Chomsky on Porn

[last1standing]

124. I think Chomsky is half right on this issue.

He's spot on when he talks about eliminating the conditions that force women into actions they feel are degrading to them. As I stated in another thread, that includes a guaranteed livable wage, guaranteed healthcare, and cultural changes on the expected role of women in society.

I believe he's wrong in equating pornography to child abuse. Women are not girls, they are adults. The reason we outlaw child abuse is children are not considered equal players in society. They are given protection based on their mental, emotional and physical inferiority compared with adults who could exploit them. Women are not inferior. In fact, much of the problems in today's culture stem from the perception of female inferiority that still lingers such as considering women to be prizes for men.

I believe the best path for those who would reduce the number of women (or men) degraded by being forced into pornography would be to eliminate the core issues Chomsky rightly alludes to while promoting the fact that people who do work in pornography are real, hard working, individuals with lives much like anyone else's.

The reason I don't go to strip clubs for my own enjoyment is due to my first experience at one. When I was 19, I crossed the border to Canada to go to my first club. While I was there, the guy next to me was getting table dances from a woman throughout the evening. While the music was going, she focused entirely on her client, but between songs she would immediately turn to me and talk about college, her kids, how she was planning her future and how difficult it was, etc... That experience provided me a real insight on the reality of stripping. She was an actor playing a part. As soon as she wasn't getting paid, she stopped her performance. On the other hand, that acting job was allowing her to raise her children and get through school. Taking that away from her with no other form of decent income waiting would be far more cruel and degrading than letting her continue to strip.

While that evening destroyed the naïve illusion of desirability that much of stripping is premised on (at least for me), I would never try to ban it or any other type of sex work as these are the choices that people make based on their options (obviously exempting sex slavery which is already illegal and should be aggressively prosecuted). Instead, I support increasing the available options so that no one is forced into work they despise just to survive.