Wage Slavery

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The fuck is "soft paternalism" supposed to mean, anyway?

White Man's Burden.

Ah.

Sort of a "WE know what's best for these little people in the porn industry", etc etc.

Only really comes into play if you're trying to ban or restrict it.  Same with the abstinence only comment.

[Freeky]

The fuck is "soft paternalism" supposed to mean, anyway?

White Man's Burden.

Ah.

Sort of a "WE know what's best for these little people in the porn industry", etc etc.

Only really comes into play if you're trying to ban or restrict it.  Same with the abstinence only comment.

Yeah, I didn't really understand that.  I also don't get why he thinks we're all repressed and that's why PORN IS BAD, MMKAY?

[trippinprincezz13]

DAYUM. 

Note to self:  Don't act like a holist when trippinprincesz is around.

You wouldn't think it, but I actually REALLY enjoy being nice to people and making them happy and for the most part I tend to be pretty live and let live. I just can't stand laziness (perpetual laziness, not just "imma take it easy today before I explode") and selfishness, especially when it's accompanied with complaints (and it usually is) about "why this" and "poor me" and "everybody else...." when the problems could very easily solved by actually doing anything or thinking outside of their own bubble for one second. But no, it's just excuses about how they're a special little snowflake whose problems are different than anyone elses and they're entitled to this because of that.

Yea, I guess it does bother me, lol. But it seems like a lot of the world's problems can be boiled down to "me first"

[Freeky]

  I wasn't criticizing you, and I actually have gotten that vibee of "live and let live" from you before now, which is why your smackdown of holist was doubly awesome.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Hey, either way I'm getting my ass reamed, right?

I mean, one's only figurative, but its still equivalent, I guess.

Every bead I make

is a tiny glass piece of rape.

And one of them was even ANGRY. 

[trippinprincezz13]

I wasn't criticizing you, and I actually have gotten that vibee of "live and let live" from you before now, which is why your smackdown of holist was doubly awesome.

I didn't really think you were, but occassionally I feel the need to clarify that I don't sit around waiting for the perfect opportunity to say mean things to people. It's just that willfully stupid/selfish/hurtful statements tend to set off my rage gland and then I can't help myself because CAN'T SEE HOW AWFUL HE SOUNDS. But plenty here have elaborated on that point before and after me, so it's not like my post will make any difference. But it had to be said.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The Good Reverend Roger's Official Holy Man™ Statement on Porn:

I was listening to a war correspondent speak at the U of A, a few years back.  He said that humans like to destroy, especially to destroy other humans. That it gives them a feeling of godlike power to revoke another person's charter.  That one of humans' favorite activities is to dehumanize and objectify others, literally objectify them if possible by changing their status from living human individual to inert object over which they have total power and superiority.  And I'm going "Uh huh, sad but true," and then he says "Just like pornography."  And I said,  "Well dammit that too is unfortunately correct.  If I am opposed to one of those things I sure can't justifiably cater to my whims in enjoying the other."

Now I am not interested in discussing or debating any of these points, all I know is that that one sentence was exactly what I needed to hear at that time to break my opinion of porn (which has never had a big attraction for me in the first place).  And I don't really care about a lot of dumbass opinions you jerks are likely to have about it either.  I'm just telling you a thing that happened, so shut up.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Also, with regard to people who strip to pay their way through college, I really think that's an outlier to the point of being a myth.  Has anyone ever met these strippers-turned-lawyers?

I know for a fact that the ones Torch works with are really, honestly dumb.  Just dumb.

Truth. They tend to stay fucked up a lot, too.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So, this "Wage Slavery" thread wasn't really about wage slavery, it was still just about porn and prostitution.  I shouldn't have bothered splitting the thread in the first place, because it turns out that Holist didn't have a point, he had a need to argue for its own sake.

[trippinprincezz13]

First, a little back story on Torchie.

Torch has done porn before.  These are the things I remember what she told me:
-She only did lesbian porn, because if she did straight porn it would fuck her brain up, what with the attachment chemicals and whatnot.
-She will never ever return to porn, ever.  She'd hook first.

I also know she knows what it's like to hook, and she told me she'd rather hook than have her daughter starve.  She never told me what it was like about hooking, but here's what she had to say about stripping, the least of all person commoditification evils:

"I try not to let it affect me, but it does.  It affects my personal relationships.  When I'm stripping for a living, my first instinct is to get you to like me, because you liking me means you'll give me more stuff.  So I end up having ulterior motives for making friends and getting to know people.  And it sucks, and I know it's a shitty thing to be thinking, but I can't help it."

