I don't deny that porn can be addictive or otherwise taken to excess. Likewise, alcohol, gambling, junk food, and a host of other things are potentially addictive, and yet we don't feel the need to ban them (though they are of course subject to regulation, as is porn). Opioid abuse is a much larger problem than porn, I would argue, and yet no one denies that opioids have their place in medicine.
Quoting Noble Dust
Well, I agree, insofar as I believe that any serious attempt to regulate the consumption of porn would be unrealistic in any liberal democracy worth having. In what other sense do you find it to be unrealistic?
The problem of legalizing things seems complex to me; Portugal seems to have done well with legalizing pretty much everything. I'm not necessarily arguing that porn should be banned or outlawed. That's also an unrealistic notion. I'm simply arguing that porn is harmful and addictive. What I find worrisome is that so many people don't seem to see it as an addiction. Society at large continues to seem to think that porn is a positive thing. It's not. And what percentage of people are using porn in a "healthy" manner, exactly? Plenty of social drinkers are not alcoholics, but virtually all cocaine users are addicted on the first hit. Where does porn fall on the spectrum? How many porn users are addicts? Children and even teenagers being exposed to porn in secrecy is never a healthy thing. I was exposed to porn as a teenager, and it was an instant addiction.
They're not anecdotes. There are indubitably enormous numbers of pre-teens - literally hundreds of millions, possibly billions - who have unrestricted access to endless amounts of pornographic video. This is fact.
Of course 'censoring the internet' is controversial - as I have often observed, arguing against porn on an internet forum is like arguing against beer in a pub. Nevertheless, following a spate of truly ghastly sexual murders in the UK, the British government is actually enacting legislation to outlaw some particularly egregious categories of porn. Of course the Guardian is outraged. (I note the references to the 'inconvenience' suffered by 'mainstream adult' sites. Poor darlings.)
Perhaps children feel the need to view porn in secret because sex is treated as dirty and shameful, and humans are made to feel sinful for having sexual desires? Perhaps then the solution is more sex education to let adolescents know how sex "really" is, and not have unrealistic or distorted expectations or beliefs about sex.
Firstly, I don't deny that vast numbers of children have access to porn. What I called an anecdote was the story of the child who became addicted to porn at 9 years old. Having access to X and becoming addicted to X are 2 different things.
I don't know which variety of porn you are speaking of, but I assume that it was something of a violent nature if it motivated "ghastly sexual murders"? If that's the case, then let us not draw a false equivalency between violent pornography and pornography simpliciter. Even if outlawing particular types of porn may be advisable, that doesn't entail that outlawing all porn is likewise advisable.
Clearly I never said that. I was asking an open question about just how harmful porn is.
Quoting Arkady
This is definitely a problem. I was mentioning the secrecy of porn though, because it's almost a joke. No one invites their friends over to watch some classic porn.
Quoting Arkady
Yes, that's a good idea, but porn is a huge reason why teens have unrealistic and distorted notions about sex in the first place.
The problem is that porn addiction escalates in the same way that tolerance escalates in drug or alcohol addiction. Those violent forms of pornography only exist because of porn addiction.
Doesn't it just come down to one's meta-ethical stance in the end? For a utilitarian, harm would be the sole factor. For a Divine Command Ethicist it would include what God decrees. For a deontologist, the issue you mention about means and ends would come into play.
I have decided that my meta-ethical stance (currently) is Love. That's agape love, not erotic so please don't make fun of me because of the context.
Love as a meta-ethical stance is closer to utilitarian than to most others, but it's more blurry around the edges and allows for decisions that may not necessarily be seen as utilitarian.
You said:
Quoting Noble Dust
These look more like assertions than questions to me.
Quoting Noble Dust
What's "classic porn," just out of curiosity?
Isn't it just possible that some people have a taste for more violent forms of porn, just as some people have a taste for S&M, sado-masochism and the like in their personal sexual lives?
The questions I referenced came right after what you just quoted:
Quoting Noble Dust
Yes, I did see your questions, but you clearly also made multiple assertions, contra your claim that you were only asking open questions about porn.
We are really drifting towards political philosophy at this point, but two things:
1) The claim, "it's immoral," is not a good reason to ban anything. We allow immoral acts all the time. There is a difference between the right action and the right to an action. For example, it may not be morally right to be mean to another person for no good reason, but no one would say that I do not possess the right to be mean to another person, regardless of whether the reason is good or not.
2) Harms usually must be demonstrably problematic to a society in order to garner regulatory control and awareness. The fact that it might harm myself or be a stupid decision does not mean the state or similar body can prevent the action. There are a number of religions and ideologies that I find harmful overall, particularly in specific forms, but I do not see this as grounds to ban these religions and ideologies.
Regulatory considerations come into play in issues of public welfare and (more debatably) public safety. Actions that dramatically affect the welfare of others outside an agreement, such as pollution and other externalities, demand some kind of regulation or ban because they directly harm others not inside the consensual agreements between private parties. Of more a more interesting line of discussion, we can talk about restrictions on behavior motivated by the notion of protecting people from themselves. Sometimes, even though the action is relatively localized to the private individual, we put laws into place that protect people from themselves. For example, helmet laws, laws surrounding suicide, and many drug laws are usually justified to protect people from their own poor decisions. This is the hot button issue- even if porn is harmful enough to warrant consideration to restrict access to, can the state reasonably do it?
:-} Stop misquoting me. I never said that I was only asking questions. I said I was "asking an open question about just how harmful porn is." This is not important.
Quoting Arkady
Deriving pleasure from someone's else's suffering, whether real or voyeristically, is morally wrong.
I don't want to get too bogged down in this, but this was our exchange:
Quoting Noble Dust
[quote=Arkady]Yes, porn can be harmful and addictive. It doesn't follow that it's inherently harmful and addictive, unless you wish to maintain that anyone who has ever viewed porn became addicted to and was harmed by it.[/quote]
Quoting Noble Dust
You said that porn is "harmful and addictive," not that it can be harmful and addictive. I took that to mean that you were saying that it is by nature harmful and addictive. If my interpretation is erroneous, how should I have interpreted that statement?
If I see a serial rapist put behind bars for the rest of his life for his crimes and take pleasure in that, is it morally wrong (let us assume that he suffers from his punishment and doesn't take some perverse pleasure in having his freedom taken away)?
Yours is a rather strong moral claim, but it seems of peripheral relevance at best to the current topic. You said that violent porn exists only due to the escalation of porn addiction, which I find dubious: I pointed out that some may just have a taste for more violent types of porn, just as some may have a taste for more violent types of sex in their personal lives. But you failed to address this point, and instead just moved on to offer your opinion as to the moral status of people who consume such fare.
I should ask: what about deriving pleasure from one's own suffering, which can be a goal of S&M (in my above post, I was redundant in invoking S&M and sado-masochism: I think I meant to also say "bondage")?
Where did this information come from and how was it obtained?
The rate of increased diagnoses of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia has been slow but steady--when viewing the whole nation. When considering race, location, and age, we find disparities between gay men and straight men, between blacks and other races, and between southerners and other regions. Rates of STDs are highest among blacks, southerners, and gay men, and there are significant disparities which porn wouldn't seem to account for, one way or the other. If one examines the history of diagnoses at specific clinics, one might see more up-and-down movement in diagnoses.
What is most related to the levels of STDs in the population is the effectiveness of outreach, treatment, and follow-up. Has anyone collected actual data about cases who looked at, or did not look at porn? I doubt it.
In none of these cases can any harm or benefit be seen, other than the particular actions annoying the people who don't like it. By that standard, grated coconut is immoral become some people find the taste, texture, and mouth-feel annoying. Personally, I think we should burn grated coconut at the stake.
Unless you have some sort of reference on research into the alleged connection, this is just idle speculation.
What is porn? While answers may not satisfy, isn't it a form of parody (Rule 34), and isn't war a form of porn, a deadly parody of morality. And how does porn distinguish itself, from erotica and comedy, is there good porn, or is that a misnomer.
Of course, because many people don't have sex "with their friends". "Friends" are in one group, "sex partners" are in another group, and many people keep them strictly segregated. (Clear separation makes life simpler.)
Usually, people watch porn in support of masturbation, and most people don't masturbate with the friends. Not as adults, anyway.
Many people try recreational drugs because they are, to some degree, risk takers. Another common motivation is participation in peer activities, and a third motivation is relief from unpleasant symptoms of one kind or another. Once tried, the users reactions will depend on the way their brain works. Some people are more likely to become addicted to drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc. than others.
Pornography can be made into a risk-free product for adolescents by providing them with thorough education about sex, sexuality, emotions, and sexual behavior. "WE" just don't and won't do it. As a consequence, pornography remains behind the enticing veil of forbidden fruit, adult disapproval, and "illicit" pleasures. Sure, children who base their vocational, emotional, sexual, or financial aspirations on television programs, pornography, or advertising are not going to have realistic ideas. The absence of any information doesn't do much for realism either.
Apparently, it is asking a lot of parents to engage with their children and teach them what it it means to be a sexual person. Maybe church and school--institutions--can do this better, I don't know, but they don't seem to be doing it either. [On the other hand, I don't know if there was ever a time when parents, schools, and churches did a good job teaching children about sex, sexuality, emotions, aspirations, and so on.]
It's variously defined. Classic porn may be defined as:
Porn produced before condoms began to appear regularly in pornographic productions (sometime in the early 1990s) roughly, 1968 to 1989
Porn produced in 8mm short form, for use in adult book stores (and home use, if one had an 8 mm projector (roughly, in the 1960s to early 1970s)
Porn produced in (whatever film format) before the 1960s (when courts began to overturn restrictions on making, selling, or distributing pornography_
Porn produced as stills on glass plates during the 1880s and later film. Fairly tame material.
Porn produced by non-photographic methods prior to the 1840s (Yes, pre-photo artists drew quite realistic pictures of people engaging in sex -- pretty much standard stuff).
Some of these definitions amount to "porn produced before you were born".
Some porn was produced on 16mm, for theaters, but most of it was 8mm. Deep Throat 1973, was probably shot on 35mm. The progression was from stills, 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, to video. I suppose somebody is shooting porn in HD video, though I don't know why they would.
Consequentialism is the hands-on winner here. If it works, it's good.
He admitted he was asserting correlation, not causation. If you're correct that the rates have actually increased for some of the things he mentioned, then his point is not only irrelevant but false.
From this article:
And this article:
Sounds like a great way for profiteers to make some money and for them to do society a favor in the process.
I would say that it likely has the causal arrow reversed, to the extent there is a causal relationship between the belief that "all consensual sex is fine" (which I doubt is even a widespread view, as, for instance, adulterous sex can be consensual and yet frowned upon) and the societal acceptance of porn. I think it is more likely the case that more relaxed social mores regarding sex fuels the societal acceptance of porn than vice-versa.
Then porn has (what) a negative aesthetic, if it's only function is to get you off or to titillate, but if it has utility then it can be improved, it can be crafted...porn sites do rate their videos, there is a rating system.
Can you think of a solution?
Issues of escalation aren't really about whether people are inclined towards S&M or not. The trouble with porn, for many who are watching purely for excitement, is it gets boring. After seeing two people fucking, watching another couple do so is less interesting. With each iteration, it only gets more and more beige.
Noble Dust is mistaken to say it's a question of addiction. Even a responsible but habitual porn watcher is going to get bored of two people doing missionary, if pure excitement is their goal. Escalation is driven by differentiation and generating interest. Products have to be bigger and bolder-- bonus points if controversial-- so the audience will go: "LOOK AT THAT" and be clamouring to watch it. As with any business model entirely dedicated to generating new consumption, escalation is understood to be a necessity. Got to be the shiniest (or most degrading or violent or disgusting) one on the block.
If this is the case, then won't porn just go away without anyone having to do anything about it?
I don't think that more relaxed or permissive social mores surrounding sex are necessarily a problem, so I don't believe that any solution is required (teen pregnancy is down in the U.S., for instance). The antidote to bad speech (if one so considers porn), as in most cases of bad speech, is more speech, in this case jettisoning foolishness such as abstinence-only sex education and giving adolescents realistic, frank, and comprehensive education about sex and human sexuality.
It might also behoove parents to raise their own children, instead of leaving it to the government to filter, sort, and approve what citizens in a liberal democracy may or may not view.
Sex Transm Infect. 2007 Jul; 83(4): 257–266.
doi: 10.1136/sti.2007.026245
Figure 6?Primary and secondary syphilis rates: total and by sex, United States, 1986–2005 and the Health People 2010 target. Note: The Healthy People 2010 target for primary and secondary syphilis is 0.2 case per 100?000 population. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.1
I simply suggested that some people who consume more violent brands of porn or S&M, or bondage porn or what have you may have a taste for such things, rather than such consumption being only the result of porn addiction, as Noble Dust suggested.
I don't think so. Not everyone is watching purely for excitement. Some people would happily watch couples doing missionary every day of their whole lives, much like plenty of people develop a habit of eating the same cereal for breakfast. The why someone is watching or consuming matters.
Then for the people who do become bored, it doesn't necessarily mean they will always find it boring . After some sort of break, it may be they find watching two people just having vanilla sex is interesting (or interesting enough) again.
It's just these don't hold as great promise for ever increasing interest and market.
I don't get why you don't think it's an addiction; you're essentially describing addiction, just using slightly tamer language. Have a look at this:
https://yourbrainonporn.com/doing-what-you-evolved-to-do
Why would people be trying to prove that porn is an addiction if there weren't, in fact, thousands of people who feel that it's an addiction for them? There's not some alterier motive here to get porn off the internet; this isn't over-protective Conservative Christian moms making these claims, it's the porn addicts themselves, the majority of which are young males. This community has over 200,000 members:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/
The only thing I was quibbling with you was that porn resulted in lower STD infection rates. There is no reason to suppose that greater porn use would reduce or increase infection rates. Why? Because the numbers of people who are diagnosed with STDs at any given time is, in most locations, quite small, and one person could be responsible for a number of infections. The incidents of STDs can certainly be decreased, but the methods (outreach, treatment, followup) don't have anything to do with porn. They have to do with the way infectious diseases are managed.
I know. I commented as I did because your analysis is shallow. It's neither interested in describing the phenomena of escalation nor in understanding the presence of violent pornography. All it's interested in doing is scoring a rhetorical point against that escalation exists or there is any sort or problem-- your argument is effectively dismissing there could be any issue by saying: "but it's really just some people are interested in violent pornography."
Then I am in good company, apparently.
I neither claimed to have a deep insight into the psyche of those who consume violent porn, nor did I dismiss the possibility of escalation. I took issue with Noble Dust's claim that such porn exists only because of porn addiction, and suggested an alternative route whereby one might seek out such porn due to a taste for more violent fare, rather than needing a more potent "hit" to satisfy their addiction.
What are you talking about? I wasn't saying no-one was addicted.
My point was people get bored of things if they are only consuming them for excitement (whether they are addicted or not), so escalation is driven by an underlying motive to attain ever increasing interest and consumption.
The problem is that this is too theoretical. It's implausible to imagine someone who's never been exposed to porn seeing it for the first time and going "yeah, but where's the violent stuff?". It's theoretically possible that violent or more unusual forms of porn could exist without addicts who need more novelty (tolerance), sure. It's just not plausible. I'm not a psychologist, but I would imagine studying addiction is better done by analysis and observation of addicts, not posing theoretical scenarios. The problem is there isn't alot of studies like that being done yet.
You said:
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
And then proceeded to describe "issues of escalation" outside of the context of addiction, so I assumed you meant that porn isn't an addiction. Apologies for the assumption, but I'm still unsure what exactly you're arguing here. I guess it's this:
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
And I'm just not even sure why this matters. Sure, there's other instances of escalation; hotter and hotter spicy food. But to me, bringing that up in this context only obscures the issue of porn being an addiction. And it's still unclear why you think I'm mistaken to say it's a question of addiction, within the argument you then are proceeding to make.
We know that some people are into bondage, S&M, etc in their personal life, and we know that some people have a taste for violent porn. I think we both accept these statements. The possibility I suggested is that some people seek out or preferentially enjoy more violent sorts of porn, not out of an escalating addiction, but just due to their tastes.
Perhaps not, but what hinges on this?
Then we disagree about its plausibility. Recall your comment that such porn exists only due to porn addiction; that is, there is not one single person who watches violent porn who is not also a porn addict. That is what I find implausible. Very few things exist solely because of one (and only one) other thing, it seems to me.
Fine, I can entertain the possibility, I just don't think it's important or relevant to the issue of addiction. It doesn't affect the problem of addiction in any way. I'm primarily concerned with the issue of porn addiction, and it seems like all that you and other folks here have to say about that is "sure, addiction is possible". These arguments that fixate on the minutae are distracting from the bigger issue.
What do you think about the possibility of porn addiction?
Good to know I'm too implausible to exist!
I was imaging bondage scenes long before I watched any porn (before I had "the talk" actually).
Your approach here bothers me. Why is the question of whether people might like violent pornography an issue?
Addiction isn't one's sexual interests or fetish. It's a maladaptive obsession with partaking in a particular action which causes you harm. You seem desperate to equate interest in bondage or BDSM with porn addiction, as if such desires or interests were nothing more than a horror generated out of porn addiction.
Lol what?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I guess because it's violent?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I don't understand how you're coming to this conclusion. Your responses don't deal with what I mentioned about what you said about escalation.
I'll pose the same question to you as to Arkady: What do you think about the possibility of porn addiction?
You seem fixated on the issue of porn addiction, to the exclusion of virtually every other consideration. There are other aspects of the topic, and I don't think they should be tossed off as "minutiae."
This:
Quoting Arkady
But the most pressing aspect of the topic is addiction because of it's prevalence and the way it affects peoples lives. What's worse right now is there isn't much data or studies to support the obvious problem that porn addiction presents. All we have are a few studies, and anecdotal evidence from hundreds of thousands of addicts, not to mention those who haven't shared their evidence yet, or those who haven't yet acknowledged that they have a problem. This is why I'm focusing on the problem of addiction. I feel like a broken record at this point.
Ok, ND, just take a deep breath and calm down. The world will soldier on and survive the scourge of porn addiction, I promise you.
Perhaps porn addiction is the "most pressing aspect" of porn from a public health standpoint, but this isn't a public health forum: it's a philosophy forum, and there are other aspects of the topic which are salient and (IMO) interesting in their own right, apart from the issue of addiction.
dog porn
cat porn
car porn
house porn
architecture porn
art porn
right wing porn
(no such thing as left wing porn, of course; there it's all factual, historical, and high value)
Honestly, this stuff functions the same way. It's quite engaging, it's escapist, there are many different settings and activities so the golden retriever puppies don't all look alike; it goes on as long as you can stand it; cats, dogs... whatever turns you on.
Some people spend hours looking at mid-century modern architecture and furniture. I like to look at brutalist architecture (featuring raw concrete), and 20th century art. So, quite a bit of time can be flushed down the drain looking at dogs, cats, house decor, architecture, and art. Granted, Kandinsky paintings don't give me so much of an erection.
The point was I'm a literal refutation of your assertion no-one would have an interest in BDSM without having seen porn: I was having BDSM fantasies before watching porn or even knowing all the details of sex.
My conclusion is based on how you are making an interest in violent pornography dependent on addiction. You didn't pull Arkady up for dismissing escalation and talking about something (that some people are interested in violent pornography, irrespective of how addicted to porn they are) that is more or less irrelevant to addiction and escalation.
