Instigator / Pro
Shane.Roy's avatar
7
Shane.Roy
1494
rating
9
debates
50.0%
won
Topic
#6381

Pornography should be legally banned within each country

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
6
Better sources
4
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
1
2

After 2 votes and with 7 points ahead, the winner is...

Novice_II
Tags
Politics
Social Media
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Rated
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Minimal rating
None
Contender / Con
Novice_II's avatar
14
Novice_II
1905
rating
103
debates
93.69%
won
Description

No information

Round 1
Shane.Roy's avatar
Shane.Roy
Pro
#1
Thanks to my opponent for accepting this debate.

Definition:

Pornography = books, magazines, films, etc. with no artistic value that describe or show sexual acts or naked people in a way that is intended to be sexually exciting

Point 1: Pornography desensitizes and forms addiction

Desensitization = the process of causing someone to experience something, usually an emotion or a pain, less strongly than before.

Pornography triggers immense overloads of dopamine and oxytocin, which results in intense stimulation.
Repeatedly being exposed to this sort of intense stimulation desensitizes sexual excitement and emotional stimuli via the brain reducing dopamine receptor sensitivity, or lowering the amount of receptors.
Furthermore, this loss of stimulation results in more extreme indulgence in order to feel the initial level of pleasure, ultimately leading to addiction/a vicious cycle of losing stimulation and moving towards more extreme indulgence.

Found that higher porn consumption is linked with reduced gray matter in reward-related brain areas and less activity in the reward system — indicating desensitization.

Explains how chronic overstimulation by porn can initiate neuroplastic changes in the reward circuitry — reinforcing the cycle of tolerance and compulsive use.

Point 2: Widespread pornography exposes children to sex.

The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for self-control and planning is still developing in children and teens.
Studies from sources such as thewaveclinic prove that repeated exposure to pornography interferes with this development, resulting in difficulty controlling impulses, and forming healthy decisions
Studies also show that repeated porn exposure is also linked to several disorders and negatively impacts social skills, along with the ability to form relationships.
Furthermore, early exposure to pornography alters how children understand relationships, intimacy, and emotions, potentially leading to mental issues such as anxiety, depression, or unhealthy attitudes toward sex.
"It also often objectifies women, reducing them to their sexual attraction based on their physical appearance. These messages can have a deeply harmful impact on young people, encouraging sexist and misogynistic ideas to develop and spread."
"Research has found that exposure to sexually explicit materials makes it more likely that young people would view women as sex objects, regardless of gender. For teenage boys, these views can contribute to harmful behaviours, such as sexist comments, sexual harassment, and gender-based violence. Teenage girls may be more prone to self-objectification, affecting their self-concept and putting them at an increased risk of developing eating disorders."
"One study found that sexually explicit material made young people more likely to see sex as something physical and material, rather than relational and affectionate."
"Research suggests that consuming internet pornography can shape adolescents’ social development, interpersonal relationships, and the way they attach to others. Pornography has been linked to social difficulties and behavioural problems among adolescents. It’s also been connected to aggressive behaviours, including sexual abuse."
"Young people’s brains continue to develop until about the age of twenty-five. This means that teenage brains are very different from adult brains and respond differently to the input they receive.
Research suggests that because of the distinct differences between teenage and adult brains, they may be uniquely affected by consuming internet pornography. For example:"
  • "The structures of the teenage brains are much more malleable, so the experiences they encounter are more likely to cause long-term alterations to the way their brains work."
  • "The sex hormones testosterone and cortisone have a unique impact on brain development during adolescence."
  • "The HPA-axis, involved in cortisol stress responses, is more pronounced."
  • "The dopamine system, involved in reward, pleasure, and motivation, is overactive."
"Internet pornography can also indirectly affect teenagers and their development, especially when it affects other parts of the family system. For example, when a parent compulsively watches internet porn, they may fail to give their child enough time and attention. This can impact a young person’s self-esteem and identity as they mature, and they may develop a negative self-perception."

Common Counterargument 1: Banning Porn Violates Freedom of Speech / Expression

Free speech has limits, like hate speech or child exploitation.
If an activity demonstrably harms brain development, mental health, and social norms (especially among youth), society has a duty to restrict it, just like drugs or violence.

