So, because you were unable to moderate yourself, that's somehow reason enough to judge everyone else who enjoys it, even if they do so healthily and safely? 

That sounds like you projecting your problems onto others more than an actual, reasonable response to something that is at its core harmless. Video Games can be just as addictive and impacting if you don't know how to moderate yourself. Literally every form of recreation can be harmful if you don't moderate yourself. Porn is no different; like I said in an earlier post, you're putting a harsher burden of value on porn which says more about your views on taboos than the actual impact of it. 

Some people are dangerously addicted to gambling, or thrill-seeking, or gaming, or junk food, or dozens of other things that can take over your lives even without the use of drugs, but you don't judge someone for gaming or skydiving. You only want to intervene when it gets to be too controlling or harmful. The fact that so many people don't understand that balance with pornography/casual sex tells me it's not about actual concern, but an excuse to be judgy and puritanical. 

Porn can be just as damaging as anything else, but it can also be wonderful, fun, relaxing, and healthy. You can't project your demons onto others. 

If there's no such thing as porn addiction then there's a recent, baffling epidemic of male erectile dysfunction to be explained, people.

1999 was the year the U.S. crossed the threshold whereafter the majority now had internet access and pornography has become fairly ubiquitous since then and has indeed become the understood default sex education of today's youth. The social consequences have ranged from mundane to quite serious. In the mundane category, girls and women today achieve orgasm less often in the course of heterosexual intimacy and are more often subjected to obviously porn-inspired practices like involuntary strangulation, so the quality of their sex lives has generally deteriorated. Also, today's younger generations are having actual sex less often, mainly because relationships are being formed less often; those being the main context in which sex takes place. Realities like these make a joke of the notion that pornography is "sex-positive" or healthy.

Pornographic portrayals (invariably by heterosexual women), I might add, are also the main form of media representation that lesbians have had, and it's just a reality that this leads people to think of lesbians in particular, more so than other girls and women, as a kind of fetish and not so much as multi-dimensional human beings who ought to be treated as such.

On the more serious side, industry advocates used to proclaim to me that porn also makes rape less common for the same sorts of reasons that it makes sex in general less common. One rarely sees this argument anymore, have you noticed? You know why that is? Because rape has, in fact, generally become more common here in the U.S., and in much of the world for that matter, over the last decade as pornography consumption has reached new heights. The circumstantial correlations used to make this argument in the past no longer exist today.

None of this though really lies at the heart and soul of why I hate pornography, and indeed the sex industry in general.

When I was a kid, the most controversial feminist in America was a woman named Andrea Dworkin. She passed away in 2005. In the riot grrl scene I was part of, we were divided over her work. What made her so controversial was her anti-pornogrpahy activism. Namely, she advocated for the enactment of a civil ordinance that would allow women who claimed damages from pornography to sue the producers and distributors thereof in court for compensation. (Talk about puritanical tyranny!) I was recently watching a (supportive) film about her activism that was originally released in 1991 for the occasion of its 30th anniversary anew. (Yeah, I do stuff like that.) What struck me the most about it on my new viewing was that it has scarcely aged a day. Some semantics have changed in the interim, but the core arguments you'll hear about porn not only stand the test of time, but are actually more pertinent today, if anything. The crux of her argument wasn't simply that porn causes rape, but that rape and battery are leading causes of pornography; that the sex industry could hardly exist in a world without relatively female-specific PTSD. And you hear from survivors at length. The vast majority of women in pornography were sexually abused and/or battered as children. Thus when we normalize porn, what are we really normalizing? That is the most important issue here as far as I'm concerned and the main, underlying reason why I've got nothing good to say about this business.

You cannot normalize something that is already normal and porn is inherent to the human experience. As inherent as eating and breathing and playing.

I mean… just bringing problems and linking to easily accessible porn is kind of a weird way to approach the issue at hand. Erectile dysfunction? Maybe because America is fat? The quality of food has deteriorated? More estrogen and estrogen-like materials in food and food containers? Maybe the younger generation has no hope of owning a home and starting a life without having to work in competitive field make them stressed all the time?

