Internet Porn

[quote]I have data which refutes it, it just doesn't fit your claims.[/.quote]I looked back at the thread, I don't see anything rebutting my claims. Would you like to point to something specific?

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Some jerks in the industry even push people (boys and girls) beyond what they would like and what is safe.

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What? But surely, you've been arguing that only namby pamby man-hating femnisists would ever make a claim so absurd.

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Now Contracycle, warts and all, why don't you explain why porn should NOT be treated with the same respect as any other entertainment industry?

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Actually, that is EXACTLY what I am advocating; that the performers achieve the same rights; that racist tropes are not excused by artistic license or considering everyones kink equal.

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We have not seen any coercion and no massive drug wipeouts, and no racism, and no sexism, and no all that BS that gets thrown on porn and people like you want to paint porn with to make it look negative as an entity.

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Well just because YOU have not means little; thats a tiny local anecdotal experience. I am NOT saying it is an illegitimate experience, but you simply cannot generalise and claim as you are doing that this is how it is always and everywhere. You cannot persist in pretending that the only concerns ever expressed about porn are fictitious and malicious slanders.

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You are an idiot.

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Thank you for confirming your resort to ad hominem, and thus the admission you don't have a leg to stand on.

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Do your simply throw darts to make choices? Obviously no one is allowed to have personal tastes based on visceral criteria, and I assume that must be true for you as well.

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A classic disengenuous response; it is of course obvious that we discriminate according to relevant criteria. Thats the key, RELEVANT criteria. The race of of soemone you sleep with is not relevant UNLESS you are buying into that whole racist trope I identified.

So lets have a look at the happy, wonderful, care-free world of porn:Nato force 'feeds Kosovo sex trade'Ian Traynor in Zagreb
Friday May 7, 2004
The GuardianWestern troops, policemen, and civilians are largely to blame for the rapid growth of the sex slavery industry in Kosovo over the past five years, a mushrooming trade in which hundreds of women, many of them under-age girls, are tortured, raped, abused and then criminalised, Amnesty International said yesterday.In a report on the rapid growth of sex-trafficking and forced prostitution rackets since Nato troops and UN administrators took over the Balkan province in 1999, Amnesty said Nato soldiers, UN police, and western aid workers operated with near impunity in exploiting the victims of the sex traffickers.As a result of the influx of thousands of Nato-led peacekeepers, "Kosovo soon became a major destination country for women trafficked into forced prostitution. A small-scale local market for prostitution was transformed into a large-scale industry based on trafficking, predominantly run by criminal networks."The international presence in Kosovo continues to generate 80% of the income for the pimps, brothel-owners, and mafiosi who abduct local girls or traffic women mainly from Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia to Kosovo via Serbia, the report said, although the international "client base" for the sex trade has fallen to 20% last year from 80% four years ago.Up to 2,000 women are estimated to have been coerced into sex slavery in Kosovo, which had seen "an unprecedented escalation in trafficking" in recent years. The number of premises in Kosovo listed by a special UN police unit as being involved in the rackets has swollen from 18 in 1999 to 200 this year.A few weeks ago the UN's department of peacekeeping in New York acknowledged that "peacekeepers have come to be seen as part of the problem in trafficking rather than the solution".The sex slavery in Kosovo parallels similar phenomena next door in Bosnia, where the arrival of thousands of Nato peacekeepers in 1995 fuelled a thriving forced prostitution industry.International personnel in Kosovo enjoy immunity from prosecution unless this is waived by the UN in New York for UN employees or by national military chiefs for Nato-led troops.One police officer last year and another the year before had their immunity waived, enabling criminal prosecutions."Amnesty International has been unable to find any evidence of any criminal proceedings related to trafficking against any military personnel in their home countries," the 80-page report said.The report said that US, French, German and Italian soldiers were known to have been involved in the rackets.Criticism of the international troops in Kosovo follows a recent broader indictment of the Kosovo mission by the International Crisis Group thinktank, which called for the mission to be overhauled.Women were bought and sold for up to 2,000 and then kept in appalling conditions as slaves by their "owners", Amnesty said. They were routinely raped "as a means of control and coercion", beaten, held at gunpoint, robbed, and kept in darkened rooms unable to go out.Apart from women trafficked into Kosovo, there is a worsening problem with girls abducted locally. A Kosovo support group working with victims reported that a third of these locals were under 14, and 80% were under 18.The UN admission in March that its peacekeepers were part of the problem was welcome, said Amnesty.Footnote: And yes, it is entirely likely that some of these performers will be seen in the West, via the internet. It is, after all, global - as is the demand.This message has been edited by contracycle, 06-29-2004 11:23 AM

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If you "looked back" and saw no research discounting the claim porn transmits or reinforces misogynist cultural messages, then you didn't READ.

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Enough with the abuse; can you point me to where these claims are rubtted or not?

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I looked back at the thread, I don't see anything rebutting my claims. Would you like to point to something specific?

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If you "looked back" and saw no research discounting the claim porn transmits or reinforces misogynist cultural messages, then you didn't READ.

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What you can find pretty easily if you read post 17 or the link in 27 were studies (in addition to the studies on no real personal changes) showing there is no evidence that there is a decrease in women's rights nor increased acts against women where porn is prevalent. Indeed, it was found that porn correlated (notice I am not saying caused) with liberal attitudes towards women.

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Many such rights were only granted a few decades ago; this ovbservation is over too short a period to be meaningful IMO. But secondly, that only addresses criminal acts; any misogtyby not seen as criminal would not be detected.

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You can't simply post that you didn't find it and so act like you are justified. Others can go and they will find it.

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actually, I asked a genuine question. Now I see what data you meant, I can respond specifically.

