Thread

Court agrees with EFF: Utah's VPN law demands a technical impossibility

802 points · 405 comments · hn_acker

SoftTalker · 1790960547 · focus · HN ↗
> platforms are left with an impossible choice: completely block all VPN traffic nationwide or withdraw access from Utah entirely
Is it even possible to reliably know that a connection is from a VPN? Anyone can proxy through a random hosting provider.
1. happyPersonR · 1790967013 · focus · HN ↗
  Requires the vpn provider to snitch and possible tag the ip frames or http frames lol
  Folks would just host their own vpns various places and this would be pointless ….
  1. unglaublich · 1790967265 · focus · HN ↗
    It's all just an effort to control the 90%.
    pkilgore · 1790968322 · focus · HN ↗
    It lawfare against porn. They don't want these companies to exist. They want it to be impossible to comply with the law to shut them down.
    pimeys · 1790970267 · focus · HN ↗
    Why are people so upset about porn? It's probably still the biggest portion of internet traffic. Kind of like human nature, don't you think?
    lokar · 1790972853 · focus · HN ↗
    Assuming you are really asking, the two largest objections:
    - religious/cultural. My beliefs forbid this, it makes people bad/worse in some hard-to-define way, so no one should be allowed to do it. Sometimes with an emphasis that the sellers are luring good people into sin/ruin.
    - it harms women. Many of the participants are trafficked or coerced in some way (and further abused). The profits from the industry encourage more of this. It “warps” the mind of men who use it, leading them to mistreat and abuse women.
    I see elements of truth in all these, but IMO they are ultimately not compelling, prohibition is unworkable and unduly infringes on willing participants and consumers.
    throwinthisaway · 1790973431 · focus · HN ↗
    Frankly I believe the whole “warps the mind of men to abuse women” is total nonsense.
    I’ve watched plenty of porn in my life, probably a bit more than average. I’ve never done anything out of the norm or unwanted to woman, let alone abuse one.
    I think shitty people will be shitty people and it’s just a really easy thing to point at instead of taking responsibility for it. It’s also a convenient plausible sounding correlation for people who already want to ban porn to use.
    schrodinger · 1790973645 · focus · HN ↗
    Agreed. It’s like the argument that video games cause shooters.
    Umm, I played plenty of GTA growing up and I’ve never stolen a car. People are actually very good at separating fantasy from reality, believe it or not.
    autoexec · 1790991598 · focus · HN ↗
    For those who aren't good at separating fantasy from reality literally anything can become the source of the voices in their head. Religion is as likely to drive them to violence as a video game would be.
    lokar · 1790973711 · focus · HN ↗
    I can see the argument for a “correlation vs causation “ argument, but I’m not a social scientist.
    BobaFloutist · 1790977289 · focus · HN ↗
    If you change the argument to "can warp the mind of some men", it becomes much harder to falsify.
    margalabargala · 1790980359 · focus · HN ↗
    Right, but only because it becomes vacuously meaningless. For example, your comment can warp the minds of men. As can mine here. As can a blade of grass waving in the wind.
    taneq · 1791073967 · focus · HN ↗
    Clearly men are the problem, if their minds are so easily warped. /s
    margalabargala · 1791078297 · focus · HN ↗
    No one said they were easily warped, just possible to warp.
    Porn, this comment, and grass blowing in the breeze all can warp the minds of women, and nonbinary individuals, as well.
    taneq · 1791098639 · focus · HN ↗
    Re-reading the whole thread, you make a good point. I agree.
    krrrh · 1790984543 · focus · HN ↗
    > I’ve never done anything out of the norm or unwanted to woman, let alone abuse one
    Yeah the Dworkin contention that porn turns men into rapists has basically been disproven.
