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Comment by neolog | Hacker News Reader

A lot of the attacks against amateur porn and sex work are by religious groups masking their actual motive by focusing on consent verification. Verification raises the barrier and makes performers much more vulnerable since their legal identities are attached to their work.

https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war...

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> Verification raises the barrier and makes performers much more vulnerable since their legal identities are attached to their work.

Producers should have been doing this anyway.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257

> "... create and maintain individually identifiable records pertaining to every performer portrayed in such a visual depiction."

The industrial producers have been doing that for decades. The problem is that the real goal of these groups is to make sex work harder, not safer.

For example, research on the take-down of reputable sex work sites harms workers by removing their opportunities for safe work.

> the financial situation of the vast majority of research participants has deteriorated, as has their ability to access community and screen clients.

https://antitraffickingreview.org/index.php/atrjournal/artic...

Yep. It's pure FUD used to moralize and control behavior of consenting adults. It's one step removed from criminalizing homosexuality and abortions.

I’m of the impression that consent is a legitimate problem? Lots of pornography is wrapped up in sex trafficking never mind revenge porn, or so I’ve heard.

Consent is a real issue. The problem is advocates apply pressure to eliminate sex work even under clear consent, because safety isn't their actual goal. See OnlyFans, Craigslist for example.

So what? There are legitimate arguments to having consent verification, and the things they prevent are about as far from victimless crimes as you can get- what happens on the internet, stays on the internet, leading to a lifetime of re-victimization.

Just because people you don't like are for something does not mean that you must automatically be against it.

"So what?" as a response to a post explaining how a policy puts certain people at risk, regardless of what the policy is and who those certain people are, makes how you view those people quite a lot clearer than you may have intended.

The person I responded to implied that the arguments in favor of consent verification were made in bad faith because some people might also oppose porn in general.

It is a logical fallacy. The risk of de-anonymization doesn't go away because their consent wasn't verified- tattoos, birthmarks, backgrounds of images and video, etc are still there.

Not only that, but that same risk still applies to people whose videos were posted without consent. What's worse than being raped and having your video put online? Knowing that everyone you ever work with may have seen it, for the rest of your life.

Also, if you read the article the post attached, it literally opens with a woman who had to impersonate a lawyer to get porn of her taken off of pornhub.

"How I view those people" seems to be your imagination, not mine.

Context and quantification are needed, not sensationalism. Yes there are real accounts of abuse. The problem is that the policies adopted aren't actually directed at solving those problems with minimum harm to people involved; they are directed at eliminating sex work.

How many problems occur, what kind, what protocols would address the problems without needlessly harming performers and consumers?

> What's worse than being raped and having your video put online? Knowing that everyone you ever work with may have seen it, for the rest of your life.

There's no mechanism I can imagine that would make this situation true. HOW would everyone have seen it? Are you aware of just how many porn videos/pictures there are in the world?

You'd be well served to post a stat for how many people have had their coworkers see their rape videos, I'd bet $$$ that it's a negligible number compared to the livelihood issues suffered by onlyfans removing all those creators.

By this logic, separation of church and state doesn't matter to you as long as you can construct some legitimate arguments in favor of theocracy.

No, the logic is that separation of church and state is a red herring.

Payment processors are choosing to not associate with businesses that cannot demonstrate that legal consent was gained from everyone involved in the production of the videos.

There's neither church nor state involved here.

This is just a variation of the ontological argument.

You say there's neither church nor state, but then you cite payment processors and legal consent, which are both constructs that are determined by the state. And the content that's in question is sexual consent. The idea that there should be an additional mind (e.g. a legal mind) regulating the behaviors of sexual participants is an old religious conservative idea.

If you still insist that the church in this sense has no meaning, and that this isn't a question of church and state, then you don't believe that there is fundamentally a problem of church and state at all, which in itself is an old religious conservative idea.

I am saying that state isnt involved in the sense that the state isn't compelling payment processors to make these decisions through regulation. Church isn't involved because there is no establishment of religion. I have presented, in several places, non-theological reasons why payment processors may be making the decisions they are.

If you want to count "choosing to not support a business that enables rapists and child porn" as exclusively an old conservative idea, I guess you are missing the mark by quite a lot.

You've contradicted yourself multiple times. You've used the legal categories of rape and child pornography to try to justify the motives of a legal entity. The entire basis of motivation that you yourself have presented is instantiated within the context of a state authority.

The institution of a church in the theological sense has nothing to do with a legally registered organization. The domain of the church, in the sense of "separation of church and state", is in the psychology and interal belief structures of the mass of people. The Enlightenment thinkers who asserted a separation of church and state were not making an assertion about mere legal technicality.

> The institution of a church in the theological sense has nothing to do with a legally registered organization. The domain of the church, in the sense of "separation of church and state", is in the psychology and interal belief structures of the mass of people. The Enlightenment thinkers who asserted a separation of church and state were not making an assertion about mere legal technicality.

Just pointing out that this seems to be your own interpretation and isn't held in any legal doctrine I've been able to find.

In-fact it doesn't have a lot of historical or academic backing either: Historically, the separation of church and state was about removing the special benefits of state-sanctioned religions so that other churches could exist.