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In any country but especially lawless lands with desperate people, or really greedy people, or really sick people, you will get abuse for all sorts of reasons. That will mean forced labor of ALL kinds.

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You're ignoring a salient point - the MARKET for these slave-traded girls was indeed WESTERN men. Men who are supposedly signed up to the equality of women and things like inaleinable human rights to life and liberty. But in fact what they did was de facto collude with the traffickers. Now if Western men can and will collude with slave traffickers, why should I not think theres a lot of blind eye going on domestically?

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Hahahahahah... are you seriously saying this for ALL media, or just for porn? I've already pointed out the reductio. Unless you are going to arbitrarily put the weight on porn, you are ending a hell of a lot of fiction, well almost all really except the teletubbies

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Huh? Its already illegal to broadcast racist propaganda in most Western states, so the answer is "yes obviously".

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What I do dismiss, is the over repeated generalizations and guessing games thrown on PORN, as if it is all one thing and guilt shared communally.

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Well thats because you generalise it yourself as if any objection necessarily emanated from Mary Whitehouse. At no point have I ever stated that all of porn was corecive and yet you have attacked me AS IF I said that.

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When someone exposes a sweat shop we do not say how bad clothes are and our desire to wear them shoving people into awful servitude and stereotypes and deride businesses that make them as perpetuating such stereotypes

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Clearly not - the salient point about them is their poverty.

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However, if they happen to honestly like having sex with people of a different race for other reasons, like preference of physical characteristics or just new experiences beyond what they are used to, then that has nothing to do with a "trope".

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and hereyou misrepresent my argument again. I have expWhat makes this really laughable is that it can only be made in a society where such "tropes" existed. You know there are people outside of western countries which also end up dating exclusively outside of their race?[/quote]I do, but as you also know, this is wholly immaterial to my argument.

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ou also have decided to concentrate on black/white as the whole of interracial,

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Actually, I specifically said that I was addressing one trope that existed as a subset of all interracial porn. But don't start addressing my ACTUAL argument now, whatever you do!

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as there are no real stereotypes linked to bigotry in other interracial acts

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... as I said. In fact, I that was more or less THE POINT.

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People can make the exact same argument about women. Women never get together and gossip about the men in the office?

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False comparison; I said I have "been privy to conversations between men which do degrade women", and you have turned this into "gossip about the men in the office".Gossip <> DegradationI said what I meant, I meant what I said; I did not say "gossip" and I did not mean "gossip".

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Heck, from my observations of women's discussions (as valid as yours regarding men), I think women can be ten times more vicious then men.

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This is neither surprising nor relevant nor new. We only FIND it suprising because of the fictiotious "demure female" archetype.

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Aren't there phrases that express similar sentiments about family?

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Resorting purely to textual criticism isn't going to help. But its is exactly this sort of apologetic that perpetuates the stereotyping; most guys don't even accept there is a problem and carry on. Whuch is exactly why dealing with the problem usually requires recourse to the law.

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Please do not use books from feminist authors, nor sold for a woman audience.

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Poisoning the well

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Well I want that one for the record. My call for a person to get data from academic resources, rather than ones which have not only no good vetting of data, but have a biased audience, is being called poisoning the well.

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Yep. It implies that no feminist author could possibly be well researched; that is direct well poisoning.

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If I were to tell a creationist not to get data regarding rock strata from creationist literature, would you seriously call that poisoning the well?

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The scenarios are not equivalent, because we are discussing a dispite in which the proponents of both sides are academiocs, not one in which only one side is an academic.You appear to be rejecting anything ever produced by the gender studies departments of any university based on a groundless slur to their integrity.Now I, and others, have picked you up for blanket abuse of "feminists". It has been conceded that their essentialists feminists, and extremists as in any field, and yet you continue to apply your generic abuse, merely, I presume, because you do not like their conclusions.

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If this is how you've been reading my posts, it's no wonder you've shown little understanding what I've been saying (especially my real position on porn).

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Well when you make it a point to abuse feminists and feminism, you don't come across as someone actually interested in debating anything, but merely banging your drum.

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However, I think this line of reasoning you are making is a bit disingenuous. First of all, using the term "a few decades ago" makes 30-40 years sound pretty short... it ain't. Second, using this statement blurs the fact that stats were observed before and after legalization. A change was observed.

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Agreed. But if, as I and others may claim, we are talking about a social form that has been culturally embedded for millenia, then 30-40 years remains fairly insignificant.Taking Japan as an example, representation of women in work was protected by law, but all to often they were given sinecure positions with no responsibilities and were referred to as "office flowers" as late as the 80's, anyway. So there may be some doubt as to exactly how effective measures have been to date in changing the actual, as opposed superficial, culture.

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If your point is that there are bad people everywhere, then you never saw me say different and are putting words in my mouth if you think I did. If your point was that there can be parts of the sexual industry in which people are abused, then you also have not seen me say differently and are putting words in my mouth if you think I did.
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People turn blind eyes to bad things going on in other industries in the west. So what is your point then regarding porn and how it should be treated/thought of?

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My point, as I have repeatedly and unambiguously stated, is that we do have just cause to suspect that not everything that goes on in the sex trade is voluntary, and this is a cause for concern. Your position appears to have been that porn is essentially voluntary (even if only of the pay-for-play variety).What I think is different in porn to most other industries is that the product that is sold is a person, or the image of a person. It cannot be treated exactly like industries where the product is an inanimate object. More care must be employed in porn than in most industries for exactly that reason.

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I can guarantee you are not going to find "abused kid-slaves of Kosovo" for rent at your local store or mentioned on AVN.

