The moderator’s opening remarks in full

MODERATOR

Helen Joyce, International section editor, The Economist Newspaper

17th November 2015

Since Paleolithic humans learnt to paint and carve, every new medium has quickly been used for sexually explicit representations. The same was true of the printing press, and of photography and cinematography, and now it’s true for the internet. More than a tenth of all web searches are estimated to be for sexually explicit material. Of the world’s million most-visited websites, 4% are dedicated to porn.

It seems highly unlikely, then, that pornography can be stamped out. How hard we should try to limit access to it, or to restrain its wilder fringes, is a different question—and yet a third question, which we’re about to debate, is whether porn actually has its merits.

Some argue that pornography is inherently degrading to women. For a clear statement of this point of view see Gail Dines’s “Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality”. (You can read an interview with her here.) Others regard it as potentially liberating. Jenny Trout, a writer of erotic fiction and blogger, was moved by her dislike of the bonkbuster trilogy “50 Shades of Grey” to write “The Boss”, which portrayed a young woman’s submissive relationship with her much older boss in a sex-positive and feminist way. She curates a Tumblr blog of pornographic pictures and video clips purporting to have been chosen by the book’s heroine, Sophie Scaife.

One of our debaters, Cindy Gallop, takes an entrepreneurial, tech-positive approach in arguing that pornography can be a positive force for human sexuality—if we loosen up, open up and start talking frankly about sex. She points out that the internet means no one need feel alone, no matter how unusual their sexual tastes, and that online porn can improve relationships by suggesting activities lovers might never have thought of for themselves, and that they might enjoy. For most of what’s problematic about porn, she blames society, in particular the prudishness that means that pornography—intended as entertainment—is pressed into service as the default sex educator for most young people today.

For Robert Jensen, pornography is much more problematic. He sees it as irremediably bound up with abusive and exploitative gender relations, and argues that there can never be sexual equality when members of one sex can “buy” the other. And he sees pornography as a poor answer to fundamental questions about values, such as the meaning of a human life, and what sex is for. He worries, too, that we are unquestioningly rushing towards a situation where almost every human activity is increasingly mediated through screens. What is that doing to our self-control, empathy and values, he asks?

Before we start this debate I would like to draw attention to a sobering fact: compared with other common activities, the evidence on the impact of watching pornography is unusually poor. That is partly because it is almost taboo to study it. Academics report finding it difficult to get funding for research into sexual functioning in general and pornography in particular. There are also methodological difficulties: researchers would like to study the effect of pornography on young people, but showing porn to people under the age of sexual consent is, in most jurisdictions, a crime.

Even more seriously, entrenched ideological positions mean some research studies of pornography would be better described as op-eds. A 2013 review commissioned by the British government into the impact of pornography on teenagers ended up discarding nearly all the papers uncovered by a literature search because they gave little or no evidence for their assertions. Of the few hundred retained, fewer than a third provided really high-quality evidence.

Our debate will certainly be informed by value judgments—and that’s fine. We look forward to seeing how values inform your comments, tweets and blog posts about this debate over the next ten days. But let us all be clear about when we’re stating facts for which we can cite evidence, and when we’re expressing opinions—which, like all opinions, have to be defended.

The proposer’s opening remarks in full

YES

Cindy Gallop, Advertising consultant and founder, MakeLoveNotPorn

17th November 2015

My answer to this question is yes—if we allow it to be. Pornography can be used to help explore our sexuality, including what we like and don’t like; to discover that there are others who share our sexual tastes; and to reassure us that when it comes to the extraordinarily wide-ranging spectrum that is human sexuality, there is no such thing as “normal”. But at the moment we don’t allow porn to work this way. Many of the evils that are blamed on porn should be blamed on society instead.

There is an easy solution to everything that worries people about porn, one that lies within the power of everyone reading this: that is, not to censor, block, shut down or repress it. The answer is to open up—to talk about real-world sex.

Freely accessible online hardcore porn has become the default sex education, and not in a good way. I found this out for myself by dating younger men, which inspired me to launch Make Love Not Porn. But this is not porn’s fault; it’s because we don’t talk openly and honestly about sex in a way that would enable people to understand the difference between #realworldsex and porn, or to view the latter, which is a type of entertainment, from a position of knowledge about the former. Our slogan at Make Love Not Porn is: “Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference.”

Now that children routinely stumble across porn online at frighteningly early ages, we cannot go on in the same old closed-minded way. People talk about pornography as if it’s one big homogeneous mass. That’s like calling all writing “literature” as if everything is essentially the same thing. With porn, as with literature, there are many genres and sub-genres. But since we don’t talk about it, it’s uncharted terrain. Porn lacks the tools we use to curate and navigate other types of media—or at least socially acceptable tools. There are sites that curate porn, but they are porn sites: there is no Yelp of porn. I have friends creating innovative, inventive, ethical porn—but if you’re a horny 15-year-old in Swindon, you’ll go straight to one of the big commercial sites and you’ll stay there. (And by the way, the Yelp of porn is a billion-dollar business idea.)

Porn producers should be able to function like any other legitimate business. My team and I fight a battle every day to build makelovenotporn.tv—an honest, transparent, ethical business with a social mission—because we are barred from using the business infrastructure that other tech start-ups take for granted. The small print always says “No adult content”.

When you force an entire industry into the shadows, you make it a lot easier for bad things to happen. Every bank, payment processor and business that refuses to work with honest, legal adult ventures shares responsibility for bad practices in the adult industry. Enabling the porn industry to do business on the same terms as everyone else would improve quality, business practices and working conditions.

My biggest obstacle in raising funding for Make Love Not Porn is “fear of what other people will think”. It’s never about what the person I’m talking to thinks; once people understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it they don’t argue with it. The business case for our unique product is clear, and the opportunity is huge—but they say they are afraid of what other people will think.

I know many porn and sextech entrepreneurs with innovative, disruptive ideas that could transform the “adult content” landscape, but who cannot get support, despite what would be a huge return on investment. It’s no coincidence that many are female. The day we have a porn industry that is run by as many women as men, that targets its products equally at women (as opposed to misguidedly thinking men are the only audience) and that makes its money from women as much as from men, the industry will be more creative, lucrative and healthy. (And by the way, that would be true in other industries as well.)

So don’t block porn—disrupt it. Why doesn’t Britain set the gold standard for communication and education about sex and porn; make business services open and available to legal adult ventures; ask business leaders to mentor, coach, advise and finance sex-related businesses; and become the global hub for sextech start-ups? British porn could be turned into an export industry to be proud of.

