10/27/10
Comments of the Week: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Porn?

photo by TheNaughtyAmerican.com

An interesting debate among commenters (and in Johnny’s case, with himself) about the good and bad of porn (plus, a lesson in “literature” vs. “research”) from the post “Wise Guys: My Girlfriend Thinks Porn-Viewing Is a Dealbreaker“:

  1. Crimsonia Says:
    October 21st, 2010 at 12:19 pm …the industry is not all about the misogynistic exploitation of women, but rather … it CAN be very liberating for all person’s involved.

  2. johnny Says:
    October 21st, 2010 at 1:17 pm ^I’d say it’s about exploitation of the performers, male and female, pretty much most of the time. Many scenes may not DEPICT exploitation as part of the sex, but behind the scenes those women and men are sex workers, which means they’re usually either drug addicts or fucked in the head.Before anyone take offense to that, look up the lit correlating sex work with mental illness and drug addiction. It’s gross.

    I’m sure there are many examples of individuals in the sex trade who are perfectly healthy in their minds and bodies and are just entreprenurial spirits who love sex.

    But give me a break. Like professional wrestlers, sex workers die young with alarming predictability. HIV, overdose, suicide, murder, car wrecks… Look up a list of dead porn stars and why they’re dead. Then tell me of any other legal line of work that’s anywhere near that likely to end in tragedy sooooooo often.

    As for the exploiters, at the very top they’re big bazillionaire businessmen – think they got that way playing nice? They don’t give a shit. To them porn is a product measured with numbers.

    The question for the individual consumer is one of hormones versus morals. Some people don’t care what bad choices other consenting adults make. Some people don’t like the shady side of porn, but can’t deny that it turns them on, so they assuage their guilt by looking at softer-core porn. And some people just hate everything about it.

    Jeez, I think I just talked myself out of liking porn.

  3. Madamoiselle L Says:
    October 21st, 2010 at 2:36 pm …Do you have links to this “literature?” Or what most would call research. I’d like to see it. I don’t see porn stars dying from “car wrecks (really?), drug overdose, HIV etc” anymore than anyone else in the Entertainment Industry. If you can provide actual Evidence Based Research to prove your point, I’d read it. Somebody’s opinion, from a Church Group or something does NOT count as “research.” Just so you know. Data, studies, P values, longitudinal will suffice.

  4. kate Says:
    October 21st, 2010 at 8:48 pm I know this isn’t the point of your post, but ‘literature’ is a legitimate term for peer reviewed journal articles. I’m studying towards a PhD and in the department we would always say literature, not research.

  5. Johnny Says:
    October 22nd, 2010 at 8:55 am …By lit, like kate said, I do mean peer-reviewed academic publication, that I got from my college library for a psych paper years ago. I could probably find it again if I tried, and if I do, I’ll post it for you.But that was talking about sex workers in general, not porn stars specifically. My info there is more anecdotal. My macabre interest in who’s a dead porn star began when I discovered, a couple of times, that women I was wanking to regularly had been dead of something horrible for 2 years, although she was 5 years younger than me.So I googled “dead porn stars” and was shocked at what I found. Like 10 women whose work I “admired” were dead of the causes I listed above, and those are just the ones I was familiar with – there were many, many more.

    Obviously porn itself is not responsible for drunken car wrecks or overdoses. I guess my point was that these people are chronic bad decision makers, usually because they’ve got major issues, and here’s this industry that’s more than willing to step in and make a buck off that.

    Not to mention the threat of HIV, of which I think there have been 19 cases in the U.S. industry since 2004.

    Maybe I’m just getting old or something, but the scuzziness of the porn industry is getting harder to ignore. That’s not to say I won’t watch it anymore – to be honest, the train-wreck aspect of it is arousing (hey, screw it – I’m not afraid of my own fantasies). But maybe with time I’ll get there.