. . . watching a lot of it can also warp attitudes or exacerbate already unhealthy attitudes about sex and about women and about the sorts of things that it shows--in other words that it creates or at least can in some cases create the sort of desires that one might think it would satisfy.
Ya, I am inclined to agree. To me the reasonable response is to counter it with better sex education since people are going to continue consuming pornography regardless of whether it is generally considered to be moral. Pornography does not have to depict women in such a way, however, which I think raises an intriguing question as to
why so many of the depictions of them currently are as they are. That is to say, perhaps it is not pornography itself that is immoral so much as it is immoral for those who produce the material to propagate degenerative ideas and perspectives - or perhaps even immoral of consumers of morally dubious material themselves for having created demand for material portraying said "unhealthy" attitudes about sex and women.
. . . even if pornography can bring about desires and attitudes that are, um, disagreeable or otherwise wrong, does that damn the whole thing? I think an absence of pornography would ultimately result in even worse behaviour and attitudes. . . .
It does not because the desires and attitudes elicited are going to depend on the content of the material. Not all porn is the same, and regardless of what the desires and attitudes promoted are there in any particular product there is still a burden of responsibility on consumers of it to handle what they get out of it (no pun intended!) in ways that are moral. That does not absolve creators of pornography from any share of the blame for bad consequences of course, nor do any of those negative outcomes detract as you said from the likely fact that there would be negative outcomes from people not consuming any pornography, as well. Meh - the haziness of efforts to predict how acts and ideas may shape future events and to what extents, for better or worse, is a serious shortcoming of consequentialism in ethics.
Well, I should give my opinion. Morality is socially constructed. So, according to european and american reality, yes, pornography is immoral.
As an answer to the question, "Is pornography moral by the standards of mainstream society?" you are absolutely correct. However, as a construct morality can also be fabricated by individuals. Indeed, the social nature of such a construct demands input from individuals - with the cumulative result being representative of a certain equilibrium of sorts (i.e. "porn is immoral" would be true of society's perspective if the sum of individuals part of society, factoring in their opinions and respective amounts of influence over capital applied to shaping perceptions of right and wrong, were more strongly in support of that statement than one of "porn is moral," "porn is amoral," or something else).
Or Shorter, empirical Gully: If it were true that access to sexual explicit material aimed at heterosexual males which depicted women in a very passive manner caused all sorts of socio-sexual dysfunctions then we would expect that the 'west' would have the highest rate of, say, rape in the world. . . .
That is not necessarily true because there may be many variables involved in determining rates of things like rape beyond the impact, if any, of pornography. There are enough cultural differences between major world civilizations that measures of sexual violence could not really be wisely compared in the way you are suggesting, no?
In practice the vast majority of people who watch porn are cognisicent of the fact that porn is fantasy, that women (or men for that matter) aren't like that in real life and that this has no real world implications outside of one's desires. . .
Ya, I completely agree with this as a caveat to one of my earlier responses to Nathan in this post!
It's fascinating to see the heavy firepower brought out here in defense of porn.
The topics of threads on the Atlas often do not lend themselves well to applying heavy firepower - especially for those of us without an intimate and highly-detailed knowledge of facts concerning electoral demographics, American political personalities, the inner workings of the Supreme Court, etc. For me at least, as a political philosopher, most subjects around here do not call for thorough responses so much as brief expressions of opinion that avoid complexity so as to avoid making ignorant statements about things I've yet to (or honestly never intend to) thoroughly research. xD
On the contrary, I had a theory that American society, and Disney movies in particular, tend to convince young girls that they should be putting themselves on a pedestal and wait for Mr. Super-Perfect, and that European girls put out more because they understand that sex tends to be fun for all parties involved, even if the male is not "the one". . .
It is only anecdotal evidence on my part, which I know is pretty flimsy, but in my experiences in the States this is true of many American gals. Some who
do give in to desire to have a bit of fun instead of waiting seem reluctant to admit it (e.g. claiming to still be virgins), as if their failure to wait for "the one" is some breach of taboo. In contrast, over the past several years virtually none of the gals from Europe I've spoken to are like this once they've reached their late teenage years, and seem just as open and liberated as men when it comes to their sexuality. I do not think it is about Disney in particular though so much as the stronger influence of traditionalist perspectives of Christianity, which in turn profoundly impact social mores and gender roles. American culture still scorns young women who are "easy" or "sluts."
I realize I haven't really articulated my views in this thread, so I guess I'll do that now. I'll try not to sound too sage. 
Basically, there are two main issues:
- The first is the similarity with prostitution and the similar issues it raises, both theoretical (paying someone for sex is, IMO, something inherently wrong) and practical (the high likelihood that the people being paid find themselves in a situation of exploitation - despite what we'd like to think about pornstars, it probably happens very often). Of course porn isn't nearly as bad as prostitution in both these respects (mainly because the "consumer" doesn't directly interact with the "worker" and thus can't directly take advantage from the economic dependence). And while I think taking advantage from prostitution as a client or pimp is a sufficient evil to be punished by law, this certainly isn't the case for porn.
- More broadly speaking, I consider porn (at least porn in the kind of way that it is generally made - though I'm not sure there is any other way to) to be part of a value system which is deeply unjust and hurtful (toward actual people). The point is that, in porn more than everywhere else, you find the kind of sexist tropes (ie, stereotypes about what femininity and masculinity are or should be) that do cause some problems in society at large. This doesn't mean porn is responsible for the existence of these stereotypes (obviously not), but it certainly takes a part in perpetuating them. It obviously doesn't mean that one guy watching it will immediately turn into a sexist creep, or even that it happens most of the time, but it is likely to at least somewhat reinforce sexist mindsets at the aggregate level. Again, as I said before, I don't even think it's that big of an issue (the priorities in fighting sexism are certainly elsewhere). Antonio, I respect this perspective but am too entrenched in the liberal / hedonist perspective to agree with it.
On the first point, prostitution only seems immoral to me if the seller is (a.) not on higher footing with the buyer in terms of negotiating power, (b.) is subjected to the authoritarian business models prolific under capitalism (one forced into selling their body on account of financial desperation, accepting the inadequete pay that often ensues when a pimp is in a good position to take a ridiculously large cut without recourse for the workers, etc.), or (c.) otherwise harmed or cheated during the negotiation or provision of service without their informed, non-coerced consent. Likewise with pronography, I see the plight of the worker as more of a problem arising from capitalism than one of exploitation intrinsic to sex-related sectors of the economy in particular.
The second concern is harder for me to juggle, honestly, because it is one of those issues that really tempts me to set aside devotion to pluralism and permissivity of deviant conduct for the defense of individual rights and empowerment in favour of cracking down on activities felt to be detrimental to society for the greater good of the public – in this case detrimental in that these portrayals are often corrosively sexist, abusive, exploitative, objectifying of women, or simply anti-egalitarian in general. These are political instincts I learned to subdue a long time ago to save myself from the siren calls of cultural imperialism. It is important from my perspective to compartmentalize ones personal ethics from those applied to crafting excellent public policy for the sake of avoiding government overreach.
That is totally a liberal obsession, of course. As a social democrat you know that the state can do a lot more good if its power is brought to bear to advance the right causes in the right ways than real liberals are willing to strive for via public policy. On my side it is more of an ideal for such power to be applied only to issues of the utmost importance, leaving many social ills and controversies to the People to sort out (at least partially) on their own. There is some measure of fear that state is an instrument of darkness that must be kept stowed away under lock and key under most circumstances.
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