The opposition’s opening remarks in full

NO

Robert Jensen, Journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin

17th November 2015

Graphic sexual material can make some people feel good, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for us, as individuals or collectively. Rather than obsessing over the immediate pleasure of an orgasm facilitated by pornography, a more productive inquiry would start with a fundamental question: “What does it mean to be human?”

All political positions are based on underlying moral claims. Attitudes towards pornography are no different. At issue are not preachy judgments about sexual behaviour, but how to reconcile humans’ yearning for self-realisation with the need for stable, respectful communities that allow individuals to fulfil their potential. Although it’s true that “you can’t legislate morality”, every position in the pornography debate is based on a sexual ethic. And the ethic of pornography is pretty clear: individual pleasure-seeking trumps all other values, and no one need pay attention to the consequences of either institutionalised male dominance or modern culture’s seemingly endless appetite for high-tech media that become more “real” than our own lives.

Pornography is more widely and easily accessible than ever before. Much of it is cruel and degrading to women, and some is overtly racist. As pornographers have championed a libertarian sexual ethic that focuses on individual choices and ignores the social constraints that structure choices, they have helped advance the idea that all aspects of our lives can, and should, be mediated through screens.

How does a pornographic culture answer the question about “being human”? When it comes to power, it says that the domination/subordination dynamic of patriarchy is inevitable, because it’s how humans are designed. So get used to the same old hierarchy. And to questions about images and the nature of technology, it responds that the more mediated our lives are the better, since this heightens our sense of control. So get used to ever-greater narcissism.

But does graphic sexual material, with the intensity that comes from delivery through film and video, help build stable, respectful communities? Exploring sexual themes in art can illuminate the power and mystery of desire, but what are the long-term effects of reducing sex to pleasure acquisition through a screen? Do these mediated experiences erode our ability to connect sexually in person? Is it possible that sex and intimacy don’t translate well to explicit representation in the mass media?

This leads to an often overlooked question: What is sex for? Of the ways people might understand sexuality in their lives, which are most consistent with self-realisation and stable, respectful communities? At times, especially within certain religious traditions, rigid answers to such questions have been imposed on people in ways that were routinely constraining and sometimes inhumane. But just because a question has sometimes been answered badly does not mean that asking it can, or should be, avoided.

The varied ways different societies have made sense of these questions indicates there is no one answer. Even within one individual’s life, sex can play a different role at different times. For young people, sex may be primarily about exploring themselves and their limits; for adults, its most important function may be to foster intimacy within a primary relationship. In general, we can think of sex as a form of communication that teaches us not just about others but also about ourselves. We can collectively try to understand which conceptions of sex are most healthful without claiming definitive knowledge or the right to impose judgments on others.

Just as we recognise that eating is more than the acquisition of calories, so sex is more than the acquisition of pleasure. The food industry offers “industrial eating”; pornography offers “industrial sex”. But the experience of eating fast food differs from that of eating food to which we have a more direct connection in production or preparation. Both processed fast food and processed fast sex create a gulf between us and the real world. People often respond to both by saying: “But I like it.” Both produce a certain type of pleasure efficiently—but what is lost in normalising these forms of pleasure?

What does it mean to be human now? Our answer must be consistent with the core progressive principles of dignity (all people have the same claim to being human), solidarity (human flourishing depends on loving connections to others) and equality (dignity and solidarity are impossible without social and economic justice).

A feminist critique of the sexual-exploitation industries analyses prostitution, pornography and stripping as ways of delivering objectified female bodies to men. Whatever one’s view of the role of intimacy and sexuality in society, it is difficult to imagine achieving justice when members of one group (women) can routinely be bought and sold by those of another (men). Under conditions of equality, it is hard to imagine such exploitative practices would exist.

A sexual ethic consistent with these widely held moral principles would reject the hierarchy of patriarchy and recognise that systems of domination and subordination are inherently abusive. And a sexual ethic consistent with just, sustainable communities would question the rush to “technologise” all human activity. That doesn’t mean that mediated storytelling with sexual themes is inherently negative, only that we need to consider not only the pleasures of sex through technology but also the deeper consequences. We don’t need to romanticise a mythical golden age to recognise that what we call progress does not always enhance the quality of our lives.

The guest’s remarks in full

GUEST

“Ryan”, Economist reader and pornography user

23rd November 2015

Moderator’s note: A reader got in touch to offer a viewpoint up to now missing from our debate: that of a porn user. He asked that we did not use his real name because he wanted to be able to talk more frankly about his experiences with porn and his homosexuality.

I’m 15, I’m horny and I haven’t seen anyone like me. I’ve watched Hollywood heroes suck the lips off their damsels. I’ve even peeked at bad actors and bored actresses making love in late-night erotic television dramas. And I still haven’t seen anyone like me. But now there’s a fuss: an explicit drama about the lives of men in Manchester is about to be broadcast. Too scared my parents might discover me watching it, I tape it on my bedroom VCR. Later, finally, I fast-forward through the plot to catch the snogs and the flashes of flesh I am desperate to see. This isn’t porn, it’s “Queer As Folk”, a drama about gay men, the work they do, the relationships they explore and the sex they enjoy. But for me, it’s representation. Seeing these men doing the things I want to do proves that I exist—that other people like me exist. I just have to move away to find them.

The power of porn, to me, is not just about instant pleasure; it is about education and affirmation. As a gay male who grew up in a small town where boys were bullied unless they talked about how much they wanted to have sex with women, I craved others like me. There were other boys in school who were more obviously like me, but they were shunned. I had to stay away from them so I didn’t become a target.

As I grew up and moved away, I still kept away from other gay men. My parents were hostile towards a gay family member. There was a part of me that didn’t want the same treatment, even as I grew strong enough to be able to endure it. While gay men in Britain in the noughties were enjoying ever-greater levels of respect, I stayed away from them. I didn’t like the fact that there was a “community”. I thought that was regressive.

I didn’t realise how important solidarity is. But as I began to welcome men into my bedroom—streamed via the internet to perform on my laptop screen—I started to feel a sense of community. I too feel Robert Jensen’s sadness that so much of our lives these days is lived through screens, but he seems to be ignoring the potential benefit of seeing someone like ourselves on a screen. Porn taught me what my sexuality meant and opened my eyes to pleasures I could not have imagined and acts I would have been scared of trying in real life.

