QotD: Since I wrote all this already, I might as well make a post out of it

The thing is, the US porn industry is already legal, it is already entirely out in the open, and it already, theoretically, is subject to US health and safety laws. These laws are blatantly flouted; there is no other industry where it would be acceptable for the ‘work’ itself to leave women with injuries that require a hospital admission (where the injuries are caused by the ‘work’ itself, rather than an accident due to a lapse in health and safety), expose ‘workers’ to bodily fluids, and regularly infects ‘workers’ with sexually transmitted diseases.

There’s no other industry were the body that claims to represent the ‘workers’ (in this case the astroturf-esque ‘Free Speech Coalition’), actually is no more than a lobby group for the bosses, and actively argues against safety measures like condom use, and checks on the age of the ‘workers’.

The only reason I can think of that the US based porn industry gets away with this, is because it is about ‘sex’, and because it happens to what is seen as (by mainstream, male-dominated culture) a sub-group of disposable women.

There is not much more the porn industry could do to harm women, the pimps/pornographers could kidnap women off the street, could kill them afterwards and dump the bodies, except this kind of thing already happens to these ‘disposable’ women; women and girls trafficked into prostitution are already used to make pornography.

The simple fact is that genuine health and safety protections for ‘workers’ in the porn industry would make porn production impossible, there is no safe way to have a man ejaculate on a woman’s face at work, there is no safe way to do a double-anal, or ass-to-mouth, to be choked or throat-fucked. If there was ever any kind of real union for porn performers, that had real clout, and had representatives on every porn set to make sure ‘workers’ weren’t abused, porn production would be impossible.

The whole ‘black market’ exists already, and there is no reason to suppose that it is somehow smaller than the ‘white market’.

I don’t think criminalising ownership or viewing of pornography would be much use, it would be unenforceable and a huge drain on police resources. Internet filters, opt-in or opt-out, may help, but then there is the risk of sex education and, eg, breast cancer sites being blocked. I think credit card companies refusing to process payments would help, but then there are ways round that like ‘free’ sites funded through advertising.

Making it easier for women who have been abused to make pornography to make criminal or civil charges against their abusers would help, and also allowing women who were abused by men who were obviously re-creating the porn they had been consuming, to sue the pornographers, would help rebalance things in women’s favour (this, of course, happens to men and boys too, but it happens to women and girls more).

There are other, more long-term things, like reducing poverty so women don’t end up in the sex industry in the first place, challenging all the other forms of misogyny and male entitlement that make women second-class citizens, etc, etc.

This blog is about challenging porn culture, and educating about how pornography contributes to misogyny and rape culture. Comprehensive, age-appropriate sex and relationships education which warned about the warping effect of pornography would be a very good thing. I want people to reject pornography because they realise that it is unethical, and that by consuming it, they are contributing to human rights violations.

(originally posted by me as a comment on this thread)