Instead, you speak like Arkady was suggesting an implausibility, as it the presence of violent pornography was only plausibly a matter of BDSM interest generated by porn addiction. Seems to me your point of concern isn't just porn addiction, but also the mere presence of violent pornography itself and anyone has an interest in it (or the sort of sex it depicts).
Addiction has always been relevant to the OP; he stated that there's evidence that porn is not harmful. I never directly addressed the OP, but bringing up addiction is relevant to the topic; it was a response to that part of the OP. Perhaps not the most directly philosophical aspect, no.
Fine, no problem. The issue of violent porn or BDSM was tangential to the main point I've been trying to address, which is addiction. I can entertain the possibility of having an interest in those forms of porn before seeing porn. Fine, I'm just trying to underline the issue of addiction. I think I've probably worn out my welcome in this thread.
Relevant, sure, but not the only thing to talk about. The OP raised a number of other issues, including whether porn uses people merely as means rather than ends unto themselves, whether sex is or ought to be solely a private act and not for public consumption, etc.
Odd how "broken record" still works as a metaphor when defective records haven't been repeating themselves for so many years.
So, addiction is a very pressing topic but what's worse is that there isn't much data or studies to support the obvious problem that porn addiction presents. All we have is a few studies...
Maybe there isn't much data or studies because it actually isn't that big a problem?
My guess is that people play video games for an extraordinary amount of time for the same reason they look at porn a lot: Their lives are otherwise empty, lacking in normal rewards, or are very unpleasant and they escape through a video screen.
I agree that people who spend too many hours a day looking at porn might have a problem, but addiction may not be its name. I think there are a ton of dysfunctional people out there, living in social milieus that are dysfunctional. Long hours at tedious work and long commutes can leave one little time and energy for renewal or even relationships. Television and the internet both provide low-demand programming that is just interesting enough to fill the emptiness.
People have been using television for a long time, the same way they use internet porn: they turn it on, sit down, and watch it for hours on end -- and people have been watching TV like that since the late 1950s. Internet porn has fewer commercials.
I'm "addicted" to the internet in general. Sometimes when I go to turn off the computer at night, I have to check email one more time, see if there is a fresh post on The Philosophy Forum, check the Guardian to see if there is a breaking news story in Britain, and so on. When I'm not feeding my internet addiction I'm feeding other addictions -- reading, especially. I spend hours a day reading books. Doctor, help me, I'm a very sick man.
Which is very interesting. Young people seem to develop various 'paraphilias' like BDSM so early on. It's remarkable. One would think BDSM, or the foot fetish, or whatever wouldn't happen until adulthood, and greater experience. But no, it seems to happen quite early - and remains throughout life.
No, no -- don't go away. We could strip you, tie you up, and subject you to various S&M procedures which you might find quite interesting.
But there's a cardinal difference between playing video games and porn in terms of the outcome (although if you don't know what it is, I'd be embarrased to have to explain it. :-} )
LOL. You've missed the point. The point would be to create a fantasy. The fantasy being that being married is cool and married sex is fantastic. So, why would anyone want anything other than married sex?
[hide="Reveal"]The fantasies currently available as porn aren't all based in reality, are they? Have you thought about what messages "the porn industry" is trying to get us to buy into?[/hide]
I'll attempt to answer this myself. I think many people do have the intuition, "I think porn is wrong", without being about to find the words to express why. Perhaps the thinking is something like this:
I'm not sure the best world is one in which sex is treated the way it is in porn videos. Wouldn't a world in which people use sex to express their love, respect and commitment be better than our current world?
I can even imagine a world in which porn expresses the best of humanity... Perhaps a better world might be one in which porn exists, but that porn shows us how to be better people.
I suppose I'm making some assumptions... like, casual sex isn't as good as sex between people who are committed to each other. and/or a world in which sex takes place between people who are committed to each other is better than a world in which casual sex is commonplace. Even the idea that some sex is better than others is probably controversial to some.
And some people believe that porn does exemplify treating people as a means to an end in a way that is disheartening.
How would a virtue ethicist view porn? Would a virtuous person enjoy porn? (hard to see how porn promotes wisdom, courage, justice and temperance).
Wayfarer, you know I'm a very stupid fellow and need things spelled out in excruciating detail. Do overcome your embarrassment and explain it.
Technology, technology, and technology.
First, pornography has become abundant, inexpensive, and ever-more easily accessible in the last 60 years. Prior to the 1960s, the US post office actively policed distributing sexually explicit material. Books like Lady Chatterley's Lover or Tropic of Cancer were still being barred from the US in the 1950s. During the 1960s a series of court decisions resulted in the practical end of censorship of erotic materials.
Second, leisure time has increased. Whether the available 'leisure time' is the result of a choice or the result of underemployment or non-employment is an important question, but many guys have quite a bit of otherwise unoccupied time on their hands.
Third, social involvement has decreased among many sectors of the population. See "Bowling Alone". Where once there were many social organizations and venues (Masons, Oddfellows, Eagles, Elks, churches, etc.) these are either much less popular now.
So, CONCLUSION, Watching a lot of porn was brought to people the same way that long aisles of crispy, salty, sugary, greasy snacks, sweetened sodas, and bottled water were brought to people, promoted, and sold.
I have some dim, vague pre-conscious intuition that video games and porn might, possibly, lead to different outcomes. But...
Activities that we enjoy doing involve the pleasure centers of the brain -- whether that's finally getting the kitchen cleaned up, playing video games, watching porn, going out to dinner, posting on this forum, or attending Mass. Obviously, the rewards are not the same from activity to activity, and different centers of pleasure are involved. The pleasure we get may be the sense of self-enhancement, relief from the irritation of cooking amidst total disarray, and so on. Or, it might be satisfaction of very basic drives like food and sex.
People who spend all their free time cleaning, playing video games, watching porn, eating, posting on this forum, or engaging in religious activity (and who don't live in monasteries) are somewhere between slightly deranged, very undisciplined, or at least unbalanced in their life activities.
Born o'er the crashing waves of existence, amidst boredom and preference-lacks.
Torn between the goals of salty snacks and the tech of the latest hacks
We are poised forlorn, with existence we now must deal
Never enough, boredom comes nipping at our heel.
One edit suggestion, line 3,
We are poised forlorn, with existence we now must deal
Thanks! Done. I was trying to rhyme the first three lines though..any way to keep that, or do you think it still works without it?
In line one, does 'born' reference birth, or being carried? In the first case, 'born' is the right word. In the second case, 'borne' is the right word (past tense of to bear). If the first, it would make more sense, maybe, to say "born into the crashing waves of existence". But if life carries us over the crashing waves, then borne.
Forcing rhymes too hard can result in very weird word choices. Go for the more obvious word, rather than something has to be forced to fit. Like you could say,
...over coming existence we are now bent on
...boredom comes nipping at our achilles tendon
It rhymes but the rhyme is too forced. deal/heel is better.
This is 'free verse' so this is a bit beside the point, but you have too many syllables in the first line and too few in the last line. Don't change anything here, but in the future try to get the same number of 'beats' (emphasized syllables) unless it is free verse which has much looser rules (at least, so I have been misled to believe).
I condone the genocide of the entire coconut race if I'm honest. Especially the rum.
I do find it interesting though that all the examples of immorality you gave (swearing, atheism, apostasy, polytheism) are all examples of generally shitty moral positions. Since they don't cause any harm, it's impossible (from a progressive perspective) to justify taking any harmful action against offenders.
Affairs and DUI both have the capacity to cause harm, so certainly the basis for us considering them to be immoral is still the harm that they (tend to) cause.
The third example you gave is curious... If someone is so rich that stealing a small amount from them wont have any effect whatsoever, then it's not immoral to do so. In theory if 7 billion people all then did the same action then harm of some kind would in fact be done, but that's a much larger action than just a single small transaction with guaranteed zero effect. That actually does jive with my political views though. If someone really is that rich and the masses can thrive only at the leisure of the elite, exploiting them back becomes a simple matter of reciprocity.
Quoting anonymous66
Well said.
Why, BC, do you include 'engaging in religious activity' be categorised as 'unbalanced or undisciplined', and why do you think that would be done 'for pleasure' or 'to stimulate the pleasure centres'? Don't you think that might be a mis-characterisation?
There are many kinds of leisure activities and cultural pursuits that can be pursued, but porn is exclusively related to the generation and satisfaction of the sexual impulse.
Possibly, just possibly, you've become a little jaded by your experiences. ;-)
Quoting schopenhauer1
Boredom is simply desire in disguise - namely, desire for something different.
I read the obituary of a highly-esteemed ethical philosopher recently. It noted in passing:
"all their free time", remember. Religious activity often does, and should involve pleasure--"taste and see that the Lord is good"--but not sexual pleasure (churchmen get into trouble there). "Too much religion" for the typical layman is unbalanced. The negative effect of an unbalanced, excessive level of religious activity is (usually) an extremely narrow, and shrinking, aperture of what is considered good and acceptable in other people. Too many ordinary activities begin to look like sins.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
You were looking for things that were not harmful but were immoral. It seems to me that swearing, atheism, apostasy, and polytheism are all harmless, in and of themselves, but many people consider them to be immoral. Considering them immoral is kind of shitty, especially if death is the punishment.
I consider abortion (particularly abortions prior to the 20th week or so) to be harmless. Perhaps not pleasant for the woman, but not harmful if done properly. Many people consider abortion immoral (you've probably heard of people like that). The harm the abortion-is-immoral crowd sees is because they have granted personhood status to the fetus. Many anti-abortionists go back to the moment of conception to declare personhood.
Au contraire, they're not about pleasure or pain. The 'sensory life' is naturally highly attuned to pleasure and pain, because these are after all sensations, the very ligaments of 'sensory existence'. But the attribute of spiritual-religious life is to cultivate detachment or indifference to pleasure and pain. I suppose that is illustrated dramatically by ascetics who subject their bodies to excruciating torture to demonstrate their overcoming of the pleasure-pain nexus. I could paste in some images, but won't, although I do happen to have a rather charming Chinese minature of a sage demonstrating indifference to pleasure:
Here the monkey offering the mango represents sensuality. The sage looks bored.
But in any case, the joy of a philosophical/spiritual/religious kind is found in letting go the attachment to pleasure. Where it becomes problematical is when it becomes consciously abstemious, censorious, or puritanical, but in my experience, that usually arises from preoccupation with the behaviour of others, or clinging to views about how other people ought to be. It can also happen because there's a disconnect between where you're really at, and where you think you ought to be at - this happens a lot in 'Churchianity', where the dogmas are recited, but the psycho-dynamics are misunderstood (which is what provided such fertile ground for the early works of Freud.)
It is certainly the case that I am jaded by my experiences.
Quoting Wayfarer
I say that porn is not exclusively directed toward the generation and satisfaction of the sexual impulse. How so?
Porn, like all entertainment we receive through media, is a product from which enterprising people derive income. What is the purpose of commercial television programming? Entertainment? Only incidentally. The primary purpose of porn, commercial television and radio, magazines, and so on is to provide bait for consumers to see the advertising. Content is cost at a magazine, advertising is the income.
"But porn is free. I'm not paying for it." How is it free? By one means or another you are paying for the porn you watch. Some of the fee your carrier charges you to get porn works its way back to the provider. There are ads next to pornography. Sometimes there are memberships you have to pay for. DVDs are not given away for free, just as reel to reel video, print, or 8mm film views were not given away. Porn is not offered as a free public service. The per-view cost may be very low, but if millions of people pay a very small amount for something, it adds up to real money after a while.
The purveyors of porn--and a lot of other goods--are primarily concerned about making money. The consumer's sexual interest is being subverted for the purpose of making money.
Porn watching is, to a certain extent, a pleasureless meaningless activity. Only with the personal engagement of one's 'erotic machine' does porn remain interesting and arousing for a period of time. Just as eating junk food is a pleasureless, meaningless activity. We, like some dogs, will eat whenever food is put in front of us--not because we are very hungry, or long for a wonderful dining experience. Oh, food: eat.
In instances where people buy porn for the immediate purpose of achieving sexual arousal and satisfaction (like in hotels) the average duration of watching is pretty short. Tape turned on; a few minutes later he is all done. Tape turned off.
The average guy doesn't require hours to reach arousal and satisfaction. From my jaded experience, average man gets aroused and achieves sexual satisfaction in less than 15 minutes and some in a good deal less time than that. ONLY if they are prolonging the pleasure do they take longer.
So, guys who spend 3 hours watching porn (without an erection, quite possibly) are clearly not doing this just for arousal and satisfaction. They are engaged in a largely meaningless time-killing activity.
— Bitter Crank
Quoting Wayfarer
Asceticism and sages cultivating indifference to pleasure is one of the varieties of religious experience; it isn't the ultimate expression. There are no "ultimate" expressions of religion.
Quoting Mark 2:23-27
Jesus didn't preach asceticism and indifference What Jesus did or didn't say doesn't mean that you are wrong (or your sage either, indifferent to the mango offered by the monkey). There are no ultimate religious teachings. Maybe your sage was just depressed? Anhedonia is next to godliness?
But nevertheless it is the commercial exploitation of an insatiable desire.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I don't see it like that - again that is mistaking the means for the end. It's only a means to detach the mind from the illusory domain of transient senses, where most of us (speaking for myself) are thoroughy ensared. (I would love to be able to participate in this conversation from a lofty olympian perch of serene detachment, but, alas, cannot.)
Getting detached from the illusory domain of transient senses usually results in kitchen disasters, as it did just now.
The better question is: What is pornography people? How is it virtuous?
Porn is form of entertainment (or it should be). It’s not the viewer’s sexual conquest, substitute for friends, romantic partners, a reflection of value outside the represented sex act(s) or sex relationships. I don’t think many can even address the question of virtues of pornography because it’s just a means to some other end. Even the often assigned purpose of “getting off” has this problem. Most people can “get off” without looking at pornography. It’s not like they are without arousal or an inability to touch genitals against something, and so need porn to do the work for them. There’s something else to pornography. We seek it in addition to “getting off.” In most popular discourse around the use of pornography, no-one pays attention to the porn itself, which kinda stops anyone addressing it in terms of virtue.
So what about porn itself? Why are people interested in spending all that time trawling the internet for videos, looking for pictures, flicking through magazines and part with hard earned cash when they might just rub one out themselves? What is it about porn that makes people interested and apparently has them thinking it’s necessary for their well-being?
Much like any from of entertainment, porn is desirable because it, itself, makes a particular moment more interesting, exciting, pleasurable or perhaps even poignant. In this respect, it can be part of the well-being of living an interesting life, at least as any other sort of relaxing or interesting time-filling activity we might engage in. It may also be a part of a well-being of sexual expression. Some people like to express their sexuality on representations other people view, either because the like showing their sexuality off or the want to show something about sex (as in the act sex and its relationships) itself. Some virtuous benefits to pornography, interesting entertainment, sexual expression and positive representations of sex itself (as opposed the sort of romantic relationship its meant to be used in), are pretty clear if you think about it.
The trouble is benefits to well-being occur where sex itself or representations of sex itself is important. For a lot of people who watch porn, this isn’t really the case. They are thinking of porn as a means to an end— getting off, seeing hot women have sex, watching the “bitches” get degraded as they deserve, a proxy for having a sexual relationships with another person or attaining a social value of having a sexual possession. To understand pornography (at least with respect to the viewer) just as an entertaining representation of sex is difficult for a lot of people.
Then again, I don’t think that’s surprising when most of our discourse around sex and relationships treat them as a question of gaining a possession of social value or individual glory. Most of the time they are only talked about in terms of getting what you desire or what is desirable. People really have to look in the right places to find stuff which distinguishes porn, relationships, sex and social value from each other, and how each relate to other people.
Morality, as distinct from ethics, is rule based. If the moral rule is 'No adultery', then adultery is immoral by definition.
I'm honestly having trouble parsing through what you're trying to say here. The typos are not helping either to be honest.
Why are people interested in porn? Because people are sexual creatures, and porn presents a fantasy world of sex. And a better question to begin with would be "is porn virtuous?"
Hint: quit now, save yourself a lot of pointless effort.
The OP wants to address the question as to whether porn is harmful and/ or immoral, so I don't think the question as to whether it is virtuous is really relevant here. It could be ethically neutral or it could benefit some and harm others; I think it is always a mistake to generalize.
I was replying to Willow of Darkness saying "how is porn virtuous?"
Ah, I missed that Willow asked that; comment should have been addressed to Willow, then.
I like the question, "How does the existence of porn help people practice the virtues?" or how about, how does porn help one's progress towards moral perfection or Eudaimonia? As to what it is? I'm the OP... I had in mind internet porn, specifically videos of people engaging in sex.
Now that I think about it... there are many videos that merely show people having sex (some only show people masturbating by themselves), without any context or plot.
In those cases, I suppose one could easily imagine that those people are behaving in a virtuous way, and/or are in a committed relationship. But, I suspect most videos portray sex between people who barely know each other and/or portray the actors as people fornicating or committing adultery. It is the message behind the porn that is the biggest issue. see this post.
Edited to add: I think I like this wording better: I can even imagine a world in which porn expresses the best of humanity... Perhaps a better world might be one in which porn exists, but that porn inspires us to be better people
This could not be more false. Any passing glance at his sayings in the NT or the consensus of scholars who associate him with Jewish ascetic movements is enough to rubbish such a suggestion.
Female genitalia haven't been featured in much art over the centuries, but male genitalia have. So, women and society in general aren't comfortable with female genitalia. Porn is helping (or can help?) change that (at least the porn that shows a variety of labia types and shapes).
Therefore: Porn that helps women feel good about the appearance of their genitalia is good.
It's not hard to imagine porn that helps women, and men, feel good about not only their genitalia, but their entire bodies as well:
some would say that "attractive people" eliminates people who are too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too muscular, not muscular enough, long hair, short hair, blond hair... and so on and so forth. Not really.
Gay porn has a fairly new category (maybe 25 years old) of "bears". "Bears" are men who were probably once slim, muscular, etc. but who have now gotten fat, old, wrinkled, gray haired or bald, and worse. When sympathetically photographed, they look pretty good. When not photographed sympathetically, they look awful. The same goes for lots of other body types. Hostile camera, ugly pictures.
Some otters, male and female, look great as old otters in the old folks home. Usually, though, young sleek otters become old fat bears. Life is hard -- get over it.
Lust, [i]per se[/I], does not seem wrong to me [i]at all[/I], but only in certain contexts or in excess. I'm not a Christian, so I don't think that it's a sin or anything like that, and if you happen to feel guilty about feelings of lust, then frankly that's your personal issue and doesn't effect my thinking on the matter.
Nor does it seem wrong to me that porn is publicly available (with some restrictions). It's often not even really personal in a sense, given, for one thing, the fact that people who have a career in porn typically treat it as just a job and make a conscious separation between their personal sex-life and their public onscreen sexual activity. Not very personal if you're in a studio with a film crew and all of their equipment recording you for publication.
I don't buy this "objectification" (treating people as a means to an end) objection either. For those who are dumb enough to start thinking that porn means that you can rightly treat just about anyone in similar ways outside of that context, without due consideration, then yes, that is of course a problem. But we should no less desire that publication of porn be shut down or severely limited/censored than we should desire that publication of media which contains violence or other forms of abuse, such as films and videogames, be shut down or severely limited/censored. I don't think a prudish, moralistic, Mary-Whitehouse-type attitude is the right one. Stop scapegoating and take responsibility. We should not have a nanny state interfering in this matter.
