There's a raging argument about porn and feminism on this list-serviette I'm on—lots of important sex researchers, academics with enormous brains, and me somehow—and I just can't bring myself to read it. I probably shouldn't describe it as a "raging" argument, as I haven't read it, so how would I know. But I imagine that it must be raging—otherwise the responses wouldn't be flying fast and furious, right?

Anyhoo, I would dive in and read if I believed there could possibly be a new feminist critique of porn; I followed the anti-porn feminist critique/freakout and the pro-porn feminist critique/backlash. I can't imagine a groundbreaking meh-porn feminist critique would inspire a lot of back-and-forth—"Porn: Who Really Gives a Fuck?"—so presumably it's the same old shit, brand new thread. The feminism-and-porn angle is exhausted and exhausting. People are going to go on making and consuming porn regardless of whether you're for or against it based on your feminist principles. Let's press for ethically produced porn, and fight the stigmatization and abuse of porn performers, and encourage people to be thoughtful porn consumers. But let's not pretend that a well-constructed argument will either end porn or save porn.

At this point I'd be much more interested in reading, say, a thread on pessimism and porn or communism and porn or fems-'n-gism and porn. Anything but another feminism and porn thread, please.