That really is just awful - well, I can't even imagine, really.  Even though stripping is generally considered a "less bad" area of the sex industry, her statements certainly give an overview of how demeaning it can all be (and without going into details). That last paragraph, especially. In a sense it's good (not quite, but something like that) that she is aware of the change in her, but just really sad that that has to be reality for her for the present time. I hope that she is able to get back on her feet soon.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

First, a little back story on Torchie.

Torch has done porn before.  These are the things I remember what she told me:
-She only did lesbian porn, because if she did straight porn it would fuck her brain up, what with the attachment chemicals and whatnot.
-She will never ever return to porn, ever.  She'd hook first.

I also know she knows what it's like to hook, and she told me she'd rather hook than have her daughter starve.  She never told me what it was like about hooking, but here's what she had to say about stripping, the least of all person commoditification evils:

"I try not to let it affect me, but it does.  It affects my personal relationships.  When I'm stripping for a living, my first instinct is to get you to like me, because you liking me means you'll give me more stuff.  So I end up having ulterior motives for making friends and getting to know people.  And it sucks, and I know it's a shitty thing to be thinking, but I can't help it."

That really is just awful - well, I can't even imagine, really.  Even though stripping is generally considered a "less bad" area of the sex industry, her statements certainly give an overview of how demeaning it can all be (and without going into details). That last paragraph, especially. In a sense it's good (not quite, but something like that) that she is aware of the change in her, but just really sad that that has to be reality for her for the present time. I hope that she is able to get back on her feet soon.

I don't see it as less bad.

I see it as Prostitution is worse than stripping is worse than porn.

Because at least porn actresses aren't being pawed at by random creepers in a dreary dimly-lit room with worn out carpeting and horrible stains on the undersides of the tables.  They are at least isolated from their audience.

[LMNO]

I'm a bit more nuanced, as I actually have met college strippers (although it was for spending money, not tuition, and it was usually amateur nights).  And I do know personally at least two women who voluntarily entered and are in the porn biz, but didn't have to (the caveat is that it's niche market porn).  So, there are outliers.  Of course there are outliers. 

But this question isn't binary.  A lot of lip service has been paid to, "a lot of porn is degrading, but..." and then acting as if the outliers throw the whole thing into doubt. When, in truth, most porn is degrading, and therefore it is entirely reasonable to say and behave as if that is the default.  To act as if the outliers somehow redeem the entire concept of porn is disingenuous.

And for the record, showing people fucking, be it cartoons, film, books, or live, is not inherently bad.  If I was going to draw the line anywhere, it would be somewhere around the time when the need for cash surpasses the need for sex/exhibitionism/desire.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

1. Porn is inherently exploitative and dehumanizing.
2. If something in inherently exploitative and dehumanizing, then we should not support/do it.
C. We should not support/do porn.

I don't agree with #1.  It's not inherent.  It IS, however, endemic.

Fine. Now, what happens to whatever needs/desires that were being met by porn?

Pretty sure porn's not going away. 

In addition, there's the "Little Angels Hentai" argument.  It was a board we trolled out of existence about 6 years ago or so.  These freaks spent all day drawing pictures of little girls being abused, etc (it turns out that drawn images of kiddie porn aren't illegal, just photographs).  When we started burning their board down, they screeched shit like "This is what gets us through the day!  MAYBE THIS IS KEEPING US FROM BECOMING REAL PEDOPHILES!"

Two problems with that:

1.  They were already real pedophiles.

2.  You don't get rid of a fixation by indulging it.  There is not some finite quantity of evil in the human soul...It is a learned behavior, and the more you indulge it, the more you want it, and the more intense it has to be to satisfy you.  This goes for degrading porn, too.  You don't feel less of a need to use a woman as a sex toilet by watching it, you become even more desensitized to the idea that women are human beings (or men, whichever).

Fact is, the question ought to be "WHY is there a need for porn to get certain people off?".

It's weird with art. People like R. Crumb can draw the sickest shit and it's just funny. There's wit behind it, it's like commentary on something that's ALREADY fucked up.

Then there's other shit that just creeps me out. I was looking for fresh attention whore memes last night and I found this NSFW. It's pretty straight-up misogyny.

So yeah. Those guys were real pedos. I don't have any answers on why some people need porn to get off, though. I always just assumed they got habituated to it, but that could be totally wrong.

[Phox]

Not to nitpick, but I doubt we have any real understanding of reality of the sex work situation.

Hey, who are you speaking for, friend? Certainly not me.

[Dildo Argentino]

THREAD ORVER.

no, not yet

oh, sorry, i can now see that i was wrong