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Debate: Pornography
From Debatepedia
[  ] [  ] [  ] [  ] Is pornography sound, and should it be legal?
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Background and context
At the moment, pornographic material showing adults over the age of 16 or 18 (depending on which country) is legal. Child pornography is entirely illegal at the moment, and it would be very hard indeed to argue that it be legalised. The debate will mainly centre on whether pornography depicting adults should be available to adults, or be banned completely. The proposition will also have to define what is meant by ‘pornography’ - does the term include books, magazines, pictures, the Internet?
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[  ] [  ] [  ] [  ] Sexual role: Does pornography play a constructive role in sexual culture?
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[  ] Yes
- Pornography can serve as an inspiration - Pornography can be seen as a mean to improving one's sexual life, as an inspiring source of visual stimuli. Certain actions may be used as creative games or vivid instructions that can enliven one's sexual life.
- Pornography can help to improve self-control and to create a healthy distance from sex - Watching other people performing a sexual act can help one to fully perceive and realize the actual absurdity and emptiness of sex (from the conscious point of view), hereby enabling one to build-up a healthy distance from the whole issue. By watching pornography one can train sexual self-control, which can come handy either during the sexual act or in the process of consciously avoiding it (resisting seduction, respecting partner's mind).
- Pornography can serve as a (partial) substitute of sexual life - For people that (for various reasons) doesn't have a sexual life, pornography can (partially) serve as its substitute. This holds especially well for men, who are much more visually oriented (with regard to sex) than women are, as can be seen from the fact that the clear majority of pornographic material focuses on the female form.
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[ ] No
- Pornography degrades women Pornography objectives women, sometimes men, by making the intimate experience of sex into a voyeuristic act of gratification. Instead of seeing women as subjects who deserve respect and worth, women are portrayed of objects to service the sexual needs of men. That degrades women and makes them less than fully human. The vast majority of pornography is a tool of male hegemony continuing the age old exploitation of women and is essentially anti-feminist.
- Violent pornography encourages violence against women and fosters the normalization of rape. Rape, especially date rape, is a widespread and serious problem that significantly hurts women and thus society.
- Pornography is unrealistic and addictive, can lead to a break-up or divorce - Pornography is known to be highly addictive. Because a real girl/wife can hardly live up to the fantasy on screen, porn addicts are constantly unsatisfied. This usually means that a porn addict is unable to find a real-life mate. Or, worse yet, this form of addiction is sometimes associated with marital break up, which is especially hard on children and has an economic impact on the well-being of the family. The attitude in society that encourages degradation and violence against women, promotes marital unhappiness and divorce and makes possible modern day slavery should be rejected.
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[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [  ] Free speech: Does pornography directly harm individuals, and thus fall outside of the protection of "free speech"?
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[ ] Yes
- Pornography is an expression falling under freedom of speech: Free speech is an ideal we cherish. Censorship is only deployed when free speech becomes offensive to others. This is not the case with pornography, as it is filmed legally by consenting adults for consenting adults, and thus offends no-one. Pornography, contrary to what the Proposition have argued, neither injures nor offends anyone, and is a legitimate tool to stimulate our feelings and emotions in much the same way as music, art or literature does.
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[ ] No
- Pornography is not victimless, making any protective claims of free speech overly protective: Pornography encourages unhealthy, objectifying attitudes towards the opposite sex. In this way, it is naive to suppose that pornography is a victimless crime; the victim is the very fabric of society itself. By victimizing others, pornography forgoes any claim to the protection of "free speech".
- Pornography is often connected with organized crime, enslaving people from poor countries - Pornography is a billion dollar industry that feeds human trafficking in which poor third world and eastern European women are sold against their will -- literally becoming sex slaves.
- Pornography debases human interactions by eliminating love, laughter and all other emotions, and reducing them to the crudely sexual. Sex is an important factor in relationships - the proposition are not prudes - but by no stretch of the mark is it the be all and end all of them.
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[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Slippery slope? Does legalized pornography lead, in a "slipper slope", to illegal forms of pornography?
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[ ] Yes
- No ‘slippery slope’ scenario exists here. The only people interested in child pornography will be those who will obtain it anyway regardless of legality. Human sexuality does not work in such a way that one might move to finding a different type of pornography stimulating by sheer exposure.
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[ ] No
- The more legal pornography is available, the more other illegal forms, such as child pornography, are encouraged by the apparent tolerance of similar activities: Given that some people may have feelings for people below the legal age of consent, are we to allow them the ‘legitimate sexual exploration’ of their feelings ? The opposition cannot fit human impulses with the rules that society has to protect us from harm.
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[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Encouraging rape? Does pornography serve to encourage rapists to commit their crime?
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[ ] Yes
- Rape will exist with or without pornography. It is likely that if one is subject to the feelings rapists are then one is more inclined to use pornography, not the other way round - pornography does not create rapists. The claim that pornography is rape does not hold water; our entire legal system is dependent on a distinction between thought and act that this claim seeks to blur. Pornography is a legitimate form of expression and enjoyment, and should not be censored in the interests of sexual repression and prudery.
- Rape has existed before the invention of pornography - Rape has existed for thousands of years, well before the invention of pornography. The sheer thought that pornography births rapists is not only naive but an uneducated statement that holds no ground in the course of history. For a clearer line of reference, pornography requires electricity, and yet during the dark ages it was not uncommon for a village to be raided ant the young maidens to be raped. Under the assumption that rape is the fault of pornography, where was pornography during this era?
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[ ] No
- Many rapists are obsessed with pornography, and it serves to encourage them in their crimes, by letting them treat women as objects whose feelings are not relevant, or as people who are actually wanting to be raped; a very common defence case is that a woman was ‘asking for it’. Indeed, feminism has proposed that pornography is rape, by its exploitation of women’s bodies. Pornography only serves to encourage brutal sex crimes.
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See also
External links
Books
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