[hyperion2010]

Not only that but everyone wins. The user looking for porn is directed to an appropriate venue and everyone in the community that doesn't want to deal with a horny male at the other end of internet never even notices he is gone!

Score -1 for continued prudishness.

[makomk]

One problem with that is that there's no reliable way to tell if someone is looking for porn. I remember this got MSN search in hot water donkeys years ago because they were making money by sending people to porn sites based on keyword matching that triggered on non-porn searches.

[AznHisoka]

Yep and I lost some respect for these guys because they were bullied into stopping by someone in techcrunch... Techcrunch. Makes me want to barf.

[girvo]

TechCrunch had (still does? I don't know) considerable influence over early startups, so I'm not particularly surprised. The article itself is complete bollocks, which is also not particularly surprising.

[throwaway3487ds]

Not everyone wins. Philosophers and specifically feminists have to spend valuable cycles deciding and debating whether sex work is morally wrong or whether there should be a sex-positive part of the free market. This time could be much better spent on questions such as war, income inequality, discrimination other than as regards sex work, or a thousand other things. But it needs to be done, it's not like there is general agreement or you can ask some authority. Likewise the time I spent writing this comment, and the time you spent reading it, could be put to better usage by each of us.

See: https://storify.com/carolleigh/gloria-steinem-a-swerf

[girvo]

I don't think I understand your argument?

[throwaway3487ds]

I was just stating that not everyone wins, regardless of the correct moral conclusion regarding sex work (including the existence of pornography and the sex industry.)

I was being quite neutral, saying, that at a minimum the philosophers and feminists who have to debate and decide this stuff don't win, since they have better things to be doing.

I don't know how else to put it other than the link I included - this isn't a settled question, some feminists are sex-positive and support the sex industry, others explicitly exclude sex work from the idea of feminism. (Because it's degrading, or hurts women, etc, by their viewpoint, which I don't mean to summarize here. Some say the very existence of pornography anywhere hurts women everywhere.)

So no matter how you slice it, not everyone wins via a redirect to pornography. I don't mean to make a deeper or more profound statement than I did, which is why it is quite narrow. At a minimum it causes feminists and philosophers to spend time on the issue that could be put to better use.

Here is a link to a book I haven't gotten around to reading: http://gaildines.com/pornland/pornland-about-the-book/

(I also am a user of pornography, though don't pay for it, and don't yet have a moral position on the matter. In fact I consider it possible that I might be "in the wrong" for being a user of pornography, given some of the above links. I haven't decided! The only position I have is that it is obviously not trivial or beyond the need for ethical analysis, i.e. it's not something you can pass summary judgment on in good conscience, like some trivial ethical question with an obvious answer - is it wrong to pretend to your dog you're going to the park but then go to the vet instead, no, it's obviously not wrong, even though you're being misleading, next question. Unlike this example you - or someone - has to look at the issue. Which is a chore.)

[girvo]

Ah, fair enough! Thanks for explaining, I appreciate it :)