"The Pornography Question"
I've been doing off and on research into what I call "The Pornography Question". Let's define pornography as explicit material, sexual in nature, created by one or more consented adults, for the consumption by adults. Basically, is it compatible with communism? Is it inherently anti-women? Is it inherently unethical? A sign of capitalist decay?
Prior to this I had a fairly negative outlook on the medium as a whole, mostly stereotypes. Mostly insofar as, assuming the overwhelming majority of women are not willingly be in the industry, either they've been coherced, trafficked or had to for the money, and thus, consuming the material is inherently harmful to women. But at the same time, I've dated a couple of Sex Workers, I've dated a dancer/softcore model and an onlyfans creator. The onlyfans creator said it was a way to empower herself, she said it was far less degrading that working as a waitress, I believe it. I never cared in either case, it's a job, get the bag, it ain't tricking if you've got it. Of course both of these relationships were before I was really a commie, so I lacked the more systemic understanding of how neoliberalism works to commodify the personal. And, admittingly, the stereotypes still played a role in the acceptance of my ex's work, ie "Something must have happened in her past to cause her to do this but I don't care that she does it".
A former friend, whom is a 36 year old former model (remember Suicidegirls?), lamented about not being able to model anymore because she was worried about the *stigma* and how it might reflect on her as a professional, career wise. She was very proud of her past career. In fact, her upbringing was very strict, with Christian gender roles and a traditionalist worldview. The same type of culture that created incredibly creepy events like Purity Balls, the same culture that normalizes treating women as objects to be traded between men. That sort of southern Christian culture that I've long rallied against. It's these personal contradictions that prompted further critical introspection into the medium as well as my own ingrained opinions on it.
Almost every study I read completely ignored or outright handwaved gay and queer porn, and this to me presents an issue. How can you handwave a significant part of a medium and then say the entire medium is bad? If someone made the argument that horror movies are degenerate bourgeoisie decadence, but o
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