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Read other letters about this article
It's not acceptable to me that my daughter flip burgers, but that doesn't mean that I think it's inherently abusive to eat fast food.
It's not acceptable to me that my daughter becomes a hairdresser, but that doesn't mean I feel I'm being abusive when I go get a haircut.
There are lots of jobs in the world that suck, and I want better than that for my daughter. She's smart and motivated and she can do better.
I'm pretty sure there are jobs in the world *I* would rather be a porn star than do (coal mining, among them), but is it abusive to use coal?
So the argument "You can only enjoy porn if you'd be okay if your sister or daughter was doing it" is fallacious, as it's tantamount to saying "You can only enjoy the warmth of a coal stove if you'd be okay with your sister, daughter, son or brother being a coal miner." Personally I don't like porn, I find it vapid, visual images don't turn me on a great deal and I'm aware that most people who choose to work in the sex industry have chosen it because they suffered abuse in their past, which makes it somewhat exploitative. But I'm not going to say that because it's somewhat exploitative (unlike, say, prostitution, which, being illegal, is *incredibly* exploitative) no one is allowed to enjoy it, because I'm pretty sure migrant workers are exploited worse and yet no one has advised me to stop enjoying fruit.
Unfortunately this world is full of exploitative jobs and unless you're going to go live off the land and grow all your own food, you cannot be a 21st century Westerner without enjoying what comes from the exploitation of others. Factory work in third world countries pays less well and is more dangerous than porn work in the US. But all the stuff we buy is manufactured in the third world by exploited poor workers. Singling out sex work as worse is making a value judgement on sex workers that I'm not prepared to make. If they freely choose to do that work rather than flipping burgers or becoming hairdressers, well, I'm not going to say that those who enjoy their efforts are morally inferior, because I like my computer and I'm sure it was put together by people paid substandard wages in a sweatshop somewhere, so I don't really have a moral high ground. And I doubt any of us do.
