Comments Elsewhere

Thomas:

Actually, I think that giving performers a say in how their images are used over time is, while difficult, ultimately a good thing. However, that leaves open the Norma McCorvey problem: fundamentalists have sometimes been really effective at recruiting allies that will embarass feminism. I don’t want to see some “ex-gay” converts to the far right using a statute to attack material that they were perfectly happy with when it was made.

Thomas, let’s set aside for a moment the legal question of whether or not (say) born-again people who were once in pornography should have the right to force pornographers to stop distributing images of them, in favor of an ethical question. Let’s imagine that someone used to be in pornography and didn’t have any particular trouble with it at the time, but later in life regretted it, for reasons that you don’t agree with (for example, becoming a born-again Christian). Let’s also imagine that this person wishes that he or she had never been in the movies, and doesn’t want people masturbating to her or his pornographized image.

Do you think that it’s right for you to keep doing so, even against the explicit wishes of the person whose image you’re using for masturbation material?