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We do have reason to fear that there may be people in porn unwillingly; you cannot simply dismiss every such concern, as it appears to me you have done, on the basis that the charge is ludicrous. It is not ludicrous; you do not know, you simply do not know if the girls you see on pictures that could have been taken anywhere in the world and at nearly any date in the last decade are there because they choose to be or becuase there is a man behind the camera making threats.And the further point I made about this was that this seems to be a "see no evil speak no evil" apporoach which only serves to discredit porn further by denying there's any problem to be addressed.

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That is part of the black market. There is a black market for EVERYTHING.

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And the internet is unregulated, and therefore very convenient to the black market. So it is indeed plausible that on the internet, we may find coercive porn, or porn in which the performers were coerced. That is the position which you have hitherto been rejecting as unreasonable.

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Yet people have been able to recognize the difference between propaganda (which means supporting a cause) and using racist elements within fiction.

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You need to expand what you mean by that; it makes no sense to me.

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There is simply no support to be found for racists within interracial porn.

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I just can't agree with that; it is openly and even proudly transmitting racist propaganda. And if it were not for the apologetics offered just becuase of its sexual content, it would be seen as just as unnacceptable as any other form of hate speech.

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But I'll tell you what, you show me some literature or links or something where racists are buying up interracial porn, or refering to its MESSAGES as proving their point.

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First question: Are you aware of this particular kink existing anywhere outside the ex-slave-owning societies of the West?But secondly, you are asking for too much introspection. I didn't claim that such porn was causative of racsim; I said it was SYMPTOMATIC of racism. So what we should be looking for is porn duplicating tropes of racism, and that is indeed what we see. To the extent this plays a causative role, it is only through repitition and the reinforcement provided by others echoing your thoughts; that is, it normalises the prejudice.Thus, you ask:

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The best you'll get are racists blasting the mockery of themselves within such porn, and the breaking of miscegenation taboos in its creation.

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Publicly, yes. But privately, that is the consuming market as well; they have to be, because they are the only people who care about these particular issues. All there concerns as expressed in their outrage are hit one by one by the porn construction. This is similar to the argument that some homophobia is triggered by an individuals suppression of homoerotic desires within themselves.

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I am attacking you for creating arguments which create a generalized negative feeling about PORN (as a whole), because bad things happen within sections of it.

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Yes, despite the fact I have repeatedly denied it.

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If you are not trying to create a general negative feeling about PORN as a whole, then I suggest you review your own arguments.

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My arguments are watertight; knee jerk rejection of any criticism does porn a disservice.

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What do you mean salient? You just quoted that article of abuse and used it to rip into the Porn industry.

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That is, the deciding factor in their participation was their poverty, not their skin colour.

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Actually it is wholly relavent to your argument. As part of your "all interracial sites must involve tropes" you commented that any black person that chooses only white girls as sexual partners must believe in that trope.

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You're putting owrds in my mouth I'm afraid. I didn;t say that all sites exhibiting interracial sex make use of racist tropes; I said that some sites make explicit and deliberate use of racist tropes for the construction of porn; porn in which THE POINT is the frisson of crossing "race boundaries".In addition, I said someone selecting partners on the basis of skin tone is indeed making a racist decision. That does not imply that THIS rtacist decision is the same set of tropes as the miscegenation trope.

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My example brings up the problems with your specific argument and begins to crumble the larger one. If a wholly interracial site was run outside of the US by a person that happens to choose only those outside of his/her race, does that mean that site is or is not supporting the trope?

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That would depend on whether we see the whole suite: cuckolding, the allegedly greater sexual prowess of blacks, the white male rejected by the white female. If we do NOT see the whole suite, then the fact that some of the sex is "interracial" is irrelevant.

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I find it ironic that your own argument gives credence to the racist arguments which were used as races began to cross lines in the sixties. .... There were definite physical barriers to this (including where people lived) and most had to go OUT OF THEIR WAY to get to mix with others of different race.

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Erm, yes exactly. And its this sort of paranoia about the sexual beast that is the black man displacing the white man from white womens affections that drives both the horror of miscegenation and the porn that presents, reifies and reinforces that fear. I'm not giving credence to the argument ; I'm demonstrating its still in circulation.

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I mean if race didn't matter why was anyone wanting to date outside their race at all?

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Umm, just becuase they found person attractive? Why can;t it just be as normal and simple as that? Why does 'interracial' sex HAVE to be fetishised?

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Or don't you remember that? That's even why you can find laws against dance halls in certain areas and restrictions within them. Many white girls and boys went way out of their way to mix with blacks.

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Yes exactly. And the arguments for seperating dance halls included the inability of white women to resist the temptation of the black sexual athlete, as I pointed out many posts ago.

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Do you need me to quote your own post where you said anyone starting a website focusing on interracial sex (with a capital I) to define its subject matter was supporting the trope? That was a pretty big brush baby.

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No, it has always referred to the specific set of tropes I identified to you. And it specifically excluded porn in which 'interracial' sex is incidental. Thus, it is not a broad brush, its a fine and pointed one.

you ommitted a term; I have reinserted it for you:

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There was a large anti-sex and anti-porn contingent and kind of became the misogynistic stereotype of feminism.

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Its quite a ridiculous stereotype

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Given that my posts have excoriated people like Dworkin and given thumbs up to people like Betty Dodson, you'd think I'd get some credit for not lumping all feminists into one boat.

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Well yes I did note that, which is in part why I think your traditional denunciation of "feminists" is mere rhetoric. Why keep appealing to these silly steroetypes if you don't agree with them?

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On the other hand I do like the conclusions of what I would call modern feminists. ....To be fair I will always refer to them from now on as proporn feminists.