In cases of exploitation and coercion and suchlike (in more of a [i]legal[/I] sense - some people will no doubt simply and loosely bandy around such emotive terms as labels to slap on to the target of their moral indignation), then sure, that's wrong. But these cases are a small minority and an exception; they are dealt with by the authorities; and besides such cases, I don't really see it as a problem. It's their career choice, they're getting paid, and lots of people get satisfaction from it.
Ironically, since we're on a philosophy forum, the immediate question isn't actually about whether any law should or shouldn't be imposed about porn, which seems to be the main concern of most of the posters here who seem to be in favor of porn. As someone concerned about porn, my concern is exactly that "objectification" you speak of. Allow porn legally, till the cows come home, please. I'm in favor. It's not a matter of legislation. But from a philosophical perspective? Porn does objectify sexuality in a way that can be exceedingly harmful to human nature.
What exactly does sexual objectification mean? It means the subject (the porn viewer) takes another subject (the porn actor) and makes that subject (the actor) into an object of desire, or sexual fulfillment by way of the viewers own sexual motives, without concern for the motives of the sexual object (the actor). In other words, there's no way to know the true sexual motives of the actor, through the medium of a computer screen, not least of all because porn is, at the end of things, an act, not an accurate portrayal of the sexuality of the actor (excluding amateur porn). It's so obvious that it's stupid to say, but sexual consent within porn only and always exists through a disjointed medium of the actor consenting via monetary gain, and the viewer consenting through their own sex drive. How is this different from prostitution? Not by any definitional distinction, surely. So, within internet porn specifically, there is no mediate connection between actor and viewer. There is no ontological line between consent and prostitution (or in worse cases, rape) within the context of porn. Viewing porn is a form of voyeuristic prostitution (or at worst, rape), and there's no clear way to discern which is which, other than one's own intuition with regards to the body language of the porn actors within a given scene, which are often hard to read.
Now, who is the porn actor? The porn actor is an equal to the porn viewer, philosophically: They are both free individuals engaged in an act, but only theoretically. In context, however, the porn actor becomes subservient to the desires of the viewer (and more immediately, in initial context) the director of the film. And in this way, the viewer becomes subservient to the actor via seduction. So, the porn actor serves the same purpose as the stripper in the strip club. The porn actor is objectified in the same manner as the club stripper. The further masquerade that porn provides for us is that the actors are enjoying it, and we get more details of the farce than we used to when the strip club was all we had. Anyone with half a wits knowledge on female sexuality can dimwittedly discern that the large majority of female porn actors are not deriving very much real sexual pleasure from their work. Sure, "lesbian" porn actors (how many of them are truly lesbians, sexually?) may derive pleasure form the know-how of another woman, but this is a single category in the ever-burgeoning categories of the major porn sites, which continue to abstract themselves further and further away from any semblance of normal sexual expression, and continue to emphasize the desires of the heterosexual male. All of this emphasizes the objectification of a misguided view of female sexuality within the process of porn production, purely for the sake of the heterosexual male. Female porn actors may be willingly subjecting themselves to a sexual experience that they don't find gratifying for the sake of making a paycheck, but what toll does this take on them themselves, the actors who derive no real fulfillment form their work? And how is this different than prostitution? If a female actor is willing to make thousands of dollars on single porn scenes, without actually enjoying the work, what does this say about the gap between vocational fulfillment and monetary gain?
So in other words, sexual objectification obtains through the process of the perpetrator (the porn viewer) gaining sexual fulfillment through the victim's (the porn actor's) consent or non-consent to performing a sexual act solely for the benefit of the perpetrator (the porn viewer), and not with any real regard for the sexual pleasure of the victim (the porn actor); the victim (porn actor) only achieves compensation through a monetary gain: i.e. prostitution.
What stats or studies can you provide to illustrate that cases of exploitation are "a small minority and an exception"?
Firstly, ethics, politics, and law are related to philosophy, and are each highly relevant to the topic, so comments along those lines are entirely understandable and not out of place here. What is or is not [i]your[/I] main concern need not be mine, and my post was not specifically directed at you in any case.
I don't accept your claim about objectification, and in particular, I reject the way that you've framed it above, such that you target porn rather than people. Objectification resides in a perspective, not in a porn video. It's ultimately about how it's viewed, rather than how it's made, or what it consists in.
Being concerned is one thing, but claiming that "porn objectifies sexuality in a way that can be exceedingly harmful to human nature" is quite another. Porn doesn't objectify. People objectify. I do accept that it is a problem that there are people who are constituted in such a way as to form objectionable views about others through watching porn - [i]to the extent that that is a factor[/I]. But this problem is just a particular example of a far more general problem. The problem is ultimately about those views themselves and the people who hold them, not with porn. The fact is, due to our nature, people are flawed; and, as a result, people will inevitably form flawed views. I'm all in favour of promoting views which avoid these kind of flaws, but blaming (in this case) porn itself is not, in my view, the right approach.
Quoting Noble Dust
At least in this paragraph you begin by speaking in terms of the viewing subject, because that's what this is primarily about. It's about how the other is viewed, whether as subject, object or both. (I see no reason why it can't be both, and why the terms should only be used in a mutually exclusive way, given that a subject can be an object in various ways (as someone else mentioned on the first page of this discussion, and the example of a musician-for-hire was given) and this is not necessarily wrong).
In reply to your comment that "there's no way to know the true sexual motives of the actor, through the medium of a computer screen" - I think that that wouldn't constitute a good enough reason to support the conclusion that porn is some kind of big problem. This problem equally applies in numerous other situations, yet this problem strikes me as largely trivial. Is this not just the so-called problem of other minds? It's a problem for philosophers with too much time on their hands to dwell upon whilst the rest of society functions as normal, where we somehow manage to interact with each other as if we do in fact have access to a sizeable chunk of such knowledge to all intents and purposes. Fortunately, we often don't need to read people's minds, and we don't need to in the case of legal porn, since before it even gets to the porn stage, there's a legal process in place which involves giving signed consent. And anything dodgy is dealt with by the authorities. The only responsibility here with which a citizen is, and should be, concerned is to report a suspected crime. If you think that some porn video that you've watched constitutes exploitation, for example, then the burden is on you to do something about that. If your concern is a problem for you, then you should do something about it, but blaming porn - without discrimating on a case-by-case basis - would be to go the wrong way about it.
And if it is not so much [i]that[/I] which is the problem, but rather the "consenting via monetary gain" aspect, then your problem isn't just with porn, but is with a huge and fundamental aspect of our society. That's just how society functions, and it isn't going to change any time soon.
Or, is it more about the act itself, sex? If so, what is it that supposedly makes sex a special case?
Regardless of how you attempt to spin it, porn is simply not analogous to rape. Only those cases of porn which involve actual rape (as opposed to depicted rape) can rightly be equated in that way. However, the similarities between prostitution and porn do, on the other hand, warrant more of a link. But what's the supposed problem? One difference between prostitution and porn is that the former is on the black market and the latter is not, so the former exposes those involved to a greater risk of all kinds of problems than does the latter. But if the former was legalised in a similar way as the latter, then it wouldn't be a problem for me. It is already more or less legal in the form of escort services anyway.
Non-consensual porn is a red herring. By porn, I mean legal porn, where there is legal consent, which is the only consent which matters. It's not my burden to attempt to read someone's mind, but to ensure that I do what I can to watch only legal porn, because legal porn is ethical porn.
Quoting Noble Dust
No, not only theoretically, they are free in practice, just not absolutely - but no one is absolutely free. They could do otherwise and stop at any time. As for subservience, so what? That subservience is what the job involves, just like countless others, including my own, and this is no secret. As part of my job I am subservient to customers and my superiors in the workplace. I could quit my job at any time. This is not exploitation in the relevant sense. In some other sense perhaps, but we're not talking in the context of Marxism here. I'm sticking with the legal definition because I think that it is more sensible in assessing these sort of situations, has a stronger foundation, and is of far greater practical use than someone's subjective interpretation.
Quoting Noble Dust
The viewer has chosen to get off on porn and is free to stop at any time. So what? It's not like the viewer is being forced at gunpoint. You could talk in this way about virtually anything, which just demonstrates the absurdity of this line of argument. Am I also then seduced by and subservient to television, videogames, breakfast, and virtually any other activity that I engage in?
Quoting Noble Dust
Why stop there? I think that you have to either go the whole nine yards by applying this logic to virtually every profession going, or you must concede to special pleading. It's all or none: either we're all objectified and it's an ordinary occurrence or none of us are. Either way, I think that such talk is pretty meaningless and an example of taking advantage of loaded language.
Quoting Noble Dust
So what? I'm sorry, but I find this ridiculous. I masquerade in my job as someone who genuinely gives a fuck about customers, even when I do not. That's what the job involves and I knew that before I applied.
Quoting Noble Dust
Since when do jobs have to be enjoyable? Do you think that retail workers are always so happy to serve you? Keeping up appearances is part of the job. So what?
Quoting Noble Dust
Well, of course. The heterosexual male is the main consumer, so they're the target market. What do you expect? Supply is directed towards demand.
Quoting Noble Dust
Who are you to say what is and is not a misguided view of female sexuality? And so what if it is for the sake of the heterosexual male? (Besides, I think that being selective, by focussing, as you do above, for example, on how female sexuality is portrayed in porn, only serves to reflect bias. There is a wealth of porn available in all different kinds and combinations of gender and sexual orientation to cater to all sorts of desires. And if there is objectification in one, there is objectification in all. Why is it so often about women, as if they're damsels in distress, when plenty of men are in the exact same situation? How often do you hear about the objectification of men? No where near as often).
Quoting Noble Dust
This just looks like more special pleading. Why should this by treated any differently to other jobs which can take a similar toll on employees?
Quoting Noble Dust
More importantly, why should it matter?
Quoting Noble Dust
Why female? And why isn't this just a general problem about work? Looks like one to me. Find a better job? There's always that option.
Quoting Noble Dust
Perpetrator, victim, compensation and prostitution?! That just made me laugh out loud. Ridiculously loaded language.
Are you really suggesting that the number of porn videos which have been proven by a court of law to be guilty of legal exploitation could realistically outweigh the number of porn videos out there which have not? That would strike me as obviously mistaken, so I don't see why I should go to the effort of looking it up. What reason have you to doubt this? I would be very surprised if it were otherwise.
Edit: Searching the internet just brings up results relating to sexual exploitation or coercion of minors, which just serves to reinforce my view that it's probably a relatively rare occurrence with regards to adults, because your average producers of porn would obviously want to cover their own backs before filming, so they'd simply get legal consent in the form of a signed contract. They'd have the legal documentation which would mean that there is no case against them. I doubt that most will see it as necessary or worth the risk to break the law by cutting corners or by forcing people against their will.
How are you defining lust?
Imagine this scenario. A child is born to a prostitute. Her mother has always been a prostitute, she is paid $1 a year, lives in squalor, has one change of clothes.. you get the picture, it's an awful life. The child grows up believing that type of life is normal. When she becomes an adult, she choose to become prostitute herself, and allows people to create videos of her engaging in sex. Lots of people get satisfaction from watching her perform those sex acts. She gets paid $1.50 (she get 50 cents more a year in return for letting them make videos) a year, and has virtually the same quality of life as her mother. Was her career choice actually a choice?
If she did so of her own unrestricted will, then, in the relevant moral and legal sense, yes. Everyone fits that criteria in regards towards their own upbringing. Parents have a standard of living. They perform some kind of function for society. By the laws of supply and demand, most of those careers are going to be in jobs the parent does not really want, with a good chance that they barely tolerate the work. Children are going to be raised up in this environment.
The normal way.
Quoting anonymous66
That's very different from the kind of typical case that I had in mind, so any conclusion you try to draw from any answer that I provide can't just be transferred over to other cases or generalised. For that reason, I see little point in answering. I'm not arguing that there can't be exploitation and really awful circumstances which in effect leave one with no choice. I thought that this was a discussion about porn in general.
What do you mean when you say, "The normal way?"
What do you hope to achieve by introducing these specifics? They are game changers, for me at least, so any conclusion you draw can't be used to support a general conclusion about porn or porn actors, the majority of whom [i]do[/I] know about and have access to alternatives.
What do you mean by a typical case? You must have a scenario in mind when you insist that everyone involved in the porn industry is doing what they do voluntarily, and that they understand they have a choice.
I mean what I said. With due respect, please don't play dumb.
I honestly don't know what you have in mind when you use the word "lust". Can we agree to this definition?: Lust: An overwhelming desire or craving: a lust for power.
People lust after things other than sex, don't they?
That's a straw man and not something that I've said. I acknowledge that there are exceptions.
Quoting anonymous66
I mean a case that is typical. If you want to know what I think that consists in, I think that that consists in circumstances similar to other jobs, which means that the person in question knows what the job involves, what they'll be paid for it, and they then consent and get on with it. What more do you want to know? I've seen plenty of porn videos with healthy-looking Europeans, Americans and Asians who most likely get paid a lot more than 50p an hour or whatever it was you came up with, and who most likely have knowledge of and access to other career options. I'd say that these cases are fairly typical and can be easily found on the internet on legitimate-looking sites.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that we agree that a majority know they have a choice... what about those who don't know they have a choice?
My reasoning here is like this: Is it harmful to be involved in the making of porn? If it is harmful, can people choose to willfully harm themselves? How can we tell if it is harmful?
I find that hard to believe. But sure, that's more or less what I meant. Lust. It's a strong desire for something, isn't it? We both know what lust is - no point pretending otherwise. We're not speaking French. It can be overwhelming. A lust for sex, power, revenge...
What about them? They're an exception, and, if we're to keep this as realistic as possible, most likely a child or someone who is under duress and suffering abuse, and I feel sorry for them and think that it's wrong and that something should be done about it. Either way, that'd be illegal.
But that has nothing to do with what I was talking about. I was talking about the typical porn video you'll find from a legitimate porn site. Not some imagined hypothetical scenario or an extreme case or anything illegal.
Hmm. I don't know. Consider this....
So, you're not talking about sexual desire, right? I mean, the night my son was conceived, I wouldn't call what I felt for my wife "lust".
But, there is something called lust... Doesn't lust actually have the sense of an excessive desire for something that isn't rightfully belong to the one doing the lusting? I've never heard lust described in terms that would suggest there are some contexts in which it is acceptable, or that one can have less than excessive lust. In my mind, if someone is talking about lust (in a sexual sense) that isn't excessive, then he must actually mean sexual desire, something I have no issue with.
I'm talking about lust in relation to the passions (or [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins]the passions) [/url] Hopefully, there is no one making the claim, "The passions aren't so bad.." In my mind, the passions entail emotional suffering.
How about this definition? Lust: perverse or corrupt versions of love for something or another... excessive or disordered love of good things.
If that's merely how she [I]feels[/I], then so what? Why should I care? I happen to feel otherwise and doubt her claims. If that's what she [i]thinks[/I], then where are the sources to back that up? The first part doesn't really need backing up, since I accept that a significant number of pornographic recordings contain sexual abuse and exploitation, but these are illegal and not what I was talking about. If, on the other hand, she's talking about the typical kind of porn video you can easily find from a legitimate porn site, then the burden lies with her (or you, if you're arguing the same point). Presumably there have been a large number arrests and legal cases that have resulted in prosecutions if that was indeed the case? Wouldn't this have made the news? And I'm not really talking about sites where you can upload just about anything, because then it's of course [i]possible[/I] that you'll find abuse, but most of these sites are probably moderated, have legal disclaimers, the functionality to report abuse, and so on. If I thought that a porn video contained illegal abuse, then I'd report it. Can't say that that's ever happened to me though. If the abuse is hidden so well that I have little-to-no chance of detecting it, and even if I stick to sites which seem legitimate, then what would you expect of me?
As for that last part, I rolled my eyes. Philosophy can say a [i]whole load[/I] of things, and there is seemingly no limit to how ridiculous or utterly wrongheaded it can be.
If there is evidence? What then? What if only the last part is true... That "pornography teaches men that sexual abuse and exploitation of women is normal... It portrays women as enjoying this kind of treatment and shows it as a form of sexual liberation."?
Edited to add:
Are you saying, "I don't care... AND it's not true?" Or are you saying, "It's not true"?
No, but nothing in the example you provided indicated that everyone in the child's life withheld information about all other possibilities for employment and lifestyle and that the only job on the market that the woman potentially qualified for and was made available was pornography.
On another note, we may not need to have access to alternatives in order to be morally responsible for our decisions, a la Frankfurt cases in which the agent does not have alternative possibilities and is still intuitively held responsible.
Then I'll take that into account when considering these things, but as I was just adding to my previous comment in an edit, if I could detect it, then I'd report it. If not, then what would you expect of me? I wouldn't give up watching porn just because it [I]might[/I], unbeknownst to me, contain illegal abuse or exploitation, just as I wouldn't give up videogames or watching television on a similar basis.
Quoting anonymous66
Does it or doesn't it? I don't care about "what if's" unless I can see that there's a good point behind it. What if the moon was made of cheese?
Of course I'm talking about sexual desire! What else would I be talking about? We're talking about sex after all. But, like I said, strong sexual desire. I don't really care what you would or wouldn't call it, I care about what it is. It would be odd if you didn't lust after your wife the night that your son was conceived. You might prefer to call it something else, but why should I care?
Quoting anonymous66
No, I don't think that it's necessarily excessive, just typically overwhelming... [I]He was overcome with lust...[/I]. His lust might've been just the right amount.
I get that lust is traditionally considered a sin and that it is not uncommon for it to be associated with negative connotations, but so what?
Quoting anonymous66
No, I'll more or less stick with the first definition I found online, which is usually a sensible idea. I'll not define it in such a way that it is necessarily immoral by implication, because I don't think that that best reflects reality. I can quite easily conceive of situations in which lust is not an immoral vice, but something quite normal, natural and acceptable. I don't find that at all counterintuitive - quite the contrary.
I'll care more if it is shown to be true, or if I am presented with what I consider to be a good reason to believe that it is true. Otherwise I don't much care because it's merely conjecture, and I have my doubts about it. The fact that it was said by a philosophy professor doesn't cause me to believe that it's true, because philosophy professors have said all kinds of things, some of which strike me as absurd, and many of these statements contradict other statements made by different professors of philosophy. Philosophy is quite different to other professions.
The pornography business is as exploitative as any unregulated, non-unionized, low-status work place is. Actors and other staff work long hours (get as much material on tape as is possible in as few days as possible). The pay is low on a per hour basis. Performers do not receive royalties, generally. It isn't a long-term career for performers, even if they want it to be, because producers want fresh faces (fresh bodies). An increasing volume of porn on the market depresses the value of any given production.
Physically, the work can be pretty tedious. Creating the appearance and illusion of sexual excitement is something of a strain. Men have difficulty maintaining erections over the course of a 12 hour day of sex scenes, women and men both get sore (depending on what sort of sex is being performed) and everybody gets tired and irritable after a while.
Most people do not elect pornography performance as one of their top 10 career choices. Many people accept this work because they don't have lots of better options, (and some people imagine that it will be exciting and serve as a gateway into 'real acting'; it usually isn't). A few people do manage to make a long-term career out of it, either as performers or by becoming producers.
Most pornography productions are unimaginative. People don't watch porn for interesting plots but a porn production can be more interesting or less interesting. But "interesting" usually involves more time, skill, and production expense, so don't expect to see much of it.