My sex education was long, detailed and private. It took place in my bedroom in my rented flat in London during my 20s. All I needed was a laptop and Wi-Fi (headphones helped too). It was ten times better than anything my petrified parents would have given me if they’d tried, and a hundred times better than the cartoon of mandatory heterosexuality shown to me in school.

During this period of exploration I read plenty of feminist theory and social science. So I came to understand how media organisations objectify people, especially women, and how some fear that the representation of ever-more violent sex acts in porn could lead to sexual violence in real life. I read about how porn actors, even gay ones, take on traditional gender roles—the active and the passive. I could see how some porn denigrates and racialises people. I turned off the clips that portrayed black men as dangerous gangsters who prey on white men—a set-up favoured by white men who want to play with a power dynamic while perpetuating it.

I have a lot of time for Fiona Vera Gray’s argument that porn can make people into supermarket items, categorised and fetishised. But she does commit the offence—along with Mr Jensen—of implying that porn is only about getting your end away. In the case of sexual minorities and anyone with tastes beyond the vanilla options served up by big studios, porn is a political project. It’s about representation. It’s about the solidarity I felt when I began to explore porn and the diversity of bodies and options it presented. Every man I watched was different, every scene was novel—but they shared something with each other and with me: they were not what I saw on billboards on the street or on mainstream television programmes.

I have as much of a problem with these phoney versions of humanity as Mr Jensen does. I’ll march beside him against corporate, unrepresentative mass media. But he and I part ways when he seems to deny the power that representations of sexuality offer us all. I suspect that a person who says we should focus on building respectful communities rather than making porn is ignoring the fact that for some of us at certain points in our lives, porn is the only community we feel a part of. What community can you build for your sexuality if you’re gay and living in Saudi Arabia, a state that views you as illegal? Even in Britain, there was little room in the community of my town, my school or even my family for gay people. Porn creates a sense of solidarity. It showed me that there are people like me. Porn recognised my dignity. It showed that my sexuality is just as valid as yours.

It took a long time before I had sex with anyone. I had seen lots of things I wanted to do. And I had seen lots of different bodies, including bodies that looked like mine—bodies that were shown to have just as much fun as the ripped, oiled and hairless bodies that unfortunately dominate porn. I was 29 before I let myself be seduced. And, thanks to porn, I was instantly comfortable with him, instantly comfortable with my body, and instantly comfortable with what I wanted and how I wanted it.

GUEST

Casey Calvert, Adult actress and model

22nd November 2015

The question “Can porn be good for us?” is not the same as “Is porn good?” The latter is a question of morality, of religion; a question that inherently asks “Is pleasure good?” and “Is sex good?” That is not what we are discussing here, even though Robert Jensen turns to this argument to make his point.

Opinions on the morality of sex should not cloud opinions on pornography. Porn is not sex. It is true that it is a representation, a performance, of bodies coming together. But the “porn” that Mr Jensen obscurely discusses (porn in quotes because Cindy Gallop is right that the word is over-generalised) is not sex. It’s not what social conservatives think of when they think of sex, nor is it what I do in the privacy of my own home with the person I love. Just because Mr Jensen takes a more traditional view of sex than I do doesn’t mean that his opinion should distort others.

Whether you think that I am committing a sin for what I do when I go to work shouldn’t influence your view on pornography. The first amendment to the American constitution means that I am allowed to do what I do. It is my right and my freedom to have sex with many partners and record it for the world. If you don’t like that, or if you think that it is wrong, fine. But we aren’t discussing the morality of my actions.

Instead, what we are discussing is if pornography can be good for us. Can it be good for us as individuals; can it be good for society? I believe it can.

Porn has long offered a glimpse of the future. Long before alternative sexualities were accepted in popular culture as they are now, porn accepted them. Gay porn, fetish porn—it has all existed as long as straight porn has. Porn accepts everyone. There is content for everyone. Mr Jensen would like you to believe that the only porn out there is what you see on the tube sites. “Industrial” porn, he calls it. But that’s just not the case. There’s plenty of art-house porn and female-driven porn. There’s fetish porn for even the most obscure turn-on.

This means that people who want something different—who need something different—have a home in pornography. Fetishists can find other fetishists just like them. They aren’t alone. Isolation is a terrible feeling, and for so many people pornography is the cure. When you no longer feel like a freak, then what? You become more confident and begin to accept yourself. Maybe, now, you’ll be able to find love, from someone else or from yourself. Sadly, there are many people who will never be able to find someone. But they have porn, and it’s the closest to intimacy they will get. Why deny them that?

Every society benefits from a population that is financially, mentally and emotionally healthy. I believe porn helps with all of these things. I believe that if we could be as open-minded as pornography is, we would live in a more benevolent world.

And if you can never accept that porn can benefit people’s personal lives, then how about this: porn is commerce. This discussion doesn’t have to be all about morals and ethics and sex. It can be about job creation, and a way out of a hole for many people. The industry doesn’t just employ performers. Directors, producers, grips, gaffers, caterers—all these people can make money, and support their families, from producing porn.

Porn is like the Bible. You can find something there to support any argument. And yes, there are lots of problems within the industry (both Ms Gallop and Mr Jensen mention many of them). But really, why does pleasure have to be bad? It’s 2015. It’s time to stop shaming people for being sexual.

________________________________________________________________

Casey Calvert is a fetish model and adult performer who began watching porn at a young age. She regularly performs for the adult industry’s most popular studios and has modelled for Hustler’s Taboo and “The Mammoth Book of Erotic Photography”. She has written about porn for the Huffington Post and the book “Coming Out Like a Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protection, and Privacy”, and gives talks about BDSM and fetishes at venues across America, including universities. You can follow her on Twitter @CaseyCalvertXXX.

 

GUEST

Clarissa Smith, Professor of sexual cultures at the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland

20th November 2015

Is pornography good or bad for us? It’s time to stop asking that question. Robert Jensen has written numerous books and articles about pornography, yet his contribution here—a series of rhetorical questions and unevidenced flourishes—demonstrates that he has understood little about it. This mix of scary futurology and techno-fear compounds a reductive and mechanistic view of pornography as unwholesome, creating interests that are obsessive, narcissistic and inhumane.

For her part, Cindy Gallop recognises the possibilities of diverse genres and interests in pornography. Wanting to see “better” representations and believing that these are possible, she isn’t afraid to use technology to make them. Yet she also frets about the “effects” of pornography, in particular that it gives young men the “wrong” ideas about sex. Pitting her enterprise against hardcore porn and puritan silence, she suggests we should “make love” and talk more if porn is to realise its potential for good.