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Why don't you just call them "feminists"?

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This is too much. Are you telling me that figures like Dworkin and Solanas were simply male created stereotypes and did NOT take part in early feminist writings, nor try to exclude those (from using the term feminist) that began to accept their own sexual freedom and porn?

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No, I'm saying that these have been inappropriately named as champions of feminism, and used as exemplary icons of feminism, in order that the moderate case can be attakced through ther proxy of the extreme case. So there is much hysteria about Dworkin and her ilk - and even then, Dworkin makes more moderate claims than are often attributed to her - and insufficent recognition of OTHER feminists.A good example of this is the bra-burning hairy-legged man-hating stereotype.

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uld I be taking notes? Is this part of some radical new feminist revisionism where Dworkin gets removed, even as her rhetoric is championed?

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Well I would think that was most post-70's Feminism. Yes, why is it you think Feminism is monolithic and stuck in awe-struck hero-worship of Dworkin?

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Because that leads to confusion, like you just had. If I only called proporn feminists feminists, then the antiporn crowd would bash me.

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And rightly so; you can't pick and choose who constitutes a feminist merely because YOU agree with them or not.

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They are all fighting for the same cause. I find the proporn crowd better and on the right track, but the other ones exist don't they?

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Yes of course; thats what I was pointing out - feminism does not just have one opinion, and it is not fair to present it as if it does. There are pros', moderates, and anit's on this issue, and you are perfectly entitled to express your own position and preference. You are not entitled to declare who is and wqho is not a feminist based on your own position on this matter, nor can you fairly tar all feminists with the anti brush. Why not just deal with it as a field of reserach and opinion like any other, exhibiting various strands of argument like any other, and containing dievrse people and opinions, like any other?

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1- The amount of porngraphy using forced participants is a significant percentage and is representative as pornography, as an industry, in any way.

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Well, we don't know and cannot know I'm afraid; its an inherent limit of the medium and is a line of work already substantially underground. But to be frank, all I need is ONE incident to legimiately claim there is cause for concern. If you are going to claim there is no cause for concern, then it is your responsibility to demonstrate why I should have this confidence.

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2- The market for slave traded girls is western men.

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I cannot see how that is relevant. In the first case, its unremarkable, because sex tourism by western men is well established; Thailand has been a prime choices for sex tourists for a few decades now. In the Kosovan case, they were definitely Western. Marc Dutroux starved kidnapped girls to death in his basement cell after a career of abductions anrd rapes. But I need not at any time claim that Western men necesarily consciously tell themselves they desire a trafficked person - my allegation is that they don't ask and don't care any more than most people care if their shirt was made by someone working in inhumane conditions.

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3- Many men do not like women very much.

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Oh no; I fully recognise its undemonstrabel, as its a claim to an insight into another persons thought process. I can only assert it is my opinion and impression, and manifestly I am not alone in either view.

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4- Interracial pornography promotes and maintains racist stereotypes.

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Thats been comprehensively dealt with already.

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5- Where, specifically, holmes has abused feminists.

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here:

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Please do not use books from feminist authors, nor sold for a woman audience. Make it real research, academic.

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Yes and no. My "assertion" regarding purpose is that it is fixed but only in a general way. It allows for many facets as human fantasy has many facets. These fantasies may always be deconstructed of course, which is what feminists do in a very subjective manner.

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am also nonplussed by the feminist argument, when you see women making porn (even lesbian porn) which is rough on women and men.

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I am stating that the feminist position is that all porn is mysogynistic.

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It is not up to the people being attacked by feminists to go and correct them, it is the duty of the feminists to get their arguments straight in the first place.

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The example I gave was specific and accurate. It shows the underlying PROBLEM of feminist critiques of porn. In a rush to judge, they grab on to whatever soundbytes sound damning, but have no connection to what porn is about or how it is used.

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But this is yet another problem engaged in by feminist critics.

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Again, comprehensivly demonstrated. Is your word search function broken, Custard?

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So far you have provided nothing to support these positions despite request after request after request. At present, you have nothing to support your position but opinion. Sorry, the unsubstantiated opinion of an internet poster doesn't carry much weight... none in fact.

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Well funny you should mention that, Custard... I did not demand that anyone agree with my views. I attacked only two things: the bklanket denigration of feminists, and the assertion that all porn is inherently harmless. The people advancing those extreme positions are the ones carryiong the burden of proof. I have only indicated that there is CONCERN, and that it might not all be sweetness and light. Thats an entirely resonable position to adopt. Those who argue that there is NO REASON FOR CONCERN must demonstrate that it is comprehensivleym IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to come to harm in porn, and that therefore expressions of concern are unfounded.And furthermore, I don't have to tolerate resort to ignorantum; merely becuase you or holmes are unfamiliar with the research work indicating, for example, the degree of trafficking is frankly not my problem. I also openly acknowledge that my capacity to find such materials as they exist on the net is limited, and I make no pretensions, ever, to advancing an academic argument on the net. But then again, I don't have to: convincing YOU individually is a fundamantally trivial issue.Here's a discussion of the acceptance of violence against sex workers in New York: Page not found | The Sex Workers ProjectIdentification of a client as a trafficked person, again in NY:
http://www.sexworkersproject.org/...ationAndAdvocacy1103.pdfThe sex workers project also notes:

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Violence Against Prostitutes: Eighty percent of street-based prostitutes interviewed had experienced or been threatened with violence while working. When asked about reporting violence to the police, they reported that police did not take their complaints seriously and often told them that they should expect violence. "Carol" told researchers "If I call them, they don't come. If I have a situation in the street, forget it. 'Nobody told you to be in the street.' After a girl was gang raped, they said 'Forget it, she works in the street.'" She continued, "I hope that never happens to your daughters. I'm human."