There are risks in sex work. Rough sex can produce injuries. Sexually transmitted diseases are always a risk which can be reduced or minimized, but not entirely eliminated.
Quoting Bitter Crank
That's pretty much what I'd expect. The main gist of much of what I was saying is that the pornography business is much like other such businesses, and is not a special exception in this regard. There may well be exploitation in a sense, but not really in the sense that I had in mind, which is to say generally keeping within the confines of the law in that area.
Quoting Bitter Crank
That's also pretty much what I'd expect it to be like.
The difference between prostitution, pornography, and dating-with-the-expectation-of-having-sex is plain.
In prostitution, a provider offers sex to a customer in exchange for cash.
In pornography, a producer hires two people to have sex with each other and share the experience with the world.
In dating-with-the-expectation-of-having-sex, one party pays for dinner, drinks, and a dance or two with the hope of having sex with the other party.
We could discuss marriage, too. The point is, people routinely exchange cash for sex, one way or another. The reason we do this is that sex has been commodified and people often commodify themselves. A person may be viewed, and view themselves, as a hot property. Access to the hot property is available for some kind of fee.
Commodity exchange is by no means the sum and substance of human sexuality, but it is one element that is often in play. We might not like this arrangement, but there it is, there it has been for quite some time.
Of course, I don't know all of what you've heard in your life. While "lust" is often given a negative spin, "lusty" (having an abundance of lust) usually gets a more positive spin -- "lusty young man", a "lusty knight", and so on. In many sections of reality, men (at least, and sometimes women) are expected to have a keen interest in sex, and the adjective for that term is "lusty". There are even references in literature to "lusty maids".
Are we really concerned that we may be an enactor of one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins?
1 Lust
2 Gluttony
3 Greed
4 Sloth
5 Wrath
6 Envy
7 Pride
They are all equally deadly; why don't we have discussions here about envy, sloth and gluttony? There's certainly plenty of that going around.
We don't discuss these often or with much passion because "sin" has become a more generalized concept--still serious, for those who worry about sin, but not divided into 7 specialties. And large numbers of people just don't think in terms of "sin" the way they used to.
There is a concerted effort on the part of some feminists to redefine a lusty male interest in sex as dangers the church hadn't thought of. The "male gaze" and "the objectification, exploitation, and abuse" of women have replaced "lust". (I'm including "abuse" here because it's meaning has been weakened by over use. "Child abuse" still has somewhat clear meanings, but "abusing a woman sexually" could mean just about anything.)
I don't know where you got that from, but I'm pretty sure that that's simply not true and a big exaggeration. And I'm basing this is in part on my own experience of taking cocaine. I've only done it two or three times, and with years gone by in between.
Having just looked it up, so far, I've found only statements along the lines that [i]some[/I] people [i]can[/I] become addicted after a short period of use. Not that virtually all cocaine users are addicted on the first hit. And, based on a few things I've read, "addiction" might be the wrong word to use, since "while not regarded as physically addictive, cocaine can produce severe psychological dependence because of the strong cravings it produces". (This is from the results of googling the myths and facts about cocaine).
Whether inadvertently or otherwise, you seem to have stretched the truth.
What do I make of it? Laughable, outdated, sending the wrong message, and very limited appeal.
Quoting Arkady
Quoting anonymous66
Non-applicable. Solutions are for problems.
A parallel with the market for chocolate occurs to me. Until recently, most chocolate was produced from cocoa that was grown and harvested in poor countries under very exploitative conditions involving lots of child labour. That exploitation was mostly legal where it occurred.
In recent years there has been a strong global movement against this, the result of which is that an increasing amount of the chocolate produced is produced under much less exploitative conditions. There are certification schemes for Fair Trade chocolate that appear to be credible. At first, only niche suppliers produced Fair Trade chocolate but now the large players are seeing the need to start complying with these expectations. There is a long way to go but there has been real, tangible progress.
Maybe I'm easily amused but the idea of a Fair Trade Porn market, accompanied by a suitable certification scheme, appeals to me. The scheme could have dual criteria of (1) no significant exploitation of the people involved in production and (2) no portrayal of activity that encourages sexual violence or unfair use of power imbalance.
I wonder what the chances are of the US government sponsoring such a scheme.
Not exactly. "Lust" is usually a combination of maladaptive desire which treats others as your possessions and feelings or thoughts associated with them. Where people are attacked for "lusting," thoughts, feelings or even one's own body are attacked-- much in the way Jesus famously calls one to cut off parts of you which make one lust.
I suspect it's intended to be metaphorical in many instances, but the pull of denouncing immorality often sees to used against any thoughts or feelings associated with treating someone else as their possession. To many people to "lust," in a sexual context, means "to find someone sexually attractive" or "to want to have sex with them," rather than just thinking someone yours. In this instance, you are using a version of this definition of "lust," where it represents attraction or the desire to have sex, such that lusting has been unfairly marginalised.
Alas, it is also reductive because it sort of doesn't take the conflux of desire and objectification seriously. It sort of rehabilitates instances of objectification as mere desire, in it efforts to untangle the unjust prejudice towards desire.
We see this play out in the "It'll be fine" dismissal of criticisms of the porn industry, porn watching and even sexual behaviour. The interaction between two or more people is reduced to someone's desire. What's is it that's at stake when someone is watching porn? Only the viewers desire, or so you would have us believe. It's an objectifying way of dealing with the unjust prejudice against desire.
The expression and interactions (performing porn, watching porn of people, sexual behaviour) of people are reduced to nothing but a question of one person desire. No doubt it is effective in undoing the prejudice against desire, but it has the unfortunate effect of reducing our understanding of these exchanges to nothing more than an individual's desire.
The trouble with abuse is often doesn't happen in every case or maybe even most cases. It's makes it easy to sweep under the rug, especially when livelihoods or even companies would be put at risk.
If you're interested, two (sex positive, pro ethical porn) people I sort of know by the internet recently did a podcast on porn, with a discussion of some of the issues which can arise. It's doesn't go into a lot of specific depth, but it covers some of the issues (including the recent Kink. com scandal) which can occur and how that interacts with ethical porn consumption.
https://apptopcast.wordpress.com/2017/04/21/the-fourth-episode-of-2017-gets-nsfw-its-about-porn/ (NSFW).
Yes exactly. I know what "lust" usually means, and several dictionaries have already confirmed this. It's pointless to argue against a dictionary over what "lust" usually means. That's what dictionaries are for. I'll opt with dictionary over Willow.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Can you clearly spell out what you think the problem is? Because it isn't clear to me from passages such as the above. You just seem to be describing the activity of watching porn with the implication that this is somehow wrong, without actually explaining [i]why[/I] it is supposedly wrong.
Do you think that watching porn should be something [i]more[/I] than what it is? If we're talking about sex (as opposed to solo stuff) then it's two (or more) people (though possibly a person and an animal) fucking, whilst being filmed and/or photographed, for people to look at and presumably get off on, for money. Do you have some kind of romantic, high-minded notion that the "expression and interactions" of the performers ought to be recognised in some special way, respected, and cherished? Because if so, I think that that's rather silly, to be frank. There's a time and a place... and masturbating over porn ain't really it.
Just bandying around terms like "objectification" doesn't help. Why is this supposedly wrong? One has a sexual desire, one finds an object for that desire, masturbates, ejaculates, and the desire is satisfied. Where is the wrongness? In this context, I see none. Outside of this context, I can envisage it in certain situations. So, ultimately, it seems to me, this is about having the right attitude or mindset. It is about appropriateness. It is a people problem about personal responsibility, and porn is just being scapegoated, in much the same way that alcohol or videogames or rock music has been scapegoated.
Yes, good point, and I agree with most of that. I acknowledge that what is legal and what is moral doesn't always overlap, and I accept that there have been - and still are - exploitative practices in business which should be reformed. The porn industry would be no exception in this regard, and I think that the model for reform, if required, should be along the lines of this "Fair Trade" idea. However, I disagree over the details of what that should consist in. The first point is fine (although "exploitation" would have to be thoroughly defined, and in the right way), but as for the second point, if such portrayals are permitted in films and videogames, then porn should be no exception. The second point is fine if it is only to be a standard for a certain kind of porn video which coexists alongside others without such a standard, but not as a universal standard.
Edit: Sorry, in hindsight, I think I overlooked a key word there: "encourages". Although there is some ambiguity there which could be problematic for my liberal political stance, in that I wouldn't want the baby to get thrown out with the bathwater, which I think it conceivably could be via an interpretation of [i]implicit[/I] encouragement. There'd be the question of what [i]constitutes[/I] encouragement. Coming up with legislation is complicated stuff.
Neither seem at all wrong to me.
I don't think so, and certainly not any more than any business does, say, with respect to our interaction with the people who work at that business.
In any event, I'd answer "Yes" to this, but in that I think we're still far too uptight and puritanical when it comes to sex and nudity, we're still far too focused on monogamy, and movements like SJWism are taking a turn for the worse in this, in that it, for example, tends to parse any focus on sex whatsoever as misogynist, sexist, etc.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes, I don't think so either. It doesn't promote [i]any[/I] ideas about how people should be treated in general. Nor, typically, do videogames, for example. If you treat people badly or steal cars, then basically that's on you. Don't be a bad workman. Fiction is fiction, and not reality. And what you see in one context might not be appropriate in another.
However, having never played Grand Theft Auto or watched Game of Thrones, I have no idea whether they are really as bad as they sound.
Perhaps you've misinterpreted my comment. I am in favour of consistency, but in the opposite direction; by which I mean that, if anything, they should all be permitted, rather than banned. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that encouraging violence or socially harmful attitudes is a good thing, but I'd dispute that they do so (not explicitly, at least), or the extent to which they do so, and I'd dispute where the ultimate responsibility lies (with the consumer, rather than the producer).
I'm a fan of both Grand Theft Auto and Game of Thrones. Yes, they're probably as "bad" as people say, if by that you mean to refer to the kind of graphic content which some people may find shocking, vulgar, obscene or objectionable in some way. Those people should just not play those kinds of games or watch those kinds of series. They should not complain or wish to ruin it for the rest of us.
That's not what I mean by 'bad'. I mean if it encourages (eg by glamorising) harmful attitudes and actions (and looking back at my post, I believe that was perfectly clear). If it does then it's some of the people playing the game that are 'ruining it for the rest of us'. If it doesn't then I see no reason for anybody to object to people using them.
As I said, I have no knowledge of whether such things do encourage such attitudes and actions, as I have nothing to do with them.
You know that Isis has a terrorist GTA? I got far cry primal last night. Luckily there are no remaining mammoths.
We often want to control everything else, rather than ourselves.
I wonder. Performers of both genders frequently engage in acts which would have been regarded as degrading or inherently immoral not too long ago. Now the 'permissive society' has taken off all the taboos, these are now said to be matters of individual taste. But if women allow themselves to be degraded (I won't dwell on the specifics), isn't that in some way degrading to women in general? Doesn't it amount to a tacit or even explicit endorsements of acts of exhibitionism or sado-masochism or whatever it happens to be?
I notice that the nearest the we get to condemnation of any such acts is when the recipient or subject is hurt by it, or at any rate, hasn't consented to the behaviour. Then it's 'bad' because it's physically harmful, or done against consent, But no matter what the act, if all involved are willing participants, then there can't be anything wrong with whatever they do, as 'consent' is the sole criteria. Is that right?
I do think though, that women were generally barred from all means of real sovereignty, and means of self-support. Sex work was a means of doing that. Most marriages are of necessity for livelihood for women. Reminds of of Russell's remark about there probably being more unwanted sex in marriage than prostitution.
I think that further degrading people that have very little options for themselves (as if they all grew up dreaming of being sex workers), for marketing their literal, most valuable assets because, one, the market exists, and two, they have no obvious better options.
If there is a problem, it's will us all, not them.
Labels. Ideological prison? Or the only thing keeping people in Florida from drinking Windex? Discuss.
Yes. This is a critical fact: Porn is fiction, not reality. As fiction goes, porn is not the most problematic genre.
Quoting Wosret
You are exaggerating. Granted, the average woman does not have exactly the same opportunities as the average man does, but women in the industrialized nations are generally able to achieve self support, and even sovereignty. Where marriage is a necessity is in providing adequate incomes on which to raise children. It takes two incomes from two adults, if the primary breadwinner is not earning a very substantial salary.
Quoting Wosret
Sex work is not a dream job. No kidding. Neither are a good share of the jobs people drag themselves to every day.
The labor of all men and all women has been commodified. Female sex workers are no more exploited than truck drivers, custodians, roofers, secretaries, sales clerks, and factory workers are exploited.
The fact is that many individuals--men, women, young people, old people, smart people, stupid people--all kinds, have difficulty taking care of themselves in times of economic recession or depression. People who live in areas of endemic poverty, under-employment, and few opportunities will suffer more than people who live in booming economic areas.
Modernity doesn't exist in a vacuum. History matters, and conditions the way people behave in the future regardless of further necessity. True in our individual lives, and our societies.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The important thing isn't the drudgery, or the work per se, but the prestige. This is two fold. Firstly, the skill level. Anything that you can do that most people can't, is usually impressive, or not awful even if it's gross -- but just doing things that anyone can do, but just wouldn't... few respect that. Second is simply perception, if everyone thinks something is terrible, even if it isn't, and you know that you do it/are it, then you'll hide it, feel terrible, or simply stop listening to, or empathizing with others.
I think it's reality for very many people nowadays, specially young adult males. They find it impossible to relate to actual women because of their conditioned responses.
Real relationships are hard and scary, real people require care, consideration and negotiation. Porn and masturbation don't. The anti-natalists will all get their way, or in the future we will all do it with virtual reality, like on demolition man.
When were men and women ever relating well? Although, at least they were relating...
But people create porn; people objectify through porn. Porn is one of the most straightforward ways to objectify. When a person objectifies another person, they look past that person's individual humanity (their unique, unrepeatableness) and transform their experience of that person into an object of desire; there's a disposable aspect to objectification. On the other hand, a sexual experience that does not objectify any of the participants is one in which the individual humanity, the unique unrepeatablness of each person is upheld and intensified, rather than overlooked. Sex and individuality are profoundly linked, but porn, for instance, makes the sex act impersonal, and not individual. Porn focuses on the sex urge, and not the deeper meaning of what sex symbolizes. The normalization of pornography just leads to deeper social isolation and disconnect from the role sex plays in human intimacy. We live in a world where the carnal is separated from the intimate, because we live in a world of social isolation. That's the irony; true sex means deep individuation, but our society's focus on individuality leads to sexual objectification, not intimacy.
Quoting Sapientia
What exactly would be the mechanics of a porn viewer that does not objectify the actors and their sexuality? What's an example of healthy porn use, versus unhealthy use? It's not a question of whether one person is addicted and another is not, ultimately. The same principle of objectification underlies the very nature of what porn is, and the function it serves, regardless of how regular porn use is, whether it's compulsive, not compulsive, or whatever.
Quoting Sapientia
Sure, in a way, this is the problem that I have with porn. Just because society may not change anytime soon, doesn't mean it's not worthwhile to rail against the depravity of the situation. If we all say "it won't change anytime soon", then it won't. If we all say "it needs to change", then it might. And I'd rather say what seems right, knowing nothing will change, then say what's easier to say, knowing that nothing will change. I'll gladly keep being a pain in everyone's ass on this topic; I'll gladly keep saying things that make you laugh out loud at how ridiculous you think they are.
That would come under "objectionable in some way", would it not? I wasn't clueless as to what you might've meant, I just thought that there was a good chance that it would relate to, or correspond with to some extent, the graphic content, in that you might think that this content does just what you describe above.
Quoting andrewk
Can you give a concrete example, then, so we're not merely speaking hypothetically?
The bottom line is, it's a certain kind of person that's the problem, not a videogame. You shouldn't go around banning stuff because of a group of idiots. That's just scapegoating. If there's an explicit message that, e.g. people should go out and steal cars, then the game should be banned. But that's never the case, and it comes down to a matter of interpretation, or rather misinterpretation.
Quoting andrewk
Then this is quite pointless, in the same kind of way that it's quite pointless to discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. For all you know, there could be nothing relevant to what we've been discussing that actually does what you'd object to.
Indeed.
Whether it's degrading or not is arguable and to some extent a matter of interpretation. And, of course, just because it [i]was considered[/I] as such in the past, that doesn't mean that it is.
I don't think that anyone who engages in those kind of acts in porn which some find to be degrading are so for people in general. (And this [i]is[/I] a general issue, about porn actors, rather than specifically about women; although I accept that it may be the case it is an issue in which women are predominantly effected). That's because the context and specificities related to this act are important and should not be ignored. There's a certain sort of fiction involved in porn productions and a sort of implicit understanding or "disclaimer" that this is not real life, but a performance involving actors. Just because someone else performs an act which might be seen by some as degrading, that says nothing about me as an individual or about those of my gender. That would just fall into the category of possible interpretation - something which is read into it.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, no, consent isn't the sole criteria. You yourself just mentioned another important thing to consider in that very same paragraph: harm. Minimally, one should act within the law, for that reason as well as others. But I'll tell you what isn't a criteria: mere disapproval. If that were a criteria in the legal system, then virtually everything would be banned.
I think it's ridiculous to say that actions in games in any way translate to real life, or that games in any way "encourage" anything outside of playing the game.
Yes, I think this is at least generally true, and here is the theory behind it:
At various times we occupy different compartments of life activities. These compartments are separated by "membranes" or doorways through which we can step, but which can be quite opaque to ourselves and others, depending on how we manage them.
Playing a game is a compartment which has rules and regulations. A classroom is another compartment which has rules and regulations. Our bedroom is a third compartment. A cubicle at work is a fourth compartment... and so on. We occupy many compartments, each with its own rules and regulations.
It is easy to move from compartment to compartment. Sometimes we take nothing with us from one compartment to another, and sometimes we take quite a bit. People leave the "work compartment" where they have had a bad day and enter their home compartment with a large load of the days aggravations in a bag, which are generously shared with anyone available.
Watching pornography on the internet in the home office is one compartment; a bed in which a spouse is lying is another compartment. One could bring the minimal rules and regulations of pornography-watching to bed, but chances are against this happening. Home, bed, and spouse have well established and practiced rules and roles.
I don't disagree with that, really, but I'd simply say that we don't need a "theory" of it. People are simply not going to confuse videogames with things that aren't videogames. (Well, not unless there's something seriously wrong with them.)
Frankly, I find that kind of talk to be nonsense, and reflective of a kind of naive, intellectual idealism. I don't have much of a fondness for such flowery and opaque language. [i]Looking past a person's individual humanity, their unique unrepeatableness, the deeper meaning of what sex symbolizes, profoundness, intimacy, deep individuation, objectification[/I]... We're talking about masturbating over porn here, and that is hardly the time or the place for deep reflections and bleeding hearts. What exactly do you expect of people? People should not masturbate over porn because of your personal and highly particular views on the matter? Or they should do so only if they do so whilst contemplating individuality and what it means to be human? It's like you either misunderstand the purpose of porn, and of watching porn, or you want it to be something that it is not, and would make little sense to be. You seem to be comparing it to some pecuilar philosophical ideals you've picked up from somewhere, but I think that the comparison itself is inappropriate. These ideals would be more understandable outside of this context. Within it, it just seems bizarre and out of place. Behind the cover of such talk, what's left? What are you really saying? Can't you put it more plainly?
