Gullible Jones wrote:No, I don't think it would prevent any of the abuses that happen in the porn industry. There should be other measures for dealing with those issues.
Fine. Then let's drop it from this conversation since it isn't relevant here.
Yes, I do think it would help prevent some rather serious emotional issues in certain at-risk groups. (Mostly but not limited to teenagers.)
A) Teenagers are going to get around any such ban.
B) Preventing such emotional issues is not for government to do. It is for parents, the teenagers themselves, and school counsellors to do.
C) Is preventing this emotional distress in a few people worth restricting the rights of literally
every citizen? Is it worth creating a chilling effect?
And no, I wouldn't call up a government official asking for permission to look at any sort of porn. That's... kind of part of the point, actually. Maybe chilling effect can be useful.
A) So don't look at porn. Maybe other people want to look at it without dealing with the embarrassment and hassle of getting government approval to do so. Why should they not be allowed?
B) You admit there is a chilling effect. You think it's good. Please explain to me how making explicit material unavailable to people without getting permission from the government is a good thing. Keep in mind that sex-positive things like
this (very NSFW) and
information on sexual health would become blocked.
C) related to B, think of teenagers. We
want them to see sexual educational material. If their parents don't allow it, they're going to never see it. Because they're going to be unable to get permission from the government for themselves. Again, chilling effect. Unless they're technically savvy enough to get around the block, which makes the entire system useless.
D) Another problem with the chilling effect, and related to the gay porn thing I brought up earlier: explicit material related to sexuality (and, yes, text can be explicit) would also be banned. This would prevent people from developing their sexuality and finding support in an online community. Because of the chilling effect. They're not going to want to talk to the government for permission to do these things. And, again, think of teens. As in C, those who most need access to this material will not have it. And this is an already at-risk group - I suspect that without access to such online communities, you'd see more people remaining closeted, more people being confused about themselves, and more people killing themselves.
E) As FZ says, how long until the list of people who asked to see porn gets out? How long until they see negative consequences from that? And how long until people stop asking to see explicit material out of fear?
So. Chilling effect. Not good.
Never good.
As far as porn depicting fictional rape goes. Well, I'd rather not discuss the minutiae of this topic, but suffice to say I'm not sure that's a bad idea either. For starters, how exactly do we know it's fictional?
A) Because the participants say so, and that is made public. As is the case now.
B) Can we please not go down the "We need to treat all sex/porn as rape, because we can never know the subjective state of another person's mind" road? Again? Because we've done that already.