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Research carried out by UK police departments indicates:
http://209.190.246.239/ver2/cr/uk.pdf

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British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) correspondents report that 6 out of 10 women working in London brothels have been trafficked. The BBC further reports that most small-town police stations have recorded on their books between 12 and 20 trafficked women per year. Scotland Yard claims that three-quarters of the women in prostitution in London have been smuggled into the country.

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The Independent, June 19, 2003
Albanian connection to the teenage sex slaves in London

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By Jason Bennetto Crime Correspondent

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The Romanian girl was 15 when she was smuggled into Britain. She arrived in Dover, via Brussels and Ostend, on a hovercraft in July 2001 and was met at Victoria station and taken to a flat in north-west London. A day later, a man named Mustapha Kadiu, 31, arrived and made the girl, later known in court as Miss X, phone saunas and massage parlours to work as a prostitute.

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Kadiu, an Albanian who persuaded her to travel to Britain to start a new life, threatened to kill her if she failed to earn between 400 and 500 a day, charging 30 for straight sex.

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After three months of sexual slavery in London she escaped and went to police. Kadiu was arrested and convicted of raping her, indecently assaulting her and of living off immoral earnings. He was sentenced last December to 10 years in prison.

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The plight of the Romanian teenager is an example of the growing power of Albanian pimps in London and of the booming sex trade involving girls and women from eastern Europe smuggled to the West. The National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) says many of the people who are trafficked into Britain enter the vice trade. Others work as cheap labour in illicit sweatshops producing counterfeit goods or are brought in by Chinese "snakehead" gangs to work in restaurants.

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Most of those who end up in the vice industry are victims of "some form of deception, and exploit the lack of opportunities open to women in source countries", the NCIS says in its assessment of serious and organised crime.

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Traffickers advertise in local newspapers abroad offering jobs as maids, nannies, bar and catering staff, receptionists, clerical staff, dancers and entertainers. Even the women who knowingly get involved in vice are told they will be able to keep their profits.

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Women from countries in the former Soviet Union and Balkan regions are increasingly the victims of kidnap by the traffickers, NCIS says. "In some rural areas of the Balkans, the fear of kidnap is such that families keep adolescent girls at home rather than send them to school or work."

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Traffickers use extreme violence, including rape, to control victims. "In some instances, women have been killed and their bodies dumped in public places as an example," NCIS adds. In Britain, traffickers strip victims of all documents so they cannot work elsewhere. Some threaten to tell their families they are prostitutes.

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Over the past decade, violent Albanian criminals have taken control of 75 per cent of prostitution in Soho. Scotland Yard estimates that last year criminals made 61m from 15 people-smuggling operations that police detected.

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Appliance Repair Videos - find local appliance repair companies

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The trafficking of people is a rapidly growing global problem that affects countries and families around the world. Because of its hidden nature, statistics relating to trafficking are extremely difficult to measure accurately. A US Government report published in June 2003 estimates that approximately 800,000 - 900,000 people are trafficked across borders worldwide each year. This doesn't take into account those trafficked internally within countries.

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Follow-up to the outcome of the Millennium Summit, Implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration
Report of the Secretary-General, 58. session, Item 61 of the provisional agenda, 2 September 2003
82. Another area of grave concern is the increasingly widespread practice of trafficking in women and girls, one of the fastest-growing types of organized crime. It has been estimated that more than 700,000 people are trafficked each year for sexual exploitation. Many of the victims are subjected to violence. This is clearly a major human rights challenge for the new millennium. Strategies to counter it need to address the many factors that at present foster a favourable environment for trafficking, including gender-based violence, cultural practices and social structures that promote the demand for and the commercialization of women’s and children’s bodies and the denial of equal status for women in access to property and the attainment of economic independence.

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From the US DOJ report:
We apologize for the inconvenience... - United States Department of State

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No country is immune from trafficking. A recent U.S. Government estimate indicates that approximately 800,000-900,000 people are trafficked across international borders worldwide annually, and between 18,000 and 20,000 of those victims are trafficked into the United States. The Department of Justice recently compiled an assessment of USG anti-trafficking efforts, which will be released this summer.

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I reiterate: there is just and legitimate cause for concern. The burden of proof lies on those who claim that despite nearly a million people trafficked annually world wide, and despite a persistent and organic relationship between trafficking and the sex trade, that there is no cause for alarm and that the only peopole who consider there might be any concern are miliciously anti-porn.

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"No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery
and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."
Article 4, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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By themselves no less. Look I didn't say they were the champions, and have made quite clear that in this thread by "feminist" I was referring to the antiporn crowd. They existed, they still exist. And they are feminists.

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Granted. They are also women, so women must be anti-porn. And they are also people, so people must be anti-porn. They are also hominids, so hominds must be anti porn. They are also mammals, so mammals must be anti-porn. They are also vertebrates, so vertebrates must be anti-porn. Etc ad infinitum ad nauseum; this is SYNECHDOCHE, I believe.

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Okay I got ya now. This is just BS. Whatever I say you are simply going to attack, even if it means contradicting yourself and when you can't find something to attack you create a strawman.
I don't choose who's a feminist, that was my WHOLE FUCKING POINT.

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You can maintain that, but I have quoted you above: "I am saying the feminist position is that porn is misogynistic"And as I pointed out a couple of posts ago, the fact that you were inconsistent in this declaration is how I know for certain that you were employing it as a rhetorical device to round up support from the anti-feminist brigade. I have you red-handed, holmes.And the perverse point about the whole issue is that centrally, we agree. IMO the point you have been advancing in this thread is too extreme for your own argument to defend; what you needed to do was advance a more moderate case and not assume that anyone who disagree with you about any detail has an axe to grind.

