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Earlbecke of Definition – A Feminist Weblog places a compass rose on the map of the pornography debate (emphasis mine):

On the other hand, I do have a lot of huge problems with the pornography industry. I have huge problems with most industries, being the radical pinko commie that I am. I know the industry harms women, both those who participate in the making of pornography and those who are exposed to it, and that is wrong and needs to be changed. I don’t disagree with the anti-porn crowd on the harm mainstream porn does.

See the quote in context here.

“I have a huge problem with most industries.” That, I think, is the North and South of the modern controversy over porn. (Or, if you must, then only for me.) I have a problem with factory farming but I don’t think the answer is to eat only what I can grow. There are 10,000 legitimate recourses in between from Whole Foods to CSA/share-farms to roadside stands. Similarly I have problems with industrial beer and wine but I don’t think the answer is to stop drinking altogether. (Ok, for other people to stop — I quit, at age 21 as sort of a joke.) And goodness knows I have a very hard time with “industrial” restaurant chains in every dimension from exploitation of labor to promotion of monocropping to gajeezablicly bad-for-you ingredients to ghastly sanitation practices) but that doesn’t mean I think everyone should stay home and cook every meal, fresh, from scratch.

Same with porn. Via Jess McCabe, Laurie Penny of Pennyred has this advice, aimed for boys and men but good for everyone who consumes porn:

2. Change your porn habits.

Everyone likes a good wank, don?t they? However, not all groin-bashing-material is equal. When ?harmless fantasy? involves the exploitation and abuse of women -either in the industry itself, which is deeply murky and unequal, or in the situations portrayed – it?s not okay, I?m afraid. We can save the Great Porn Debate for another time. Thankfully, however, there is a great deal of woman-positive pornography out there: particularly professional voluntary sites like the excellent Suicide Girls, the delights of which I?ll leave you to savour for yourself. Sites like Pornotube also contain a lot of voluntary, amateur stuff which – whilst not half as polished as professional pornography – are good for a giggle, and often show footage which is both a lot closer to real sex, and surprisingly hot. If anyone has other links to share and discuss, do comment below.

Penny says it here.

Earlbecke adds

All sexually explicit material is pornographic, and not all of it is necessarily bad. Just, you know, most of it, which is true of a lot of other less controversial things in this sick, misogynistic world. Admitting that there are other ways of depicting sexuality and that not all depictions are bad doesn’t really hurt the anti-mainstream-porn case, so far as I can tell — but using definitions of “pornography” which are not standard and highly subjective is harmful to those of us who use sex in our art and writing as a way of exploring female empowerment.

And it’s so baffling to me that we can come from the same place — “mainstream porn is disgusting, degrading, misogynist, and racist” — and still not manage to even have a rational discussion about the subject.

I’m perfectly aware that the mere scope of an undertaking doesn’t make it good or bad, but it is the case that the economic constraints and the logistical scale of industrial pornography militate strongly towards not simply a lowest-common-denominator product (since, by definition, most people are more squicked by porn than not) but by a lowest whoever-will-consistently-buy-more-of-the-stuff denominator. You can say a lot of different things about hand-crafted beer but one thing you can’t say about them is “some people can drink them by the case” the way they can about industrial beers.

Now. Is it particularly healthy to consume beer by the case? Um, no. People who do tend to be, or to quickly become, physical wrecks. But if you’re brewing your “macrobeer” in “vats the size of Rhode Island” those guys are going to be your bread and butter. And I just have a feeling that, with their low margins and high turnover, industrial pornographers have to aim for the similar types of high-volume something-wrong-there consumers that beer companies, lottery pushers, home-shopping networks, and fast-food vendors depend on.

Sure, pornography has other dimensions and there are legitimate questions to ask in all of them, but on any map one cares to draw Industrial North is going to be the most significant line, the one that everything else orients to.