Neil said:
As for 'Even child porn, that favourite bogeyman of police and
campaigners,
is so rare that many porn researchers as well as porn aficionados say they never saw any child porn even in the 1960s and early 1970s in America, before any anti-child porn laws existed there.' -
I've read that the child porn industry would not be financially viable without purchases by police and prosecutors. It's probably an urban legend, but I enjoy it--like the similar contention that for many years the FBI was the main financial backer of the U.S. Communist Party, because no one but double agents could ever be arsed to pay their dues.
What disturbs me most about pornography is not so much the content but the mechanics of its production. If consenting adults want to be filmed or photographed, as an act of self-celebration or simply for the money, fine. But how many are genuinely consenting?
Unfortunately, alienated labor exists in the sex industry as well as, e.g., clothing manufacture, and economically marginal people end up producing sexual images as well as designer-label clothing for the profit of others.
But both pro and anti factions of the porn debate operate from their own assumptions.
I think you'd have to rewire human beings to prevent this.
Neil also raised what I think is an important point: the distinction between filmed/photographed images of actual people and writing/drawing that is completely fabricated.
-(Y) No penguins were harmed in the production of this post