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What kind of concern? Concern that if you go online and buy an Amber Lynn vid, that you may be helping the slave trade? Concern that if you use porn you will want to join the slave trade? Concern that allowing porn to exist helps keep the slave trade alive?

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Concern that some people in the tarde are there not volutarily, but due to coercion. Do you or do you not acknowledge that this is a possibility and a problem?

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The reality is that people should be concerned about abuse, and that includes in the porn business. I have never said nor argued otherwise despite the strawman you continually build regarding my position.

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Actually, you have - for example, you accused me of posting material to "discredit" porn. Your line of argument has been that any concern or cricisim is mischievous and ill-informed.

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The reality is that abuse does occur, but it is like in any other industry, isolated from the mainstream. Most people making and using porn would have no connection to the abuse.

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Completely undemonstrable; there is no reason at all for thinking that. Porn on the net is more accessible than porn in the shops. There is no mechanism anywhere that leaves you absoluetly positive that an image you are looking at was not taken under coerced conditions. It may well be that many people are viewing images of coerced sex; but neither you nor I have any idea. This is a reality that you seem to persist in denying.Its manifest in your sentence above where you falsely conflate buying an amber lynn videa weith the slave trade. Thats clearly ridiculous, and is a spoiling argument artificially constructed to be false.

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It is fearmongering.

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Thats arrogant complacency. As you yourself say:

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There should be no vague "concerns" about the sex industry. They are concrete. Someone somewhere may be getting abused. You track down leads and prosecute those involved. Just like any other industry/.

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But apparently NOT like any other industry, because according to you all "concerns" are "fear mongering".

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Just because there is a justified concern that someone somewhere is being abused to make porn, does NOT mean that you picket VCA pictures to clean up the industry. There simply is no connection like that.

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Thats quite true. But then again, I've never advocated picketing VCA pictures, have I? So I have caught you once again resorting to hyperbole and misrepresenting my argument to make a rhetorical point.

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Yes, your bizzaro-ideology regarding sex between races has been expounded quite comprehensively. If you habitually do not appreciate your sex partner as just a bunch of parts, and any parts will do, then you are a racist.

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... as you do here again. Not very good with logic, are you holmes?

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Maybe you missed Custard's point. You need facts. I'm still trying to get how you know what everyone MUST be doing privately, though they all do something different publicly.

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And as I pointed out, the medium in which a racist trope is propagated is irrelevant. An undeniable racist trope is being propagated, the medium happens to be porn.

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But, since you did take it seriously... nice job rebuilding your strawman through quote mining. My use of the word feminist in this thread, regarding criticisms of porn, has already been well explained. You simply choose not to get it in order to keep arguing.

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Vaion protestations of innocence. [bart]"I didn't do it, nobody saw me, you can prove a thing".[/bart]

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Well that leaves me out of the picture. Although I will say that all PORN IS harmless, it is not the using of porn which does the harm, it is people who make it that may cause harm during its production. This needs to be stopped wherever it is found.

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Well then what the fuck have you been objecting to?

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Speak for youself asshole. First of all we were talking about PORN, which is a wholly separate issue than TRAFFICKING. If this had been a thread on TRAFFICKING then I could have provided stats on that.

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Also demonstrably false; in fact I can quote you acknowledging this up-thread: [quote]me

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'sex is not THE ONLY thing goin on in porn'; please address my argment and not a straw man.

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you

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If this is ALL your were saying, then there is no issue. As I myself have already said, there are many different fantasies which get played out in porn, which means things beyond mere sexual acts.

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My position has been consistent through-out.

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Its curious that you hounded me for stats

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I didn't hound you for stats. I asked you where the stats where that you claimed undercut my point that 1) not everyone in porn is there consensually and 2) that other pernicious tropes are propagated by porn. you ahve provided no states criticising any position I have advanced.

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The subject was porn. If you want to expand it to all sex work then that is fine, but then you must still address the stats regarding porn as well to make the actual points that are the MAIN TOPIC of this thread and ALL I WAS ADDRESSING.

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What is the reason for thinking that porn, as a subset of sex work, is uniquely free of the problems that plague other sex workers?

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Well blow me down! I don't even HAVE to address those because they have little or nothing to do with the topic!

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well clearly it does, unless you can show some reason for thinking that nobody who was coerced has ever appeared in internet porn. And that is blatently untrue; at the very least we can be confident that some paedophilic images were coerced. Can you provide any reason at all for ruling this out? If not, you must concede it is relevant to the topic of internet porn.

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And, if anything, they will support my own arguments (if we want to get into a broad based discussion on the issue like we did I think a year or so ago)... If you are aware of research in this area then you already KNOW that human trafficking is a poverty issue, not a porn/sex worker issue.

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Of course I do; thats why I stated that the poverty was a salient point up-thread. Have you even been reading what I write holmes or just leaping to conclusions? And the reason this is relevant to porn and sex work in general is becuase manifestly, human trfficking provides the PRODUCT - that is women - these industries sell.

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Both are correlated to its ILLEGALITY. You bring me stats from New York? Sex work (in this case prostitution since you have moved the goalposts to that) is illegal in NY. That is the reason it is profitable, and that is the reason violence gets reinforced against these poor people (which actually includes boys though the study was not so up on that).

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Yes absolutely. Or at least partially; I would still allege that there is misogynistic collusion between pimps and johns, especially where johns apply violence. But I fully agree that the solution is to make porn legal and bring out into the bright light of day where it can be regulated like any other industry and, among other things, suppress such hate speech as is propagated through this medium.