I think you're wrong to claim that the normalization of pornography just leads to deeper social isolation and disconnect from the role sex plays in human intimacy. That is likely true of some cases, but is not representative of all. It is entirely possible for porn to be treated as something normal without sliding down this slippery slope of "deep social isolation" and "disconnect" from "human intimacy". That's a load of nonsense. You're conjuring up this artificial link between the two to bolster your own feelings that sex should be something "special" and "uncorrupted", and to make yourself feel better by painting a picture where you're more "caring", "connected", and in tune with some kind of "deeper meaning". But this is just an arrogant pretence.
Another criticism I have is that - and this is especially clear near the end of the paragraph quoted above - you are guilty of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Quoting Noble Dust
What does it even mean to objectify the actors and their sexuality? If you can give me a clear answer, then I might be able to answer your question.
Quoting Noble Dust
One way of distinguishing the former from the latter is in terms of excessiveness. It would be unhealthy to watch porn for hours on end, day after day. That's common sense.
Quoting Noble Dust
It's not a question of addiction of at all, if we're to maintain the generality of this topic. There are vast swathes of people who aren't addicted to porn. The average watcher of porn is not an addict.
As for this principle of objectification, specifically with regards to the innocuous context of someone simply watching porn, then it doesn't mean that much to me. If you want to discuss real issues, like how people ought to be treated, then that'd be a different story.
Quoting Noble Dust
But, if you're still talking about what I was talking about, which was finding the "consenting via monetary gain" aspect objectionable, then that's not a problem specific to porn. So why make it all about porn? That's not really a problem you have with porn, but a problem you have with the basic economic structure of society; and it applies not just to porn, but to employments too varied and numerous to list.
There's another kind of sex that's very personal. It's tender because the most vulnerable parts are unveiled: not genitals, but hearts.
May everyone have both kinds at some time or other along the byways to nowhere.
(Y)
Exactly. It's about context and appropriateness. Some people here seem to want to blur the boundaries. The simple act of watching porn says nothing about how sociable or intimate one is. It says nothing about your view of how people should be treated in general. It's a highly specific and isolated context, and it is misguided to read too much into it.
You don’t recognise sex and porn are always about other people.
Other people are actually what we think of first in any instance of pornography or sex— “Their hot.” “I’d like to fuck them.” "Watching them have sex gets me off so well.”
The idea sex or pornography is about some abstraction of individual desire, like just “getting off” or “pure physical pleasure” is a myth. In any instance, sex or pornography means means interacting with another person and their expression. Even the purest “physical,” no stings-attached, act of sex or consumption of pornography is about someone else.
It’s the defining difference between solo masturbation and either sex and pornography. People prefer sex or pornography becasue it’s about other people. Many people prefer to access the bodies and/or expressions of others, whether in a sexual relationship (sex) or pornography (entertainment).
In either sex or pornography, we are making use of someone’s “private” body and expressions. We can only do because they found it worthwhile to give us such access (unless it abuse and rape). To consider sex or pornography as only getting off to a passive object is to entirely misunderstand what’s happening. It’s to pretend other people are not involved— a foundation for abuse to occur or be ignored.
You scoff at the notion of recognising watching porn to be about anything more than getting off to an object, but it is exactly the right time for “high-minded” concerns like the fact someone is a person rather than a object. At what point could it be any more important to recognise another person is at stake than sex or pornography? How are we meant to recognise someone’s sexual expression, and it’s limits, if we don’t even recognise they are a person involved in the interaction?
It's entirely wrong because it utterly misunderstands what's involved with sex or pornography. Instead realising they are about other people, it forms a myth that sexual arousal (by others) and desire is only about you and getting what you want.
The myth runs so fucking deep that many people can't even think of sex, pornography or even relationships in any other way except getting an object. You see this a lot in complaints that concerns about objectification are somehow attacking sex or sexual desire (which you are more or less suggesting here).
To recognise, for example, that porn involves other people acting to provide you entertainment, by choice to do something they consider worthwhile, is meant to be some plot to undermine sexual desire, all because it dares to point out porn is about more than oneself and getting their satisfaction.
A lot of people seem rather nonplussed by the term 'sexual revolution', and indeed it is not very well recognised or understood any more - it's hardly discussed. You can read volumes on what it was, but the upshot is that what is regarded as normal or normative standards for sexual behaviour underwent radical changes as a consequence (which is pretty much what the Wikipedia entry on it says). But now it's the new normal, and questioning the new normal is now itself regarded as strange or threatening. It's normal, right?
It is true, of course, that such topics are the focus of comment and controversy by many conservative commentators. Indeed to even discuss it, is nowadays to be categorised as 'conservative', regardless of one's views on other matters of social policy (such as education, taxation, public health, and so on.)
Anyway, in this context, note the majority view - I think it is the majority view - is that porn is normal and very much a matter of individual choice. There's nothing wrong with it, unless it involves minors, illegal acts, or force. Even violent pornography is OK, if the participants are willing. What is wrong, is the belief that it is immoral - because that is said to suggest censorship, which is interference with freedom of choice, and also 'judgementalism' which is one of the very worst kinds of attitudes anyone can be accused of in a liberal culture. ('Stone him!')
I agree that people are free to do what they like, provided nobody is injured and nothing stolen or destroyed. That is after all the meaning of freedom in liberal culture. But that doesn't justify the complete abandonment of sexual morality, which is pretty well what porn signifies. However it seems my attitude must have been shaped in an earlier age. So I know what I say about it will generally be regarded as out-dated and embarrassingly mistaken - so I won't spend a lot more time debating it. Just wanted to get that point out in the open.
A lot of the conflict, I think, has to do with the change of the significance of sex. Humans haven't really all changed that much in what they want out of sex in their personal lives.
The big difference is sex is accepted as recreation and/or entertainment, rather than being an activity only for married people. In a lot of cases, people seem to react more to this aspect ("Look at how the demand themselves by having casual sex and appearing in porn!" ) rather than abusive behaviour itself.
It's a bit like the objectification I just took Sapientia to task for, only instead of objectifying people for one's pleasure, it does it for the purity of society. I mean it has it's own position ("Follow this rule: only have sex and talk about sex within the context of your life long relationship. Anything else is demeaning" ), but it doesn't leave a lot to discuss with respect to people, sex, pornography and harm.
Could you expand on this a bit more. Are you dating the sexual revolution from 1870 to 1970? Norms of sexual behavior wasn't static during this period, turning both less and more restrictive at different times, but I am surprised that you term the whole 100 years as part of the "sexual revolution".
At least in the United States (the region I am most familiar with), what we call the sexual revolution was probably begun in the late 1940s, early 1950s. Beatniks, bohemians, and homosexuals were one part; young heterosexual adults were another part. The 1950s are only represented as the "Leave it to Beaver" high point of the nuclear family.
The largest changes in sexual behavior ("the" sexual revolution) resulted from the introduction of the reliable daily birth control pill. The Pill freed women from the fear and risk of pregnancy. The short-lived counterculture of the 1960s was a combo effect of the sunny economy, the baby boom, low tuition costs for college, and easy geographical mobility. The sexual revolution continued into the 1970s with the legalization of abortion and gay liberation movements.
Pornography was redefined by the courts in the 1960s as a legal product that could be sold through normal business channels.
By 1980, "the revolution" was over. Sex won.
But I think the groundwork was laid much earlier. 'If God is dead, everything is permissible' was one major factor. Insofar as the sexual act was previously only to take place within the confines of 'holy matrimony', then the 'death of God' removes that foundation, at least as far as the secular state is concerned.
Another was Sigmund Freud. His theory of libido and repression was, I think, hugely influential on culture - much more so in the long run than his actual therapy, which has more or less died out. But in the public mind, Freud equated sexual repression with hysteria and neurosis, and also depicted libido as the very life-force, the expression of which was practically a 'summum bonum' in Freud's materialistic and atheist view of the world.
So the Victorian attitude that sex was dirty was not only discarded, but practically turned inside out; sexuality was something to be celebrated, flaunted, and even constitutionally protected. And once the nexus between sexuality and procreation was removed by the availability of contraception, then of course this resulted in the widespread attitude of the secular West that we see today.
And, here we are.
If no one is forced, or coerced and no one feels that they are being harmed in any way, then what could be the problem?
Quoting Wayfarer
But you don't believe in the kind of personal God who would be concerned about the specific issue of what people do in or out of matrimony, do you?
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't understand why exactly you think sexuality is not something to be celebrated.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think that what you say will be "embarrassingly mistaken" unless you fail to provide a plausibly justifiable argument to support it; one that doesn't involve belief in doing the will of a personal God. I say this because its hard to see what alternative to positing such a wilful personal God who deliberately created us and will punish us for transgressions against His will could justify your stated attitude to what you see as the moral wrongness of sexual permissiveness (and judging by what I know of your beliefs as expressed in your previous posts, I believe you do not posit such a God).
Isn't his concern more about people only caring for experiences of the world?
Most of the time Wayfarer comes back around to how deeply unsatisfying the world is, as if living for what is valuable in life (including sex) amounts to nihilism. For him we're supposed to aim "higher," to find the infinite not in our lives and the world around us (even in life-long committed relationships), but in the infinite of a spiritual realm above desires and worldly concerns.
In this respect, limiting sex to "holy matrimony" is important. It makes sex "higher," not for any individual's desire or well-being, but for the glory of the spiritual realm which, according to Wayfarer, makes life worthwhile.
I think Wayfarer is more worried about how, sans the authority on high, sex becomes about ourselves and our well-being, generating a secular culture in which meaning is understood to be expressed by the world.
One of the things that happened in the US, from which other countries were spared, was prohibition. But prohibition has some highly unintended consequences, one of which was bringing together a mixture of people who didn't normally mix in the speakeasies. Class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual deviants, etc. all were in the room together to drink. This mixing resulted in a further loosening up of mores.
There was a busy Atlantic traffic jam of people going to and coming back from Europe, and bringing with them new ideas from various European (like French) social and artistic movements.
Radio was introduced; people's horizons were widening; the economy was booming (except for the farm economy). Cars were giving people mobile privacy boxes. Houses were a lot smaller in the 20s than they are now, and social mores, evening if they were loosening, were still tighter than they are now. Cars gave people a way of getting away from the nosy observations of parents and neighbors.
Prohibition was repealed in 1933 about. Liquor laws were re-established, and there was a strong reaction to all of the damnable social mixing that went on in the speakeasies. So bars were under legal pressure to monitor and restrict behavior. Now, only mixed couples (male/female) were allowed to dance. Black/white mixing, men dancing together, etc. were verboten. Then too, if the lively days of the 20s were spurred by a booming economy, a depression put a definite chill on the social scene of the 1930s.
Freud had an influence among some groups, certainly, but in the 20s I think it would have been restricted to a social elite. Psychoanalysis, infantile sexuality, and all that would have embarrassed to death the average rural, small town American (which was a big chunk of the population).
Here's a song from 1926 which substantiates your observations.
I don't see what people could really care about beyond what is experienced while in this world.
If a person is more concerned about his or her personal survival after death, and the nature of that (supposing for the sake of argument that there is such) than about the poverty, injustice, suffering etc. they experience either personally or observed others experiencing, then, considering that the former concern is over something we can only irrationally believe we could do anything about, and the latter is something we can definitely do something about if we have the will, then would we not have to conclude that he or she is impractical? Doesn't true spirituality consist above all in practicality (in the Kantian sense)?
Can it be logically consistent to assume that there could be a "higher aim" for sex, or anything else at all in the absence of an assumption that there is an infinite intentional intelligence and will, or, in other words a personal God? In order that our lives could have a "higher meaning" would there not have to have been an infinite transcendent deliberation that determines it? How else could we make sense of it? What could a "spiritual realm" even be without an infinite intentional intelligence and will that determines it's value and meaning?
None of these questions are intended to suggest that there could not be a human meaning to human life; a meaning that could be more than merely subjective; that could be objective in the sense of being rational and intersubjective, or perhaps better, transsubjective. Such a human meaning could of course be coherently understood to be amply spiritual, but not in any sense of afterlife or unseen "spiritual realms", but rather only in the phronetic sense of this-worldly ethics.
I am also not suggesting that there is no God, in the fully personal sense; I am, for the purposes of this argument remaining agnostic about that. The question that concerns me is how the notion of "higher purpose" could be made coherent in the absence of the presumption of a personal God.
Then you too are guilty of a No True Scotsman. Sex is sex, and need not be about "deep individuation" (whatever that means). That's just an invented notion which suits your personal feelings.
I've been called worse.
Quoting Sapientia
Isn't everything?
Quoting John
That would make an interesting discussion.
Yes I do. That's obvious.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Haha, no, getting off is not an abstraction, and it's certainly not a myth. It's an activity that happens all the time. No doubt someone, somewhere, is getting off on porn right now.
This is indeed about getting off, but it isn't [I]just[/I] about that, and I haven't said otherwise. It is obviously about the people in the video as well. They, and what they are doing, is of course what the viewer is getting off [i]on[/I], and the act wouldn't make sense without that aspect.
Your entire reply is based on a big misunderstanding of my position.
I'm not calling [I]you[/I] anything, so don't make out as though that was a personal attack. It is a criticism of the position you just said that you agree with, without qualification.
Quoting Wayfarer
But there are [i]already[/I] concepts for such things, and it is a fallacy to personally adapt them to conveniently rule out perceived faults of which you disapprove, so that sex doesn't "truly" count as sex unless it fits this model, or ideal, of yours.
But you're missing a key factor here; sex work often involves an element of manipulation, and sexual manipulation tends to be deeper and more emotionally scarring than, for instance, a simple workplace situation of "we know you signed up to dig holes, but we need to you excavate some caverns" (horrible, off the top of my head example). "Digging holes -> excavating caverns" is not analogous to "sexy photo shoot -> sucking dick and fucking without a condom with someone you've never met", for instance. The former just requires more skill; the second requires an intensification of human intimacy which the worker may not be prepared for. An 18 year old girl getting lured into the business of sex work is a different situation than a basic dude without much prospects trying to figure out if he should work in the factory or as a custodian. The 18 year old guy without much prospects (but plenty of muscle and testosterone) has way more social potential within the work force to begin at an entry level factory/etc job, and then, if he applies himself, move up into higher paying jobs, all the while, offering his simple physical labor for a decent wage. As a side note, he's surely less susceptible (though not immune) to sexual harassment all throughout this process. This is not analogous to women being lured into the business of sex work. At this point, Sapentia will cackle out something about "you really think all female porn stars are lured into porn work? I just spat up my diet coke reading that." Not exactly, no. But take a second, and try practicing some empathy here. Imagine yourself as an 18 year old woman, a 21 year old woman, or whatever. You don't have much prospects. You know you have the body that guys want. You have an average straight female sexuality, (read: much different than straight male sexuality...I really shouldn't need to spell that out, but I start to wonder); maybe you're bi-curious even, just to be progressive. Now, you've just graduated high school, or there abouts. Where are your parents? What's there influence on your life at this point? So anyway, at this point, you're either aware that you can go into the sex business, or you're not aware. If you're aware, what are your feelings about this option? I'm not telling you what they should be; I'm suggesting that you put yourself in her shoes and imagine (wait, this isn't philosophy! Damn you, Noble Dust. You sentimental dilettante). Ok, now you're not aware that sex work is an option. A pimp approaches you, courts you, makes you feel beautiful, makes you feel a way that other men haven't made you feel before. What's your next move?
Ok, back to the basic factory dude. The mindset of a basic young dude working in the factory is not the same mindset as the 18 year old woman who decides (?) to work in the sex business. For instance, the 18 year old guy may not exactly be a philosopher, but he's used his brawn for the better part of his pubescent years for various basic purposes, so the transition to factory work, or hard labor of some kind, is at least logical. It certainly doesn't pose any amount of emotional scarring on his psyche, given that his work is, at best, only liminally sexual, not gratuitously so. His sexuality is expressed through the use of his strength to perform basic, essential tasks in a factory environment. HIs sexuality is only expressed very marginally here. And it fits with his basic situation in life. But how can we say that the innocent, 18 year old girl, initiated into the sex business, is in an analogous situation? Surely she's learned to use her innocent feminine charms to navigate the world thus far (and this is only assuming innocence, which suggests the sort of gleeful cluelesness that those in favor of porn on a general level, like Sapienta profess). Simple common sense should surely indicate that these are not analogous situations. I continue to be amazed at the brazen, willful blindness to the particulars of what gets sex workers into sex work. There is not a lot of data on the subject, so all we can do is use our best educated hypotheses, and read data from non-profits who have a stake in the claim. But the folks unequivocally in favor of porn seem to begin with the assumption that porn is unequivocally positive, which leads to an inability to even consider the possibility of what actual life would be like in a situation where sex work suddenly came unto one's horizons. Furthermore, considering that most of the small amount of data available is provided by non-profits in favor of helping people with porn problems, those unequivocally in favor of porn are, therefore, basing their arguments on less actual data. As a side note, the sheer amount of sheer opinions being thrown around on both sides here is surely much more than a typical discussion on this forum, which is indicative of the situation.
No one's mother is telling them, at age six "Laura, one day you'll be a fine porn star! A fine one!" (And no, this is not emotional pleading, again. If you find yourself feeling various emotions at this point, that signifies that the analogy is doing its work, and you'd rather not interface with it on a visceral level). There seems to be this utterly unrealistic, (porn-influenced?) meta-narrative of sexually liberated, feminist women joining the sex work force in order to gloriously flaunt their sexuality in front of us strip-club-patron-esque straight men who are apparently applauding their sexual liberation. Or, alternatively, the simple (more accurate) portrayal of sex workers as women who have "no better prospects". If sex workers only join the sex business because they have no other prospects, then our willful participation in their work simply perpetuates that situation; a situation of unrealized potential that straight men benefit from; a situation of objectified women who could otherwise have had more fulfilling careers. And no, it's not analogous to the monotonous life of the factory worker, the cherry-picker, the meter-reader, or whatever. It's a profession that bares the entirety of one's sexuality to strangers. TO STRANGERS.
I'm commeniting on social attitudes towards sexuality and porn from a conservative point of view. The views I express are not exclusive to myself, they are not 'my idiosyncratic view'.
Ha! Simple common sense is simply not on your side in this debate. Your stance is quite far removed from simple common sense, and represents a conceited and convoluted over-intellectualisation.
Ha! Simple common sense is simply not on your side in this debate. Your stance is quite far removed from simple common sense, and represents a conceited and convoluted over-intellectualisation.
Now you're taking things out of context. That wasn't a criticism of a general view, but of a specific comment, which you seemed to express agreement with, and have not denied. There is an important difference between what sex is and how one should view it or go about it. My objection is to the fallacy of confusing these two issues. If you're a conservative, then so be it, but that doesn't mean you have to be illogical.
Took me to task for! :D
Okay, if you say so, Willow. Give yourself a pat on the back. If you don't even understand my position, then you have little hope of "taking me to task" over it.
They should know.
Why are animalistic tendencies demonic or just bad? Do you the say the same for necessary functions like shitting?
From what I've read, the pornography business doesn't operate the same way that prostitution operates. Pornography producers are media businesses with a publicly available address. Most of these businesses operate in the San Fernando Valley area of L.A. They are legal businesses. Prostitution operates everywhere; it is not a legal business (except in Nevada, at least in the U.S.)
Men and women are hired by studios to work in productions. They have sex with the other people in the production. When the production is finished, the job is over. Prostitutes either work alone or are managed by a pimp or madam. They have sex with any and all customers. The job is over when they can no longer 'turn tricks' or they leave.
