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A couple of months ago we discussed the cultural legacy of the Playboy mag of all things under an effort post by @FiveHourMarathon. I was reminded of this by a recent lame-ass political scandal in Hungary in which a local/district volunteer coordinator of the main opposition party and apparently a single(?) mom was doxxed by some pro-government journos as a former porner / sex worker. Technically I’m supposed to call her a former porn actress, but the actual level of ‘acting’ that is involved in all of this makes me decide against doing so; supposedly she also appeared in a grand total of one casting video only (by Pierre Woodman) so calling her an actress would be a big stretch either way. Pretty much the only factor fueling this whole thing was that the party leader and MEP was pictured shaking hands with the ‘lady’ during some public events.
What does Playboy have anything to do with this, you might ask? Well, said party leader decided it’d be a swell idea to reverse the accusation of sleaziness and would also be some sort of clever gotcha to point out that a 51-year-old woman who’s a government commissioner and a former ‘Secretary of State for Sports’ (if you’re one of the few female politicians in Eastern Europe, it’s the sort of government position of lesser importance you can ever hope to fulfill, I guess) appeared in a photoshoot in the local edition of Playboy ages ago.
Anyway, I’m aware that culture wars are waged with maximal cynicism, dishonesty and opportunism, and this is a case of culture-warring alright; no need to remind me of that. Still, I found myself asking the rhetorical question: who the heck actually believes that posing for a photoshoot in a completely mainstreamed, slick, high-class magazine which eventually shifted to a women's fashion and lifestyle brand is the cultural/moral/social equivalent of anonymously getting your holes stuffed and swallowing cum/urine on camera for a handful of cash?
They’re equivalent because they’re both equally fine, and both equally unworthy of further attention.
Commodifying sex is anti-social.
So if they do it for free, is that ok then? Thereby de-commodifying it.
Granted, commodities can be given away freely too, I suppose. But if I were to say, write a poem and put it on my own public blog for free, I don’t think anyone would call the poem a commodity. I’m just creating something and choosing to give it freely. So it seems like I should be able to create and give away my own porn and have that be not-a-commodity too.
See that's the problem. Unlike your poem, sex is not a good, service or other such thing. It's a relationship you have with others. The implications of which do not cleanly stop and start at the will of contracts.
This fuzziness alongside its other peculiar characteristics (irrational draw, propensity to create children, etc) is why it is not treated the same as other things morally by most societies. And why attempts to use reductionism to map it onto benign activities are wrong headed.
Drugs have similar problems that also make them special in this way.
When and how did you arrive at the idea that sex is a relationship (this particular kind of distinguished relationship, as you conceive of it)? Did you only decide that porn was a bad thing afterwards, on the basis of this conception, or did you already believe that porn was a bad thing beforehand and this was just one more piece of supporting evidence?
This isn't a gotcha, I have no agenda here. I'm just genuinely and sincerely interested to learn more about how you think about these issues.
Arguably it started when I read Plato as a teenager, but that's not what convinced me of it. I think it's about when I had friends of mine get back together for the third time after swearing each other off. That's about when I knew my mother was right both to say that sex makes people retarded and that it connects people on a special level other things do not.
But time has done nothing but confirm this for me. I've hung out with many a people of little virtue (I've probably had more candid conversations with sex workers of more genders than anyone on this website), and their existential angst seemed to be proportional to the amount of casual sex they had.
A decent amount of them openly whined to me about feeling desensitized and frustrated at how unable to feel anything for anyone they were.
Now I refuse to conclude something too specific from my life experience, because it's not really generally applicable, but I will certainly stand by the ancient idea that sex is special and that carnal knowledge is not like other acts in its implications on the psyche of the participants. That alone seems undeniable to me.
I do not actually believe pornography to be evil. At least not inherently. I've stood by its artistic merits and associated freedoms here before on numerous occasions.
I used to have far more liberal views on this particular matter, but these days I think it probably needs some effective regulation or at least social framework, like we do for tobacco or alcohol.
The complete free for all of hyperreal stimuli seems a bit unwise, seeing as though I've had multiple friends make stupid life ruining decisions on account of it.
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