    But there’s no reason to say “warps the minds of men” has to lean in that direction. Reading forums of young men who have porn addictions and grew up with HD hardcore porn it seems more like the opposite happened, they become more withdrawn, less likely to engage with women enough to develop social skills, less able to perform sexually irl and subject to porn-induced erectile dysfunction. When it was just magazines and socially stigmatized VHS rentals it was unheard of for college aged men to take viagra, now it’s widespread. Arguably warped minds led to this.
    rootusrootus · 1790989884 · focus · HN ↗
    > When it was just magazines and socially stigmatized VHS rentals it was unheard of for college aged men to take viagra
    In the days of VHS, Viagra wasn’t a thing.
    numpad0 · 1791019243 · focus · HN ↗
    Fun fact: Japan now has the highest birth rate in East Asia, and everyone knows what it's best known for.
    edoceo · 1791061101 · focus · HN ↗
    Godzilla?
    bushwart · 1791067327 · focus · HN ↗
    Sushi? Ramen?
    alpaca128 · 1790987793 · focus · HN ↗
    Reminds me of a study[0] I saw recently which concluded that antisocial behaviour from drunk people seems to stem mostly from antisocial people consuming alcohol.
    [0] <a href="https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/43/2/204/122225?login=false" rel="nofollow">https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/43/2/204/122225?logi...
    QuiEgo · 1790994055 · focus · HN ↗
    This reminds me of the whole "playing video games causes violent behavior" stream of thought. Like people, I do not think CounterStrike is real nor do I want to engage in gun battles to the death in real life.
    OroPla · 1791057185 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree, but maybe the problem people see with porn is people having that same attitude? "Relax, I don't want to have sex in real life."
    Ma8ee · 1790996995 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m quite sure porn impacts what is considered “the norm”.
    UltraSane · 1790976191 · focus · HN ↗
    The "porn harms women" argument really seems to infantilize women and assumes that women can never want or enjoy sex for the sake of sex.
    lokar · 1790976630 · focus · HN ↗
    Some argue it harms all women who participate in, but others argue it harms some women who participate, which seems undeniable.
    fwip · 1790978277 · focus · HN ↗
    True, and this is probably true of all work. Retail work has probably harmed many more women than sex work (by virtue of being much more common).
    UltraSane · 1790991507 · focus · HN ↗
    Almost all activities harm some of the people who participate in them.
    jonahx · 1790978171 · focus · HN ↗
    This is not the claim. The claim is that, empirically, many (or enough) of the women who end up in porn are underage, trafficked, or psychologically coerced (due to poverty, drug addiction, abuse, etc) such that the choice is not really the free choice of willing participant.
    I am all for individual freedoms, but I've read enough about this issue, and seen enough documentaries, that I think the claim is very well-founded. Of course, some porn stars are just willing adults doing something they want to do, but there are many who are not.
    UltraSane · 1790978664 · focus · HN ↗
    > The claim is that, empirically, many (or enough) of the women who end up in porn are underage, trafficked, or psychologically coerced (due to poverty, drug addiction, abuse, etc) such that the choice is not really the free choice of willing participant.
    The main point of contention becomes what "enough" constitutes. Almost no women in commercial porn is underage as all countries that legally allow its production also require strict proof of age for the people actually having sex.
    lokar · 1790979288 · focus · HN ↗
    I’ve seen two arguments:
    Women who do not provide fully informed and voluntarily consent are harmed
    Porn makes some (or many, or all) men who consume it treat some (or many, or all) women badly
    reilly3000 · 1790981292 · focus · HN ↗
    Admittedly hot take, but I think the existence of ubiquitous porn on-demand does take away power from people who would withhold sex as part of a negotiation in a relationship.
    serf · 1790981493 · focus · HN ↗
    but you can apply this argument to almost any product or good on the market and get a similar ratio of 'willing participant' and 'pseudo-slavery' involvement. Across the board.
    in other words I wouldn't ban oranges because some of the farmers have been found to have been enslaved; instead i'd investigate and penalize the enslavement and crimes taking place.