Common Counterargument 2: Bans Don’t Work - People Will Just Use VPNs or Dark Web

We don't stop making laws just because some people break them. Bans reduce exposure and signal that something is socially harmful - just like laws on drugs, trafficking, or child abuse. It’s about public health and setting boundaries.

Common Counterargument 3: Adults Should Be Free to Choose What They Watch

That assumes porn is only an individual choice.
In reality, porn fuels addiction, encourages violence, objectification, and even affects how people treat each other in relationships and the workplace
Pornography isn’t just private, it shapes public attitudes and behaviours.

Common Counterargument 4: Some Porn Is Ethical and Educational

Those are a tiny minority. The vast majority is degrading, unrealistic, and addictive - especially to young viewers.
A society can promote sex education without turning to profit-driven, manipulative porn.

Common Counterargument 5: Banning Porn Could Hurt the Economy or People in the Industry

Harm reduction takes priority over profit. Just as we regulate or ban industries that cause cancer or pollution, we must do the same here - especially when human dignity, mental health, and safety are at stake.
Novice_II's avatar
Novice_II
Con
#2
Overview

I will use the abbreviation PY to refer to pornography throughout this debate. My position is straightforward: while PY may have some negative impacts, those impacts are not more serious or more considerable than the harms associated with other widely accepted activities like playing video games or consuming junk food. And if we agree that those activities should not be banned, it follows that PY should not be banned either. I begin by laying out a principled moral framework, followed by empirical evidence demonstrating that PY’s harms are at best comparable—if not significantly less severe—than the harms of activities we already permit.

My Case

A1

[1] If something is generally not morally wrong, and it does not produce sufficient negative outcomes, then it should not be banned.  
[2] PY is generally neither morally wrong nor does it produce sufficient negative outcomes.  
Therefore,  
[3] PY should not be banned.

On [1]:  
This is intuitive. If an activity is morally permissible, then people are not doing anything they ought not do when they engage in it. Hence, there is no justification for stopping them. Of course, this can be overridden if the consequences are bad enough—but not merely because there are some negative consequences. We don’t ban video games or junk food despite their negative effects, precisely because we apply this principle: the consequences are not sufficiently bad to override moral permissibility or basic rights like freedom of expression or bodily autonomy.

On [2]:  
The choice to consume PY is no more morally wrong than the choice to eat junk food or play video games. Pro might point to the fact that PY contains sexually explicit content, but nudity, sexuality, violence, and profanity are present in many other forms of media—movies, books, and games—and we don't consider their consumption morally impermissible. There is no morally salient difference between watching an R-rated film and watching PY, especially when done privately and consensually. If watching violent films or consuming sugary snacks isn't considered morally wrong, then neither is PY.

Further, simply pointing to negative outcomes isn’t enough to establish moral wrongness. Many permissible actions have negative side effects—lack of exercise, unhealthy eating, wasting time on entertainment, etc.—but that does not make them morally wrong. The mere fact that something has some downsides does not mean it should be prohibited.

Hence, [2] stands. If the harms of video games and junk food are not morally disqualifying, or disqualifying based on negative outcomes, then neither are the harms of PY.

A1*

Let’s go a step further and loosen the moral assumption:

[1] Even if something is morally wrong, if it does not produce sufficient negative outcomes, it should not be banned.  
[2] PY does not produce sufficient negative outcomes;  
Therefore,  
[3] PY should not be banned.

On [1]:  
This too is uncontroversial. Many things we consider morally wrong are not and should not be illegal. Cheating on a partner, breaking promises, or verbally insulting others may be morally problematic, but we don't make them illegal. Why? Because their consequences, while bad, do not rise to the level that justifies infringing on personal freedom or legal autonomy. This principle helps explain why free speech includes protection for speech that is mean, offensive, or even harmful.

On [2]:  
As I will show, the negative impacts of PY are not more severe than other unbanned behaviors. In fact, when we compare PY to junk food and video games, it becomes clear that the case for banning those is stronger—yet we obviously reject that. So [2] holds, and so does the conclusion.

Rebuttals

Is PY Morally Wrong?

Pro does not successfully show that using PY is morally wrong. Again, negative consequences alone do not imply moral wrongness. If they did, we’d be morally required to ban all sorts of everyday behaviors. A person playing a violent video game or drinking a soda isn’t doing something morally impermissible, even if it has minor adverse effects. Likewise for PY.

