h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(probably more appropriate to continue this away from the HMHB entry)

Yes...I have mixed feelings on porn myself. There's nothing wrong with it *in principle*...I don't regard sex as a moral issue per se...but the practice is very different. On the whole its a shameful, exploitative industry controlled by gangsters. Much pornography also portrays the very worst kinds of human sexual behaviour, and I am especially concerned by the vogue for portraying women in humiliating and abusive situations.

Yes, the guy I met did rather 'protest too much.' For a start he would have been selling on his product to some very dodgy operators in Amsterdam. One thing that really concerned me was that he said that he had a nineteen year old performer who could pass for fourteen...but they posted a copy of her birth certificate on the web to show it was all legit. So that was all right then. Well, if you know anything about the psychopathology of child sexual abuse, it was very much NOT all right.

It's a curious culture, though - bohemian Bohemia: Students and intellectuals mixing with gangsters and pornographers.

I don't really know a great deal about the psychology child pornography except that as I understand it, there's a difficulty in setting boundaries. When I studied a bit of criminal law it would be like knowing that something was wrong, but not feeling that it was.

As far as I can see, such things as 'portraying women in humiliating and abusive situations' seems to be motivated by feelings of inadequacy in the men and fear and hatred of women.

'Students and intellectuals mixing with gangsters and pornographers' sounds a bit like America in the prohibition years - glamourous on the surface only.