PORN: Or Part 1 of Why I am Leaving SG: Interlude: Response to Comments

First, just to sum up that essay of yore: the theory of porn I have no problems with (porn!=evil); it's the practice of porn that is problematic for me. At the time I wrote that essay, I thought that SG was, suddenly, porn* that no problematic. To quote ValCapone, I thought it was "something [I did like]."

For the record, I do not believe in censorship of any kind. While I may not like or approve of images that are being produced, I do not think that the right to produce such images should be censored.

ValCapone is right that SG's do not own their images. This is something that I will take up at a later date.

Again, to respond to ValCapone, I think it was fairly clear that I was not talking about emotional crying during sex. I was talking about pain.

Consent is a tricky motherfucker; there's no two ways about it. For example, economics (ie being broke) often skew consent. For instance, let's say that I work at a job that while I'm allowed to take a sick day without being fired, I will not get paid for that day. If the job is rather low-paying and I need the money, I am probably less inclined to take that sick day. With porn there are a whole set of social, economic, and psychological reasons why "consent' can be called into question. I will not expand on them here because it is a topic that deserves a more rigourous and thorough treatment that I can currently give. (I will briefly point to things like fraternity/sorority rushing rituals and the "Girls Gone Wild 'Phenomenon'" as places where consent seems to be obvious murky territory.)

And yes, we do have free will. But there is zero doubt that that will is shaped by society to a very large degree. The question I want to pose here, and it is one that I have posed to myself is: Why do I get off on being degraded as a human being? (That is to say, why can I accept and enjoy acts done to me by someone who loves me and that I love that I would never consider doing to someone that I loved?)

To reply to Silvery, I do not think that "marijuana does lead to heroin"; however, in the case of porn there have been numerous, rigourous studies, to show that porn, like many things in America, progresses along the bigger is better course of action, wherein "bigger" is "more hardcore" (more penetrations, more objects, more people, longer scenes, more skin, larger breasts/penises). I think the move Supersize Me deals with this topic quite well and demonstrates that porn is not, obviously, in a cultural vacuum. Like the Big Gulp, it also continues to "grow" towards what is known as "gonzo" scenes.

Part 2

*To be clear, I think SG is on the very soft, soft end of soft/hardcore porn: that is obvious. But I do think it is meant to titillate and as such it is porn. If it were not, there would not be such strict rules [for example] about nudity happening around the 11 frame of a set. For those who do not consider SG "porn," where is the line? What is porn and what is not porn?