Presenting their experiences as more than personal, both conjure up a figure of the “porn user”. For Mr Jensen, he (it is always a man) is focused on selfish “pleasure acquisition through a screen”; for Ms Gallop, he’s a “horny 15-year-old in Swindon” who doesn’t know better. Both impute consequences for those who engage with porn and for the very fabric of society. Worries about pornography have been with us for decades, and despite all the rhetoric we still know less about the audiences for pornography than for any other genre of popular entertainment. Too often, the research that gets attention is scaremongering about “changed brains” and “addiction” presented as scientifically irrefutable.

But there is another body of research which looks at people’s actual consumption of pornography to understand how rich and complex those engagements might be. Such research doesn’t start with assumptions about the genre’s harmfulness, or the idea of its pleasures as exclusively masturbatory. Instead it explores the reasons for consuming porn and how these feed into people’s varied interests in sex. These include the different senses of sexual selves opened up in sexually explicit materials; what sexual representations might mean and the ways in which they may be important for experiencing bodies; ways of thinking about sex; how desire might feel; and the political possibilities of finding community with others who share your sexual orientation.

Sexual arousal may be sought for its own sake, simply because it feels good. However, the explorations of self and sexual identity that are facilitated by engaging with sexually explicit representations are not just about arousal and pleasure. They are also ways of playing with the meaning and significance of arousal and pleasure.

Too often the debate revolves around whether pornography is good or bad for us. The assumption is that the desire to explore sex is stimulated by bad people who use bad ideas to entrap and inculcate the naive. It follows that the only responses are to ban or disrupt that business. But that focus ignores arguments derived from research about the social and cultural significance of pornography and the media generally. It sees pornography as a kind of “message” and its consumption as a form of “exposure”. So, Mr Jensen argues, pornography is concerning because of its apparently irresistible power to shape sexuality and its pernicious impact on sexual relations between men and women. Its potential to open up new panoramas of sexual being and aid fantasy and pleasure are dismissed as utterly unimportant. Ms Gallop does recognise some of these possibilities, but only in some Utopian future. For now, she still worries about porn’s “bad messages”.

The good-for-us v bad-for-us framework is part of a moralistic agenda of good sex v bad sex that cannot accommodate the complexities of sex, sexualities and identities in our media- and technology-saturated world. Let’s stop repeating the same old concerns with a mish-mash of “evidence” marshalled for its emotional appeals. If the problem is, for example, porn’s alleged racism, then let’s examine how pornography has represented race in various historical and social contexts, recognising that those images may have powerful resonances for people of colour, notwithstanding the worries they raise for Mr Jensen. If the issue is that the sex education young people get from porn is one-dimensional, then let’s have an in-depth conversation about what sex education they need—and, in case you are in any doubt, it will not be abstinence-only.

There’s no doubt that pornography is a significant presence in popular culture and the public imagination. But it is too easy to simplify complex representations and their equally complex place in contemporary life to searching for “messages”. Curiosity, desire and stimulation vary infinitely and unpredictably from one person to another. The questions need to get more specific and the debate needs to move on.

________________________________________________________________

Clarissa Smith is professor of sexual cultures at the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, part of the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at the University of Sunderland. She researches issues relating to sex, sexual identities and sexual representations in contemporary culture, and is a founding co-editor of Porn Studies, a Routledge journal.

GUEST

Fiona Vera Gray, Researcher of sexual violence and coordinator at Rape Crisis

19th November 2015

Pornography is not one big homogeneous mass, as Cindy Gallop points out. But neither are “we”, and her claim that nearly all of us watch porn is not backed up by evidence showing large sex differences in the consumption of sexually explicit media. It also does a disservice to her admirable project of “opening up” sexual practices and preferences. Not everyone uses porn, and not everyone who uses porn likes the fact that they use porn. Recent research from Maria Garner, a researcher in porn and sexualisation at London Metropolitan University, shows how some men struggle with the negative impact of their porn use on their sense of self, sex lives, and ethical and political beliefs. A practice evoking shame, nausea and what she calls “panicked arousal” is not what we would expect of a “useful tool” for the expression and exploration of our sexuality.

Pornography cannot be easily mapped. It is an industry of perpetual escalation, which makes content analysis difficult. Evaluating its ethics or “goodness” must therefore be based on its very being. Robert Jensen moves the debate to an ontological account of what it means to be human. The shift is useful as it moves criticism of porn away from moral panic, or negativity about sex in general, and towards an explanation of how human beings ought to be treated. These are the conversations we must open ourselves up to, and they may result in us deciding to reject pornography in its entirety as antithetical to the project of sexual freedom, opposition to oppression and gender equality.

As someone who works to oppose violence against women, I am familiar with the connections between and among different forms of violence. My research shows connections between how women experience routine intrusions by men in public, such as street harassment, and how they experience criminal forms of violence, such as rape. I’m interested, therefore, in the relationship between pornography and sexual violence.

Some feminist positions are caricatured as claiming that pornography causes sexual violence—though this is rarely, if ever, what feminists actually say. The End Violence Against Women Coalition, of which the Rape Crisis centre where I work is a member, uses the concept of “conducive context” set out by Liz Kelly, a professor of sexualised violence at London Metropolitan University, and the notion of “cultural harm” described by Clare McGlynn and Erika Rackley, law professors at Durham and Birmingham universities respectively. Catherine Mackinnon of the University of Michigan Law School highlights the fact that the production of pornography can involve sexual violence, and Rae Langton, a philosopher at Cambridge University, suggests that simply producing pornography ranks women and legitimates violence against them, regardless of the response of those who view it. From Ms Langton’s point of view, no matter how “ethical” or “disruptive” pornography may be (and the producers of such pornography rarely explain what they are doing to end the exploitation, racism and sexism in mainstream pornography, other than creating alternatives to it), the very nature of pornography is not conducive to authentic human existence.

