Vested Interests

Laurelin:

if you are a consumer of pornography, you have a vested interest in it, you benefit from it, and therefore your word on how wonderful and harmless it is is seriously compromised.

And:

Survivors of sexual violence have a vested interest in opposing pornography. Without it, they would benefit from not having their abuse shown over and over and over again for the joy of the self-obsessed. They would not be humiliated. They would see their rights and integrity as individuals respected. They would not be made to relive their abuse by outside agents who get off on it.

So, those who have one kind of real life experience must be completely ignored, and those with another kind of real life experience must be praised as purveyors of all things truthful.

I don’t think anyone’s claiming that people or organisations in the sex work businesses are never harmful to anyone, I’ve seen several people claim that it’s claimed that porn is harmless, but I’ve never actually seen that claim made by halfways enlightened people. You see, making that claim would be denying the experiences of the many trafficked women and children, it would be denying the experiences of those who were forced into prostitution. Porn CAN be harmful, yes, I don’t think anyone’s really denying that. But it isn’t always.

By saying that it’s always harmful, we’re denying the experiences of people who are willing and even enthusiastic participants and workers in that line of work – sex work that is.

I find it interesting that Laurelin feels the need to juxtapose consumers of porn with unwilling participants in porn, when the fair thing to do would be to compare willing participants with unwilling participants. Consumers of porn have no first hand experience, and so, indeed, they are not the ones to ask. After all, would you ask a restaurant customer, how the pineapple he’s eating was grown? How the heck would he know if the farmers were treated right and were paid fairly? That’s right. How about we ask the farmers, or in the case of porn, ask the actors and actresses? No, according to Laurelin we should be comparing the people (apparently defined as thoroughly unreliable) who like to watch porn, with those who hated to be in it, and with that Laurelin is trying to silence the voices of the voluntary sex workers.

If vested interests exclude people from having an opinion, then survivors of sexual violence shouldn’t be heard either.That’s only fair.

Of course, anyone who has unwillingly ’starred’ in porn should have the right to demand the film/clip/something off the shelves and offline, and it should be upheld by the law. Their vested interest in having revenge should not take away someone else’s livelihood, however. Let’s have the criminals prosecuted, because whether or not porn is legal, it ALWAYS illegal to force another person into sexual situations, however far they go. Rape is always illegal, but it’s not porn doing the raping, it’s sleazy scumbags who happen to be affiliated with the sex work industry somehow.

Just because we’ve had several cases of pedophiles working in day care centres, we’re not attempting to close all day care centres because clearly they’re dangerous for the children. NO, we’re trying to root out the bad apples from the centres so our children may once again be safe, and that’s exactly what we ought to be doing with the sex industry. Get rid of the bad apples and let the rest of the business go along legally on its merry way. Safer for women that way.