The Never To Be Met Demand for "PROOF" That Porn is Harmful

The ever predictable and never original Steve Simels did the journalistically minimalist thing in criticizing what I wrote yesterday by quoting Roy Edroso at alicublog,  the effective part of the quote was a variation on the old and mouldy pseudo-liberal chestnut:

"No one can prove that oceans of internet porn have done anything worse to humanity than give Goldberg another opportunity to embarrass himself..."

First, the demand isn't for evidence of people harmed by pornography it is for the production of a "proof" that porn is harmful, that it damages people.   While the demand for proof sounds impressive, it is frequently, and obviously in this debate,  a dodge for the pro-porn side.  "Proof" short of and, in my experience, even up to the level of mathematical proof can always be rejected as insufficient by someone who really isn't interested in whether or not their claims are valid.   Anyone who demands "proof" in this case should be considered as showing they're not interested in evidence, they are exposing themselves as unwilling to consider evidence and, I will assert, are uninterested in the people who are harmed by the porn industry.  They are as indifferent to those victims as any consumer who wants the shiny, attractive and chic items produced by slave labor in the third world as indifferent as others who disregard people harmed by dangerous products.  So, their championing of porn is real liberal and lefty of them, isn't it.  

NOTE:  In researching this post I looked at some Wikipedia articles on this topic which have obviously been "edited" to present the porn industry line on these issues.  I wouldn't trust anything on this topic "edited" by unknown and undocumented people.  Wikipedia is frequently a venue for industry propaganda or, at the very least, suspiciously reflective of that. 

With the ease with which you can find people harmed by porn it is pretty astonishing that Village Voice and other, uh, journalists are always missing it.  You can start at the blindingly obvious, those whose bodies and lives are on the line in its production.   As I mentioned here a few weeks back, you can see minor children who are raped to produce porn as easily as taking a close look at Tumblr porn and noticing the obviously minor, even pre-pubescent bodies being penetrated by phalluses I would imagine neither Edroso nor Simels would consent to have violently jabbed into their anuses, in a few instances, two phalluses at the same time with the viewer pleasing assurances that it is painful and damaging.   But, as I said on that occasion, I will not provide links to such material.   A number of them are "daddy" "twink" incest fantasy blogs, where one can find such young rape victims with ropes or neckties being pulled taught around their necks as they are raped by adult men or slapped and verbally abused by them.  Much of such porn, freely available online,  touts that the child being raped is from Russia, Eastern Europe or the third world. 

Though I suspect Edroso and Simels would point to the obviously ass-covering and obviously false disclaimers that the Tumblr porn accumulators post that all of the people in the pictures, GIFs and clips are 18 or older. Only we're not supposed to demand PROOF of that, are we.  I don't find it even credible that they believe it themselves.  Eventually those who want pedophile themed porn will want the real thing, the real rape of children.   It would be very easy to prove that anyone they present was a legal adult if they had a policy of never showing the image of anyone not verified as being, in fact, a legal adult at the time of the filming.  Oddly, I've never seen a Tumblr blog that had that policy. It's certainly not Tumblr's policy to demand that level of truth in advertising or proof of child protection. Neither have I ever seen a pro-porn "journalist" demand such a policy. 

Then there are the adult sex workers who have contracted HIV or been exposed to the possibility of infection on movie sets, there are lists, stories, and testimonies online.  For the illiterate among those demanding such "proof" YouTube videos listing the necrology of porn actors who died of AIDS, some on the the job.  Few porn actors are penetrated by or penetrate only one person.  Many porn actors have sex with many different people every year if not week.  It is not much different from prostitution in what the job consists of.  And it is the director and producer and the, um, writer(?) who decide what they're going to do.  The idea that porn actors are any more in control of their work conditions than coal miners is an idiotic fantasy.  I'm sure you could find a few very well paid porn workers who would claim that, especially those who go into producing or directing porn themselves but it is clearly not true of the majority of the people whose bodies you see on the screen or on the page.  Of course, the demand being for "proof" and with the possibility that the actors were infected for non-paid, non-filmed sex on their own time, it will be insisted that any case presented isn't "proof"*.  