Negative Impacts

Pro’s case rests heavily on the idea that because PY is associated with addiction, objectification, and changes to the brain’s reward system, it should be banned. But this is a weak argument because these same associations apply to other things we clearly accept.

In fact, similar or even worse psychological and physical effects are found with junk food and video games, yet no one thinks these should be banned. So even if everything Pro says is true, their argument backfires: it overreaches and proves too much.

Junk Food

If anything, junk food has far worse effects than the collection of harms Pro attributes to PY, encompassing a wide range of serious health consequences as well as comparable addictive qualities.

To begin with, junk food is strongly linked to obesity, a condition that carries extremely serious health risks. As the literature notes:

“Junk foods are found to be associated with obesity due to their high energy content and the amount of fat present or free sugar, chemical additives, and sodium, with the presence of a low amount of micronutrients and fiber.”

This isn’t a minor issue. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), obesity and junk food consumption are associated with a long list of serious medical conditions, including:

Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, metabolic syndrome, fatty liver diseases, some cancers, breathing problems, osteoarthritis, gout, diseases of the gallbladder and pancreas, kidney disease, pregnancy problems, fertility problems, sexual function problems, and mental health problems.
“As well as causing you to gain weight, the short-term effects of eating junk food include increased stress levels, fatigue and decreased energy, difficulty sleeping, concentration problems, low mood, and tooth decay.”
“Long-term impacts include type 2 diabetes, heart-related problems (such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol), overweight and obesity, osteoporosis, certain cancers, depression, and eating disorders.”

Furthermore, the addictive nature of junk food is evident. Uma Naidoo, instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, explains the neurological mechanisms involved:

“The reasons that our bodies crave these foods is because they are loaded with ingredients that tap into the pleasure centers in our brain—the so-called dopamine reward pathway, which is the same pathway that street drugs like cocaine tap into. When we consume ultra-processed foods that are highly palatable, such as highly sugary foods or sodas and so on, the dopamine, which is the feel-good neurotransmitter, makes you feel better in the short term, and it reinforces that loop of you wanting to eat it again. People focus on the short-term effect and dismiss the long-term consequence: Junk food damages the gut microbiome and harms your mental health. It causes inflammation, lowers your mood, and increases your anxiety.”

In sum, the negative consequences of junk food consumption are not only more physically destructive than those Pro cites for PY, but also deeply intertwined with addictive behavior and long-term mental health decline. These harms are more extensive, more dangerous, and more empirically documented—yet no one reasonably suggests banning junk food. If Pro's logic held, it would demand a far more aggressive policy stance toward junk food than anyone is prepared to endorse. So even on their own criteria, PY cannot reasonably be singled out for prohibition.


Video Games

A similar argument applies to video games. Consider the evidence on their negative impacts:

Brockmyer et al. (2015) found that prolonged exposure to violent video games reduces empathy and prosocial behavior, indicating psychological desensitization.

Carnagey & Anderson (2006) demonstrated that just 20 minutes of violent gameplay lowered participants’ heart rate and skin conductance when viewing real-life violence, showing physiological desensitization.

A 2016 study found that repeated play of violent games led to diminished feelings of guilt during gameplay and blunted emotional responses afterward.

A 2022 EEG study revealed that habitual violent gamers showed reduced neural responses to others’ pain, and even short-term exposure caused similar effects in non-gamers.

Beyond these psychological effects, there are physical health concerns as well. According to Harvard Health:

“[G]aming is also associated with obesity in teens and, plausibly, the same would be shown in adults, if studied. This is due to the obvious phenomenon that if a teen is sitting in front of a screen for hours every day, he or she isn’t getting much exercise.”
These findings demonstrate that video games carry a range of serious consequences—both mental and physical. Yet, just like junk food, they remain legally permissible and widely accepted. If we applied the same logic that Pro uses to advocate banning PY, we would be forced to consider banning video games as well—a clearly untenable position.

If Pro’s standard is consistent, they’d be forced to advocate for the banning of both video games and junk food. But this leads to an absurd conclusion. Therefore, even if we grant all their evidence, it doesn’t support banning PY.

