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Articles

Soft Pornography: What’s the Problem?

Asks Paul Davis.

What problem, if any, is there regarding soft pornography?

I examine the claim that pornography is bad because it portrays women as sexual objects. There is, I argue, no a priori connection between soft pornography and the denial of personhood to women.

However, in elucidating what I see as the problem about pornography, it becomes apparent why the foregoing argument has been endorsed. There is a clash between the essential nature of pornography and contingent features of the context in which it is often placed. Some pornography-consumption events are different from other pornography-consumption events; some are bad and some are not.

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