    Similarly : I wouldn't ban pornography on some false pretense that it's to save someone, because quite honestly if I began that boulder rolling it shouldn't stop , every industry victimizes someone; it's a question of stopping and penalizing abuses and preventing victimization, not about regulating broad industries ( a move that worsens human rights violations by moving them into a highly lucrative black market, into the shadows ) .
    jonahx · 1790984750 · focus · HN ↗
    I never argued to ban pornography, and I'm not in favor of that.
    That said, no, it's not like other industries. The amount of well-documented abuse is much higher. Degree matters.
    BEEdwards · 1790991884 · focus · HN ↗
    Find chocolate that doesn't involve slave labor at some point in it's production and then say that again.
    Semaphor · 1791030978 · focus · HN ↗
    There is some of the bean to bar variety. Very different price class, though.
    I'd also guess (not know, haven't researched that area at all) that some of the fair trade and similar certified labels you can find even in supermarkets have a good enough control for that.
    autoexec · 1790992279 · focus · HN ↗
    I'd be willing to bet that there are far more people who voluntarily make porn than people who voluntarily work on cocoa farms in Western Africa. Not that the existence of other industries where slavery and abuse are more prevalent make those problems in the porn industry any better, but at the very least a lot of work has been done to limit the amount of abuse in the adult entertainment industry and there are a lot of places where people who are being abused can find help and support, especially here in the US. You're more likely to be supporting slavery and abuse buying a Hershey's Bar or an iphone than by watching a video on pornhub.
    xorcist · 1791022403 · focus · HN ↗
    This is perhaps the clearest example of whataboutism I have ever seen. Sure, the porn industry is nasty, but have you seen the chocolate industry? Let's talk about that instead!
    nsomaru · 1791023571 · focus · HN ↗
    In this case it’s not because this subthread is specifically about comparing abuse levels in other industries and further whether the product should be banned or the abusive practice should be investigated and eliminated.
    swiftcoder · 1791012237 · focus · HN ↗
    > it's not like other industries. The amount of well-documented abuse is much higher. Degree matters.
    It's certainly not that different in degree to the agricultural industry (undocumented workers packed into squalid working conditions, long hours in harsh climate, wage theft, constant threat of ICE...), and we're not out here trying to ban tomatoes
    jonahx · 1791014003 · focus · HN ↗
    You can honestly acknowledge what both industries do without "being out there trying to ban them." In any case, plenty of people want to improve working conditions in the agricultural industry. Probably the best you can do in both cases is imperfect regulation which at least tries to change incentives for the worst kind of abuse.
    swiftcoder · 1791015412 · focus · HN ↗
    Right, but I'm specifically pointing out here the difference in knee-jerk response (particularly in the political arena). Rampant worker abuses in porn leads to attempts to ban it entirely, while similar abuses in the agriculture sector engender a very lukewarm response
    rpdillon · 1791015674 · focus · HN ↗
    How about phone battery manufacturing? Shall we do an accounting of abuses there? Phones warp minds, and have extensive slavery overseas in the supply chain. Societies love to claim the moral high ground by externalizing bad behavior, and importing the result. The US does this extensively with climate and labor laws, and Europe does it with pesticides. The difference with porn is its pretty girls, and its all on camera. I see some parallels with Missing White Woman Syndrome.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome
    [deleted] · 1790983601 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    monksy · 1790984896 · focus · HN ↗
    > of the women who end up in porn are underage, trafficked, or psychologically coerced (due to poverty, drug addiction, abuse, etc) such that the choice is not really the free choice of willing participant.
    People who believe that are not aware how the industry has changed and the standards attached to that.
    Additionally, that wasn't the draw of the industry. Using the "porn/stripping" preys on the poor is a far over simplification and a weasly thing to say.
    swiftcoder · 1791012086 · focus · HN ↗
    > People who believe that are not aware how the industry has changed and the standards attached to that.
