I've had this debate with a number of male socialists, as well as some feminists. They use the word exploitative to refer to porn. But I'm not sure you could call all, or even most, porn exploitative. If someone is earning a lot of money, and doing something they enjoy (assuming that both of these are true) how is that exploitative? It goes against the very definition of exploitation, even from a socialist point of view. What do you think?
I really don't think it is. Like you said, everyone involved is getting paid, and they chose to be there. And other people get enjoyment out of watching it. Now does that really hurt anyone? And I know there is some porn out there that is made by exploiting children and younger teens, but thinking about porn that is made my consenting adults who are getting paid, I have no problem with it...
well some people do it to pay for drug habits or Sex reassignment surgery, people that would never do it if they had enough money S
But they choose to earn thier money that way. They could get another job, even if it was in a sweatshop in asia working for two dollars a day. Now that would be exploitative.
It's all supply on demand to me. With todays open views on sex and such there's a little less exploitation going on, you can mostly tell if someone isn't enjoying it. If, on the other hand, you like to see people being abused then that alone is enough to fuel the fire, someone will supply what you demand. I prefer to see people enjoying themselves myself!
It's a much better situation now that it's all above board and legal and regulated, there's much less opportunity for exploitation. I think the USA led the way on that one. But there's always the case of people making bad decisions or feeling they have no alternative ... which brings up the question of how far should we protect people from themselves?
That's an interesting point. Do you think the same might happen with prostitution if that was legalised, legitimised and unionised?
If prostitution was legalised there would be far less problems arising from prostitution than occurs now. Less violence towards the women, less disease being spread, less criminal profit, less exploitation. Exactly the same with drugs, legalise them all and you take away the criminal aspect, and the majority of problems that arise therefrom. It's just a shame that we have to pretend to live under a banner of moral superiority that noone really believes in anymore, instead of dealing with social problems like sophisticated intellegent human beings.
I have known a sex-worker from Australia for some time, she is constantly battling for more openness and better laws for protecting sex-workers. She is in NY at the moment, she says there are still alot of prejudices there to overcome... How comes the oldest job in the world is last to be regulated. Perhaps it will always be "dirty" and misunderstood to the average person.
I don't see how it's any more exploitative than any other job. Most employees do things that they wouldn't want to be doing if they didn't need the money. Are they being exploited? I do think that with porn, the potential consequences to health, emotional wellbeing, present and future relationships are not worth the relatively paltry reward on offer. But ultimately, it's the individual's choice.
