I understand that some of the criticism comes from conservatives but the sentiment seems to extend far beyond thst. Of course, I understand it when it’s forced or when someone only does it to survive against their will. But if people genuinely want to do it, why do people hate on them?
I’m no prude, but I also don’t think a lot of porn actors really want to be doing what they are doing. There is a lot of manipulation, drugging, exploitation, and straight up criminal activity that a large porn industry begets. But if you regulate it, if you protect sex workers, if you disallow access for younger people (I’m not for age verification, I’m saying parent/guardian intervention), if you allow the actors to have agency and full authority over their own work, then cool. I think there needs to be a lot more study and subsequent awareness what early access to pornography does to a young mind. I truly believe that porn is responsible for the increase in vociferous misogyny we are seeing with young men, enabled by the manosphere, which is just chock-full of sex predators and straight up pedophiles. To start to even have these discussions though, the taboo around sex needs to be widely removed.
I’ve always been curious about the effects on minors as well, especially with a country like Japan where sex is much more widely accepted and pornography is just out on display in some stores. From what I’ve heard, Japan has always had the mentality that porn would be either unappealing to minors or, specifically for games, would be to difficult for them to actually play because they’d have trouble reading the text. I know that Japan has done studies on other porn related topics, so maybe they have in the past and were able to come to this conclusion.