    This very much depends on where you look at. If you are only consuming Made in California™ porn from the big producers, then yes, a lot may have changed.
    If you are searching out the raw shit from Russia/Eastern Europea/Asia, then no, the industry is still heavy on the abuse and intertwined with organised crime.
    306bobby · 1791015932 · focus · HN ↗
    But that's literally the same with virtually all industries in those regions. Porn isn't some sort of exception
    swiftcoder · 1791045218 · focus · HN ↗
    Indeed, but it is treated as an exception in most political discussions
    olyjohn · 1791043232 · focus · HN ↗
    Sounds like call centers. People are trafficked, kidnapped and and forced to work in them, but nobody is trying to ban call centers.
    monksy · 1791180349 · focus · HN ↗
    That's a disingenuous response.
    Having legalized and accessible adult content hurts the scope and desire for "the raw shit". Organized crime created the problem, not the production/consumption of adult content. They're unethical, unlawful, immoral opportunists.
    subscribed · 1790989150 · focus · HN ↗
    All fast fashion comes from the trafficked or abused workers. All meat comes from the grave abuse of the animals.
    It's still sold on the high street and advertised everywhere.
    halfcat · 1791043377 · focus · HN ↗
    Let’s replace a few categories of your argument and see how your logic holds up.
    ”This is not the claim. The claim is that, empirically, many (or enough) of the men who end up in construction jobs are underage, trafficked, or psychologically coerced (due to poverty, drug addiction, abuse, etc) such that the choice is not really the free choice of willing participant.
    I am all for individual freedoms, but I've read enough about this issue, and seen enough documentaries, that I think the claim is very well-founded. Of course, some construction workers are just willing adults doing something they want to do, but there are many who are not.
    You could replace construction with mining or fishing or factory work. It’s pretty clear to me that outlawing fishing jobs isn’t going to solve the problem of forced labor.
    OroPla · 1791057552 · focus · HN ↗
    Never quite understood how that applies to drawn porn or nowadays AI porn.
    malfist · 1790987529 · focus · HN ↗
    It also ignores gay porn.
    UltraSane · 1790989909 · focus · HN ↗
    It is amazing how comprehensively gay porn is ignored in these debates which I think supports my argument that the "porn harms women" argument fundamentaly removes female agency.
    pimeys · 1791011480 · focus · HN ↗
    Being the writer of the parent comment who started this discussion, gay porn was the open I was thinking about. Then it the whole discussion was about harming women.
    BTW all the women I know in my age group watch porn too...
    numpad0 · 1791042105 · focus · HN ↗
    It does. This whole logical train of thoughts just fall apart without extremely sexist premises, disregard of agency and human rights and tons of other stuffs. It probably don't even support ideas of toxic masculinity for heterosexual males. It's just mild insanity.
    germandiago · 1791002098 · focus · HN ↗
    Any intervention to protect adults with laws infantilize.
    The cause is clear in my mind: the world outside is what it is. If you cannot take good decisions (whatever that is for you) and you need someone to get protrcted and you soend your day whining about your own problems bc the world is not perfect, then you did not become an adult, ever.
    There are extreme cases: for example you cannot say aperson in a country with no weapons is infantilized bc the complain for being abused by an armed gang. Something like that is legit.
    But for many things I see around I just see people complaining instead of changing strategy, solve a problem, change their choice or just plain skip things they do not want. Instrad of that they demand some kind of protection.
    For a very narrow set of exceptions I would agree. For the rest, we sre just adults, we should know what to do.
    popdu · 1791024324 · focus · HN ↗
    > For the rest, we sre just adults, we should know what to do.
    We should. Yet a significant portion of mental health issues would be solved if psychiatry provided mother as a service: Teach interpersonal skills and to take care of yourself. They don't teach that stuff in school and parenting is a hit-or-miss.
