HawaiiLawyer - I'm sure if one were to contact your cop-contact he could also provide graphic images of the wives and girlfriends of lawyers, doctors, blue collar workers, librarians, artists - in fact those from the whole spectrum of human endeavour - who are also brutalised, murdered, sodomised and rendered incapable of self-worth. I find it a specious argument to link only sex workers to male violence in order to link it to pornography. I also refer to my earlier post wherein I pointed out that the verbal convention of objectification is not gender specific - nor, as your knowledge of Greek or Latin will tell you, is it a new construct linked to the increased availability of pornography.I also reiterate what several posters on this thread have pointed out: - rape is not about sex but power. So if we are in the business of anecdotal evidence (albeit backed up by graphic illustration in police files) ask any male who has been raped by other heterosexual males in prison, on campus or in dark parks.

If indeed you identify with feminism you will know that it is a vast oversimplification to attribute gendered violence merely to one cause. Citing pornography as one of the many contributary causes of violence towards women while linking it exclusively to sex workers not only does not make a convincing argument, but does great diservice to the countless women throughout the ages not engaged in the sex trade who have been victims of male violence.

Pornography is degrading to women, wether the female willingly particpates in it or not..nothing to do with feminism and everything to with objectifying female sexuality..

Not saying theres not a place for it..but a lot of moral dilemmas in its conceptuality and portrayal.

mjpb

Did it occur to you that heroin addicts need money and for addicts prostitution may be a short term answer (They have to "work" the streets because they would not be employed in a brothel). Your assertion that prostitution leads to heroin is just as misguided as saying porn reduces the incidence of rape.

Rachel

Most porn depicts men and women, why is it exclusively degrading to women? If women do not engage in it willingly it is rape and not pornography.

Moral dilemmas depend on each persons "morals".

"Likewise in Brisbane all prostitutes I have encountered have not been enjoying the great life of a topless barmaid(if working in a smoke filled bar can be characterised as such) like the WA topless barmaid who claimed to have given up a job as a lawyer to do the work.

One lady I used to half know worked as a prostitute"

Not "claimed" to have been a lawyer, mjpb, this is true. What's wrong with you? Can't you accept that not everyone fits your stereotypes?

And how can someone half know someone? You may not know them very well, but you either know them or not. And if you don't know them well, then you may not understand their motivation for doing anything.

And how about all the Brisbane prostitutes you have encountered? May we ask how many and under what circumstances?

As for working in smoke filled workplaces. I have never smoked and have always hated and resented having it forced on me. My father was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1948 and his doctors told him even that long ago that it was almost certainly due to his heavy cigarette smoking. But for a large part of my working life I was forced to share other people's smoke at work and whilst socialising. And also in my living quarters whilst in the Royal Navy and in work camps. So this form of physical abuse is not limited to hotel bar work, regardless of how the bar workers are dressed.

Boaz, behave yourself.

>>"When God is dead, all things become morally permissable." is something that either J.P. Sartre or F. Neitchze said.<<

Neither Sartre nor Nietzsche is responsible for this "quote", Boaz.

But I suspect you knew that, and just slung a few of your own prejudices together and put them in someone else's mouth to add some spurious weight to them.

Contrary to your insistence, non-believers have a moral compass too. Porn, abortion, capital punishment, stem-cell research are concerns that we all share, and we are all mentally equipped to a greater or lesser extent to wrestle with the human dilemmas they create.

For the umpteenth time, christians do not have a monopoly on righteousness, only on self-righteousness.

From Robert Jensen, "The Paradox of pornography" (Feb.l, 2006):

Pornography -- though still resisted by some, from either a
conservative/religious position or...from a feminist point
of view - has become just one more form of mass entertain-
ment in a culture obsessively dedicated to the pleasure-
without-thought-about-the-consequences principle. Not every-
one likes it, but few see it as worth debating.

But the paradox remains: At the same time that it is more
accepted, pornography's content is becoming steadily more
extreme. In the "gonzo" style (those films with no plot or
characters, just straightforward sex on tape) that dominates
the market, directors continue to push the edge, filming
increasingly rougher sexual practices involving multiple
penetrations of women by two or three men at a time, or oral
sex designed to make a woman gag, while the language used to
insult women during sex grows harsher. Since legal controls
on pornography began loosening in the l970s, pornographers
have pusehd the limits of sexualizing the denigration of
women.

Though the pornography industry loves to talk about growing
sales to women and the so called "couples market," men are
still the vast majority of pornography consumers in the
United States....

So how can we explain the paradox? People typically do not
openly endorse cruelty or the degradation of women. Yet
just as those features of pornography are more extensive and
intense than ever, graphic sexually explicit material is more
widely accepted than ever. How can a culture embrace images
that violate its stated values?....