[azalemeth]

I have never understood how acts of love (at best) or reproduction (at the least) are considered in some societies to be dangerous, shocking, and in need of the strictest censorship -- or at the very least, not on prime-time TV. Yet acts of war, killing, maiming, and violence in general are often the mainstay of entertainment.

Sex is part of human nature – and, I would argue, a much bigger and better part of it than violence and aggression. Why do we hide from it?

[Flimm]

If porn needs to be filtered then it needs to be filtered regardless of attitudes towards of depictions of violence, and if it doesn't, it doesn't. We shouldn't choose as a baseline depictions of violence.

Many people say they are negatively affected by porn addiction (whether consumers, or partners of consumers, or parents, or people who feel objectified, even some people in the industry), and they feel strongly about it. Just because sex is a good part of human nature doesn't invalidate that in their eyes. In fact, it is precisely because some consider sex to be good and precious that they want to be much more careful about viewing it or depicting it, and I agree with that.

The number of societies that don't want censored sexuality is near zero. It is not just "some societies". And there are plenty of societies that desire that more than western ones.

[umvi]

Sex is complicated. Sex is not always a beautiful expression of love between committed partners. Sometimes it's a casual pursuit of pleasure. Sometimes it's a whimsical act of exploration.

In many cases sex is the direct cause of much sorrow, misery, and emotional damage. Maybe your partner cheated on you. Maybe you got pregnant and your partner left. Maybe alcohol was involved. Maybe you are lonely and got addicted to pornography. Maybe you didn't use contraceptives and are now seeking (or went and got) an abortion. If you look around in poor communities, you'll find a big source of poverty is... unprotected sex. It turns out, you can pretty much ruin your life as a teenager and guarantee you'll stay in poverty your whole life if you get pregnant and have a baby while you are in middle school/high school.

Unlike war and murder, sex is something most people will participate in (in some form or another). So I would argue that it's more important than ever to consider the types of sexual messages we send in media. Do we want to promote sexual relationships between committed partners or do we want to promote wanton promiscuity? I would argue that whichever you choose will have an impact on some non-negligible % of the future choices of the viewers. To be clear, I think we also need to be careful of depictions of extreme gore/violence as well, but for slightly different reasons.

In general, I'm of the opinion that implicit > explicit for both sex and violence in media, but perhaps there is a time/place for being explicit (i.e. so people understand what really happened during the Holocaust, etc).

[jpxw]

People want to avoid the porn industry because it’s sleazy, predatory, and reduces sex to a commodity.

[rimliu]

And murder is ok?

[bishalb]

You deduced that from his comment?

[mensetmanusman]

Porn is to murder as romance is to self-defence.