Conclusion

The moral and empirical case against banning PY collapses under its own weight. Either we accept that merely having negative consequences is not enough to justify legal prohibition, or we accept a wildly overreaching policy regime where we begin banning things like junk food and video games. Since the latter is clearly implausible, we must reject the former as well.

Pro’s arguments fail to show that PY is uniquely harmful or morally impermissible in a way that justifies its banning. In fact, when placed side-by-side with other legal activities, PY’s impacts are either comparable or significantly less concerning.

So if we’re being honest and consistent, we should treat PY like we treat any other activity with some downsides: something to approach with personal responsibility and perhaps caution—not something to outlaw.







Round 2
Shane.Roy's avatar
Shane.Roy
Pro
#3
Con's argument presented in defense of pornography’s (hereafter, PY) legality is a masterclass in shallow analogy, category error, and philosophical sleight of hand. It postures as rigorous moral reasoning, but upon closer examination, reveals itself to be intellectually flaccid—held together by selectively applied principles, strawman rebuttals, and a stubborn refusal to confront the qualitative nature of PY’s social harm. Let us proceed with scalpel in hand.

I. Category Error Disguised as Analogy

The linchpin of the case rests on the laughably crude analogy between PY, junk food, and video games. This is a category error dressed up as moral equivalence.
“The choice to consume PY is no more morally wrong than the choice to eat junk food or play video games.”
This is a statement so philosophically naïve it barely deserves rebuttal, but let’s indulge it for a moment.
Eating a cheeseburger does not commodify another human being’s body. It does not require the extraction of coerced sexual labor, the normalization of domination-based sexual scripts, or the global proliferation of child exploitation material. Video games do not render women disposable, interchangeable vessels to be degraded on camera for male consumption. PY does all of the above—and does so systematically, at industrial scale.
A junk food habit may kill you slowly. PY corrodes your capacity for intimacy, empathy, and relational development. It metastasizes in adolescents’ minds, rewires neural pathways around power and sex, and leaves a generation unable to distinguish desire from dominance. The moral difference is not one of degree, but of kind. Your analogy fails because it ignores this qualitative distinction entirely.

II. Ethical Evasion via “Negative Outcomes”

You claim that because PY’s harms are “not sufficiently negative,” they fail to override basic liberty. This is a grotesquely selective application of liberalism.
When speech incites violence, it is curtailed. When actions exploit others, they are banned. When systemic harm to vulnerable populations becomes widespread, society intervenes. PY triggers all three thresholds.
  • First, it incites sexual aggression, particularly among adolescent males, as numerous meta-analyses have shown (e.g. Wright et al., 2016).
  • Second, it exploits: the commercial PY industry is built on structural inequality, poverty, and a pipeline of coercion that is not incidental, but foundational to its business model.
  • Third, its harm to social cohesion, romantic development, and gender norms is not anecdotal—it is empirically traceable and thoroughly documented.
To invoke the principle of freedom here, stripped of its historical limitations and philosophical nuance, is not liberalism—it’s libertinism, the kind that thrives on moral indifference disguised as tolerance.

III. Strategic Ignorance of Industry Atrocity

Not once does Con confront the realities of the pornography industry—the violence, coercion, trafficking, and non-consensual content that has been uncovered by investigative journalists, NGOs, and former insiders.
“There is no morally salient difference between watching an R-rated film and watching PY…”
This is intellectually bankrupt. The difference is that most PY is real sex, involving real bodies, often performing acts under duress, in contexts riddled with fraud, drugs, trafficking, and abuse. Con's refusal to address this is either ignorance, cowardice, or deliberate evasion.
If you want to defend an industry that has hosted videos of child rape, do so openly. Do not hide behind the euphemism of "negative outcomes."

IV. The Fallacy of the Slippery Slope

The claim that banning PY logically entails banning junk food and video games is a textbook slippery slope fallacy, reflecting either poor training in logic or intentional misdirection.
  • Activities are not banned because they are imperfect or have some harm; they are banned when they cross a threshold of systematic, non-consensual harm to others, especially the vulnerable.
  • Junk food affects the consumer; PY often affects the performer, the partner, the public, and the culture. It is not private. It is not victimless. It is not benign.
To pretend otherwise is not only naïve—it is deeply dishonest.

