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Fossidarity wrote

I had mixed feelings about Hentai for because of this. On the surface it looks like the perfect form of porn: it allows the creator to express their sexual desires without having to be part of the conventional porn industry and without the negative stories you hear about the exploitation of sex workers in the industry.

But then you realize that even in the fantasy settings the non-male characters rarely have any agency whatsoever and that the actual fantasy has the same expectations as women being good housewives and then you realize like most other popular forms of media coming from male dominated cultures it's just shit.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

It also deprives sex workers of their opportunities to make a living, as the jobs that remain in an animated industry for sex workers are farther and fewer between, and disproportionately skewing to a different labor pool (animators, voice actors, etc), and thus higher-barrier skillsets (not everyone gets to go to art school & learn how to animate). Thus, a bunch of people basically can't access their line of work anymore. A similar thing happens when pornography becomes free and easily accessible, sex work is clamped down upon and pushed to the periphery, and then jobs in either field are harder to come by, more competitive.. It's the tech-broification of sex work & pornography, and hentai is the cumshot of all those processes.

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[deleted] wrote

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celebratedrecluse wrote

It is, but I also think it has an impact on the market, to encourage a consumption that shapes desire in a direction which fetishizes the unreality of abstract fantasy.

It is certainly not a solution to this problem to simply fetishize existing, real people, like in mainstream pornography for example. but I hope we can try to build a society in which sexual desire is learned, shared and developed in an atmosphere of collective respect and mutuality, rather than individual consumption such as with the dominant existing forms of sex work, pornography, etc. This would shift power to the sex workers, making sex work safer and healthier for the participants, as well as improving the safety and health of social sexuality in general. I think we should put sex workers in the drivers seat of their own lives and livelihoods-- foruntately, everyone can participate in sharing the burden of moving this cultural conversation in the right direction, as an act of both solidarity to, and mutual interest with, sex workers, even if one is not a sex worker. We all benefit from a culture the values consent, not just in sex, but in all aspects of life.

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