We respect a person by affirming her or his status as a free, conscious subject. Both pornography and sexual violence involve treating an individual as a disposable, anonymous universal—as a means to our own sexual ends. In our daily lives we struggle with the freedom of others. That our sexual partners have their own interior lives, desires and goals that do not involve us and of which we cannot be fully aware reveals that we all have our own desires and goals. With pornography this struggle is resolved. The other is reduced to the object of my desires, my goals. Internet pornography and the shift to living via screens that Mr Jensen refers to give consumers an unprecedented sense of freedom to click through pages in a never-ending supermarket of people—mostly women—reduced to objects of desire. It is a place where deviations from the white heterosexual male norm become fetishes, where white women become MILFs, (a MILF is a ‘mom I’d like to fuck’), slutwives (note the way they are characterised by their relation to men); trans women become shemales, trannys and cocks in frocks; black women become black bitches and black whores.

This is part of the very nature of pornography, and why it is not as simple as making porn more diverse, and improving business practices, talent treatment, working conditions or the quality of the output. Porn reduces individuals to interchangeable tools and elevates the consumer to the position of the ultimate subject, making an object of others and our own bodies. An excess of stimulation and a sense of unchecked freedom may be part of the pleasure of pornography. But they are a big part of the reason pornography is the source of so much unhappiness, alienating us from ourselves and each other.

________________________________________________________________

Fiona Vera Gray is a researcher studying violence against women and girls. She has over ten years’ experience in providing frontline support for female survivors of sexual violence at Rape Crisis South London, as well as writing and delivering prevention workshops and conducting research for London Metropolitan University’s Child and Woman Abuse Studies Uniton young people’s understandings of sexual consent. Her forthcoming book, “Men’s Intrusion, Women’s Embodiments”, is due to be published in 2016. She begins a Leverhulme Fellowship at Durham University in 2016 extending some of her argument here to explore how pornography affects the ways women experience their bodies.

http://debates.economist.com/debate/online-pornography?state=rebuttal

The moderator’s rebuttal remarks in full

 

MODERATOR

Helen Joyce, International section editor, The Economist Newspaper

20th November 2015

A couple of days into our debate, those who answer No to the question “Can porn be good for us?” are well ahead. With 6,174 votes so far, 85% people say No. We’ve had some pertinent comments from the floor, on both sides.

Among those who defend pornography, lff12 strikes a sad note with a reminder that sometimes what is ideal is not on offer. “For a large number of people sexual intimacy is beyond their reach. If we are going to ask questions about what it means to be human, surely we should be asking also what it means if some parts of humanity are denied to you—for whatever reason.” On the anti-porn side, Tendril_rise neatly flips on its head the argument that porn can be educational. “The subtext of every pornographic exchange is that the viewer’s pleasure is paramount … that lesson runs counter to satisfying and fulfilling human sexuality that prioritises the object of one’s love and seeks to give rather than receive.”

These reader comments bring experience and insight—please add yours to the website or on Twitter using #IsPornGood.

Since we still have a week to go, I’m not going to sum up at this stage. Instead, I will comment on some points made by those who have spoken to date, and point out where it seems to me that their arguments fall down. The first is from Robert Jensen, our debater on the No side, who says that in a totally egalitarian, non-sexist world, it is hard to imagine that women would “routinely be bought and sold” by men. I greatly dislike this characterisation of sex work. Prostitutes and porn performers are more than their bodies and sexual roles, and men who buy sex, or its representation, are buying a service, not a person. It is not at all clear to me that it is a service no woman would sell in a non-sexist society.

I find myself dissatisfied by vague suggestions of links between pornography and sexual harassment and violence made by Fiona Vera Gray. She says that victims of sexual abuse experience sexual harassment and violence as part of a continuum—but does that mean they are in fact on a continuum? And even if they are, what does this have to do with porn? It may seem obvious that men who watch a lot of porn (or perhaps just a lot of violent porn) thereby become more likely to objectify women, or to harass or attack them—but is it true? Without any evidence, one can also theorise that porn offers an outlet for violent impulses, and makes violent men less likely to act out. Or there may simply be no correlation. I have seen nothing to suggest that anyone knows.

I find Cindy Gallop’s claim that porn has become the default sex educator both convincing and worrying. Of course porn users are a heterogeneous bunch—but those who speak frankly to young people about their ideas and experiences of sex report that porn tropes are at the front of their minds. Leaving porn to teach young people about sex is as absurd as expecting them to learn about science from “The Fantastic Four”, or how to drive from “The Fast and the Furious”.

But I am less convinced by Ms Gallop’s version of Gresham’s law. Pornographers are in the business of making money, and if “good” porn could drive out “bad”, I think it would have happened already. No doubt there is room for a greater variety of pornography, but I suspect that “ethical porn” will mostly be watched by new customers, rather than converting old ones, who seem quite content with their parade of multiple penetration and surgically altered bodies. I think it will be like organic wholefood or haute cuisine, which can be profitable and popular—but much less so than junk food.

And finally, I want to know what public policies anti-porn activists would recommend. It’s one thing to look at porn, dislike what you see and become convinced that the material makes people unhappier, nastier or worse at relationships. You might then decide to stay away from it yourself, and perhaps advise others likewise to refrain. But do you go further and try to ban it, in whole or in part? In short, what do you want the law to be?

Coming up next in our debate are views from a professor of sex and a porn star—with more to come next week. Please keep adding your comments on this website or on Twitter with #IsPornGood.

The proposer’s rebuttal remarks in full

YES

Cindy Gallop, Advertising consultant and founder, MakeLoveNotPorn

20th November 2015

This may not be what The Economist and its readers want to hear, but I actually agree with a number of the issues Robert Jensen raises. However, I have different perspectives on how they should be addressed. I love his question of “What does it mean to be human?” and his statement that “at issue are not preachy judgments about sexual behaviour, but how to reconcile humans’ yearning for self-realisation with the need for stable, respectful communities that allow individuals to fulfil their potential”.

Being human means being sexual (barring a small number of people who are asexual). But an unfortunate consequence of the taboo around sex has been to stifle and repress the fact that sexuality is a fundamental part of humanity. A journalist once began an interview with me by asking earnestly: “Cindy, why is it that we enjoy watching people having sex?” I burst out laughing and replied: “That’s a ridiculous question. Of course we enjoy watching people having sex; we’re sexual beings and wired to enjoy and respond to erotic stimuli.”

What we are not allowing humans to do is to self-realise and self-express sexually, in a way that, referencing Mr Jensen, enables individuals to fulfil their sexual potential. Our reluctance to talk about the immeasurable richness that is human sexuality means we have reduced sex to an act, a thing we do. But sex is personality, and we need to encourage a fuller understanding of what that means.

