PIII.

Now.

I've recently found myself having committed a drunken act with someone else by the same first name who was also drunk. Of course this statement of drunkenness does not justify my actions. You could say this act was wreckless. You could also say that it was motivated by some latent sexist urge. It was in fact my set of actions that brought it about. Some people have suggested that I am a sociopath, people who hardly know me. It started off as a miscommunication which turned into me becoming overly excited and reaching for more than was consenually agree in a moment of ecstasy. I hurt a person, to whom I have given apologies — and who has pardoned my actions on multiple occasions. She said "I just want things to be normal." This is not a paraphrase. It was a second-night stand that this happened, with a girl I found incredibly charming.

However, one friend of hers who caught the news made a very interesting assumption of me. He accosted me with the assumption that I was a porn addict, and had confessed that he too had given up porn, years ago. I immediately responded by showing him a porn app I briefly collaborated with a friend on. One of the main purposes of the porn app was to show that porn can be curated through small-network algorithms such that the "extreme" fetish stuff is eliminated by default in virtue of democratic principles. His response was "I cannot believe you're showing me porn right now."

Now.

It just so happens that I've never really been interested in fetish porn, and that I find "extreme" sexual activity deplorable. Pedophilia, deplorable. Rape is absolutely repugnant to me. Rarely I've looked at hardcore porn, but it's almost always with curiosity — I usually find myself in a reflective mood, knowing full well that this is staged. And sometimes it completely ruins my mood if I download some clip that goes just a notch over my personal threshold. What I find most surprising in myself is that I do not throw all of porn out on account of these offenses, and I do, and always will, consider them offenses. I become angry with myself, surely, and sometimes such offenses have compelled me not to view porn for weeks on end, if I find something distasteful — because I clicked on a thumbnail that led to a scene that is stronger in content than I would prefer. Do I ban the whole porn studio's/producer's material? Well, I never actually commit myself to porn beyond downloading maybe 10-20 clips and then deleting them afterwards. I'm that kind of downloader.

Digressing again. I have always found myself on the "libertarian" side of things, having marched with social justice groups, argued in defence of feminism, argued religiously against arguments like "child prostitution as an economic alternative to child labor". I find such reasoning sickening. I agree with John Stuart Mill that nothing in our institution of law can grant women any powers that nature has not already given, nor should we legislate against women. I believe women are fantastic, and I actually grew up with only that single Baptist mother (though she did bring abusive men into our home now and then in my youth). I am the type of person who independently of any of this has stuff like The Categorical Imperative committed to memory — along with Kafka poems and various philosophers on ethics. I just happen to be a Spinozist.

This may seem like a lot of coincidence, but I don't care. Is child porn on the same level as adult porn? Is it all "just prostitution"? I don't know the answer to these questions. But I do know something from a personal vantage: Did porn bring it about that I hurt someone, and is the view that it's "prostitution" actually relevant to peoples' complicated lives that can be directed and compeled by a multitude of factors? I maintain that the view that "porn is not the problem, we are".

I'm saying this in the face of someone, Gavrieli, is who making broadstrokes about an industry, completely ignoring gay porn and softcore and roleplay — in the face of someone who seems to be pinning a lot on an industry, when I know from personal experience, that porn didn't make me hurt anyone. I was hurt, and I just so happen to be male. And I just so happened to do something that, when put into conversational form, shared as such, turns into a "regular porn result." When that is just not the truth. I will personally admit that I hurt someone, but porn had nothing to do with it. And I strongly believe that the way people like Gavrieli say "all porn is like X" but has to recant, chuckle, and recollect his words so that he can make sense to his audience... THAT is the problem. He's talking about porn as he has experienced it — and that's totally valid. But to say that porn has NO "light touching" or NO "involvement of hands"?

I'm sorry... I understand that we're all trying to cultivate and grow the right kind of society here... But allowing such undisciplined modes of criticism to hand-wave and make bad arguments, entertaining ficticious assumptions and myopic perspectives? I will stop and be first to say, even if it is in defense of porn, — I will be the first philosopher to put his neck on the damn line so that at least I can envision a future that is palatable, knowing that I deep down am not evil or out to hurt anymore, in defense of porn I will say DEFINE YOUR TERMS.

And adding to this: Hurt people hurt people.

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[0]: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/women-who-stray/201305/p...

[1]: http://www.khou.com/news/crime/Young-Pearland-woman-murdered...