Is anyone else getting a kick out of the news anchors all fascinated and intrigued to be finding out just how to run an escort service. CNN had a really cheesy news story dramatization last night showing two people going into a hotel room .... oooooo And, you'd never know that wives also cheat on their husbands (I don't know the stats, but it does happen).
Meanwhile, it's always worth 10,000 words to ask what the difference between porn and prostitution is, as one of AS's reader's does. (Even if there are salient differences between gay porn and non-gay porn).
Why is it illegal for me to pay a prostitute for sex, but it's NOT illegal for a film director to pay two people to have sex in front of a camera and then make money for his product in the form of a DVD or an online download?
Easy question, not so easy answer.
What's are the differences between thinking about something, watching someone do it, and doing it yourself? We can probably find meaningful distinctions in all of those, yes?
Sociologically, porn could be thought of as one of those socially permissible vices, like drinking, that seem worse in the banishment than in the practice.
It's fantasy, it's larger-than-life (pun intended). Like theater, it can be conceived as something that 'makes sense' when done by a limited number of people that a larger group participates in, without becoming an agent, a 'porn star' yourself. It's expressionless expression. There is something about it that has distancing, something not sensible about everyone being a 'porn star'. Whereas prostitution involves being an agent and it's clearly not limited in the same ways (most everyone can certainly participate in prostitution).
As I say, one can go 10,000 words deeper. Some would point out that the lines I drew can be easily blurred - porn as prologue, harmful fantasy, too weak to hold the weight, for instance. Still, it's not such a bad distinction, a way to draw a line, done without an appeal to a lot of other conceptualizations of what sexual relations are all about or what they should be about.
Slice of life:
