Responses to Pornography

Given your responses to pornography (1.D, above), what arguments, evidence, experiences, and/or other grounds can you offer to support those responses? For example, you may want to argue that exposure to pornography may be harmful for children and adolescents, as it might foster both less than respectful attitudes toward young girls and women, and understandings of sexuality that emphasize power and exploitation rather than respect, equality, and mutual intimacy.

These sorts of arguments are common consequentialist or utilitarian arguments and are frequently invoked in debates surrounding pornography and its regulation. But you may well have other arguments, etc., to offer.

3. Review the first two arguments sketched out above regarding pornography and SEMs as:

(A) ethically objectionable because these materials objectify persons as “just meat” and thereby deny them agency, autonomy, and equality, vis-à-vis

(B) ethically defensible because these materials may contribute to the (high) modern values of emancipation, autonomy, agency, and equality, especially for those persons whose sexual identities and preferences do not align with the preferences and identities dominant in their culture.

Which of these two arguments do you find more persuasive – and why?