It could, if that was what they meant. It could also just be a stupid decision by someone not considering the repercussions.
The character/person saying “You want to consume pornography but want to feel above those who perform the service?” was sort of interesting. That’s the way it is for fast food cooks, low level retail workers, garbage men, customer service reps, food delivery guys, assembly line workers, janitors, valets, landscapers, etc. There’s hundreds of jobs society wants people to do for our benefit but society doesn’t think better of the person for doing them. At the end of the day, “porn actor” is another low-skill job (albeit potentially high paying) that many people think is kind of gross but I suppose you say the same about someone who cleans out dumpsters for a living. Granted, dumpster cleaning doesn’t carry the same lasting stigma.
I guess that any revolutionary act is a mixture of the two.
OK. But less than a century ago that same reasoning could have been applied to someone choosing to marry out of their race.
It could be applied to a gay person coming out in any country that currently condemns homosexuality.
Would you lose respect for someone making that kind of decision just because it would so obviously make them a pariah? Would you be a part of that hate or condemnation?
Sure, it’s an imperfect comparison for a number of reasons, but I don’t get why you’d choose to be a part of the negativity. It sounds like you’re saying “I would disrespect someone for making a bad decision that is obviously bad because people would disrespect them for it.”
Because it is completely unnecessary. Someone marrying outside their race in the 50s or coming out in saudi arabia is doing something courageous and standing up for what is right, someone ruining their life to be in a porno is just doing something stupid on a whim.
As a slight hijack, this reminds me of the way certain societies have acted towards people who do the “dirty jobs” that need doing… In Europe, 500 years ago, executioners were generally despised and treated as pariahs; very often the “trade” was limited to one or two families (the famous Samson family in France, for instance). Or the tanners and undertakers in Japan (the Eta), rife with “ritual impurity”, who were very much discriminated against in Feudal Japan – incidentally, they were also the ones tasked with executing criminals (and even today there is an undercurrent of alienation against people who are descendents of Etas).
There is even a short story by Isaac Asimov that deals with the subject: “Strikebreaker” (you can check the plot here).
Of course, porn, or prostitution, is not usually what we may think of as “essential public service which happens to have unpleasant connotations”… Although in certain places prostitution was considered part and parcel of a healthy society, an essential “safety valve” for people.
Anyway, back to your scheduled thread, and sorry for the mini-hijack 
Look, I’m sorry. I’m really not playing anything at all, and I didn’t intend to goad you.
I’m not meaning to treat this as some kind of game. It’s something that made me think rather deeply about my own shifting morality.
I would have appreciated your response to my question because, as I (sort-of) explained, I too have held various religious-based attitudes on porn in my recent past.
But I understand if you’d rather just leave it.
Sorry if I offended you.
I wouldn’t respect them any less. I really don’t care about this.
Its nice and simple to believe that the society that would react in that way is some prudish 50’s style enclave, but its not really true.
Say you are hiring and have two outstanding candidates to choose from. You google both their names, one result comes back with the boring usual things, and the other result brings up a porn video. At that point, like it or not, agree with it or not, the pornstar is probably not going to get the job.
So, doing the porn was a poor decision, because it brought negative consequences. And so once again we come back to what respect is, how respect is earned. If you make poor decisions then you will probably lose peoples respect, whether its the decision to get a face tattoo, walk away from your kids, or have sex in public. Thats just reality.
Me? I have no respect for people conforming. I have no respect for people losing respect at others for not conforming. If you wouldn’t give a job to somebody because he or she did something unrelated to their job performance you don’t even have rational qualms about, well, then I just lost respect for you.
Getting a face tattoo is about the best comparison really.
I don’t lose respect for people just because they have made errors that made their own lives harder. I figure everybody’s done that.
Bully for you. Say no to conformity, fight the power and all that.
I don’t have to. But I do respect people who do.
On a practical point, I really doubt many people are making much money in porn nowadays because its put out there for free. So porning there way thru college? I doubt it.
So really, why the heck did they do it then? That shows to me an even poorer decision making ability.
I have known a few people, men and women, who have done porn (as actors, not talking about technical people).
The thing is, they (OK, four people, small sample here) were all fucked-up pathetic characters. One of them was also absolutely despicable. But I knew that before I knew they’d done porn.
But I’m aware that that’s only my experience, based on a really small sample size, and it is entirely possible that there are people who I would like and respect who would do, or have done, porn. I think I’d have an open mind.
Based on my experience, then, I’d have to say that I wouldn’t respect the kind of person who would do porn.
For an acquaintance or friend or colleague, etc, I wouldn’t care one way of the other. For a romantic interest it would be a deal breaker.
What he said.
Presumably because they enjoyed it more than the other alternatives open to them. Why is that a hard concept? Better than working at McDonald’s, anyway, even if the pay’s the same, and a McDonald’s job is also precisely the kind of thing to elide from a résumé once you get some actual work experience/schooling/other accomplishments.
I’d consider taking a dead-end job with no plans to advance beyond that position an example of poor decision-making ability. It’s possible to have a life which essentially forces you into such a thing, though, so we shouldn’t look down on people who end up there.
Moralizing such things is stupid. Especially porn. Frankly, you’d be more intelligent to moralize about McDonald’s employees propping up a corporation which effectively exists to promote obesity. (Not much more, but more.)
Well one could also point out alot of unsafe sexual practices in porn. There is also the worry of venereal disease and pregnancy.
Plus at McDonalds, a person can work up into corporate management. You can take your experience at working at McDonalds and apply it to other McDonalds or most other fast food restaurants out there. I suppose you could do that in porn.