Just because you don’t feel degraded does not mean you’re not, or that something is not degrading to a certain population. AKA “false consciousness.” A lot of women didn’t think it was oppressive that they were unable to vote either.

I’m not sure that this is a valid argument. One could argue that anything is degrading to someone, somewhere. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater like this would mean that nothing would be allowed.

BDSM is a good example. Men degrade women, women degrade men, however most would agree that this is consensual degradation. The difference is that, for example, in the UK, you cannot consent to assault, even for BDSM purposes.

Given that porn actresses and models would maintain that they consent to being degraded, the questions would then be these:

1. Is it the casual viewer’s place to impose their morals on the rest of us, and on the participants in such work, regardless of the excuse for such moral outrage?

2. What actually does constitute ‘consent’?

3. Does moral outrage on religious or degradation grounds make such work more attractive to some consumers?

4. Further to 3, once such work is categorised as ‘degrading’, is it possible that it suddenly becomes attractive to consumers who may have previously not given such work a second glance? I.e., folks who think that they get off on ‘degradation’?

5. Doesn’t subjective categorisation of rpon as ‘degrading’ assist in creating the kind of hysteria recently witnessed in the Bill Henson Incident? And is this hysteria warranted?

Who sent you that bootleg copy of my first video?

Just joking my stage name is

Jip Woods

I don’t know that there is too much from a morality point of view that you are not allowed to do in the NT, provided of course that you are not aboriginal living on a reserve – the intervention enacted last yeah prohibits any pornography from being consumed on Aboriginal land, by anyone actually.

I’d go you one further – even if it isn’t legal in many cases. I’m speaking about any violation of the law that is strictly a “morality” issue. (NOTE: no one needs to throw out pedophilia, as that isn’t strictly a morality issue. It’s a physical assault.)

Anyway Sean, you had an opportunity to break out into my latest song on radio! Should have done it, bro.

Thanks for commenting.

On the issue of real vs depicted, I don’t know where I sit in the sense of the “depicted” violence/rape etc. Lets say it makes me feal uncomfortable.

It goes without saying that real footage is illegal and repugnant.

On the issue of porn being degrading towards women. Some most defintely is.

Some I would argue isn’t based on what I have read recently.

On the issue of “false conciousness” that women in pron may not see themselves as being degraded – I may have to do more reading. I hesitate to suggest that women don’t know there own mind, that they don’t know if they are being degraded. Yet I see religion as being degrading to women (indeed one of the findings of the porn report was that there was a positive correlation between religion and poor attitudes to women).

At least in both our societies we have the liberty to voice our points of view to discuss the situation.

And while I fall on the side of the argument that yes, porn does degrade women (Just because you don’t feel degraded does not mean you’re not, or that something is not degrading to a certain population. AKA “false consciousness.” A lot of women didn’t think it was oppressive that they were unable to vote either.) I would like to ensure my right to argue that belief, so I cannot condone what I view as censorship.