The thing that pornography and prostitution have in common is that the workers don't receive a fair share of the cash rewards.
Nobody in their right mind plans on being a porn star (it's not the same as being a movie star). Both men and women get into pornography either by chance (a friend who does porn suggests they try it or a producer recruits them) or they seek it out. I don't believe that men or women who perform San Fernando Valley pornography videos are hapless victims, though it is likely that they initially may have unrealistic expectations of stardom.
Quoting Noble Dust
Women in Europe, the US, Australia, etc. have many prospects besides sex work. There are a lot of low status legitimate jobs that an unskilled woman can apply to and have a good chance of getting hired for. They are not pleasant jobs, but they do pay regular wages. That there are a lot of unpleasant, low skill, low pay, jobs is not great, but there are alternatives.
But that's not a criticism of sex work. That's a criticism of sexual manipulation and its prevalence, which is understandably objectionable, whatever the context. Especially if it's something as drastic as your example. Although it's possible that what you might deem to be manipulation, might just be encouragement. You should recognise that your assessment of such things is from the perspective of a subject interpreting events, and may well be biased. (In fact, I think that your use of loaded language throughout this discussion is quite a strong indication of bias). You most likely do not have access to [i]all[/I] of the facts or intricacies involved. Consider things from another perspective: as a porn director, it would be part of your job to get the most out of the actors you work with through encouragement, incentives, and so on. That is understandable and to be expected.
But again, it ultimately boils down to personal responsibility. If you allow yourself to cave in, consent, and go through with something that you're not really comfortable doing, and do not really want to do, then you're culpable to some extent. The question is then whether or not there are extenuating circumstances. There are laws in place relating to these kind of situations for good reason. Both employers and employees need legal protections in place so that neither are done an injustice. Problems like this require practical solutions, and your approach doesn't seem to take that into account. Anyone can interpret something as an injustice, but mere subjective interpretation is more prone to error than something practical and concrete, like a legal document showing that someone has given signed consent.
Quoting Noble Dust
I [i]am[/I] empathetic. You don't need to go into all of that detail to try to inspire empathy in me. People make mistakes, and regret those mistakes, and sometimes others involved are partly to blame. Coercion is wrong. I will not, and have not, denied that. And we've all been young and naive at some point in our lives. However, once you turn eighteen, you become an adult, and take on all of the responsibilities that that entails. That is more or less as it should be.
I wasn't saying getting off was an abstraction. My point was your understanding of sexual desire abstracts other people out.
You take sexual desire out of the context of other people, turning into something that's only between them and their own genitals.
The problem is NOT that you specifically claimed sex or porn isn't about other people. It's that your understanding of sexual desire doesn't include other people. It's what you are leaving out that's the problem.
When I suggested people ought to think of porn actors as people, you scoffed like it was disconnected from the act of watching porn. You treated like thinking about others as people was some "higher" concern, somehow conflicted with a brute desire to get off-- like my argument was suggesting an irrelevance in the face of a need to watch an object and get off.
People are never objects, not even when someone else is looking at them for pleasure.
To find someone attractive, look at them and feel aroused or desire to have sex with them is NOT objectification. There is simply never an object present, only a person. When sexual desire involves others, whether for sex or just entertainment, a person wants other people.
The mere object which brings sexual arousal doesn't exist. When watching porn, it's people getting us off, not a mere object of a hot body doing sexy things.
That argument makes no sense. If coercion is wrong, it doesn't matter if your eighteen or thirty-five? or a hundred. You are treating coercion like it's the victim's responsibility, as if it were a "mistake" they made and so it's fine for it to happen.
I can't endorsed Noble Dust's infantalisation of women and sex workers, but they're right about your lack of empathy.
Consider the situation he talks about, where a women is coerced or manipulated into doing things she doesn't want, by flattery, promise of worth or riches. Is this fine? Yes, according to you, she just should have known better.
But what of the responsibility of the porn producers and audience to women who might work in the industry? Shouldn't they have been honest with this woman about what the porn industry involves, told here the truth of how far its adoration, worth or riches goes, rather than considering it just enough to get her to say "Yes."?
Sure; we all should, including yourself. There's no way to assess anything other than as a subject interpreting events.
Quoting Sapientia
Again, no one does. This isn't an argument.
Quoting Sapientia
When someone manipulates another person, how is the victim culpable? Resistance to manipulation stems from personal autonomy, not personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is on a spectrum based on a person's level of autonomy. A mentally handicapped adult without much autonomy doesn't have the same responsibility of a mentally healthy adult, for instance. The ability of people to be autonomous individuals varies widely, based on a bunch of factors, and their level of expected personal responsibility stems from that.
What have you read on this? I'd be interested to read it as well.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The reason I bring up prostitution in relation to porn isn't because of legality. As I said elsewhere, I'm not in favor of some sort of law against porn. I'm tentatively in favor of legalizing prostitution as well. I'm more concerned that porn and prostitution may have a link, and sex trafficking is a business that operates within prostitution. Plus, in a way, porn is like an evolution of prostitution.
The pornography business is a sleazy topic which mainline media rarely cover, and about which few serious books are written, besides books and articles which attack the product, the customers, and the and the producers.
So, if you want to know more about the adult business, I'd start with two adult entertainment business sites xbiz.com and avn.com [adult video news] for starters. These are not "porn sites" but since they are about the porn business, you might not want to peruse these sites with the family (depending on what your family is like).
You'll have to sleuth your way into this information.
btw, On May 11, xbiz.com had an article on "ethical porn".
Do you mean an operational, or business link--like pimps produce porn? Or, a link in that whatever leads one to try porn might lead them to try prostitution?
I think there is, quite possibly, a link. For instance, in Minneapolis, prior to 1993, the principle owner of porn shops was also involved in several whorehouses, to use an old fashioned term (they were, officially, "health clubs"). Some of his porn shops featured strip shows that involved contact through a window -- whether this led to prostitution later, don't know. Some gay and straight porn stars reported turning tricks before or after getting into the porn business.
Human trafficking for purposes of prostitution has been well established both as a criminal practice and as a law enforcement problem for quite some time. Whether adding porn production to a trafficked woman's to do list happens, or not, I don't know.
Certainly, if porn were produced under the same terms as human trafficking or forced prostitution, then that product would be far too morally contaminated to be acceptable as a product for commercial sale.
You're imagining things...
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree, because this term, "object", is ambiguous. You should stop using that term and replace it with what you really mean to say. That would be helpful. Obviously people are people, and not inanimate objects, like a chair. But people can be, and often are, used as a means to an end, and this is often quite ordinary and not immoral. There was the example given of the musician for hire, and there are plenty of other examples which could be given. Those who object in this particular case of porn actors need to explain why this is some sort of special exception.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Then what [I]is[/I] objectification?? What do you mean?? Saying something obvious, like that it's a person in the video, does absolutely nothing. No one is thinking otherwise. A man is a person and so is a woman. People are people. People have bodies. People are not objects like chairs or pianos. It is people who are in porn videos, not objects. People, including those who watch porn, are not so stupid as to fail to realise these truisms.
Here were go again, reading into something I've said, rather than addressing it directly. Please stop interpreting how I'm treating things, and address what I've actually said. Or at least seek clarification before diving in head first. Because you're not doing a very good job of it.
I said that coercion is wrong, and I meant what I said. These cases are an exception. Whether someone is responsible, or to what degree, is a complex issue, and should be treated on a case-by-case basis, and all of the circumstances would have to be taken into account. I'm not part of the legal profession and neither are you. We're not part of a jury who has been presented with all of the details. So it is harder to make an impartial judgement with regards to matters such as culpability, extenuating circumstances, innocence and guilt. And I'm not just talking in a legal sense, but in a philosophical sense also. I'm just using the legal system, with its methodology and concepts, as a point of reference.
Well, ultimately, yes. But there's more to it than that. For example, there's a big difference between what some guy on a philosophy forum happens to think, and the kind of investigation carried out by the police.
Quoting Noble Dust
It's not a matter of all or nothing, it's a matter of the extent to which we have knowledge or evidence, and, with regards to the latter, its strength. It's about the difference between what might largely amount to speculation and views firmly grounded upon evidence.
Quoting Noble Dust
I've already acknowledged that there can be varying degrees of culpability, and that there can be extenuating circumstances. For someone to have no autonomy at all, and therefore no personal responsibilty at all, in such situations would be an exceptional case, I think. I was speaking more in general. Generally, you'd be responsible for what you consent to. That's a personal choice. But, of course, if, say, someone has a gun to your head, then that will make a big difference.
Objectification is ignoring that others are people whose well-being is important, in favour of understanding and using them as objects to achieve your desire. It's not about being sexually aroused be someone. Nor is it about desiring a sexual relationship. It's not even about wanting to see sexy images of someone.
The problem is when understanding and concern for another person are not present, when someone understands an exchange between two people is only about getting what they desire. In pornography and sex, this means considering other people, their desires, their well-being, rather than just arousal, activity or entertainment someone wants for themselves.
If someone is looking for a hookup, it means not just searching for someone who says "Yes," but someone else who wants to have sex with them. The goal is not for them to "get some." It's to engage in an act which benefits the well-being of someone else.
The same is true of pornography. If someone is producing or watching pornography, they ought to be concerned about the well-being of the people involved. Yes, the pornography is about making money (for the producer) and feeding desire (for viewers), but it's also (if people are ethical) about the well-being of people performing it. Both the producer and viewer ought to understand pornography is not just about making money or obtaining pleasure, but an expression of the well being of the performers.
One does not watch porn (if they are non-objectifying and ethical) just to, as you crudely put it, to "get off." They do so to engage in a mutual interaction which benefits both their well-being (which includes, in most instances, getting off) and the well-being of any actors involved. Just as hookups are defined by finding someone else whose well-being benefits, producing or watching pornography (as least the ethical sort) is about benefiting the well-being of someone else (the performers involved).
So the question here isn't legal. The law is frequently a blunt instrument. It simply can't deal with the range of issues and understanding which come in human relationships. Ethics is what matter to us.
Instead of making "bad faith" arguments that "the law says..." or "but they chose it..," we can think deeper. We can consider the other person and their well-being, rather than just what the law allows us to do and how we can manipulate the situation to gain the most personal benefit. At certain points we can say, when we recognise the other people we are dealing with: "Well, that is legal, and they might of said "yes," but in circumstances their well-being isn't going to benefit. This action I'm about considering will cause them harm, despite it being legal and them agreeing to it. It's my ethical responsibly not to harm them, even it means giving up what I want."
When they're objectified, yes (and it's highly immoral).
This is the deep set myth of objectification I'm talking about. Is it "objectification" merely to work for someone, give something to another person or follow someone's instruction? No, it's not. Simply hiring a musician doesn't amount to objectification. Nor does hiring a sex worker. To hire someone doesn't mean objectification.
An employee is only treated as a means to an end if the employer (and consumer) understands and treats them that way. What do you think it says about your position that it reads mere employment as objectification, as if wanting, desiring or asking something or someone else amounted to treating them as a means to an end? Can you not recognise they, even if you want or demand something from them, are their own person who has a well-being that's more than just whether you reach your business goals?
A musician for hire isn't objectified unless their boss is ignoring their well-being--i.e. misleading them about the nature of the work, making false promises about what the role will gain them, setting impossible deadlines, demanding the musician work to the expense of health and relationships, etc.
So no-one is making an expectation for porn actors. People in any other line of work can be objectified just as badly (and frequently are).
The problem I have with the argument about objectifying the men or women performing in a pornography product is that I am not interacting with the actors. I am separated from the actors by time and space. I am viewing a video recording of the actors. I can not interact with the actors. The actors are not interacting with me. Pornography is not a live conference call. The actors on screen might have been dead for 40 years (there's lots of vintage porn for sale). The actors can not reach forward in time and across space to me, nor I to them.
At the time the production is made, the producers, cameramen, actors, fluffers (they help the guys get an erection if that turns out to be a problem), catering, and so forth have a relationship. That relationship can not/does not extend to viewers.
All media productions -- dramatic film, advertisements, radio shows, television soap operas, Eurovision broadcasts, educational television programs, etc. all have the same limitation: What is on the roll of film or the spool of video tape, or in digital memory, is static. What I see on television, even if it's a live broadcast, is a flat image that I can not literally affect and that can not respond to me. No relationship carries forward from the warm bodies and bright lights of the studio.
The most we can do is respond imaginatively to the static image. That's all.
Positing that the viewer ought to be concerned about the wellbeing of the real characters on the screen seems like a truly monumental misapprehension of what media is, and how it works. WOD, when you go to a movie, or watch Transparent, or Orange is the New Black, or BBC Masterpiece Theater, Formula One racing, Soccer, Cricket, Rugby, or Croquet on TV--whatever you watch--do you really think about the actual wellbeing of all the people who played the characters you might see? How does that work for you?
It simply does not matter what the viewer thinks about the performer: the performer is not present in the image.
So are you critiquing my response here, or critiquing your own statement? vis:
Quoting Sapientia
____
Quoting Sapientia
Where did I suggest an all or nothing attitude, and what "firmly grounded" evidence can you provide for your views about porn in this context?
Quoting Sapientia
I don't think a general case of an 18 year old woman going into the porn business would be analogous to a general example of personal responsibility (what does that even mean?).
In other words, what exactly amounts to general here?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/
There's also been a recent documentary called Hot Girls Wanted that looks at the lives of some of those in the business - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4382552/
But people can be used as a means to achieving desire in many ways without ignoring that their wellbeing is important. So, yet again, this is not a criticism specific to the porn industry, or the activity of porn watching. It is a criticism of a certain way in which some, but not all, people in those kind of situations think or act.
Also, I think that considerations of wellbeing should be looked at in a context of reasonable expectation. What would and would not be reasonable to expect of people who watch porn? It would be reasonable to expect people to go to porn sites which they believe to be legitimate, that is, law abiding. It would be reasonable to expect people to make a conscious effort to avoid any material that they believe to amount to abuse or that is suspect, and to report it. It would not be reasonable to expect people to reach conclusions about whether or not a porn actor has been manipulated, coerced, or mistreated without sufficient evidence, and it would not be reasonable to expect people to take highly impractical and inappropriate steps towards these concerns, such as, for example, attempting to contact a porn actor to check if they're alright. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect people to give up porn just because there are some less than ideal cases, or just because some people find it distasteful, or just because some people disapprove. There would have to be a very good reason, and this would have to amount to more than speculation or a certain point of view.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
What do you expect? I think that it's unreasonable to expect one to be in a constant mode of empathy and moral concern over everything. People are not obliged to be a sort of moral police force, ever vigilant for wrongdoing. People can and should simply get on with life, and do the ordinary things that they do, like watch a film, play a game, jack off to porn, without having to submit to the expectations of do-gooders all the time. Life's too short and you only live once. You have to draw the line somewhere, since striving for moral perfection is not a realistic or reasonable goal. I mean, you could kick up a fuss over virtually anything: you shouldn't eat at McDonald's because of such-and-such, you shouldn't play videogames because of so-and-so, you shouldn't shop at this store or that one because of such-and-such. Oh no, you shouldn't watch that, listen to that kind of music, or play that sport, or associate with those people, or do this or that or anything much at all really, because someone, somewhere might have some sort of complaint.
I think that our differences on this issue reflect two different ways of thinking: idealistically and pragmatically. Your thinking reflects the former, whereas mine reflects the latter. You want people to think and feel in a special way which conforms with your ideals, whereas I think that actions are more important. I think that to adopt the kind of thinking and feeling that you endorse would in many cases amount to a difference that makes no difference. Jacking off to porn is jacking off to porn - however you rephrase it (e.g. by using terms such as "personal expression" or something along those lines, which may give a different impression. I may put it crudely, but I believe in straight talking) - whether you do so in the normal way, with the kind of thoughts and feelings which are appropriate and to be expected, or whether you do so with the additional considerations that you endorse. If the end result is the same, then it doesn't make any real difference. That only the latter would gain your approval is not something that I care about.
As for harm, the first step would of course be to ensure that there is good enough reason to believe that harm has indeed been caused, rather than just imagined. Then one must assess the significance, and how any actions would or would not have a harmful effect. Then weigh this against other factors which merit consideration, and so on. So, it's not so simple or straightforward, and I think that a lot of cases wouldn't pass these tests.
The same standard should apply to both positions. But you're the one who's been making a positive argument, whereas I've largely been questioning and criticising it in comparison to such a standard. If you're claiming that harm has been done, or that manipulation or coercion is involved, then you have a burden to back that up, and I'm giving you an idea of what I consider to be weak evidence and strong evidence.
Quoting Noble Dust
I said that you most likely do not have access to all of the facts, and you replied that no one does. My comment could have perhaps been better worded, as you took my comment too literally, and so missed the point, which was attempting to get you to think about how well equipped one may or may not be to judge such a matter in different contexts. This relates to method: what have you done, or perhaps failed to do, in reaching your conclusion? What kind of hand have you got? A pair of aces or diddly squat? Don't try to switch the focus back on me. The burden lies with you.
Quoting Noble Dust
Why not? I think that it's analogous to many other situations and is not unique in this respect. For example, if I decide to get a tattoo, sign a disclaimer, and then later regret what I've done, then, all things being equal, I'm to blame. The porn situation is essentially no different. I mean, you could assume that some kind of coercion or whatever must have been involved, but that'd just be begging the question and failing to act in accordance with a key tenet in jurisprudence, which is the presumption of innocence - commonly expressed as 'innocent until proven guilty'. There are plenty of 18 year old women who don't go into the porn business, and - believe it or not - not all who do are victims or damsels in distress who need a white knight to fight on their behalf. Circumstances can of course vary, and in some cases exceptions should be made in light of them, but age and gender alone do not a smoking gun make.
In general, people are responsible for their actions. That's a fundamental ethical assumption, and important in other respects as well, such as in terms of practicality. That you can throw spanners into the works by altering a generalised hypothetical situation by introducing specific and potentially game-changing factors doesn't really make that any less so, because you'd have to sacrifice that generality we began with, and we'd be talking about something else: something more specific. That would be to move the goal posts.
Unless one suffers from the lamentable condition which the Greeks knew as 'akrasia', or weakness of will, which manifests as 'acting against one's better judgement'. That is precisely what is at stake in respect of this particular matter, because porn has an enormous pull, and is highly habit-forming. The upshot is, many who would like to walk away from it, or never have anything to do with it, are quite unable to do so. That is why there is an entire genre of literature, and forms of therapy, and websites devoted to, 'porn addiction'. Because such habits undermine your ability to be 'responsible for your actions'. It's like gambling or cigarette or alchohol addiction, but in this case, what suffers is the ability to have meaningful intimacy with a significant other (quite aside from the well-known issue of porn-induced erectile dysfunction which is now quite prevalent among young males.)
The other point that needs to be made, is that it's one thing to oppose censorship on the grounds of 'freedom of expression', and another to defend porn as porn. You can argue that it is up to individuals as to what imagery they decided to consume - indeed it may well be - but to then argue that there is no intrinsic difference between highly sexualised imagery, and any other kind of imagery, is blurring a critical distinction.
The point isn't about what you think about from second to second watching actors. I'm not talking about setting down, watching pornography and thinking: "Oh what a wonderful time the actors are having" at every moment. That's just distracting. Most people would get taken out of the narrative on screen. If one is watching a film, one does not jump up and down saying: "Oh what a wonderful time the actors had making it." It's effectively the audience breaking the forth wall.
My point is about something else entirely. Since we know media representations are a production and fictional, we always relate to them as more than images. We get home from a movie, talk about how great the production was, how hot the actors were, how the actors, writers and/or directors did such a great of producing media. Ideas about the status of the people who produce media we enjoyed form in our head.
We think about them in relation to ourselves and desires, whether they a skilled, how they are supposed to act given our love (or hatred) for them, what they are meant to do or do not for us, how they are meant to be treated by audiences, producers and fans. In consuming media, they are giving us something and we are taking from their efforts, so we understand and recognise as people with a status in reference to ourselves.
What is this status? Do we recognise the people we are watching have well-being that's important? Are we going to take them seriously as other people? Are we going to have concern they are treated ethically? Are we going to recognise they are people who exist beyond merely appearing on a screen to give us pleasure?
When I say objectification runs deep, I'm talking about the sort of response you've given here. You take my point, which is about how we think about the performers we watch outside of the representation on screen, and treat it like I'm some idiot confusing representations with reality. Instead of recognising you know media representations are produced, so you have thoughts regarding the people who made it and what they mean, you pretend you're only thinking about an image on a screen. Objectification. More than that even, you use the fact you are thinking about a representational image to pretend this objectification is somehow necessary or unavoidable, as if one couldn't think about a image on its own terms and then, at a different time, consider the people who produced it and their well-being.
It absolutely does matter what the viewer thinks of the performer. Not in the sense of changing or influencing something that's already made, but in terms of respect and basic decency given to other people, which impacts what other people think of the performer and the actions other take towards them going forward.
You mean jerkin' the gherkin, floggin the log, chokin' the chicken, whitewater wristing, oiling the mutton dagger, poppin' the purple pimple, grippin' the gristle?
Oh, yeeaahhh!! As Bob Hawke once said "I think we're gonna have to take a long, hard look at this issue".
Seriously, though, you're coming off as a bit priggish here. Better to lighten up, and take the load off, I would say. ;)
Yes, I accept that there can be problems similar to those you get with gambling, smoking, and drinking. But my position is the same with those as it is with porn, which means that there are lines which should not be crossed with regards to liberty and scapegoating. I am in favour of practical solutions that can help with these kinds of problems without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. For example, I'm in favour of the limits that have been placed on advertising which promotes cigarettes, and I am in favour of those adverts designed to increase awareness of the problems with drinking, smoking and gambling. I don't smoke and have a low opinion of smoking. But I wouldn't make the blanket statement that no one should smoke or that smoking is bad (in a strictly ethical sense, not in the sense that it is bad for your health).
Quoting Wayfarer
I accept both of those distinctions. I would object to censorship [i]and[/I] defend porn as porn, and that's exactly what I've been doing. And, although there is a distinction between highly sexualised imagery and other kinds of imagery, that doesn't mean that true analogies can't be made. They can and have.
What baby? Rosemary's? >:)
Quoting anonymous66
Privacy is meant to be provided and assured by society, not dictated, meaning it is up to us what to keep personal and what to make public.
Quoting anonymous66
I argue that the porn industry's actions and/or intentions don't define pornography, that you confuse pornography with sexual objectification and that the porn industry doesn't really promote such sexual objectification as much as it reinforces it. The last may seem just a pointless argument about semantics but what I mean is that demand makes porn as objectifying as it is, it's not an inherent trait of porn itself.
You talk about porn as seeming wrong to you. I ask you: why is that? My guess is that you either don't understand its purpose, thinking any sexual activity should be reserved for procreation or that, at the opposite pole, you view sex as more than baby-making, like as an expression of passion and most porn out there fails to support that view, being as dispassionate as it is, and so becomes revolting.
I was watching an [url=https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-whq04sQFKA]Owen Jones video on YouTube[/URL] yesterday, and in it, right at the start, he gave a good example of objectification, and it was immediately clear to me what was wrong about it: "Objectifying two of the most powerful women in the country, talking about - not what they stand for - but about their legs".
But there's quite obviously a big difference between that and porn. A porn actor is not a prime minister. The former has [i]chosen[/I] to use his or her body as a sexualised object of desire. The former is doing so [i]purposefully[/I]. In the former context, it is entirely [i]appropriate[/I] to react in this sort of way.
Scapegoating undermines a serious issue and a worthy cause. Doing so makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution.
What are you suggesting is the purpose of pornography?
There are no true statements of the form "M is always about x," at least not when we're talking about at least a handful of people doing and thinking about M.
What makes M about x is that S thinks about M in a particular way--namely, so that S associates M with x. M is only about x insofar as that's the case. Otherwise M is about something else.
I don't agree that there's anything wrong with that--anymore than there would be to only focus on "what they stand for" and not focus on their legs. It's just two different aspects of them as people. You can't focus on every aspect at any one time, and there are no correct/incorrect aspects to focus on, no objectively more or less important aspects, etc.
Wouldn't the world be a better place without the passions?
This reminds me of a conversation wherein my interlocutor said, "I don't care about the exploited workers at McDonald's.... so, why would I care about exploitation in the porn industry?"
Maybe we should care about exploitation, no matter where it occurs.
From where I'm sitting, some are saying, "wouldn't the world be a better place if we could get rid of [all of] the passions?"
And some are saying, I don't care about passion X, so why would I care about passion Y?" Or maybe they're saying, "I don't care about passion X in situation Y, so why would I care about passion X in situation Z?"
If there is a passion (harmful emotion) involved with porn... let's be honest about it.
Honestly, anonymous66, I've tried very, very hard to get off watching industry films of exploited McDonald's workers, and try as I might, I didn't get even a tingle in my dick. I didn't get a tingle in my conscience either, because it isn't the case that McDonald's employees are necessarily exploited. They are doing relatively skinless work for (usually) less than an 8 hour shift less than 5 days a week and their wages are often quite adequate for that kind of work.
A parent may not be able to support themselves and a child on McDonald's wage and hourly arrangement, but that is becoming increasingly true of many low-skilled jobs. Under capitalism, one should keep one's expectations low. If you want to pursue great expectations, then you should become a socialist like me.
Quoting anonymous66
It would certainly be a better place without some of them, at least. Any chance of getting rid of them?
People are always thinking about other in the context of sex and porn. The activity involves the direction of thoughts, desires and actions towards other people.
To want to have sex with someone is to think of them. Watching someone on screen is to consider an image of their body. In any case, their is the significance of another person on someone's mind, even when someone is thinking "Wow, that's a hot body I'm attracted to."
Desire, attraction and pleasure towards others always involves thinking about someone else. That's what makes it different from just looking at an image (e.g. a picture of a fictional person) or merely involving yourself (e.g. just masturbating on your own, with no tights about anyone in particular).
I'm not saying a handful of people are thinking about others in this context. My point that *everyone* is doing so in this context. It's entailed in thinking, desiring or acting in a way that involves another person-- this doesn't change just because someone insists "I'm only looking at an image" or "It's just about my own pleasure." In either case, said person is still thinking about someone else.
It's wrong given the context. Given the context, it's inappropriate and degrading. There [i]are[/I] right and wrong aspects to focus on in different contexts, and this can be illustrated with numerous examples in which there would be broad consensus. I'm not suggesting that the consensus makes it right or wrong, accordingly, but that your personal morality is unusual and less relatable.
I don't agree that it's degrading, though. And yeah, I'm obviously not going to agree that consensus has anything at all to do with it.
I'm also rather anti views of "appropriate"/"inappropriate" behavior with respect to different social contexts--basically, those are views of etiquette.
It's degrading because ogling at their legs takes a serious and important matter down a grade - it drags it into the gutter. And it's disrespectful to frame it in that way when that's clearly not what the meeting was about - they weren't there to show off their legs, they were there to discuss important political matters.
And I do think that consensus is not entirely irrelevant. If you differ drastically from the consensus on moral issues, then there might just be something wrong with you. Morality isn't a matter of anything goes and it isn't entirely personal. I think one needs to look outside of oneself for comparison.
But that a is a "serious and important matter" and b isn't is entirely subjective. Your opinion could just as well be seen as taking the serious and important matter of leg-oggling and degrading it--you feel it's nowhere near as important as other focuses. Different people have different opinons on that, and no one is right or wrong objectively. I'm certainly of the opinion that there's nothing "guttery" about leg-oggling.
What something is about is subjective, too, and the idea that just in case x was about A to S, then all further talk about x must be about A is what I consider purist nonsense. Of course, some people would prefer to talk about A in relation to x, and that's not wrong objectively, but it's not right, either.
Morality is in no way determined by consensus. There is no right or wrong morality objectively. It's just what individuals feel is right or wrong. It is entirely personal. And that, which isn't itself a moral claim, is a fact.
This comment was made on a different frequency than references to the legs of political leaders, but has the same effect of 'taking them down a few pegs'.
So if you can't focus on every aspect of the two women all the time, it's just as valid to focus on their legs as it is the political issues at hand because there's no objective right or wrong?
The daily mail is meant to be.. Oh. It would be wrong if the daily mail was meant to be a proper newspaper. But it's utter prurient garbage. Is it 'not wrong' for the daily mail to subtly sexualise children because there's no objective right or wrong? Or is that just another aspect by which one can view children, no more or less valid than any other?
That's not at all how I use the word "valid." That use of the word "valid" seems like a category error to me.
But in any event, I'm fine with anyone focusing on whatever they'd like to focus on.
Nope. Not at all. You're wrong that I'm wrong about that.Quoting Sapientia
Correct. And that it's not coincidence that large scale agreement occurs has absolutely no bearing on whether ethical judgments are entirely subjective.
Quoting Sapientia
Intersubjectivity doesn't amount to anything aside from the fact that people can agree with each other from a behavioral perspective. In other words, Joe can say, "I feel it's morally wrong to disagree with anything Terrapin Station says" and Bob can say, "Yes, I agree." Intersubjectivity amounts to nothing more than that.
Moral judgements are entirely subjective.
Number 1. Watching porn is alike watching a gladiator fight, in the sense that in the production of it many people are generally harmed in quite irreversible ways. We can talk about both spiritual/psychological and social harm. For example, someone who has been a porn actor will have a difficult time raising normal children. The kid will go to school, and his mates will be like "Oh wow, your momma sucks it quite well! ;) " - and if the kid is a girl, then she'll be treated like the town bicycle, everyone will want a ride.
So yes - there is quite some pleasure to extract out of watching people do things that you'd never do yourself - whether this is fighting to the death, or shagging in public, or whatever other fantasy you have. Why? Because it's fulfilling your desire, without paying the cost that is normally associated with that fulfilment. Other people - the actors are paying the costs for you. So it's a way of doing things you'd never be able to do in real life. For example, a woman may fantasise about being shagged by 10 guys, but there are some costs associated with that in real life. She's not going to want to go through with that, but she can easily fulfil that fantasy through porn. This is oppression - gaining something at the expense of others.
Number 2. In an age dominated by sexual obsessions, most porn watchers are victims who, once in the cycle, find it hard to escape. It's nice to watch porn. I mean you have so many hot chicks a single click away - you can have variety, you can experiment with different races, different colours, married women, virgins, bisexuals - anything you can imagine! And there's no charge - you know, they don't want you to do anything in return, they don't protest, they start/stop when you dictate, etc. If you are a hedonist, you'd do well to stop dating other women/men, and just get yourself properly into porn my man! You'll achieve more pleasure than you can ever imagine, at no cost! Enough with the chasing women, losing time, etc. Just tune in to the porn!
But - porn keeps you sexually obsessed and doesn't permit you to focus adequately on other things in your life. You will not learn to value and respect other women or men. You will not develop a kind of love that transcends mere sexual expression. Instead you'll become very self-centered, always oriented after your own pleasure.
Number 3. Porn has long-standing effects on the brain, which have been neuro-biologically studied. These are actual structural changes that happen in the brain due to watching porn. Porn leads to:
• Decreased Willpower
• Numbed Pleasure Response
• Sexual Hyper-reactivity
Please do yourself a favour and watch this video:
Since the effects of porn are subtle, people who are addicted to porn (watch it frequently) don't even realise what they're missing out on.
Number 4. From within the life of porn, things look good. You're banging the hottest chicks on the planet, seeing tens of hot, steamy, naked women in minutes, all the while you're flapping that bird like there's no tomorrow! But from without, things look very different. I will allow this Buddhist story to speak for me:
It is the case that Porn has effects on the brain, but -- quite seriously -- so does everything else. Learning French, driving a car in heavy traffic, walking in the forest, swimming in a lake, arguing with your boss, feeding a baby, writing a book, singing, studying music -- it all has an effect -- and quite possibly an enduring effect. "And all these effects have been neuro-biologically studied"
Not only that, but everything you have ever done so far had a significant effect on the brain, and THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. The brain contains a record of our lives so far.
So, porn having an effect on the brain is saying no more than riding a bike for 2 hours has an effect on the brain,.
Which means that among other things, you're assuming that:
(a) kids are watching so much porn that they have a veritable mental catalog of porn actors at their disposal
(b) most fellow students know everyone's parents, and
(c) most porn actors are very easy to recognize in person
It clearly isn't if you know what the words valid and category error mean. Is it 'acceptable' for papers to be objectifying female politicians? No. Is it 'acceptable' for papers to be talking about children in sexually suggestive language as if they were adults? No. Unless you have some personal definition of 'valid' peculiar only to you, or you're deliberately using it in another sense to contrive a category error, it's not a category error.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Even if it's the sexual objectification of children in a national tabloid. Wow. This is your brain on moral relativism.
Look TED talks are not the equivalent of a peer-reviewed journal, or even just serious science journalism. The presenters may be experts in their field, but they are presenting a combination of "speech to inform" and "speech to persuade". So all of these fairly brief, quite punchy, slick, fast-talking lecturers are all over the Internet, and the lion's share of what they have to say is being taken at face value.
One of my favorite Ted talks, A STROKE OF INSIGHT by Jill Bolte Taylor is really informative and inspiring. BUT, a paragraph of fine print is missing from the talk. After her massive stroke, Ms. Bolte Taylor couldn't tell shit from shinola. It took her something like 8 to 10 years of intense therapy to recover her mental skills. She did not remember the stroke that she is talking about. Rather, the experience was reconstructed. All this is explained in her book.
The point isn't to knock Bolte-Taylor; the point is to suggest caution about swallowing everything in a TED talk, hook, line, and sinker.
Maybe there is less there than one thinks there is.
You've been watching too many TED talks.
An argument is valid or not. Not (interpersonal) behavior.
I'm not of the view that any speech or expression is unacceptable.
So you are using it in another one of its senses so as to make it a category error. Regardless, it doesn't really matter whether I use the word 'valid' or 'acceptable' because you've just admitted you don't have an issue with tabloids sexually objectifying kids because there's no objective right or wrong.
That's not why I don't have an issue with that. I don't reach any personal moral conclusions because of meta-ethical facts. I don't have a problem with it because (a) I think that "objectification" concepts are nonsensical, (b) I'm a free speech absolutist, and (c) I'm very pro-(libertine) sex.
(a) ah, the I-don't-understand-it-so-it-must-be-bullshit-even-though-other-reasonable-people-get-it stance (b) whether people should be allowed to say anything they like has literally nothing to do with whether certain speech acts are moral or not (c) so this includes using sexual language to talk about kids as if they were adults. Gotcha.
Well mine seems to be going very strong BC, so I'm not sure about that. But then I'm not a fan of TED. I rarely if ever watch TED talks, I actually hate them. I just gave that video since it contains references to scientific literature all in one place that you can check by yourself.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes I remember that. That's the story of the gal who has a stroke and somehow manages to dial a friend in time to save herself. Regardless, that was a physical event that she was recounting. In this case, the lecture is based upon scientific studies, which is exactly why I've linked it. It has a lot of resources in one place.
Do you have any reason to question any of the science in it?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well let's see BC, is decreased willpower, numbed pleasure response and sexual hyperreactivity part of those effects you want stuck on your brain? I don't know man, but if that's your cup of coffee, what can I do? ;)
Well, or that it's a nonsensical concept even if you're not the only person fond of it. In other words, whether it's nonsense has nothing to do with how popular it is.
For (b) I didn't say I wasn't issuing a moral stance. That is my moral stance re speech.
For (c), I hate ageism, but otherwise, yes, basically.
Of course they do man! Are you kidding me? Most guys probably watch porn by the age of 10 if not even earlier! For example, the first time I watched porn I was ~12 in a computer room - many guys gathered to see the good shit together my dawg >:O And keep in mind that back then technology was very backward. Now, I can't even imagine! They're probably seeing it even when they're 7!
Quoting Terrapin Station
Okay let me tell you how it happens. Some kid will ask "Umm what's ur mommy and daddy doing?!", and you'll answer. If your mommy is a porn actress, then obviously you won't be like "Oh my mommy shags men on camera". You'll say she's something else, like a pilot for example. Soon the news of that will spread. Sooner or later, people will be coming to your house, etc. etc. and realise that your mommy can't be a pilot or whatever you said. Soon they'll start researching, and be extremely curious why you haven't said the truth. Someone will find out, and you'll be fucked.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Common bro, if there's this absolutely stunning, jaw-dropping girl in your high school or university, what's the first thing you'll do? Research who she is! Maybe she's a model or something, afterall she's too hot! When I was at university that's how one of my friends found out that this girl he wanted to shag had taken nude pictures online. Even though it was under a different name (well nickname really), he still found the pics!
Now imagine that you have this smoking hot mom when you are in school. What will kids do? Research who she is, clearly! Name and address will often be enough to find out a lot of details.
A lot of porn actors' kids probably have no idea what they do for a living. (At least when they're young kids.)
A lot of porn actors aren't unusually hot re how they look going about their mundane business. And it's not so easy to recognize many famous folks in their everyday lives, especially if they're trying to not be recognized. It's more difficult if you're a celebrity on a level where you have paparazzi regularly stalking you, but that's not the vast majority of celebrities, and it's certainly not porn actors.
They will find out man. Kids are very inventive, trust me. If you think you can fool your kids, you're dumb. Kids are always one step ahead of you when it comes to this stuff, because you always underestimate them, while they always overestimate you. They're better prepared.
Quoting Terrapin Station
They certainly have better physiques than your average person, otherwise they wouldn't be in porn in the first place, especially the women.
You know that a huge percentage of porn is fetish porn, including chubby women, mature women, very average looking women, etc., right?
No, I don't watch it, I hope you can tell me more though >:)
I consume plenty of porn, so yeah. You're thinking of more or less a caricatured stereotype.
So you like it watching the meat hit the plate while you bust them nuts in half no? Cooking is an enjoyable activity afterall ;)
I hope you ain't doing it right now mate! Or did my appetising descriptions entice you to go cook up some food?
That's not what I was saying though, is it? My point wasn't that it's true because lots of people believe it. My point was that it's not nonsense because clearly other reasonable people can make sense of it - something you have admitted you can't do.
Quoting Terrapin Station
You said, in other words, that it's morally acceptable for anyone to say anything, no matter how objectionable, because you're a free speech absolutist. I could also be a free speech absolutist, but I could at the same time have extreme moral disagreements with what other people say. You're mixing up two separate things.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Does that mean you don't believe in age of consent laws?
I wasn't saying anything about truth value either. And obviously plenty of folks think the concept makes sense. The slightest bit of critical analysis demonstrates that it doesn't actually make sense, however.