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Street prostitution is BAD.

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You are imposing moralism where none exists.
Somebody who sympathsaies with a girl getting beaten up to perform for camera or for johns is not satying that prostitution is bad; they are saying the violence is bad.

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And if you believe those issues make any serious case against PORN, even that we must be CONCERNED more about that industry than others, you are also delusional. You have made NO connection between any of the above and the majority and specifically mainstream porn.

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Shifting goal posts again (as you have already done with Lynn). Who said anything about mainstream porn? Did I? Does the thread title read "mainstream porn"? No, it reads "internet porn". You are demonstrating yet again that the entirety of your argument has depended on selective reading; you parse concerns about internet porn as concerns about mainstream porn, despite the fact that the distinction has been repeatedly drawn. Please start debating honestly.

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Persistent and organic. And an upgrade from concern to alarm.

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I see. And so its your contention that despite illegal status of sex work generally, if you found a relationship between any sex worker and organised crime you'd be suprised? Then you have been living in fantasyland. Yes, persistent and organic.

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See what I am talking about? Fearmongering. Seriously, is there any reason to believe that your corner porn store is carrying many if any tapes made with human trafficked sex workers?

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I have no idea; its inherently unkowable where a picture was taken. I cannot in any sense verify the sourcing and origin of such material when it is so closely linked with the black- or grey-markets.

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How about the internet? Do you think a person can accidentally buy forced porn?

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"buy"? Thats only a subset. But yes, its entirely easy, becuase you cannot know the circumstances under which the material was shot. you have already conceded that much of porn includes the feigning of pleasure, so let me reverse the question and put it to you thus: how can you be sure that any given image is NOT coerced? What methods would you employ to determine that to your satisfaction?

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While I agree it might be tougher to tell when you are dealing with sites outside of the US, don't you think YOU can tell when you are crossing from content in a white market, to a grey market, to a black market?

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Haha. Yes, I know for certain I cannot tell. Because the black market was the the conjoining medium that brought porn and the hackers together. And I know that hackers can put together a web site that will in every detail be as good as one designed by a professional outfit. It is entirely possible for any site to be wholly illegal, andf no punter would be able to determine that. And if it were hosted oput of a data haven, there wouldn't be any way to find out either.So if you think you could tell, would you advise me as to what tools you would use to dinstinguish them? And while you're about it, can yuo explain whaty difference it makes if its consumed accidentaly or deliberately? The performer has still been coerced regardless of the punters interaction with whoever is taking the money.

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Trafficking is alarming. Violence against sex workers is alarming. These issues are poverty and legality based, and not dependent on porn for there existence.

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Absolutely correct; but then you will note that my argument from the very beginning is not that they are DEPENDANT on porn, but that porn serves as a VENUE. Will you now, finally and belatedly, acknowledged and address the point I have actually advanced? Or are you still a little high strung about the issue and prone to imagining persecution where there is none?

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Yes. You use broad language which pretends knowledge that abuse can be anywhere.

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More words in my mouth. I didn;t say it CAN be anywhere, although that is increasingly likely as sundry misogyny and racism are steadily defended. I said the PUNTER cannot be certain.

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This is PATENTLY FALSE. No mechanism anywhere? I tell you what. Start a porn business (even an independent internet one) and run it LEGALLY.

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What on eartjh is the relevance of this? It only serves to demoinstrate that your etnire argument, by your admission, has been a "joke"; I have already identified your belaboured attempt to switch the topic from internet porn to 'safe legal porn'. Please STAY ON TOPIC, or create a new thread.

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If a person is ever in doubt and wants to make sure, absolutely 100%, that there is no coercion, all you have to do is look at 1) it's a US registered business, and 2) it has a nice little 2257 compliance notice at the bottom.

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Great. So thats dealt with responsible consumers of legal porn. What does that have to do with this thread, though?

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Thus YOUR UNFOUNDED ASSERTIONS are FEARMONGERING.

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Holmes continues with his distortion above; not only does attack me for sticking to the topic, he then draws conclusions from it and attributes motive!

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Vague, idiot, vague. Its part of a guilt by association argument, which you do just dandy. Bob and weave, duck and cover, and shift them goal posts. No one can touch ya... then zoom out with a nice juicy "but you NEVER CAN KNOW."

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I'm glad you finally and grudgingly acknowledge the point I raise. Can you be bothered to address it yet?

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Huh? And huh? I like how you tell me not to talk about the content of porn stores, yet are able to bring in sex workers and childporn because they are relevant to internet porn?

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Well, the thread topic is INTERNET PORN; not 'regulated american porn' That means we are dealing with MANY origins, not merely yuour local legal arrangements.

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Anyhow, I am trying to figure out how anyone mistakes buying childporn online, with buying adult porn from a legitimate business (indy or not).

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Whats that got to do with anything at all? I've never suggested anyone was making a mistake.

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Funny thing is, and maybe you should check it out, in the West it already is legal and is regulated. Overregulated in fact.

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Cpongratulations, Sherlock, I'm well aware of this. I merely don;t make the error of synechdoche and assume that this is representative of all INTERNET PORN; you know, the topic.

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No childrape pornographer said I think I'll keep up this site and round up more girls and boys because so many people are seeing my popup page.

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Correct; they appear to operate by invitation only, and by donations of collections to an archive. Which demsontarets again that they are actively soliciting and producing this material, and real human beings suffer in its production.

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That's why when you go to get that black market shit you keep talking about, you know when you crossed the line.

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See what I'm saying. Conflation and vaguery and indictment of PORN. Porn sells women. Wrong. Porn sells sexual entertainment.

