Still, there is a genuine case to be made against pornography, not so much that it harms the women involved in making it, but that it harms all the women in the society in which men consume it.
The argument goes that if men watch porn, in which women are portrayed as sex objects, those men are more likely to treat women as sex objects in real life. Not so much an instant conversion from sensitive new age wanker to chauvinistic rapist, but part of the background of culture that makes chauvinism and objectification and rape all the easier, psychologically.
It's a plausible claim, but does it really happen like that? This needs empirical investigation, and that turns out to be very difficult. Whenever researchers try to do a study assessing how men view and treat women in correlation with whether they have viewed pornography or not, they have a terrible time trying to create a control group. Why? because they can't find any men who have never viewed porn.
That alone should wake up the Icelanders about the futility of this ban.
All this gender-political discussion has me rather tired. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go browse some pics on tumbler.