    The world indeed is what it is and your diagnosis is spot on: Most people didn't become adults as defined by being able to make consistently good decisions without support. Can either let them hang themselves or infantilize just a bit to let most dodge the worst pitfalls.
    Don't really have a strong personal opinion on where the pragmatic optimum is, but surely a long way before banning porn. Tangentially it'd be far more ideal if that pragmatic optimum could cater to the ideal adult without catastrophic social consequences, but that'd literally be a generational effort.
    failbuffer · 1790980228 · focus · HN ↗
    I would add:
    - natalism. Some people worry about inverted demographic pyramids. They want to see more births, so they need more horny guys trying to form relationships instead of being content single. Sometimes there is a racist angle.
    - industry. Anything that's "too fun" for young people disincentives education or working.
    - addiction. (But people get addicted to shopping or eating dirt too.)
    Some arguments against outlawing it include:
    - free speech.
    - a sizeable fraction of the population wants it to exist.
    - better option for economically impoverished women than prostitution.
    - societies that suppress it don't really seem better for women, or anyone.
    - prohibition of a widely demanded product creates crime (and nothing is easier to smuggle than pure information).
    autoexec · 1790990406 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    germandiago · 1791001727 · focus · HN ↗
    You could say natalism as opposed to maltusianism, or that is not a thing? One with a worse outcome IMHO given the aging of population and low birth rate.
    Industry: agree.
    Addiction: true, many things can be addictive, I think this is in big part a matter of education but there are some things that are more addictive than others also.
    As for better option than prostitution. I would say this is kind of prostitution is some way.
    AnthonyMouse · 1791012688 · focus · HN ↗
    > natalism. Some people worry about inverted demographic pyramids. They want to see more births, so they need more horny guys trying to form relationships instead of being content single.
    This one seems to have an obvious problem.
    It's October, consider the traditional Halloween party for 20-somethings. Slutty costumes, college students making out on the couch, and those are the tame ones.
    All of that stuff has been effectively banned from workplaces and official school functions and the like for a while now. Meanwhile people increasingly do their social interaction via social media. So what happens if you ban revealing images and sexual dialog from there too? Where are you leaving for people to actually do those things, if you want them to connect with each other?
    theultdev · 1791024111 · focus · HN ↗
    Birth rates are down. And you used "traditional Halloween party", yes that's what you think happens traditionally, but what if you just opened cosplay category on Pornhub and didn't go to the party to meet your potential mate? Seems easier right? That's what they are getting at.
    It's not a full replacement, but it's enough to keep people content with the status quo.
    Telemakhos · 1791030491 · focus · HN ↗
    Halloween has only been a major, marketed holiday for the millennials and later generations. As late as the beginning of the 1980s it was a kids’ holiday only for most of America. Spirit Halloween was founded in 1983; 80s horror films (like Halloween) helped build the holiday for adults.
    Traditional ways of meeting a spouse don’t involve slutty costumes at once-a-year parties (Halloween is not a spouse-selection fertility festival), but family, church, and neighborhood connections that build over spans of time in 3d. Sometimes HN seems to miss slow, complex, physical-world interactions because of a focus on modeling transaction-like events or instants (like parties).
    AnthonyMouse · 1791047917 · focus · HN ↗
    > Halloween has only been a major, marketed holiday for the millennials and later generation. Spirit Halloween was founded in 1983; 80s horror films (like Halloween) helped build the holiday for adults.
    The people who were in college in the 1980s aren't millennials. If you were 22 in 1983 then you were born in 1961. That's not even Gen X, that's a boomer.
    And Halloween in particular isn't really the point anyway. The decade associated with topless hippies and free love was before the 1980s. The Romans would dispute the notion that this sort of thing is a recent development.
    > Traditional ways of meeting a spouse don’t involve slutty costumes at once-a-year parties (Halloween is not a spouse-selection fertility festival), but family, church, and neighborhood connections that build over spans of time in 3d.