The reality is that unless you’re a super working hard individual who goes to medical school, engineering school or chooses a very relevant speciality, you’ll end up struggling saving up. Even if you end up with a relevant degree, you’ll still need to compete with locals and foreigners giving how open the market is right now. Long gone the days in which working as a seller in a shop 5 days a week, 12 hours a day, was enough to live a life with dignity (owning a house). I’d say all of this has a much bigger impact on someone’s well-being and ability to perform than watching porn. Even if porn is responsible for making sex less appealing, is that a really problem? It’s not like you’re not getting any joy out of porn or masturbating? If you prefer to have a fuller sex experience and you’re convinced porn is the reason, stop watching porn and see how that affects your sexual life overall? Also, I imagine in a porn-less society, one would still close their eyes and masturbate anyway….  

As for porn portrayal of women and lesbians, that is a problem with the entertainment media as a whole. Women and minorities only recently started to get a proper presentation in movies, TV, etc. So recent that Harvery’s abuse was public knowledge, a subject of comedy for many sitcoms (BoJack and 30 rock), until someone decided to “hmm…. This isn’t good”. The answer to these problems is to correct them, protect women and minorities, and provide them with the ability to perform without having to be victims. But again, most here are pointing fingers without providing solutions, me including  

I don’t know about rape and pornography, but it would be interesting to look at the numbers you brought up and dissect them. Maybe rape has gone up because population has increased magnificently? Genuinely curious. Also the definition of what is considered rape has changed, hasn’t it? It wouldn’t surprise me if rape in the past was a much bigger issue. Again, talking out of my ass here, but I am on a hurry and a in-depth look at the numbers would help. 

I honestly don’t know about rape statistics, but the general theme in this thread has been “porn consumption has increase, so mental health issues and rape. A connection must be there!”…. No? 

Sometimes I think porn users are the new pot users. In the past it was almost impossible to have a proper conversation with them, with all that crap about its harmless, you cant be addicted, its just a natural weed from nature therefore cant harm you etc. Today things have changed and we have a lot of info about it and its starting to be possible to have a proper conversation with them. I have seen it first hand with my brother and the problems that pot addiction can cause for some of it's users.

I believe it will be the same with porn in the future. 

I would be interested in seeing your evidence for the bolded. From my quick google the only thing I could find on the stats of child abuse for porn actresses was that they were no more likely to have been abused as a child than the non-porn actress public. We can argue about the legitimacy of a survey study done on 177 porn actresses (a pretty reasonable number for something like this to my understanding) but then I would want to know what study you are using to come to your conclusions. 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2012.719168

What are you even on about here? Pot is harmless and it's virtually impossible to overdose. Like literally any foreign chemical it can have addictive properties and can cause harm if overused, just like literally everything else in the world. 

Again, you're putting far too large of a burden of value on porn and casual sex, here. You're applying standards to it that you wouldn't apply to other forms of recreation despite the arguments being nearly identical. Just like everything else in this world that we do for fun, doing so in moderation can be completely healthy and normal and beneficial. There is nothing special about porn, just that we have this idea that it's adults only (seriously, you won't meet someone who hit puberty that hasn't looked) and thus there's this concern trolling about 'what about the children' narrative. 

You need to understand that many things in this world are completely safe and not harmful if you enjoy them responsibly. For someone who seems to hate the idea of governmental control (but muh freedums), you seem to have a hard-on for telling others what harmless recreation they can enjoy. 

Harshhhhh... You're not wrong, though. But in fairness, Shikamaru doesn't go out without highlighting a few real problems that absolutely need to change in the landscape. For one thing, this shows us that parents need to be more involved in their children's online habits and overall upbringing. More communication is needed. At the same time, children should be insisted again and again that getting obsessed over one thing isn't good. I'm not a social educator or anything of the sort, but I think if you bring strong foundations for your children, the less chances there are for them to go towards undesired paths. Easier said than done, however, but the possibility will always be there. For Shikamaru it wasn't as simple as "being unable to moderate himself", he had rough circumstances. 