V. Philosophical Incoherence: The Trojan Horse of “Permissibility”

The author’s argument is structured as:
[1] If something is not morally wrong and not sufficiently harmful, it should not be banned.
[2] PY is not morally wrong and not sufficiently harmful.
[3] Therefore, PY should not be banned.
This syllogism fails at both premises:
  • Premise 1 is overly simplistic. We do ban things that are not intrinsically immoral but pose structural risk—like insider trading or unlicensed medical practice.
  • Premise 2 is laughably false, disproven by decades of literature on PY’s addictive potential, its role in violent sexual crime, and its influence on cognitive development and relational health.
The syllogism is not wrong in form, but in substance: it relies on two demonstrably false claims. Thus, the argument is invalid in application, if not in logic.

VI. Intellectual immaturity

Con writes - "I thought this would be easy, but wow am I surprised. These are maybe among the worst arguments I have ever read." - in the comment section.
The above is a textbook case of Ad Hominem, signaling inability to maturely engage in debate.
Poor conduct. Rude. Embarrassing.

Conclusion: The Cowardice of Neutrality

Con takes great pains to appear reasonable, likening pornography to potato chips and PlayStation.
This is not reason—it is cowardice masquerading as moderation.
There is nothing moderate about a global billion-dollar industry that profits from the filmed degradation of others.
There is nothing intellectually honest about defending it with analogies to soda.
This is not a matter of puritanism. It is a matter of dignity, exploitation, and what kind of society we are willing to normalize.
If you still defend PY after understanding what it is and what it does, then at best you are misinformed—and at worst, complicit.

Sources + evidence:

1. - Voon, V., Mole, T.B., Banca, P., Porter, L., Morris, L., Mitchell, S., Lapa, T.R., Karr, J., Harrison, N.A., Potenza, M.N. and Irvine, M., 2014. Neural correlates of sexual cue reactivity in individuals with and without compulsive sexual behaviours. PLoS ONE, 9(7), p.e102205. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102205.
  • Reveals brain activity patterns in porn users resembling drug addiction—profound evidence of neurological harm.
2. - Park, B.Y., Wilson, G., Berger, J., Christman, M., Reina, B., Bishop, F., Klam, W.P., Moser, C. and Doan, A.P., 2016. Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports. Behavioral Sciences, 6(3), p.17. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs6030017.
  • Systematically links pornography consumption to rising rates of erectile dysfunction and intimacy problems.
3. - Kühn, S. and Gallinat, J., 2014. Brain structure and functional connectivity associated with pornography consumption: The brain on porn. JAMA Psychiatry, 71(7), pp.827-834. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.93.
  • Demonstrates structural brain changes correlating with high pornography use—direct evidence of neuroplastic damage.
4. - Wright, P.J., Tokunaga, R.S. and Kraus, A., 2016. A Meta-Analysis of Pornography Consumption and Actual Acts of Sexual Aggression in General Population Studies. Journal of Communication, 66(1), pp.183-205. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12201.
  • Shows statistically significant association between pornography use and sexual violence perpetration.
5. - Bridges, A.J., Wosnitzer, R., Scharrer, E., Sun, C. and Liberman, R., 2010. Aggression and sexual behavior in best-selling pornography videos: A content analysis update. Violence Against Women, 16(10), pp.1065-1085. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801210382866.
  • Content analysis revealing that 88% of porn scenes contain physical aggression, mostly targeting women.
6. - Kristof, N.D., 2020. The Children of Pornhub. The New York Times, 4 December. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficking.html [Accessed 7 July 2025].
  • Investigative journalism exposing systemic hosting of child abuse and rape videos by major porn platforms.
7. - BBC News, 2020. Online abuse: How Pornhub enables and profits from rape videos. BBC News, 22 December. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55333782 [Accessed 7 July 2025].
  • Independent investigation uncovering the proliferation and monetization of non-consensual videos on Pornhub.
8. - Dines, G., 2010. Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. Beacon Press, Boston, MA.
  • Sociological analysis detailing how mainstream pornography normalizes sexual violence and misogyny.
These sources combine peer-reviewed neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and investigative journalism to expose:

  • Neurological addiction and brain damage caused by PY consumption.
  • Causal links to sexual dysfunction and aggression.
  • Systemic exploitation, abuse, and moral degradation at the heart of the porn industry.
  • Blatant failure of self-regulation in hosting platforms, enabling criminal content.