Everything in life starts with you and your values. I regularly ask people: “What are your sexual values?” Nobody knows how to answer this question, because we are not taught to think that way. Many of us, if we are fortunate, are born into families and an environment where our parents bring us up to have good manners, a work ethic and responsibility. Nobody ever brings us up to behave well in bed. But they should, because empathy, sensitivity and kindness are as important there as they are in every other area of our lives and work, where we are actively taught to exercise those values.

So I agree with Mr Jensen that a sexual ethic is important—but an individual sexual ethic, not an externally imposed one. It needs to be encouraged as a natural part of everyone’s upbringing and education, and to be a topic of open conversation. Combine that with opening up to help the porn industry create a healthier future for itself and to provide helpful curation and navigation, and we enable individuals to make their own choice of sexual entertainment reflecting their own conscious sexual values and ethic, as well as encourage porn producers to create more innovative, disruptive, values-driven sexual content.

When we understand that human sexuality is as nuanced and individual as any other human trait, we also understand that systems of domination and subordination are not always inherently abusive in a sexual context. When people and the media make negative generalisations about porn, they focus on that genre of porn that shows men dominating and forcing women to submit. You never see the media covering the vast genre of porn for men who love being dominated by and submitting to women, and women who love dominating submissive men. That’s because it doesn’t fit with the clichéd societal construct of masculinity. There are many men out there who would love to be dominated, and women who would love to dominate men, who may never discover that within themselves, and who will therefore never achieve sexual self-realisation and realise their sexual potential.

Mr Jensen’s and Fiona Vera Gray’s concerns reflect my original point: the issue isn’t porn, but that we don’t talk openly about sex, and porn. If we did, we would encourage better sexual understanding and behaviour, end the situation where porn acts as far too many people’s only source of sexual education, and inspire innovation and the creation of different types of porn. The “negativity” Ms Gray talks about isn’t caused by porn itself, but by the weight of guilt and shame society causes people to feel about using it. They would like to be watching different kinds of porn, but can only watch what they are given by an industry the business world refuses to help innovate. A 24-year-old man told me he found his way tohttp://makelovenotporn.com when he googled “Porn that is not porn”, because he was fed up with what was out there and wanted something different.

Pornography is not some kind of fixed and immutable evil entity. Bring it out of the darkness; strip away the shame surrounding it and anything to do with sex; encourage a gender-equal industry, transparent business practices and sexual values-driven creativity and innovation—and you’ll see a dramatic reduction in negative impacts and an equally dramatic transformation in humanity’s sexual sense of self, and better sexual connections with each other.

The opposition’s rebuttal remarks in full

NO

Robert Jensen, Journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin

20th November 2015

Pornography producers’ and consumers’ typical first response to critiques of the way the industry eroticises misogyny and racism is to say that pornography is “just fantasy” and need not be taken seriously. Cindy Gallop’s opening statement in this online debate wisely rejects that diversionary tactic and acknowledges (at least implicitly) the importance of human storytelling and the power of mediated stories about sexuality. All art, in some sense, is fantasy, but how we are encouraged to fantasise plays a role in how we come to understand the world and behave in it. It matters what kind of stories we tell.

But, unfortunately, Ms Gallop embraces the typical first response of pornography’s apologists: “We just need better pictures.” This derails a deeper conversation about the limits of mass-mediated storytelling about sexuality.

“Better” in this context appears to mean sexually explicit images that aren’t overtly cruel and degrading, like so much contemporary pornography. Choosing between pornography that celebrates patriarchy and white supremacy, and sexually explicit images that don’t, shouldn’t be difficult (though it’s a struggle for many men). But the deeper question that Ms Gallop, and many others ignore is: “Why do we need pictures?”

Although Ms Gallop appears to take a progressive position by rejecting the sexualised domination/subordination dynamic of much of the pornography industry, her “solution” of creating pornography with different messages demonstrates the limits of the contemporary imagination. Her “innovation” doesn’t challenge the culture’s obsession with explicit images but instead encourages people to keep their imaginations tethered to a screen.

In a world saturated with mass-mediated images, it’s not surprising that people grasp for mediated solutions to cultural problems. But the collective failure is revealed in Ms Gallop’s own goal: “The answer is to open up: to talk about real-world sex,” she writes. I agree, but why does “talk” require pornography? People can talk about sex without being stimulated by intense sexual images. After decades of inundating the culture with graphic, sexually explicit images, perhaps the pornographers have so dulled our imaginations that we believe we cannot discuss the topic without them. If that’s the case, how will more images set us free?

Here is a telling anecdote. A young man once asked me, after being challenged by a feminist critique of pornography presented in my lecture: “Without porn, how would I masturbate?” I let the question hang in the air a moment, before offering the obvious answer: “By imagining what kind of sexual being you want to be, which doesn’t require a hard-core movie.”

Storytelling can indeed help us imagine, and that has been one of its roles in human history. But to spark our imaginations, stories must leave us room to imagine. Pornography, no matter what kind of images it offers, does the opposite—it closes down our imaginations, as the young man’s comment so painfully illustrates.

Ms Gallop contends that her approach is “pro-sex”, a favourite term of pornographers and their defenders, and one that implies that anyone critical is “anti-sex”, another attempt to derail the conversation she claims to want to encourage. No one is really anti-sex—even the most repressive religious conservatives support people having sex (just in extremely restrictive contexts, such as only in heterosexual marriage for procreation). The question isn’t pro-sex v anti-sex, but what values animate our sexual imaginations. I have met thousands of feminists critical of pornography, and not a single one has ever expressed anti-sex views. Instead, they critique how sex is defined in a mass-mediated, patriarchal, racist commercial culture.

Ms Gallop suggests we “disrupt” pornography by changing the images the porn industry produces. Again, pornography that is less misogynist and racist would be better than the current fare, but such a change would not disrupt anything. Rather, it would keep people in front of screens, which is exactly where a commercial society likes to keep us. The most powerful way to disrupt a pornographic culture is to recognise that we don’t need it.

http://debates.economist.com/debate/online-pornography?state=closing

The moderator’s closing remarks in full

MODERATOR

Helen Joyce, International section editor, The Economist Newspaper

25th November 2015

As our debate draws to a close, there is no doubt which side is comfortably ahead. Of the more than 11,000 of you who cast votes, a whopping 83% have rejected the proposition that porn can be good for us. Thanks to all who took part—and a particular thanks to those who took the time to comment.

I was impressed by how open and thoughtful so many were on this sensitive subject. “I’ve been suicidal, questioning every day why my life has been hijacked by porn use to the point now where my social circle is practically non-existent,” wrote guest-nesaile. “Porn came before everything, my career, my wife, and my friends who wondered why I always flaked out going to parties and living it up with others in my school.” On the other side “Ryan”, a reader who gave his perspective as a gay porn user, was particularly candid. “The power of porn, to me, is not just about instant pleasure,” he wrote; “it is about education and affirmation.” He credits pornography with making him comfortable with his body and his desires, while he feared his family would reject him if he talked openly about his sexuality.

Before moderating this debate I was already aware that despite the large number of people who damn porn by quoting studies of brain activity and use vocabulary borrowed from the science of addiction, there is actually almost no evidence for the notion that it can “rewire your brain” (any more than simply living and thinking do), or be addictive in the same way as drugs (rather than simply habit-forming). And I had already decided that the shame experienced by many users of porn (cited by one of our experts, Fiona Vera Gray) tells us little about porn’s innate harmfulness. Nineteenth-century teenagers unable to refrain from masturbation, despite scare stories about it sapping their vitality, no doubt felt shame. But that indicates only that sexual desire is natural and that some moral teachings are awful, not that masturbation is addictive or wrong.

However, I have been given food for thought by the number of comments from people who, like guest-nesaile cited above, truly believe that pornography has ruined their lives. In our briefing on the impact of pornography we cited Geoffrey Miller, a psychologist at the University of New Mexico, who pointed out that easy substitutes for real pleasures do not cause such people’s problems. But, he added, they do make it easier to stay stuck in a rut.

On the other side, I was moved by the testimony of our reader, “Ryan”. It’s not enough to dismiss his experience, as Robert Jensen does, by saying that it has more to do with the prejudiced world we live in than the value of porn. That is a counsel of perfection. Should young gay men who know that they will be ostracised if they are frank about their identities and needs wait for homophobia to become a thing of the past? Until that happy day porn offers at least some of them a route to greater self-understanding and acceptance.

Perhaps the remark that most struck me of all was Cindy Gallop’s, that “debating porn may ultimately be a pointless exercise”. “I’m genuinely curious to know,” she writes: “has anybody, reading all of this, actually changed or rethought their personal point of view about porn based on anything any of us has said?” My overall position hasn’t shifted much. But I have a greater appreciation of how many people feel their lives have been affected by porn—for both the better and the worse.

The proposer’s closing remarks in full

YES

Cindy Gallop, Advertising consultant and founder, MakeLoveNotPorn

25th November 2015

Well, it has been a lively old ten days here in porn-debate land. We have had a fascinating range of intelligent and insightful perspectives. I couldn’t agree more with Clarissa Smith’s observation that “the explorations of self and sexual identity that are facilitated by engaging with sexually explicit representations are not just about arousal and pleasure”. Casey Calvert rightly asks, “Why does pleasure have to be bad? It’s 2015. It’s time to stop shaming people for being sexual.” “Ryan” shares with us how porn helped him come into his own sexually.

And we have heard from many commenters who have raised some great points. Guest-Nelmome acknowledges that “the situation with porn is as complex as all other human endeavours. Yes, much of it is exploitative and degrading. But the fact that we need to clean it up—and do so by opening up, collectively—doesn’t justify shutting it down. Because yes, porn ‘can’ be good for us.” I was struck by guest-Nesajim’s comment that “I meet with men of all ages who are disassociated from their bodies as the result of excessive visual stimulation … if the goal is becoming more intimate with one’s partner, then one’s relationship with one’s own body is the place to begin.” That resonated with me, because it’s why we welcome male solo #realworldsex videos on https://makelovenotporn.tv/. As one male MakeLoveNotPornstar told us, doing that “made me love myself more”, exemplified in this wonderfully honest post.

However, I have come round, over the past ten days, to believing that debating porn may ultimately be a pointless exercise. The various posts, arguments and comments demonstrate that sex and porn are where the adage most applies: “We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.” Subjectivity reigns, and misinterpretation is rife.

Both Robert Jensen and Clarissa Smith put words in my mouth when rebutting my arguments; at no point in either of my two previous posts did I use the word “better” in connection with what I would like to see in porn (I deliberately refrain from making value judgments on porn—everything you see in porn, someone somewhere enjoys doing), and neither have I used the phrase “bad messages” (as I cannot say often enough, the issue isn’t porn but that we don’t talk openly and honestly about real-world sex).

So I am genuinely curious to know: has anybody, reading all of this, actually changed or rethought their personal point of view about porn based on anything any of us has said?

I question the power and effectiveness of debate in this area for four reasons:

First, there is no commonality of understanding. More than any other debating topic you could come up with, everybody has a completely different mental image in their minds when the word “porn” is uttered, and so everyone is assuming and reacting to very different things.

Second, rational debate is irrelevant when it comes to emotional and physiological arousal. It’s entertaining to hear people talk about “watching” porn, when the reality is that nobody is watching it—they are masturbating to it. Porn is not entertainment you view, it’s entertainment you use for sexual arousal and satisfaction, and as studies have shown, rational thought and decision-making go out the window in a state of sexual arousal.

Third, porn is a fact of life. Robert Jensen’s suggestion that “the most powerful way to disrupt a pornographic culture is to recognise that we don’t need it” is unrealistic. As Patricia Davis, Simon Nobel and Rebecca J. White wrote in 2010 in “The History of Modern Pornography”, a white paper: “Censorship and opposition to pornography have had little effect in stemming the tide; the biological chemistry of sexual desire has outlived all censorship attempts and will continue to do so.”

Fourth, there is too much talking and too little doing. Saying “porn is bad” over and over again does not magically make the largest (by orders of magnitude) and most influential category of content on the internet go away.

Obviously, I am being subjective here myself. This is the most writing you will see from me in one place on one topic; I turn down almost all requests for posts or articles, explaining that my personal philosophy is: “I don’t write, I do.”http://makelovenotporn.com/ is my and my team’s attempt to create and scale a category on the internet that has not hitherto existed—social sex. I believe in “communication through demonstration”—and I’d love everyone reading this to join me in that, via your own choice of action.

Whatever your view on this topic, what can you do about it? How can you take action on your own philosophies, principles and beliefs, whether it is something as simple as resolving to speak up more about this in your everyday conversations, or perhaps starting your own venture to be the change you want to see? If you believe in the empowerment of each of us as sexual beings, and the myriad opportunities to create and innovate in porn that still have yet to be explored, a good micro-action to start with would be to vote “yes” to the question: “Can porn be good for us?”