    The issue being that the neighbors are no longer renting a hall to have local discussion meetings because that sort of thing now happens on Facebook. And then if Facebook is a place where non-platonic sentiment gets you a ban, what happens?
    AnthonyMouse · 1791046180 · focus · HN ↗
    > what if you just opened cosplay category on Pornhub and didn't go to the party to meet your potential mate?
    The thing about imposing content restrictions via corporate intermediaries is that they're not that selective. If you're not banning cleavage and innuendo from the mass market services then they become the funnel to OnlyFans and escort services, but if you are then the result is a de facto ban on real people flirting with each other because they're afraid of having their account locked.
    Consider what "chilling effects" implies in the context of sexual expressiveness.
    brookst · 1790987378 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah both of those arguments would work fine for banning religion, but oddly that is shocking to proponents.
    Rohansi · 1790989487 · focus · HN ↗
    I thought the same. People would realistically be thinking "not my religion" but, even if that were true, that is the kind of thinking that leads to conflicts between religions. That can range from racism between individuals, to stuff like this, and even to entire wars. Despite all of this we specifically protect religion, which I'm fine with, but nobody should be forcing their religious beliefs onto others in any way. That has definitely harmed far more people overall.
    germandiago · 1791001493 · focus · HN ↗
    So in the absence of religion, there is no racism, no interests and no wars?
    You seem to suggest that banning religion would end up wars or human nature.
    And yes, noone should force everyone else, but not only om religious stuff. Sometimes there has been non-religious truths to which people are forced and that collides ireemediably with other thinkings.
    I am not sure why one philosophical thinking should be better than other just bc it does not contain religion.
    In fact, I consider a big part of most religious a compilation of wise advice about human nature. You can believe it or not, take it or not, that is a choice, but when not taken into fanatism I do not think it is harmful.
    Again, that is not anreason to force a position to others. But there are a handful of things that are very controversial.
    Dylan16807 · 1791010178 · focus · HN ↗
    > So in the absence of religion, there is no racism, no interests and no wars?
    Nah. Between the two comments above there's an implication that in the absence of religion there would be somewhat less of those things.
    germandiago · 1791203233 · focus · HN ↗
    As there would be if you worship money or communism or any other belief that is not a religion also for which wars or oppression has been caused.
    306bobby · 1791016254 · focus · HN ↗
    Saying something is a major catalyst is not saying it's the only catalyst.
    Neither parent was being this black and white about it so I have no idea why you are
    hinkley · 1791054168 · focus · HN ↗
    I’ll take “Things You Learn In Introduction to Logic” for 500, Alex.
    In places where supposedly most of the people are in engineering or software, I’m surprised how often 1) people have to point this out, 2) people are willing to loudly pronounce their lack of basic logical skills.
    antonvs · 1791039363 · focus · HN ↗
    Religion acts as a mechanism for perpetuating and giving social acceptability to certain kinds of bigotry. If it didn’t exist, it’d be much more difficult to justify that kind of bigotry.
    hinkley · 1791054319 · focus · HN ↗
    Institutionalized Othering, literally. This is my in group and we spend every Sunday morning talking about everybody else. Sometimes with extra separate classes for the children.
    fleroviumna · 1791098159 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    germandiago · 1791203370 · focus · HN ↗
    This is not different from any political power or belief, which shapes mind and action.
    In fact, in the absence of religion, the hole is filled with political power.
    There is no void. If you leave a void, someone will fill it, after all. Bc there will still be social organization among us.
    numpad0 · 1791018521 · focus · HN ↗
    The way religion always comes up in these discussion makes me think that, there's a chance that the world sees what happened in the Uighur region of China as a right call, repeating it, not over the next 3-5 years but at 30-50 year history book timescale, just in trivially more humane manners.
