Vicky Vette's MySpace Blog: The Adult Industry Should Not Have "Teen" Websites
Out of respect for Vicky, I'll just ask you to link to the essay, and solicit comments.
Note that she's not calling for out and out censorship of "teen" sites; just saying that adult consumers should exercise more caution in supporting them out of concern for possibly enabling those who would target young children.
Vicky's also gone on record as supporting raising the legal age of entry into adult to 21 from 18.
In the comments section, I wrote this as my means of agreeing and disagreeing with Vicky's points:
[Posted by me (Anthony_JKenn) today @ 9:21 AM]The floor is open now for discussion, if you are interested.
Interesting take on the subject, Vicky...I can agree with everything you said, but only to a point.
I'm not one for "teen porn" myself (I tend to prefer mature MILF's and Cougars who actually KNOW what the hell they are doing sexually), being that I have no intention of wanting sex with someone young enough to be my daughter. (Unless, of course, she is damn hot.) And it does kind of squick me to think that a lot of those who are into the "Barely Legal" subgenre might have at least in part some tiny level of pedophilic fantasies about banging girls that may be underage or just at the legal age. Plus, there is still a bit of the "stretching the boundaries of taboo" going on, and having "barely legal" porn does tend to stretch the boundary a great deal.
On the other hand, though, I'm not so fond of targeting "Barely Legal" porn as a cause of actual pedophilia, for the following reasons.
1) Note the phrasing of "BARELY LEGAL": meaning that she may just be over the edge of legality, the performer is certainly legal, and has the papers and 2257 compliance to prove it. Why should she be denied her legal right to earn her craft merely because some sick (as in mentally ill) 45 year old man sees her as his personal "jailbait"??
2) I'd say that the majority of the consumers of Barely Legal porn aren't older men looking for fantasies to stoke their pedophilic lusts, but young men of the same age just looking for similar type women. I'm not so sure that I'd count that as promoting kiddie porn...at least not in the traditional sense.
3) Even if there is the typical "dirty old man" using BL porn to get his peculiar rocks off, I still say that it is a suitable alternative to him actually going out and targeting REAL girls. At least, BL porn serves as a release for such fantasies....in the same way that other forms of "extreme porn" serve a similar function. Better to have him jerking off to Internet porn than to be going around real people imposing his desires on unsuspecting victims.
4) Last time I heard, it is still a crime to sexually assault and target underage girls...and this dude whom you described at the beginning is a bona fide criminal who deserves to be placed UNDER the jail....but notice that he targeted much, much younger kids than the target audience of BL porn. (The fact that he was a youth minister should raise some real flags of deep sexual repression coming back to explode on him, too.) To say that BF porn encouraged his assault on 4 year olds is a bit like saying that the Hostess company should be held liable because Harvey Milk's assassin got high on Twinkies, or that the Roman Catholic Church should be held liable because some whackjob quoted the Bible in justifying his killing spree or bombing an abortion clinic. In short, kind of a reach.
In my perfect world, porn would only be performed by mature adult women who were into it not just for the money or the fame, but specifically for the sex, and there would be no need for "barely legal" porn to survive. In the real world, however, the desire for deflowering "new meat" remains strong with a sizeable majority of men, and most of them have money to spend to purchase media that attracts that kind of fantasy. Even if tomorrow you criminalized their fantasies, they would not disappear; they would only seek less legal and safe and more perverse means to satisfy their ends...and that would be a hell of a lot more threatening to legal adult porn than any bit of "barely legal" porn out there.
Finally....while I understand exactly where you are going with this, Vicky, and do think that it would be so much better if men stuck to legitimate adult sex subjects (like, for instance, YOU...heheh), I'd be real careful at this time about calling for restrictions on what is still legal adult material. Given the forces that are in power, it is all too easy for good-hearted and well-meaning regulation to blow up and backfire and be used as a bludgeon against even legal adult material far beyond what was originally targeted. What may be used against Hustler's Barely Legal series today could well be used against MILF/Couogar porn tomorrow...and under the same justification of "protecting children" from "sexual aggression". Who's to say that some right-wing fundamentalist might find YOU to be as much a threat because of your sexual aggression?? And remember, the first letter of MILF does refer to "Mom". And even single Cougars might like to target young men.
Oh....and 18- to 21-year old young adults have as much a right to explore their sexuality as 25- or 35- year olds do; to put them down as automatically inmature and unable to make informed decisions merely because they just reached that age is a bit ageist. Perhaps porn isn't the best place for them to begin their experimentation, but that only states the need for support groups of older starlets and health and safety protections built in so that they have a safe place within the industry to avoid exploitation and abuse.
Just my own ranting and raving, Vicky....take it as you will.
