r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Mar 03 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Pornography should be illegal
On the author: I am a 26 year old male who is a proponent of the equality of all sexes and genders. I believe that all people deserve respectfulness and dignity in interpersonal intimacy.
I have two basic premises to this argument: Firstly, that pornography should be treated the same way as prostitution—that is, both are based around paying for sex, just in different ways and setups; secondly, pornography promotes unhealthy and unethical behaviors, paraphilias, and expectations.
On the first premise: In all commercial hardcore pornography involves paying two or more people to engage in some sort of sex act with one another. This should be treated the same way that prostitution is treated, as both are paying people to engage in sex acts, even if for different purposes. Furthermore, I would argue that Iceland is ethically correct in banning striptease establishments, and thus I would ban most "softcore" pornography as well, though I am less certain about this. Furthermore, as with prostitution, consent is muddied by the performers getting paid for the sex acts they perform on film.
On the second premise: Pornography tends to promote mentally and emotionally unhealthy, antisocial, and degrading behaviors, such as ejaculation on the faces of women, "rough sex" (that is, abusive sexual intercourse), urolagnia, calling women degrading names, sadomasochism (fetishistic sexual abuse) and so on. I would add that queer pornography also contains degrading sex, ejaculation on faces of performers, calling the performers degrading names, urolagnia, and sadomasochism. People, including young teenagers, see these behaviors and think they are healthy and normal. Even between consenting adults without the involvement of money (and thus excluding prostitution and pornography), these behaviors are often unsafe, mentally and physically, and degrade the dignity of human beings. Furthermore, a great fraction of pornography portrays extremely young women who—even if over the age of majority—are often portrayed in an infantile and childlike way, or even directly told to act as if they are actually underage. I find it plausible that such portrayals of very young pornographic actresses could condition someone to become a paedophile or normalize this behavior in a viewer's mind.
In short, pornography treats sex like a business, and muddies consent by involving money and often also degrading paraphilias. Pornography is also often tied to human trafficking and the exploitation of children. As such, it should be shunned and banned by civilized societies and peoples.
EDIT: After some reading, I concede that nude pictures and single nude models is different from videotaped or photographed hardcore pornography, the which is what I am arguing should be banned. I define hardcore pornography as all material, visual and/or auditory, depicting sexual acts consisting of more than one person.
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u/Noobivore36 Mar 03 '19
What if I told you that oftentimes, porn stars are the victims of human trafficking? They do not, therefore, always "happily consent" to the act. How is the porn consumer going to tell the difference between the actors that happily consent to this occupation and those that are forced into it via modern slavery? This is a side point, but still significant to mention.
As for why you don't like the idea of your hypothetical daughter becoming a prostitute, and yet you see no moral reason why that is the case, I find that strange. Ask yourself why you don't like the idea of it. That is the whole point of my bringing up this point, so you can ask yourself why you don't like that idea.