    It's just weird that people could just base decisions on religions and hide behind freedom of thoughts, when there are actions and consequences of what are supposedly thoughts. It only works when the accusing and accused shares the same beliefs, and effectively collude out of a shared interest, which is not just wrong but increasingly becoming not a workable strategy.
    someonebaggy · 1791041182 · focus · HN ↗
    There's basically no country that hasn't done at least one holocaust in recent history. They happen wayyyyyy more than you'd think. We just don't care about most of them. It's the same reason almost all politicians support Israel - nothing that's happening there is different from anything they want to do or have done in their own countries.
    cindyllm · 1791041897 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    numpad0 · 1791042466 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't mean that I think nations will start harassing "foreign" religions, but that someone is going to redefine the concept of religions and draws some line as to what parts of it a civilized nation could tolerate; there are dictator's autobiographies that are legal to possess, read or study all you want, as speeches, but not to follow or to worship. What I'm thinking is that similar thing might happen to religious materials and organizations.
    tarpitt · 1791048483 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think it is a good idea to operate a society totally on the basis of reason. Religion exists as a framework for people rationalize their intuitions.
    That being said, I don't think religion as we know it will be a powerful force in the future, so there will be little reason to persecute the religious. The framework of religion is built to deal with perrenial problems of human nature, and we are in a dynamic time. People may not see religion as adequate for answering modern questions
    [deleted] · 1790991772 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    GolfPopper · 1790975651 · focus · HN ↗
    >Kind of like human nature, don't you think?
    That's one reason why traditionists in power usually crack down on any sort of pornography or alternate sexuality. Sex is a huge driver for human behavior. And established power structures would prefer that the only way for anyone to get sex is via compliance with the existing power structures. It's not something where the establishment is ever going to be able to perfectly control things, but if they can make it more difficult to get any sort of sexual gratification that doesn't align with their preferred social structure that gives the establishment an advantage in holding on to power.
    lazide · 1790985524 · focus · HN ↗
    They want to protect their local ‘woman’ market, without them having to compete with porn expectations.
    tyrabound · 1791023874 · focus · HN ↗
    So you produce pornography? Does your mother produce pornography? How about your sister or father or grandmother, do they produce pornography? So you consume their pornography since just regular and normal human nature?
    What about pornography…the concentrated, focused depiction of sex acts…makes it human nature to you?
    ButlerianJihad · 1791152541 · focus · HN ↗
    Adam and Eve partook of the Tree of Knowledge because of the serpent, and blamed one another in a chain of blame for it. Adam even blamed God for "this woman"!
    Now that I have eaten of it as well, I want to testify to the good that it did in me. My "love life" was full of failures, and terrible relations with my female peers. I realized eventually that I didn't honestly know what love was, or how to be a husband, much less a father.
    It was a few years ago when I came across a handful of pornographic scenes that opened my eyes to what people mean by "consent" and what a really loving relationship could look like, as a "fly on the wall". Because it had never played out in front of me until then, I didn't know what it looked like, or sounded like or felt like when people were consenting to intimacy, enjoying that intimacy, accepting their partner, and encouraging them for more. It was literally just beyond my experience, and when I saw it, I was so ashamed of myself.
    I was ashamed of how I'd treated women and I was sad because they had treated me so badly, and I hadn't even the guts to say "no". I try not to "belong" to an incel community or foster bitterness to women for how I am, but my gender ID and my sexuality have been thoroughly ruined, even without so much porn. Just from imbibing pop culture depictions, and all the singers, and MTV, and actresses, and fake sitcoms and films that warped my self-image along with warping my reality into fantasy.
    Porn addiction isn't moral, and there are many, many ways for a man to be trapped by porn into worse and worse mental health, ruining his RL relationships as well. But it seems that women are empowered to use all their qualifications and gifts to earn a living and provide for themselves and families, and even sincerely follow their faith and conscience to worship the demons that fuel porn. So who am I to judge that they do the needful, because we capitalists live by PT Barnum's maxim, "There's a Sucker Born Every Minute".

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