(For transparency, I used AI assistance in order to create Harvard citations)

Novice_II's avatar
Novice_II
Con
#4
Overview

As a brief note, nothing in the comments section bears relevance to this debate.

My Case

My case centers on two related arguments, grounded in two key principles:
  1. If something is generally morally permissible and is not outweighed by sufficiently negative impacts, then it should not be legally prohibited.
  2. Even if something is morally wrong, so long as it does not produce sufficiently negative outcomes, it should remain legal.

To illustrate the second principle, I offered the case of someone cheating on their spouse. While we may agree that this is morally wrong, we do not believe it should be illegal—because it does not cause sufficiently negative outcomes to justify legal intervention.

Similarly, I’ve shown that PY is not generally morally wrong. But even if it were, under A1*, this still wouldn't be enough to justify banning it.

Additionally, the negative impacts Pro attributes to PY—addiction, cognitive effects, relational problems—apply equally (if not more strongly) to things like junk food and video games. Pro attempts to argue that PY is relevantly different, but these attempts fail—sometimes even introducing considerations that favor PY in comparison, such as scale.

A1
Let’s take a closer look at my first argument.

Premise [1]

Does Pro contest it? He seems to, but in reality, he doesn’t. They say:
“Premise 1 is overly simplistic. We do ban things that are not intrinsically immoral but pose structural risk—like insider trading or unlicensed medical practice.”

But this simply confirms the premise. Recall:

[1] If something is not morally wrong and not sufficiently harmful, it should not be banned.

Pro’s example shows that we do ban things that are sufficiently harmful—even if not immoral—which supports, rather than falsifies, [1]. So Pro does not contest the premise.

Premise [2]

On this, Pro says:

“Premise 2 is laughably false, disproven by decades of literature on PY’s addictive potential, its role in violent sexual crime, and its influence on cognitive development and relational health.”

But these concerns—addictive potential, cognitive influence, relational effects—also apply (as I’ve already shown) to video games and junk food. These are not generally considered morally wrong, and thus such impacts are not sufficient to establish that PY is morally wrong either.

Regarding “its role in violent sexual crime”: the fact that an item has been used in a crime does not imply that the item’s use is morally wrong in general. Guns were used in ~76% of homicides in 2023, yet using a gun is not generally morally wrong. That someone uses X to do Y (wrongfully) does not make using X to do Z (harmlessly) wrong.

So, even if Pro thinks these concerns are damning, they do not show that PY is generally morally wrong—nor do they distinguish it from junk food or video games.

Thus, Pro’s direct objections to A1 fail, and the conclusion stands.

A1*
What about my second argument?

Premise [1] goes uncontested by Pro.

Premise [2] is logically weaker than its counterpart in A1, because it contains only one conjunct. But since: P ∧ Q ⟹ P (by conjunction elimination), if A1’s second premise is true, so is A1*'s. I have already defended the premise in A1, so A1* follows as well.

So at this point, both arguments remain intact and unrefuted.

Rebuttals

Back in round 1, I offered clear empirical comparisons showing that the harms Pro attributes to PY are not worse—and may be less serious—than those from junk food and video games. For Pro’s case to succeed, he must demonstrate a relevant asymmetry: a reason to ban PY but not these others. Let’s go through his attempts.

A Pattern
A key pattern emerges in Pro’s arguments: he frequently just repeats the negative impacts of PY. But what he should be doing is comparing them—showing why they are worse than the impacts of junk food or video games. Merely stating a harm is insufficient.

To illustrate: eating a cheeseburger can lead to heart disease. That’s a harm. But unless Pro shows why PY’s harms are worse, the appeal to harm doesn’t advance his case.

“Eating a cheeseburger does not commodify another human being’s body.”
But commodifying the body is not inherently wrong. Professional sports, physical labor jobs, modeling, food tasting, bodybuilding, street performance—each involves economic use of the body. These are not immoral. So commodification isn’t a morally relevant distinction here.

“It does not require the extraction of coerced sexual labor...”
Neither does PY—generally most especially in the case of AI-generated PY, where no labor is extracted from anyone.

“...domination-based sexual scripts...”
Pro does not explain why this is wrong or why it is relevantly different from depictions of violence in video games.

