From: Iain Coleman ijc@bas.ac.uk
I'd strongly recommend you check out the following articles by Feminists Against Censorship:
http://www.libertarian.org/LA/censcrim.html
And very good reading they are too, with plenty of ammunition to deploy against the moralists. Yet I can't help feeling that these three articles betray biases of their own, by marginalising the existence of genuinely nasty stuff. A statement like 'In contrast, it should be noted that the "kill the bitch" syndrome is never present in pornography' (in the first source cited above) is flat out *wrong*. I've *seen* a short movie called "Beat the Bitch" (shown on a TV documentary years ago) in which a tied-up naked women is subjected to (unconvincing) pummelling from a naked man.
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.' - that is just shoddy argument at its worst. "Is so rare" (ie now) hardly relates to the state of affairs nearly 30 years ago. That's like saying video piracy is a non-issue because nobody had a VCR in 1970.
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? I've heard it alleged that women in particular are coerced or blackmailed into making porn (there is the famous anecdote of Linda Lovelace being forced to 'perform' with a gun pointed at her head - true story or urban legend?). If so, then there is genuine reason for concern, IMO. But both pro and anti factions of the porn debate operate from their own assumptions. Andrea Dworkin (maligned in the third of the sources cited above) has written from direct first-hand experience of the production of pornography, an irritating fact glossed over by the anti-censorship lobby.
Similarly, there have been recent noises in the media about illegal immigrant women ending up in the sex trade. Genuine concern, scaremongering deterrent, or palliative cloak for xenophobic rhetoric?
At least fan art porn does not, insofar as the mechanics of its production are concerned, threaten or injure anyone (unless the artist sprains her wrist or something while drawing).
That's the obB7 bit, BTW
Neil