Comments on “It´s just fantasy: Why the consumption of online pornography is ethically impermissible.” by Teresa Baron.

CRISTIAN DIMITRIU

Congreso; ROME 2021 - Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress; 2021

University of Colorado, Boulder

Accordingto Baron, consumption of pornography is morally impermissible. Inorder to defend this claim, she relies on two arguments. The firstargument relies on three premises. Thefirst premiseis that pornography is an industrythat involves abuse and exploitation of some agents (typically,female agents). The second premiseis that consuming pornography that involves abuse of actors isclearly morally impermissible, as consumer become complicit in apractice that profits from abuse. The thirdpremise isthat consumption of pornography ingeneral(that is, even pornography that does notinvolveabuse and exploitation) is morally impermissible, as it is impossiblefor consumers to avoid abusive content when they look for any kind ofporn movies. Once they decide to consume porn, they accept the riskthat there will be abusive content on their screen.Thepremise I am not convinced about is the third one. That is, I amwilling to accept that watching porn scenes in which weknow thatactors are being abused or raped is morally impermissible. In thesescenes, someone is profitting from the abuse, and we are contributingto this profit. This makes us morally complicit. However, the factthat some porn movies involve abuse does not necessarily, I think,make porn consumption, in general, impermissible.