Besides being wedded to the fallacy that porn is exclusively about consenting adults, many of our opponents try to equate citizen activism and criticism of another’s speech with state censorship that violates the First Amendment. Nadine Strossen is one of the more prominent employers of this approach. One commenter claims that asking businesses to avoid […]
Continue reading The Imus Affair: Criticizing Speech is Not Censorship
Cary Tennis is Salon’s advice columnist. The key harm of porn, he argues, is that it saps users of their motivation to build human connections. Cary’s critique is also relevant to “sex work” in general. Even if it’s entirely consensual, it’s still problematic to have your sexual needs met by ‘vendors’ instead of a true […]
Continue reading Salon: Porn Isolates its Users, Erodes Civility and Love
Many of our opponents suggest that because the boundary between porn and erotica cannot be perfectly defined, that it’s hopeless to try. Many pornographers would like to fudge the issue to make their products seem more acceptable. Nevertheless, useful distinctions can be made. Writer’s Digest explores the issues in “On The Edge: The Power of […]
Our opponents profess extreme devotion to free speech, yet in reality many of them freely employ debate-killing tactics such as disrespect, ridicule, misrepresentation and intimidation. Tactics like these have a history in this debate that stretches back for nearly half a century. They have been effective at skewing the public dialogue over issues of love, […]
Continue reading “Sex-Positive” Debate-Killing Tactics Stretch into Their Fifth Decade
Many comments from our opponents have a despair- or paralysis-inducing cast to them. We have been derided for not making a big dent in a $56 billion industry within a few months, told that sexual abuse has been pervasive in society long before the advent of today’s porn, told that to improve the lot of […]
Continue reading Dorothea Dix: Giving Voice to Suffering, Getting Results
There is so much that’s wrong with today’s porn that it’s easy for anti-porn activists to be in a bad mood most of the time. As Andrea Dworkin freely admitted, “I represent the morbid side of the women’s movement.” The public sees the anger and frustration, and many turn instead to the porn industry, which […]
Back in March we discussed the bile and vitriol on offer at MoPornNorthampton, and the consequences for the quality of public debate. Peter Brooks of TalkBackNorthampton considered the matter, then issued a defense of “trash talk”. George Will discusses this phenomenon in “Anger Is All The Rage”, published March 25 by The Washington Post: …today’s […]
Porn is a product that addicts many, often with consequences that can be dire (loss of family, loss of job), affect innocent parties (abuse, molestation, secondary effects), and take a long time to manifest. During this time, the addict generates handsome profits for the companies that perpetuate his addiction. The industry, not surprisingly, aggressively protests […]
Continue reading Commerce, Addictive Products, and Harm: Lessons from The Cigarette Century
Members of the Los Angeles County Commission for Women heard testimony about peoples’ encounters with porn at a hearing on April 22, 1985. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.336-338). Testimony of Jeffrey Masson My name is Jeffrey Masson, and I’m a psychoanalyst [who taught] at the University of […]
Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc. (1976) is not a new decision, but it is worth revisiting for its discussion of the First Amendment. In this case, the US Supreme Court affirmed Detroit’s right to zone adult theaters. The Court recognizes the value of the First Amendment, but understands that it is not absolute, particularly […]
Continue reading How the Supreme Court Reconciles Adult-Use Zoning with the First Amendment