Getting into blog brawls should never be done without the opportunity to learn something. I've been having one on the issue of porn at Alternet. I'll be posting about porn in the near future. I haven't learned much but I have been able to organize some of what I've known before.
For now, I'm getting sick and tired of middle-aged white, affluent men, mostly, but women too, talking about how having an unregulated porn and prostitution market honors the "agency" of the women and men used by the porn and prostitution industries when the fact is both porn and prostitution are related industries based on the use, abuse, degradation, exploitation, disposal and, yes, deaths of those very "agents" for the entertainment of, generally, men who have more money and more power than they do. Often those using the "agents" in that way are also stronger and more brutal and enforce their will on those "agents" with violence, intimidation, coercion, manipulation, lies, fear of death and other means.
The pseudo-liberal line that so many liberal bloggers and commentators take on porn and prostitution is everything that liberalism, real liberalism opposes pushing a line of ultra- Milton Friedmanian economic blather. Porn and prostitutions are industries that lie about the "agency" of those who it uses, pseudo-liberals who support their legalization and deregulation are either ignorant or stupid or, more often, they are libertarians who are posing as liberals.
Here's a challenge I issued to the porn shill I got into the blog brawl mentioned above, it's a question that any supposed liberal proponent of pornography and prostitution should be forced to answer, questions they should have to confront.
"goldmarx" do you have children, sisters, brothers, a mother or father you would like to see choose a career as a porn actor or prostitute? Try to make me believe you really mean yes when you claim that.
and in a follow up when "goldmarx" didn't answer the question:
So, you don't want any of your daughters or sons, or brothers or sisters or your mother or father to choose these two fine professions you think are so wonderful. Why not? If there's nothing wrong with those professions why wouldn't you be happy if your family decided to make money by letting men pay to stick their phalluses in their mouths, or anuses or vaginas or any of the other places they do in porn or prostitution? If it's OK for the people involved in it, why wouldn't that be a perfectly good way for your family members to make money?
Let me take it one step farther, would you be willing to have your daughter or son or brother or sister or father or mother penetrated by a random sample of the porn professionals in LA? Or penetrating them? Oh, yes, that penetration will be without condoms because it will be legal for the director and producer to decide that in that scene there will be no condoms. Would you like your son, daughter, sister, brother, mother, or father doing a bare back sex scene with, say ten randomly chosen men or women who make movies in Los Angeles?
Answer the question, "goldmarx". If bareback sex at the say of a porn director or producer is OK, why wouldn't you want to have your family member on the receiving end of it? Or how about any of them under similar conditions, alone in a hotel room with a random sample of the unknown johns who frequent prostitutes of one or another or both genders in Los Angeles. Would you want your child to be in that situation right now?
I wish I had thought to pose those questions to the white, affluent, Ivy level PhD holding, middle aged male blogger and economist I first got into the "agency" issue with. I know he doesn't have children but he has parents and a wife. I will not fail to ask those kinds of questions in the future.
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