this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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Porn made with the willing consent of all parties involved, where everyone is compensated appropriately. No harm = no ethical problems as far as I'm concerned. Most big studios these days make sure of this. But there have also been pioneers that push the bar further up (e.g. Lustery, Ersties or Erika Lust).
There is a clear power disparity between a father and a daughter. It's debatable if the daughter could even realistically consent in that case.
But a depiction of it in porn is in my view not inherently unethical. I can disapprove of it personally, but that doesn't mean we should start banning it based on feelings of inappropriateness.
We depict murder and violence in movies and video games too. Actual murder is of course not exactly ethical, but we have no problem accepting it in a movie, because nobody is actually being murdered. You might not like to watch a movie like Saw or something (I personally don't), but it doesn't make the movie itself unethical. To me, porn is no different. There's a clear separation between fiction and reality.
Where imo a line is crossed, is if said media actually makes a clear effort to promote these acts IRL. But that's not the case here.
We don't have a specific cordoned off section for meth and cocaine in our brains. Many things trigger those areas of the brain, including some pretty innocuous stuff.
Porn isn't physically addictive like meth and cocaine. It can be psychologically addictive though, but that goes for a lot of things out there.
Stuff like meth and cocaine can actually alter your brain, porn does not.
Anyone can develop an unhealthy relationship with porn, but that goes for just about anything out there.
This article is overly sensationalist/alarmist and doesn't match the study behind it.
This is the study they're referencing: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/5/3/388
It primarily focuses on internet addiction and video game addiction. Pornography is mostly mentioned in passing as "likely similar".
In it, they review evidence that these things can be addictive, and that people experience pleasure doing them (this is the whole "same-areas-as-coke-and-meth" thing btw; the brain is happy playing video games, and it is also happy doing coke). However, they distinctly mention that behavioral addiction is not necessarily the same as substance addiction:
The exact quote about areas of the brain thing:
The brain rewards sexual behaviour. Makes perfect sense from an evolutionary point of view, so not exactly a shocking conclusion.
And regarding the "brain-altering" thing, the study also directly mentions that this is simply what happens when the brain is activated through its reward systems. This "altering" happens for everything that triggers some kind of dopamine hit. It's not the case that porn does something special here; a model train hobby for example would do the same to enthusiasts for example.
I remember this study actually, I've seen it before. It is frequently misquoted or represented in an extremely alarmist way, mostly by people with a dislike for pornography. But the study doesn't back up their assertions that porn is anything special when compared to any other behavioral addiction, it actually expressly doesn't.