Comments Elsewhere

Pete Guither on pornography:

It’s been around forever and will continue to be around forever.

Pornography exists because men make it and men consume it. (Yes, I know, some women control porn production companies and some women buy pornography. So what? Look at what sustains the market as a whole.)

And again:

If, instead, you take a positive approach — educate people, change the conditions, offer something more positive that fills the same need — then you might be able to get somewhere.

“Getting somewhere” in what sense? If you think that pornography will continue to be around forever, then what sort of progress is being made?

Part of this, I suppose, has to do with the phrase “fills the same need.” What needs do you think pornography fills?

None of this, by the way, is to endorse a policy of litigation or State censorship. It’s a question of what you take the ends of activism around pornography to be, rather than the (very important, but different) question of what means you choose to adopt it.