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Correct. Or indeed, exactly. And especially interesting in the light of the long history of male control over female sexuality. It is the reduction of humans to sexual objects that it sells.

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Mainstream is the majority of porn, including internet porn. Thus it has relevance... much more so than sex workers and child slave rings.

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Really? What? I mean, clearly harsh working conditions in textile factories in 'free trade zones' are totally irrleevant to the problem of poor working conditions; becuase of course in the west we have unions and labour law. So clearly, there cannot be a problem anywhere... Holmes, your desperation to get yourself out of the hephalump trap you dug for yourself is dirving you to the miost absurd rationalisations.

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And that's the key. You say there is a reason to be concerned and that there are NO MECHANISMS for one to know whether any image is coerced or not. Well that is patently untrue. There is a great amount... mainstream porn... for which there ARE MECHANISMS, and so free of this CONCERN of yours.

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OK. Lets hypethsize I have bfroe me a porniographic image downloaded from the net. Where in that image is the manufacturer specified and their licence given? come on, holmes, I want you to show me the MECHANISM by which I can be SURE that there is no coercion. Go to it, step by step please.

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People should not be concerned about the porn they consume, until they start deviating from the mainstream.

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Oh I see Only perverts are a problem. But as you know, we for example differ over some content I say is racist; thus our perception of where the line is crossed differs. Therefore, appealing to your personal view of what is or isn;t mainstream is valueless to the question. Theres not even a reason to think that mainstream porn has anything to do with the actual topic, which I remind you again, is INTERNET PORN.

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Again, a person getting a slave sex worker can't be too shocked.

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No shit. I am sure they are getting exactly what they paid for.

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And that's ASSUMING all trafficked people go into sex work which is also patently untrue.

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I assumed no such thing. Please try to address the argument I am making instead of this endless succession of straw men.

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Now remember I was talking about porn stores in this case,

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... yes, becuase of your complete inability to advance a case related to the actual thread topic.

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They better all have labels and those labels better all have 2257 notices and inside the tapes

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WHAT TAPES??????????? The topic is INTERNET PORN!

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There is no REASONABLE CONCERN for the white market, certainly not at this point in time.

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But holmes, the topic, as I have pointed out to you many times, is internet porn, not 'white market regulated american porn'. As I identified a long time ago, your entire argument depends on distorting the topic your favoured ground.And thus your ranting is exposed again. You have criticised me an others for being concerned about porn in general, when by your own admission you can only be confident about a small subset of all porn. You did the same thing to feminists; you are distorting the argument, and then attributing malice to your opponent based on this distortion. Its difficult to imagine a less honest argmentative technique.

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Fourth. How can a hacker fool you into believing their business registration and 2257 compliance material?

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With photoshop. Duh.

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You can certainly bump into it accidentally through free content, but then I pose the question to you how that leads to a market in human trafficking? Seeing something for free never put money in anyone's pocket.

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Actually thats not true, to the extent I understand how hit counters work. But it presumes an ideal isolated transaction unsullied by the real world. Once the purchase has been made, there is nothing to prevent it being re-distributed to like minded fellows; there is nothing to prevent it from being redistributed for free. So once again, your entire defence rests on the assumption of ideal conditions.

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You mean grey and black market ends of porn generally serves as a venue for gray and black market activity in general?

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No. But that the grey and black markets are by definition unregulated, and so the extent of misogyny that appears in porn, the degradation of women, which you deny in mainstream porn, is here uncontrollable; and thus your complacency about porn in general is demonstrated as bogus rationalisation.You;ve already conceded your anti-feminists rants were "a joke"; and seeing as your entire argument rested on the claim that these feminsists were creating alarm where there is nothing to be worried about is totally discredited. Firstly becuase you have admitted that your description of feminists was innacurate, secondly because you grudgingly concede that in fact a grey and black market exists and is not regulated to the extent that the legal market is (duh), and third you have demonstrated the very tolerabce for, for example, racist imagery that constitutes one of the concerns.Case closed; you have been soundly whipped, kid. Go play in the shallow end.

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What you just outlined is the real myth and you ought to be very very ashamed for stating it again. You carted this out once before and I tore it to shreds. I hope this is the last time I am going to see this from you.

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Yeesh this is like attending a remedial social studies class.Lets start here:

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Geishas and courtesans and brothels and mistresses have been with us FOREVER.

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In the first instance, 'forever' is hyperbolic on a number of levels. More substantively however, note that all of these are FEMALE roles. So can restate the claim thus: women providing sexual services to men has been with us 'forever', or at least, quite some way looking back. But seeing as these coincide with women being the lesser partner, or a dependant, or reliant on (unsurprisingly) patronage, it is indicative not of free human expression but the sexual commification and objectification of human beings.So the case that this is demonstrably natural has NOT been demonstrated, becuase misogynistic coercion would also produce this phenomenon.

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And once again, the myth you have created is steeped in ethnocentrism.

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And the myth you propagate is steeped in androcentrism, not least because authentic female perspectives of most historical periods are hard to come by. Its unsurprising that by and large we get a quite naturally self-serving analysis by men and for men.Now; please note that I am not asserting anywhere that monogamy is in any sense natural, or the the legislators of our morals have any serious argument. I can easily cite 'promiscuous' practices in many societies. But this has little to do with the allegation that the advent of the pill allowed a large degree of social and psychological pressure to be placed on women to conform to this new order, and indeed a language of 'frigidity' appeared to explain (and criticise) those women who declined to open their legs for anyone who asked.Observing that monogomy is a social construct does not mean that no such pressure was applied.This message has been edited by contracycle, 07-07-2004 07:39 AM