The opposition’s closing remarks in full

NO

Robert Jensen, Journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin

25th November 2015

One of the ironies of the pornography debate is that those who claim to be striking a blow for individual freedom and creativity actually are shoring up the very ideologies and systems of power that constrain us. Many attempts to defend pornography either capitulate to—or celebrate—the strength of patriarchy’s demand for dominance, capitalism’s nihilistic commitment to profit over people, and the obsessive technological fundamentalism of contemporary culture. Underlying many of the responses in this debate is the assumption that we have no choice but to adapt to these forces and make our peace with the corrosive culture that results.

For example, “Ryan” is certainly correct in pointing out that in a culture hostile to gay men and lesbians, isolated individuals can find some comfort in sexually explicit images that validate their identity. That’s not an argument for pornography, but a recognition of how cruel the culture can be for those living outside patriarchy’s narrow norms.

This capitulation to the dominant culture also leads to a misunderstanding of the feminist critique, seen in Casey Calvert’s suggestion: “It’s time to stop shaming people for being sexual.” A critique of patriarchy and a call for collective critical self-reflection about a healthy sexual ethic is not an attempt to shame anyone for anything, but rather a search for ways to transcend patriarchy.

I will put aside an evaluation of the “rhetorical questions and unevidenced flourishes” that Clarissa Smith uses in her commentary—as well as her attempt to dismiss my arguments by sleight of hand—and focus on the gap between the reality of the pornography industry and her emphasis on the “ways of playing with the meaning and significance of arousal and pleasure” that she contends pornography offers. Such claims cannot wish away the fact that the pornography industry has in the past three decades produced images that are steadily more cruel and degrading to women, and more overtly racist. Nor can it magically eliminate the concerns not only of many women but also of an increasing number of men who feel trapped by their habitual use of pornography, articulated by many of the contributors to The Economist’s online conversation.

Finally, I am always amused when opponents in the pornography debate suggest, as Ms Smith does, that I “start with assumptions about the genre’s harmfulness”. In fact, when I began my research on this subject nearly three decades ago, I believed that pornography was a harmless expression of sexuality and that feminist critics’ opposition was irrational. I re-evaluated those beliefs after taking that feminist critique seriously and evaluating the evidence.

This process did not lead me to claim that “pornography is evil” or “pornography causes rape”—simplistic reductions of a complex feminist critique—but rather to ask how pornography shapes all of us, and how our choices about whether to create and/or use pornography contribute to the shaping of society. Ironically, as I was moving in that critical direction, most of the culture was embracing a pornography industry that was becoming more callous towards women and more contemptuous of anyone who dared offer a challenge.

This wider acceptance of pornography includes many women, especially younger women, as several of the participants in this debate have pointed out. After offering my critique in public, some of those women have told me that for them, “porn is no big deal”. Whenever a woman makes that claim, I offer a simple hypothetical:

“You are a heterosexual woman dating men, and you have a choice between two men who are equivalent on whatever criteria are important to you—sense of humour, intelligence, appearance. Two guys, pretty much the same, except for one difference. One is a habitual pornography user, and the other doesn’t use sexually explicit material. Which one would you prefer to go on a date with?”

The most common response to that question is a sigh. On several occasions, women have told me that they would opt for the non-porn user, if they could find one.

Those sighs cut through the academic jargon and political rhetoric, reminding us that we live in a world based on domination/subordination dynamics that routinely make it difficult to form stable, decent human communities in which people can flourish both as individuals and as part of a collective with common goals. In a hyper-individualised, hyper-mediated society, it’s easy to give up on the idea that we can move beyond patriarchy’s cruelty, challenge capitalism’s inequality or craft a life that isn’t permanently tethered to screens.

Challenging the pornographers is one small part of this larger struggle to imagine a different world. I use the word “imagine” deliberately. Pornographers claim to be opening up our sexual imagination, when in fact they constrain it. Real imagination today requires engaging the oldest of philosophical questions—the one I highlighted in my opening statement, “What does it mean to be human?”—and going beyond the thin answer that contemporary culture offers.

Better, I think, to struggle. Better not to surrender your imagination to the pornographers.

The Decision

The votes are in and despite a late mini pro-porn surge, it’s an overwhelming victory to those who disagree that porn can be good for us. Of the 11,671 who cast votes, 81% rejected the motion. It’s been an interesting and illuminating 11 days, in which our debaters and guests have offered their varying perspectives and done a great job of drawing out and illuminating the issues. Our readers have done us proud, too, with over 191 comments which added a depth and completeness to the conversation. Thank you all.

Pornography is surely the largest single category of content online. When people sit down to type something into a search engine, well over a tenth of the time they are looking for explicit material. Millions of web pages are dedicated to porn. On big sites hosting user-generated material, both visual and written, such as Tumblr and fanfiction.net, a lot of the content is explicit. The musical “Avenue Q” is not far off: “The internet is for porn.”

So why, when it’s so popular, do so many people hate it so much? Lots of them don’t view it and regard its very existence as degrading. They worry that it damages those who do, perhaps fostering violent or misogynistic attitudes and thus making the world a worse place for everyone. As I commented at the beginning of this debate, the evidence in this field is strikingly poor. But it really does seem that such fears are overblown.

Many of those who hate and despise porn, though, are actually viewers. A significant number, it is clear from our comments, feel unable to stop. Some are people who feel that porn is taking over their lives; some are people who look only occasionally. I heard from more than one researcher that if you seek heavy porn users to participate in a research trial, you will be contacted both by people who fit that profile and others who rarely look at porn but think that they never should and are consumed with guilt, perhaps because of strict religious or moral beliefs.

In the end I think pornography is like junk food. It’s natural to enjoy eating, and to like the taste of fat and sugar—and junk food is there to take advantage of natural weakness. Many people struggle to control what they eat, especially when junk food is so cheap and ubiquitous, and feel deep shame. Others simply eat when they are hungry—including, from time to time, junk food—and stop when they are not. Personal attributes that have nothing to do with food, such as self-esteem, happiness, friends and a purpose in life, all make it easier to be in the second group. Perhaps it’s the same with porn.

This article originally appeared as:

“Can Porn Be Good for Us?” Debate, The Economist, November 17-27, 2015.

http://debates.economist.com/debate/online-pornography?state=decision (subscription required)