Monday 21 June 2010

More views on Shane Jones and porn and all that

Further to Deborah's fantastic post on Shane Jones watching porn which I highly recommend you read if you haven't already, here are a couple of other opposing views which you may be interested in.

Anita at Kiwipolitico states that she doesn't care about Jones' porn watching habit because it isn't the only thing produced in an exploitative manner that we consume and that the taboo around discussing sex is more harmful to women. While the post itself is short, the comment thread is a very interesting discussion of the porn industry.

And in a somewhat different take on the matter, Bob McCoskrie of Family First argues that pornography is not a private issue in the Otago Daily Times, including this:
The indignation being shown towards Mr Jones needs to be redirected towards the increased availability and exposure of pornography not just in hotel rooms but on free-to-air television, radio, billboards, in print, and when and where children can be exposed to it.

It's everywhere, and that must change. And the media should show the same level of indignation towards their promotion of the pornography industry as they have towards Mr Jones.

Although this is my favourite bit of what Bob has to say:

It's time that we acknowledged the harm that pornography does to families, men and marriages.
Good to know the laydeez aren't at risk then. /sarcasm

3 comments:

Sally-Mae said...

This is why I hate the porn debate. Because if I say I believe porn is harmful I'm essentially on the same side as McCroskie. Though I really don't get the argument that because porn isn't the only thing produced in an explotative manner we consume it's somehow not an issue. It's kind of like the "they do it too!!" non-argument in almost any political issue.

moz said...

Sally-Mae, I read it as more of a "please distinguish unacceptable slavery from acceptable slavery" question. If the specific reason is that sex is special, that's at least an argument. But when it comes down to "the buyer can't know that the consent was real", that argument applies to many more things than porn.

I'm also bemused that apparently the question of whether male porn stars (can) consent has not yet occured to anyone here. I wonder why that's not mentioned?

Anonymous said...

Regardless of consent, who's story is being told? What information are we being (mis)represented with in porn.

You do not fall into the same camp as Bob McCroskie. There's this big defining feature we've used called logic, as opposed to sexism and bigotry.