> 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.
