I was surfing around online and found the radio show Philosophy Talk. (Ok, how else am I possibly going to get to talk about pr0n on something like this blog and make it even half respectable?!)

First off, you can listen to the show here: Philosophy Talk talks about Pornography.

They focused on the degradation of women. Ok, I’ll back-pedal and point out that their guest Rae Langton was more hung up on that.

I think I’m going to inject my own take on this.

“What is pornography?” That is the question they led off the show with.

Here’s my definition: “Pornography is the depiction of erotic or sexual acts intended to arouse and/or sexually excite the audience. Pornographic works span mediums from online streaming video, to photographs, written or oral depictions of of such.”

Note that I’m broad enough to include things like romance novels.

“Is it bad?”

That’s a harder question.

“Bad” often is defined in moral terms. Morality is subjective. I prefer to think of what goes into making and consuming the materials in question.

Here’s a rundown of the superset of people in the process:

1. Actors that are having direct acts performed by/on them
2. Actors that are “along for the ride”

1. Phone sex workers
2. Writers of erotic literature
3. Strippers
4. Etc.

I’ll take these in order.

Direct Actors

Actors that are having direct sex or sexual acts done by or to them. The first two questions I have are they of the age of majority and are they engaging in the activity by their own free will (i.e. they are not being coerced or tricked into it). If they are legally allowed to be doing it and they are doing so voluntarily I fail to see the problem.

An argument can be made that there are job hazards associated with the profession. The same argument can be made about many jobs though. Take professional football for instance. Professional football players get well paid; they also have a very real possibility of injury. Without having the numbers in front of me I’d bet on the porn star with regular testing having a long and fulfilling life over the football player with their training and pads.

Interviews with people in the industry have convinced me that they are normal people in a very, very public profession.

They sometimes have fun at work. They have good days and bad days at work. Some enjoy what they do, some look at it as a job.

Come to think of it, that describes my job too.

Except I program computers.

And no one films me doing that.

Indirect Actors

Other than facilitating some fantasy, I don’t think these folks are at all any worse off. (Note: same caveats apply: of age and consenting) Other than engaging their consumers, nothing is being done to them. I’m using consumer broadly and on purpose; the consumer could be the customer, the watcher, the listener, the reader, etc. At most you could call the job degrading (I would humbly disagree), but not bad.

Directors / Editors / Producers / Publishers

These are the folks running the show. I don’t think they can be thought of as “being used” in any way. They know what they are doing, who they are doing it to and with and so forth.

Distributors

These are the merchants. The “adult store” guys. Without pornography they likely wouldn’t be around.

Consumers

Here’s where the real moral argument comes in conflated with the next category. It’s the consumer that pumps money into the system to keep it going for the most part. It would happen anyway, but the big productions wouldn’t happen.

What’s inherently wrong with consuming pornography?

The arguments posed go something like:

1. They desensitize you
2. They make you objectify women (or men in romance novels)

I have to disagree. Assuming you consume pornography, I’m sure you seek out the stuff you like. I’m sure some stuff doesn’t appeal to you. I’m sure you’re still a member of society too.

People have been asses well before this stuff was around. To blame it on porn is like blaming video games for teen violence. I don’t buy it.

Friends and family of consumers

These are the folks that are making the noise. Sexuality is a normal thing for critters — and I think that all of us are critters like everything else.

The real question is how does it affect you?

Is it just that you don’t like it? Do you think it minimizes you?

Is it just perception or is it really affecting things?

Anything can be a problem. Just because something is a problem for at least one person doesn’t mean that it’s inherently bad.

What about “Violent Porn?”

Bondage porn? Isn’t that wrong?!

Is it morally wrong to like bondage? (see the caveat on top again!) In this case I’m talking about the actors in the “morally wrong” videos. Is it wrong to record the act of it? Is it perverted?

As the old saying goes: “I Am Erotic, You Are Kinky, They Are Perverted.”

Much of the discussion on the show centered around this topic and I think it went off the tracks. The crux of the argument that was made was “I wouldn’t want done to me what I am seeing done to them, therefore this must be bad.”

That is simply projecting what you like onto everyone else. Everyone isn’t you.

Put more bluntly, I’m not telling you what to like, nor should you tell me what to like.

To say that the internet and pornography in general brought about this phenomena of sexual violence is absurd. To claim that the consensual domination of women (I’ll cover men in a moment) by men in a sexual way has been brought on by the internet ignores the fact that there has been BDSM activities that predate the internet. Sure, the internet has provided an avenue for people in smaller, less diverse cities find out about themselves, but that’s a discovery of something that was already there. For instance the Society of Janus has been in existence since 1974 — that’s before the tubes were started. Going back even further brings you to the Story of O written in 1954.

Another angle to consider is that of the male bottom. When I say the word “dominatrix” what comes to mind? I’m going to just to the conclusion that you’re now thinking of a woman dressed in a shiny leather or vinyl corset holding a whip. Was I right? There are professional dominas that will do nothing except tie men up and beat them up — and they get paid for that. No, sex is not even part of the deal. To consider that men, typically considered to be the dominant gender will pay to have someone beat them up speaks volumes; no one is forcing that transaction.

Quoting the Wikipedia article on BDSM:

The fundamental principles for the exercise of BDSM require that it should be performed by responsible partners, of their own volition, and in a safe way. Since the 1980s these basic principles have been condensed into the motto “Safe, sane and consensual”, abbreviated as SSC, which means that everything is based on safe, sane and consenting behavior of all involved parties. This mutual consent makes a clear legal and ethical distinction between BDSM and crimes such as sexual assault or domestic violence.

BDSM is an odd abbreviation. It stands for three distinct parts of the whole:

• B-D: Bondage and Discipline
• D-S: Dominance and Submission
• S-M: Sadism and Masochism

Sexuality is not a pathology! To pathologize it to try to make it go away simply isn’t going to work.