Hello everyone, this is Rebecca and Henry. During our presentation, we’ve chosen the second reading “The Ethics of Porn on the net” by Kath Albury. As it is an interesting article, yet controversial.
The topic is about virtual ethic. Firstly, ethics is a social construct that operated as choices of moral acts by cultural meaning and value given by our beliefs and value system.
Internet porn industry has become one of the largest Industries on the internet. There are about 4.2 million porn websites and 68 million daily search engine request on cyberspace. The porn’s revenue is more than other virtual industry.
Pornography is a form of media text, people often addressed that pornography is indeed a male gaze industry, as the subject loses its autonomy by showing their body as sex appeal.
Moreover, people considered it is dehumanizes and objectifies women when women are being viewed as object (most of the time). Especially it is against of social norm, sex is a private matter that should not be shown in public. Hence, sex or pornography should be performed in private sphere traditionally.
But the Internet has changed the core of ethics, as the anonymity of the Internet has opened up people to search and share their different sexual preferences, which includes minorities that has generally been considered as “abnormal”. It becomes a platform for their communities, breaking the social constructed norms and thus, we will discuss how the Internet has blurred the boundaries between public and private sphere.
When people with different sexual preferences using the Internet to exercise their agencies, is it still considered as immoral?
In conclusion, ethics is based on perception of large group (power relation), the relativism has made it only pointing out people that are frequently disagree over what is the most “moral” course of action. It has become a power struggle between niches and majority. Hence, do we share the same ethics/moral in reality and virtually?
It is hard to given an absolute definition about moral of porn; there are different agencies behind different people’s action. The demand and supply in market, segmentation when only certain of group of people that are interested to be viewed and viewer are engaged in, by searching their own senses of sameness.
In our discussion part, there are some questions we would like to discuss with classmates.
1. Do you think that online porn is moral and ethics? Why and why not?
2. Do you think that online porn can show the inequality of female status? Is that changing the status of female?
3.Do you think that the online porn site is a platform for the people sharing the similarities? Is that really public sphere for the platform?
4. Do you agree that there is power relation included in the boundary of moral and ethics? And if there is power relation , is there any absolute truth about ethnicity?
by Chau Ka Leung Henry and Chen Yi Chen Rebecca
It is difficult to say is it moral of porn. In my opinion, I think online porn is both moral and immoral. For moral, it is because it's the own choice of the characters. On the other hand, it is immoral because people can watch it online anytime and no need to pay. So, I don' think it can increase the status of women. Since, everyone can see their body. I don't think online porn is able to change the status of women. It is actually lowered women status. Besides, online porm is really a public platform and no private at all. That's why people are not embarassed with watching porn now. They think it's a kind of need of their daily lives and it's a normal thing.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, porn always shows the inequality of female status. Under the social norms and institution, when female buy porn from a store, they will be discriminated or looked down by others, they will think buying porn in a public place is a shame thing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, when there is online porn, no one knows there is a woman watching, since identity is blurred in online world, and women can access and watch porn whenever they want.
This can be said that the online porn makes women have chance to watch porn, but actually this reinforcing the traditional social institution that woman cannot consume porn in public, but can only in a private place. So there isn’t any big change in status of female.
Moral and ethics issues are always debatable since the definitions of them are blur. They change from time to time and different in any places. People with religion may have higher moral standard so online pron must be immoral and unethical but others may think it normal. Somebody may think that online pron is liberating females. However, I think such products and actions should not be praised because children nowadays often use internet. They are more easily reaching the webs. It may lead to the number of pre-marriage sex or pregnancy under age 18 increases.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, online pron cannot show the inequality of female status unless all prons use females as the objects, showing all of them are victims and photos or videos being taken passively. It then shows the female status is lower. Female status is changing but not due to the online prons. In Asian countries, females still being assaulted, being called whores if they nake their bodies easily. Thus, online prons is not contributing to change women status.