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• Sunday, October 5, 2008 11:20 PM

  @ Ontologer

  "I think you misuse "torture" - there seems to be a difference between prisoners of war and porn actors. One is being paid for a job they willingly signed up for, while the other is being held as a prisoner of war - captive - against their will. Needless to say, the porn actor can get out while the POW can't."

  POWs are victims of chance. They signed up to be a soldier or they sign up to be a spy they get paid for one job and ended up having to give up more of themselves than they thought was possible. I think that (some) young women who get into porn are the female equivalent. They go in thinking it's going to be sexual intercourse for payment, and instead it's more akin to rape and torture. Especially if they hook up with someone like this guy.

  "In this example, the actors in question were not (being coerced)"

  Do you know that for sure? Everything i read on the net made him sound like he pretty much took advantage of people and was heading for a crash. Would it make a difference to you if they were coerced?

  "So then it seems you're saying Max Hardcore's porn is "wrong" as in "immoral" or "something that doesn't sit well with you," but I think that perspective has already been established as irrelevant to the point of Glenn's post, which seems to be to highlight the hypocrisy of a government jailing people for fictionalized, consensual scenes of humiliation/degradation while protecting or ignoring its own tendrils that actually do those things in reality to non-consenting prisoners."

  Actually I read BSDM stories sometimes, so it's not a sexual morality issue for me, it's a physical issue. My books don't involve hurting real people. I bought a tape when I was much younger- it ended up getting doused with nail polish remover. The women on my tape were obviously doing stuff for money, and allowing people to hurt them. It wasn't sexy to see it happen to a real person. I'm not sure why, but I don't seem to work that way. They don't fake the torture in porn. They are getting paid to actually be tortured. In that sense it is very much like paying a soldier for his body.

  "Ironically, inherent in your claim that it's a matter of humanity instead of law is a negation of the validity, or even existence, of choice - which many would argue is essentially to negate the thing that makes a human a "human," as distinct from all other living beings. Conscious choice. After that, your contention that it's about "the humanity" is kind of self defeating."

  I'm not for cutting out conscious choice. Like another person said, we made these laws, we can change them. None of them are written on stone. Either they reflect our society, or they need to be changed.

  I'm not trying to be snarky - if I understand the definition of that term correctly.

  Me either :) just trying to figure out what I feel and what the people around me feel and trying to make sense of it all.

  —hyblaean Read hyblaean's other letters
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