The number of porn actors who became addicted to drugs, alcohol, who committed suicide is a rather large but it, as well, would fall short of being the "proof" demanded.   I can easily imagine the claim being made that they were psychologically damaged before or outside of the porn industry.  As if that is an exoneration of an industry that would expose such mentally damaged people to the abusive objectifying story lines and scenarios that are found in pornography.  

But, clearly neither of these two journalists, seem to have considered things from the point of view of the people in the bodies they enjoy seeing engage in dangerous sex.  Which is kind of the idea of porn, isn't it?  It's for people who don't want to consider the rights and dignity of other people who they enjoy seeing as objects for use and abuse and destruction.  It includes the acculturation and theme of people as objects, domination and, frequently, abuse.  There is, most often, the dominator and the dominated, sometimes several dominators to one who is dominated. Anyone who thinks people can be serially raped, either real or simulated, without sustaining some kind of damage, with the ever increasing violence and abuse that is demanded by the porn audience as they need to ramp it up so they, dulled by the sameness and repetition of porn, can masturbate to climax.   Or, worse, to give them ideas of how their jaded and deadened libidos can achieve orgasm with people they convince to have sex with. 

When it's the sex industry, the same standards for worker protection, child labor, etc. that a liberal would have little trouble seeing in the production of garments, electronic equipment of chocolate - if they cared to look - is of no importance to them as compared to the "rights" of the producers and sellers of porn.  And by "rights" when it comes to the porn industry, that means their profits.  The porn issue is about the best test there is of the actual liberalness of the liberal.  And the pro-porn side fails that test. 

The lies that porn is harmless always, always concentrate on the far more difficult to "prove" case that it harms the people consuming it in the general population.  Making that case is far harder and whatever evidence that is produced can be denied with the ease with which the Zimmerman jurors overlooked that he was the one with the gun who pursued Trayvon Martin after being told not to by the dispatcher he was talking to and who threatened the kid who was walking home from the convenience store to watch basketball on TV with his father.  The level of evidence demanded by them to prove Zimmerman's guilt is similar to that which the supporters of the porn industry demand of those who find the evidence available convincing.   I will go into that in my next post. 

* In one case, that of Lara Roxx who says she was infected on the set in Los Angles, the industry has launched a massive counterattack, including the claim that she infected Darren James on the set.   As if that would have been disproof of the fact that actors are infected in the production of porn.  The porn industry in Los Angles is engaged in an attempt to overturn about the only law requiring condoms in porn productions in the United States, pointing out that they could just move their production elsewhere in the United States to produce the condomless porn demanded by their consumers.

Note:  I posted this before it was close to a final edit, again.  Sorry for that. 

Update:  Someone wants to know why I'm picking on poor little Tumblr when there are thousands of other venues of porn online.   First, I don't mind anyone making that case on my blog, that porn and even images of children being raped as porn is available for free online and I wish you had done so in a comment instead of a flaming.  Second,  that there are other corporations, some of them quite large and well known, who provide such images doesn't exonerate Tumblr.  Third, there isn't blog space in all of a blogspot blog to make a comprehensive list, it being, as you point out, ubiquitious.  Fourth,  I'll treat porn sites with full equality when all of their product removes all dominator-dominated, rapist-raped, adult-child, etc. inequality themed pornography from their site.  I'm under no obligation to treat those who promote inequality equally. In that instance, I will apply their own standards to them.

Update 2:   Steve Simels, in a comment I have chosen not to publish,  says, "To paraphrase the old joke --- hey, Sparky,  YOU'RE the one looking at the dirty pictures. :-)."   No, friends, your eyes don't deceive you, it's the heads I win, tales you lose, Catch 22 dodge, you get it in this argument every single time.   Steve Simels is the kind of journalist who apparently thinks you can write about something you haven't researched or observed as anyone who has witnessed one of our brawls will, no doubt, have seen.  One is always encountering such standards of intellectual practice among the supporters of pornography.   

If he would like to tell us how someone could write about pornography, against, or in support of it, for that matter, without looking at it or reading it, I'll publish that comment. But I mean how someone could write responsibly and honestly  without gathering evidence to support what you write. I'd like his explanation of how that could be done.