Furthermore, when Shikamaru says "porn causes x", that's where he's certainly wrong. As you already said, pornography doesn't cause anything, it's all on people. In that sense, we have to find the ways for people to stop developing unrealistic expectations for body proportions and stop seeing others as mere objects even if they watch porn; or in other words, consume it responsibly.

Oh, absolutely! There are very real problems in porn and the fact that it's so taboo makes it hard to get regulation on the industry and too few are willing to speak out. Abuse is or at least can be rampant and given the nature of the work, it's far harder to get help. 

And people in this thread that speak out against porn and try to judge without context are exactly why that remains such a problem. 

Furthermore, the reason people are so up in arms about OnlyFans banning explicit contentis because it was one of the few platforms that WAS making major strides towards fixing or at least alleviating the problems in porn. By normalizing sex work and putting the power in the hands of the performers ahead of the producers and any shady executives, they were making positive change in this world. them going back on that goal and pivoting their design is a huge blow for the industry in this regard. 

On the flip side, all industries are susceptible to abuse from higher-ups. We're on a gaming website, we know better than most how shitty EA and Activision and Rockstar can be to their employees. How is that any different? Gaming can be just as addictive and just as harmful to those who make the games, yet it doesn't have that social taboo so people tend to brush over the worst parts or go 'eeh, it's not all too bad, just go to a different employer' or something. Abuse happens everywhere, in every industry. Porn is not special or unique, it just has a different perception by the common consumer. 

I really feel normalization of sex work as performers and yeah, escorts/prostitutes should be a focus. It happened in Denmark and a few other nations like the Netherlands and sex workers there are treated remarkably well. There are government-supported health care checks, protections, and respect in the industry. AS long as sex works remains illegal and not regulated or protected, it will always be open to abuse. OnlyFans and other self-publishing services did a lot to help with that over the years. 

People like Enrico and Padib and Ghost Boy are all exactly why we can't have nice things. their need to judge and control what other mature adults do with their time is why these behaviours have persisted for so long. Their personal experiences have led them to feel like they have the moral high ground and they don't. That's why I get so angry about this. If their stance was "I don't like porn so I won't watch" or "I feel sex should be for procreation and thus I will not have sex until I am married", those are completely legitimate stances on the matter. 

The moment they said 'so the world would be better off without it' or 'it's bad and you should feel bad'....well, I don't have any desire to let those sorts of comments lie without responses. 

Ethics are quite straight forward. consenting adults get to decide what they like and what they don't like. It's nobody's job to decide what they can or cannot do. all things have potential to be abused, all activities can be addictive, all hobbies can control your life, and all people should have the right to make that decision for themselves as long as those decisions do not directly, negatively impact others. That really should be the end of the discussion in terms of ethics or morality. 

If I make porn, and someone sees it and doesn't like what they see, that's not my fault. If one person is offended by the act of another, it's not their job to decide what the other person does. Everyone is in charge of their own destiny. If I wanna make porn you don't want to see, you're welcome to not see it. the moment someone tells me I'm immoral for doing something that makes me happy, pays my bills, and makes countless other people happy just because they personally find it revolting, that's on them and that's where their opinion on the matter should stay. 

Since this thread already gone off topic into the realm of sex work in general instead specifically about onlyfans then on topic of sex workers I highly recommend Kaytlin Bailey Presenting U.S. History from a Whore's Eye view. It a entertaining presentation about the history of Sex work in the USA from about 1830's to present time and shows how sex work have empowered woman throughout USA history. For example the first Public School system in Seattle was funded by Lou Graham a Female Brothel owner. The other main focus is most anti sex work laws in this country origins was based on both sexism and racisms.  Like the first law again sex workers in this country was part of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1866 and the first major law specially targeting sex workers was the White-Slave Traffic Act(Mann Act) of 1910 which basis was fear from the raciest premise that freed slaves was a danger to white woman.

The presentation start around the 10min mark