That was explicitly about the legally registered organisation, and you can see this now in how legally registered churches are constantly trying to find ways to legally divorce themselves from linked entities so those entities can receive state funding. That is 100% about the legally registered organisations.

> Let us now consider what a church is. A church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord in order to the public worshipping of God in such manner as they judge acceptable to Him, and effectual to the salvation of their souls.

Where do you see "legally registered organization" in this defintion?

Of course, within existing legal doctrine, "separation of church and state" could only refer to legal technicalities. And that's the whole point I was making, that separation goes both ways. For you to redefine the idea behind separation of church and state in merely legal terms is itself a breach of that separation.

The idea of separation of Church and State came from the Reformation, and it was explicitly about separation of the legal entities. And they were legal entities - notably under Calvin the Genevan Consistory was the entity in charge of religious life and it was separated to the civil authorities.

See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_kingdoms_doctrine#Response...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genevan_Consistory

In any case, this has nothing to do with consent laws, which are entirely a matter for the state.

You've misunderstood your own sources. The Lutheran doctrine of two kingdoms, according to which the church is not a legal entity but which exists in the spiritual kingdom, was a way to protect the church from the law and other secular authorities. This doctrine was then adopted by Calvinists, one way of which is the way that you're talking about.

> this has nothing to do with consent laws, which are entirely a matter for the state.

That's what I've been saying. And it has nothing to do with my point.

> You say there's neither church nor state, but then you cite payment processors and legal consent, which are both constructs that are determined by the state. And the content that's in question is sexual consent.

I don't think many people who believe in the separation of church and state would think that implies that the state doesn't have the ability to make and enforce laws around consent.

I don't think we should expect a policy to serve the stated purpose when the people driving it have entirely different reasons for pushing it.

For example, when states strengthen regulations on abortion clinics with the stated goal of improving patient safety, but the driving forces behind the legislation are anti-abortion groups who know that rural abortion providers will have to close, creating large unserved areas... will those laws help or hurt the safety of women who want abortions?

Likewise, we should be wary of consent verification laws that are pushed by groups whose supporters are opposed to legal pornography.

In both cases the goal is not to protect women. The goal is to take something morally wrong and make it seedy, underground, and dangerous, like morally wrong things are supposed to be.

"but the driving forces behind the legislation are anti-abortion groups"

This is the definition of an ad hominem, which is what the whole separation of church and state discussion is, since neither church nor state are involved here.

We arent discussing regulations, we are discussing payment processors choosing to not do business with video hosts who cannot prove legal consent was obtained from all involved.

If you ran a business, would you want to make money off of rape and child pornography? The payment processors chose "no", and that is their right.

Ad hominem is an appropriate form of reasoning in this case, although in context you might pronounce it "cui bono." It's reasonable to expect that when a group pushes a policy, the details of the policy will be engineered to serve their goals, and the policy will be tweaked over time to serve their goals better. Corporations want to make them happy so they can do business in peace. What will make them happy? Will it make them happy if most porn is created by workers who enjoy robust assurances that their autonomy, consent, and medical safety will be respected? Or would they regard that as a nightmare of legitimized industrial-scale psychological harm to women?

In porn as in abortion, prohibitionists are numerous and committed enough to be a force to reckoned with, but they strategically justify their work using reasons that the rest of society finds persuasive. Anti-abortionists believe that abortion is inherently wrong, but they talk about women's safety while they shut down clinics.

The difference is, the groups who care about the safety of women will look at the details and say, the effect of this supposed "reproductive safety" bill is that thousands of women will lose access to legal abortion. Even if it targets shortcomings at poorly staffed, decrepit facilities, they won't support it if it actually makes women less safe. Overall, will shutting down OnlyFans payments make things better or worse for the women on it? People who aren't asking that question don't actually care.

It is still the inverse of an appeal to authority. Both "Agree about X because Y agreed" and "Disagree about X because Y agreed" are faulty logic.

Replacing skepticism and critical analysis isn't doing anyone any favors, and it doesn't make the matter at hand an issue of church or state.

In the case of identity verification:

The Craigslist shutdown seemed mostly driven by anti-sex work motivations

The Pornhub identity verification changes were driven by women who had been tricked into having their videos appeared and sued Pornhub over their inability to get them taken down: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pornhub-lawsuit-nonconsensual-v...

So yes - motivation is important. The identity verification requirements for performers on porn sites are at least partially driven by actual victim complaints.

So it is at least partially to protect women.

> what happens on the internet, stays on the internet, leading to a lifetime of re-victimization

Nonsense. The odds of you stumbling upon a particular porn photo or video are miniscule unless you are specifically searching for it or it's very popular (which is very hard and not going to happen for unwilling pictures).

Particularly as most sites would take down images of you on request.

Verification is obviously necessary to prevent revenge porn.

If that inconveniences performers, then that’s their problem to deal with. We shouldn’t be focused on making things easy for performers if that happens at the expense of allowing revenge porn.

Revenge porn is just another form of harassment. The problem isn't it being uploaded to pornhub, the problem is a dickhead sending it to all the victims contacts. It becomes a non-issue with reactive takedowns and going after those who repeatedly upload it as you would any other form of deliberate harassment.

Going after porn sites does nothing really to stop the harassment (they can just send the pic or video directly rather than a link).

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