Quoting WhiskeyWhiskers
Yeah, and? That in no way implies that my moral stance on speech isn't that all speech/expression is morally permissible.
Quoting WhiskeyWhiskers
I do not. I'd hinge consent on ability, not age.
My point wasn't that people think about others the same way. It was anytime someone is attracted, desires or intentionally acts towards a person, they are thinking about them. The argument from a porn watcher they are only looking at and thinking about a hot image is first order bullshit. They're thinking about someone else and, in some way, how they are significant.
The same applies to watching women in the media. If someone is watching women in the media and, for example, reducing them just to "hot legs," there is a thought about the significance of a woman and how she is valuable-- not for her policies, her skills, her personhood, but simply that she's legs that got someone aroused.
Objectively, to focus only on someones's in the context of a political and public discourse, is to think about them not as competent or incompetent people who have some significance to politics, but to consider they are only their as hot legs for someone to enjoy.
Problems of objectification have nothing to do with whether someone happens to have one particular trait or not. Nor does it have anything to do with which traits are "more a part" of a person than others. It's always to what someone else thinks of a person. The question isn't about whether polices or hot legs are a more "valid" aspect of a person, it about how someone thinks and relates to a person who has policies and hot legs. Do they recognise her a person who makes legitimate (whether it be good or terrible) policy and has a role governing the country? Or is she dismissed as only legs to get someone off? Or in the case of porn, is an actress recognised as a person who is entertaining a viewer or is she seen as only an object the viewer is entitled to?
The claim that it's bullshit is based on what?
Thanks Nietzsche.
Quoting anonymous66
But what's their purpose? Are they some kind of anomaly? Don't they serve any function?
Large scale agreements occur in totalitarianism as well and yes, they're not pure coincidence but how are they morally valuable?
1. Porn actors are free to change their jobs and porn industry is legal and regulated, the stigma that comes with it is assumed and may be itself the problem.
2. People can make an addiction from virtually anything.
3. You mean: porn as an addiction has long-standing effects on the brain but so does any other addiction.
4. Isn't that such a naive and immature point of view anyway?
Quoting Terrapin Station
(Y)
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Maybe they're not interested in politics, ever thought of that? Objectification comes into play when someone's not recognized as a person which doesn't happen just because their approach and outlook are ignored and focus is on a part of their physical appearance. I'd argue that if you view politicians as just bunches of policies and political views, then you're objectifying them.
What's the impetus for your idea here that porn actors are "free to change their jobs"?
Quoting Noblosh
What does virtually everything entail?
Quoting Noblosh
Yeah...definitely...
The stigma is inevitable.
Quoting Noblosh
So what? Porn is addictive by its very nature, it is impossible to dabble in porn and not be addicted.
Quoting Noblosh
Yes, and we should fight against all addictions, including porn.
Quoting Noblosh
No. Case closed.
Word. Thread closed?...
>:O It would be, but nobody, including the moderators, have the power to close threads :P
Fair enough. Free speech over all.
They do it because they choose to and in the same way they can quit.
They're not forced to do it more than any other wage labourer is.
Quoting Noble Dust
Anything that gives a rush of dopamine and considering how variable and diverse human preferences are, any prefered activity can become an addiction, for example, exercising.
Quoting Noble Dust
Sure.
Quoting Agustino
Why fight against addiction but not against stigma? Isn't addiction also inevitable?
Quoting Agustino
Untrue, where did you even get that idea from?
Quoting Agustino
Yes, but again, it's not as if porn is an addiction in itself.
Quoting Agustino
Then maybe educate people if they themselves can't grasp that much. They need to know the downsides, clear facts, not the theory that it's wicked and deplorable and should be banned, that doesn't tell them much.
Ok, links of studies to drive home your point?
Quoting Noblosh
So are addictions positive? Neutral? Negative?
Quoting Noblosh
The point being: how can we cast a positive light on porn when we also at the same time talk about it as an addictive substance? It's cultural. Cigarettes used to be culturally acceptable, via advertising. We don't exactly advertise about porn yet. Fine. (I'm a cigarette smoker, btw).
Is watching porn inevitable?
Quoting Noblosh
Can you sniff cocaine and not be addicted?
Quoting Noblosh
I have provided you with a video containing the facts. Have you watched it?
If you think I'm wrong you should give me studies to refute my argument and drive home my ignorance.
I don't even get the perception that the porn industry is forceful but I get that it can be overbearing and inconsiderate. But one can argue that the software industry can be like that too.
Quoting Noble Dust
Addictions are defined as negative. Or at least that's how I understand this definition:
As you've conceded by your response, my point is that there are none; or, rather, the only "studies" are those done by groups with a stake in the claim. I find this meaningful when making blanket statements about the state of the porn industry.
Quoting Noblosh
The difference being?
I don't get it, you really want me to educate you on addiction and porn industry?
But I lack the required authority.
Still:
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Noble Dust
Are those rhetorical questions? If yes, you're doing it wrong.
Of course you can sniff and not get addicted, a sniff doesn't transform you in a heroine dependent, and the difference is the same one between being extorted and paying your debts.
You both have strong views on these topics and I'll respect that, I mean myself, and won't start a senseless fight. I think it's a win-win.
Case closed, then?
Quoting Noblosh
Mine isn't.
Quoting Noblosh
How?
Simple, we all have our own beliefs reinforced by such an arrangement.
What arrangement? Hitler had his arrangement of belief. Pol Pot. Ad absurdum.
Where in the hell do you get that from? I've used coke many times throughout the years and I've never become addicted. I'll do it for a day or two if it's around and not even think about it for years. I can always get it, but usually I have better or more important things to do. Porn is the same, I look at it every so often but it's not a obsession, there's probably only a small percentage of people that are porno-maniacs, most of us can self-regulate. I'm not in favor of banning stuff just because a small minority can't control themselves. The vast majority of people that own guns will never shoot anyone, the vast majority of people that drink alcohol won't become addicts or do anything to endanger anyone else, and the vast majority of porn viewers won't develop an unhealthy fixation.
That might have been misinformation. How does it relate to the topic, considering that you dredged up page 2 out of 16, from however long ago? Your underlining of my bad argument does not a good argument of yours make.
Quoting Sivad
You base your personal assessment of porn use off your personal use of coke, then?
Quoting Sivad
Agreed.
Most people aren't addicts, or do you have some numbers to dispute that? I just don't think we should base social policy on protecting of a small minority of dysfunctionals from themselves.
I agree. My argument in this tread, since the beginning (since page 2! which you dutifully dredged up) has not been political; my argument has been ethical.
Btw, I don't have those numbers, but do you? Totally curious.
Yes, that's definitely possible.
That's like squaring the circle pretty much. Two sado-masochists can claim they enjoy cutting each other up, that ain't makin' it true. A cannibal's victim can claim they enjoy being eaten - that ain't makin' it true either.
Just like the cannibal, it's self-deception for someone looking for a hookup to think they're really looking for someone who wants to have amazing, knee-shaking sex with them, as if they were doing that person a favor. A cannibal may also look for someone who wants to be eaten, does that make it more moral somehow, or beneficial for the victim?
Some people - perhaps a majority of people in today's society - are mentally deranged, to one degree or another, regarding hookups. So what makes it fascinating - why would I want to go out to find a random stranger who wants to shag so that I can fuck her brains out for a night? Clearly the pleasure I'd be looking for isn't the pleasure of orgasm, or any purely physical pleasure, cause then I'd just pull up some porn and spank the monkey.
So what is it then? Validation maybe? I want to be sexually validated by another. I want someone else -
preferably a smoking-hot, jaw-dropping beauty that is desired by many other men to validate me as macho, sexy, and strong. I want her to want me, over everyone else. Domination? I want to get her to willingly give herself to me, much like a sacrifice is provided to a God. Beg me to pleasure her, touch her, smell her, taste her. Feeling important? Oh yes, I want to take her to the peaks of pleasure where she can barely breathe anymore and feel myself being associated as the source of that pleasure - as essential to her state, as responsible for it. When she says it's the best few hours of her life, it must be me there - I must be the cause of that. Certainly then I would have provided what no one else could to one person - despite all the disadvantages I had (just knowing her for one night). Excitement and overcoming fear of the unknown? That too. I'm testing my powers, I don't know exactly how it will work out, but when it works out in my favour I feel supremely happy - my strength is validated and affirmed in the world.
Let me switch on to a woman. If I were a woman here's how I'd feel about hookups. I'd enjoy men glancing at my hot body, looking after my skin, being excited when I look back at them, desiring me. I'd enjoy knowing that my body is hot, and can dominate (attract) other men. The more the better. I'd enjoy them squirming to get between my legs, latching onto my each and every word, and desiring me with their entire beings - being willing to do anything for me. As I tease them, I love seeing their eyes burning with desire, ready to swallow me whole. To lie on my back and have a guy worshipping at my temple - that moment I would matter, I would be important, SIGNIFICANT. At least to this one person, I am everything. I may be a tiny and insignificant ant, but to this one person I matter more than all the stars and galaxies put together. My body is so hot and damn it feels so great to have another want me and pump into me. And damn, look at those sexy, strong abs. So hot, so powerful and it's all under my control. Out of all the bitches out there, this guy chose me. I want to drain him completely, I want him to surrender everything he has. I love clinging and moaning to his body, feeling his kisses on my neck, and my hair spread out all over the pillow.
So let's see. We have:
• Validation (both social and sexual)
• Domination
• Feeling Important/Significant
• Excitement
• Feeling Wanted/Needed
Now what the hell is wrong with this seductive train of thought? I can already hear Bitter Crank around being like "Hell yeah that sounds great man! Let's get this shagathon ON!" >:O
The representations above are idealised. They are hookups at their best - no worries about STDs, not worries about pregnancy - none of the actual practicalities and technicalities involved. No actual hookup is likely to live up to the descriptions above.
Now - something becomes clear. Hookups originate and have their being in a lack - in an absence. Their purpose is to fill up an emptiness inside the soul. Someone wants to be validated, to feel strong/powerful (at least sexually), to feel important and significant to another, and to feel wanted and needed. They want to feel like they mean something to another - something deep and powerful.
However, the salient point here is that hookups always involve deception. The people involved always deceive one another that they are able or capable to give to each other what they are each looking for - which is false. That deepest need is the need for strength, power, independence and self-sufficiency. Paradoxically, after the sex one feels like they can get anything they want from the world - as if they were self-sufficient. They feel strong, desired, wanted. But the truth is that they're always at the mercy of the other - they have failed to reach and gain what they were looking for - that's why they feel compelled to repeat the experience. To hit it out on Tinder once again, and take another round. Like playin' a slot machine.
In addition to this, the two people actively harm each other by treating the other as a tool for achieving their purposes (hence objectification). Hookups revolve around me - around I - the ego. They don't stem out of love, respect, dignity, and compassion for the other, but rather from personal NEED and WEAKNESS.
There is a deep humiliation in that, which is often experienced as self-pity or guilt afterwards for those who are aware of it - those who are open to feel it. The same humiliation the horse feels when after a very long journey, it still doesn't get the carrot. Why is it humiliating? Because one falls short of one's goal, and yet one was convinced they had achieved it. This self-deception feels humiliating.
So the idea that a hookup benefits the well-being of someone else is utterly contradictory and irrational - the height of self-deception. The temporary high that one receives from a hookup is only met by a much deeper and more pervading loss to be followed. Not to mention the irreparable damage that is done in terms of intimacy, and relating to others.
>:) did you try?
If it's not an obsession, then live without it (or hookups, etc.) for one year.
Yes. Don't forget that I've been a professional musician for a long time. I've done a lot of drug experimentation.
In either case, you're an outlier then. Cocaine is known to be one of the drugs that produces addiction very quickly.
Yeah, I'd not argue that people don't more often get addicted. I don't know what the percentage would be, and I don't know if anyone knows that. It's something it's difficult to get data for. I've seen plenty of both sides--people who did it a bit and had no problem with it, and people who had a huge problem with it.
Exactly, so cocaine is inherently addictive, something that can be proven chemically. So is porn. Of course there are exceptions, but these are just exceptions, not the rule.
How does that work?
I got the concept slightly wrong... the idea I meant to convey is that the passions are forms of emotional suffering.
Here is how the Stoics thought about them...
I would think that the purpose of emotional suffering would be to propel us toward things that aren't harmful... and toward things that don't cause suffering.
I was looking at the passions from the standpoint of the tradition of Western Philosophy. There are some things that can't harm- it's hard to see how wisdom or justice could be harmful... And there are some things that are harmful. Lust has traditionally been thought of as being harmful.
the thought I was conveying is that if there is evidence that making porn is harmful to the people actually involved in the industry, then it seems it is an issue that needs to be dealt with.
When I suggested that people in the porn industry are being harmed, it seems to me that others suggested they are aware of people being harmed in other industries, too, but they don't care. My thought is, perhaps we ought to care about people being harmed, no matter the industry.
I don't know that I'll stop spending my money at certain establishments (i.e. McDonalds), assuming there is evidence of harm.... But, I might do what I can to fix the problem. The first step is actually acknowledging there is an issue, instead of denying it, or minimizing it. I do care about exploited workers, no matter the industry or job.
In another post, I may have conflated the passions (harmful emotions, or emotional suffering) viewing porn can cause (Lust) with the harm that working in the industry presumably causes. For that, I apologize.
From all I know about the porn industry, there's nothing that confirms what you're claiming.
Quoting Agustino
Like any other activities or substances that give a rush of dopamine, e.g. extreme sports and sweets.
Sugar consumption, I'd argue, it's also a plague on civilized societies that people don't recognize as such, maybe because there's no stigma or illegality associated with it. What about caffeine? It has withdrawal symptoms, therefore it's also addictive! So everyone should definitely stop drinking sweet coffee, ever!
I don't see the point of your arguments, people generally know what's bad for them but they still do it.
I agree.
You've changed the subject. We began by talking about right or wrong aspects, and about morality, and you've changed that to ethical judgements. The judgements themselves are entirely subjective, but it is because we are objectively such-and-such that it's not a coincidence that we largely judge certain things in the same way, and therefore largely agree on them.
Quoting Terrapin Station
It can be taken as evidence towards objectivity regarding things other than the inherent subjectivity in judging. It can be taken as evidence that there is something about the circumstances outside of us, as subjects, and about the way in which we typically react to these circumstances, that can explain why there is large scale correspondence in a judgement that something is right or wrong.
"Objective" and "subjective" refer to whether something occurs in a brain functioning in mental ways or not. We don't make any moral/ethical judgments (the two words are the same thing) because we're such and such outside of our brains functioning in mental ways.
Okay, that's fine, but that's what I'm referring to. Subjectivity conventionally refers to, for example, "(Philosophy) relating to or of the nature of an object as it is known in the mind as distinct from a thing in itself," and what that amounts to is a brain functioning in mental ways. "Subjectivity" isn't a synonym for "opinion" in the sense of "I like dark clothes." "I like dark clothes" is subjective, because it's a mental phenomenon, but your perception is subjective, too, and that's nothing like an opinon a la "I like dark clothes."
Re facts, if you like dark clothes, it's a fact that you like dark clothes. And of course, there are facts that your brain functions however it does.
What I'm saying is that morality is strictly something that individual brains do, and that's all I'm saying (in saying that it's subjective).
Only the "what it's like" of perception is subjective, and perception is much more than that.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Morality without brains doing what they do in the relevant situations wouldn't make sense to me, but I think that morality encompasses more than just that, and that it includes objectivity, and equally wouldn't make sense without it.
Hmm. What about this? There are some objectively measurable problems with caffeine consumption. So, perhaps we ought to be honest about them... and consider the cost. Is caffeine consumption causing problems? If it is, then what are some possible solutions?
That definition doesn't specify that, though, and neither do other conventional definitions of the subjective/objective distinction.
Quoting Sapientia
Since you use "objectivity" differently than I do, I'm guessing you're referring to facts about brain functioning here?
Quoting WhiskeyWhiskers
I don't think it's the concept, I think it's just that some people talk nonsense about it.
That doesn't seem right to me, but I'd have to look further into it.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Not just that. I'm talking about the bigger picture, and whether it would or would not make sense if certain elements were removed. Morality requires more than moral agents, it requires the right kind of environment and the right kind of activity.
My point was simply that they're not [i]entirely[/I] irrelevant. They're irrelevant in ways other than what I had in mind. Totalitarianism, slavery, segregation, and so on, are not counterexamples against what I said. They're relevant because they give us insight. For instance, they give us insight into humanity, and insight into the the effects of our surroundings, and these things are relevant to morality.
I'm not sure I know what you're getting at there, but I agree that it requires what the agents are making moral judgments about--certain types of interpersonal behavior, etc., which of course require environments to take place in (people aren't floating in a vacuum). But that doesn't make that stuff literally the moral judgments.
You're the one who keeps trying to reduce what we're talking about to moral judgements, not me. Perhaps you should ask yourself why. Is it because it's more convenient for you?
I agree. It looks like you might be describing intersubjectivity, which I would say counts as objectivity in this case--unless one means objectivity in the sense of being entirely independent of minds (which I think you don't mean).
So in layman terms: it depends.
Well, that's what morality is. It's judgments that we make. It's not identical to what the judgments are in response to.
It's similar to painting, say. Painting is applying pigmented mediums to surfaces like canvas. Painting isnt' identical to what the painting is in response to--say if you're painting a still life, a vase of flowers or something. You need the vase of flowers to do that, but the vase of flowers isn't itself painting. It's important to not get confused between the two, not to start to think that the vase of flowers literally is painting.
No, that's what moral judgement is. Morality has a broader meaning, and that is evident from the way in which we talk about it.
Quoting Terrapin Station
That's not a claim that I've made.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Art, like morality, involves subject and subject matter. Neither are entirely subjective.
The vase we painted isn't art. It's just what we've painted.
This is a common fear/misconception--the one-hit menace.
The fact that argues against one-hit addiction is that in fact, addiction is a process which changes brain chemistry and it takes time. Recreational drugs either block neurotransmitters (e.g., heroin), or they resemble the neurotransmitters too closely (meth). Either way, neurotransmitter output and uptake doesn't change so fast that one can get addicted from one use.
Another fact that argues against one-hit addiction is that most people do not get addicted to psychoactive substances that they use fairly often. Take alcohol. Many people drink regularly but don't exhibit any sign of addiction (like reduced sensitivity to alcohol).
However, some people are more prone to addiction (might be heritable) and exhibit reduced sensitivity and drug seeking behavior fairly quickly (meaning over months time).
With respect to pornography (or any other pleasure producing behavior) most people won't develop an "addiction" to the pleasurable behavior, but some people will. People have developed a dependence on aspirin. Aspirin isn't addictive, but compulsive personalities feel they need it, and tend to take it even when advised not to (like, before surgery, with bad consequences). Laxatives are abused by some compulsive personalities, too. It isn't the aspirin and laxatives that trigger the abuse -- its the compulsivity in the personality of the abuser.
That's fine, but it's different than what art is.
You could just as well say that for anything to make sense, we need a planet that could have supported creatures that are able to make sense of things. Pretty soon you get to everything being necessary, and then everything is everything rather than art being art,and water being water, and east being east and west west, and then if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
What art is is not limited to artwork, just as what morality [I]is[/i] is not limited to moral judgement.
Quoting Terrapin Station
No, it's not a slippery slope. The boundaries are just wider than what you accept.
Why not?
Because it encompasses more than that. Art can be the activity or process directed at producing artwork. And that involves more than the end product. We call this "doing art".