I think looking the world through the American conservative vs liberal goggles is just ignorance.
It does that to men too, but aside from that the majority of women in porn are there consensually, many make a ton more money than they could elsewhere. That is empowering to women! As long as there's no coercion, the woman wants to do it. What happened to my body my choice?
The book "renegade history of the United States" is a great read I recommend. It really goes into aspects of our history that is never covered in school and avoided in polite company. It is both enlightening and fascinating
Are you implying that this is a hypocritical stance for feminists to have? Why do American feminists speak for all feminists in the world?
Even if these were American feminists, you could make the argument that there is manipulation and coercion happening so the "my choice" part might be less than safe to assume. So a ban may be against human trafficking and coercion first and foremost.
No, I'm asking a question in an attempt to understand.
> Even if these were American feminists, you could make the argument that there is manipulation and coercion happening so the "my choice" part might be less than safe to assume.
Unless you're arguing that any and all decisions are due to manipulation and coercion, then this doesn't get us anywhere and is a strawman version of the 'pro choice' argument. Of course there is manipulation and/or coercion in some cases (from what I've heard, it's a sickly large number at that). That is (IMHO) terrible and unethical and should not be legal. I doubt that anyone (or to avoid absolutes, very, very few people) arguing "pro choice" would take the position that there's no problem with that.
But what about situations where it's voluntary? Do you argue that there is no such situation? If there is any money involved at all, you could say that is "manipulation," but is it any less manipulation than any other job where the person wouldn't be doing it if there weren't some incentive? and does that make all jobs unethical and should be illegal?
1. Prostitution is liberating and empowering
2. Women should be able to choose what they do with their own bodies, even if it means prostituting them
For those truly arguing item 1, I couldn't say. That conclusion is certainly not self-evident to me and the chain of logic seems to include at some point something that is supposed to self-evident.
However some of the feminists that appear to argue item 1 are actually arguing item 2 but they're jumping to the conclusion.