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Comment by whoknew1122 | Hacker News Reader

Somehow many Americans still haven't gotten past the whole 'sex = icky' idea.

The perceived skeeviness of Flynt is also why you don't hear all that much about why he shot. Sure, people know that he was in a wheel chair because he got shot. But why? Because a white supremacist terrorist didn't like the fact Flynt's magazines showed interracial couples.

He advanced the cause of American Freedom of Speech. Like real Freedom of Speech. Not these fake I-got-kicked-off-social-media-so-1st-amendment freedom of speech arguments that are so popular these days. But actual freedom of speech.

He also got shot by a terrorist because Flynt had the audacity to show people of different skin color enjoying themselves.

Flynt deserves more than that headline.

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Apart from “sex = icky” there is the whole thing that his business was built on degrading and abusing women.

What about the business was abusive? Because most of the time people say this it comes down to the idea that taking nude picture of people for others entertainment is just immoral.

If it’s old women, people object that the elderly are being disrespected. If it’s young women, proper object that they are only young enough to die in a war but not old enough to decide if nudity is appropriate for themselves.

Or we resort to saying somehow women are inherently always disadvantaged in any nudity related real. Male actors though can handle themselves... somehow.

Which in the end is just a restatement of “sex = icky” but with more syllables and hotter tempers.

I’ll agree with Chomsky’s stance on pornography.

Just to elaborate on the above: https://thebridgehead.ca/2018/11/26/noam-chomsky-and-the-ant...

> The fact that people agree to it and are paid,” Chomsky replied, “is about as convincing as the fact that we should be in favor of sweat-shops in China where women are locked into a factory and work fifteen hours a day and the factory burns down and they all die. Yeah, they were paid and they consented, but that doesn’t make me in favor of it.

Is there a theoretical abstraction in which pornography and the pornography industry isn’t degrading and abusive to women? Maybe. But the amount of degradation and abuse in the real pornography industry is pretty good evidence that theory and practice aren’t syncing up.

As a formerly sex-positive liberal man, reading Andrea Dworkin’s “Right Wing Women” was revelatory.

The key difference between laws against sweat-shops and pornography is that we sweat-shops are defined by measurable traits that is not based on a moral value about the work being done. We do not have a law against work places in china. We don't have law against the type of industries those work places do. What the law is defines is the hours of work being done, if people are working under the threat of violence, and the wages, and the work safety standards.

We could make a work regulations that forbids any work that has the same level of health risk as in the pornography industry. We could forbid work which workers would not volunteer do unless being paid. We could make regulations that forbid industries that has the same level of human trafficking and slavery as the porn industry. We could mix and match. As long it does not use the word "sex" or "naked" or any other word which would be proxy to the moral view about pornography, it would be a regular work regulation that can be discussed as other work regulations.

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