“...the global proliferation of child exploitation material.”
CP is obviously wrong, but this doesn’t justify banning PY generally. We can—and do—ban CP without banning PY as a whole. This is not a relevant asymmetry.

“Video games do not render women disposable, interchangeable vessels to be degraded on camera for male consumption.”
Actually, they do. A UN report says:

“Video games have historically been critiqued for perpetuating negative stereotypes and harmful attitudes towards women and girls... contributing to a culture where violence against women is normalised.”

Worse the APA notes:

“More than 85% of video games on the market contain some form of violence.”

The majority of players are male, so if Pro’s critique applies to PY, it applies to video games as well.
“A junk food habit may kill you slowly. PY corrodes your capacity for intimacy, empathy, and relational development.”

This is an overstatement. Pro’s sources show possible increases in aggression or addiction risk—but that’s a far cry from “corroding empathy.” Moreover, he again fails to compare this to junk food or video games, whose health and psychological impacts are well-documented and severe.

“It incites sexual aggression.”

But I’ve shown video games reduce guilt, empathy, and pro-social behavior, while junk food leads to serious chronic diseases and addiction. Pro offers no standard for why PY’s impacts are worse. The objection is arbitrary.

“Systematically, at industrial scale.”

This actually supports my side. Video games are a $455 billion global industry. Fast food alone: $900 billion+. PY? Only $15-97 billion. If scale is the concern, video games and junk food are the more dangerous industries.

Conclusion

Pro has failed to show any relevant asymmetry between PY and things like junk food or video games. Without such a distinction, his case collapses into arbitrariness. His arguments either apply equally to these other practices or rest on moral claims he doesn’t adequately justify.
My round 1 rebuttal demonstrated that each of Pro’s concerns could be used to argue for banning video games and junk food. That still stands, and Pro has not escaped it. Pro's position rests on no basis, and thus is inconsiderable.


Round 3
Shane.Roy's avatar
Shane.Roy
Pro
#5
Con, Your Case Does Not Survive Scrutiny: A Complete Dissection

Let me be perfectly candid: your defense of pornography (PY) rests on analogies so fundamentally flawed, selective evidences so transparently convenient, and moral evasions so blatant, that to accept them would be to abandon reason itself.
I will now, with precision, dismantle every pillar of your argument—because partial refutation would be a disservice to intellectual rigor and moral clarity.

1. The Analogy Between PY, Junk Food, and Video Games Is a Category Error, Not an Insight

You claim:
“The harms Pro attributes to PY… apply equally (if not more strongly) to things like junk food and video games.”
This statement isn’t just mistaken. It is a gross oversimplification and moral obfuscation.
  • Junk food and video games are predominantly self-regarding activities. They impact primarily the consumer.
  • Pornography, however, is a complex ecosystem involving multiple layers of harm — performers coerced or economically entrapped, systemic exploitation, cultural normalization of violence and degradation, and real interpersonal damage.
To equate these vastly different phenomena is a category error—one so elementary that to press it is either ignorance or intellectual dishonesty.

2. Your Treatment of Consent Is Naïve and Misleading

You argue:
“PY generally… most especially in the case of AI-generated PY, where no labor is extracted from anyone.”
This is a convenient but dangerous evasion.
  • AI-generated PY remains marginal in the industry’s scale and impact today.
  • The overwhelming majority of pornography is produced by real human beings, frequently under coercion, economic desperation, or abusive conditions.
  • Consent is not a binary “yes/no” switch but a nuanced spectrum. Economic coercion and abusive contracts are forms of soft coercion, not freedom.
Ignoring this reality amounts to willful blindness. It is intellectually indefensible to sweep under the rug the profound ethical concerns raised by coercion and exploitation.

3. Your Gun Comparison Is Logically Unsound and Morally Irrelevant

You say:
“The fact that an item has been used in a crime does not imply that the item’s use is morally wrong in general.”
This statement is a truism—but your application is a logical non sequitur.
  • A gun is an inert tool. It is morally neutral until wielded.
  • Pornography is not merely a tool, but a product of explicit acts — acts often violent, degrading, and exploitative — deliberately recorded and commodified.
  • There is no morally neutral way to depict or consume pornography that involves acts like choking or humiliation on camera.
Your comparison fails to grasp the ontological difference between an object and the performance and dissemination of harm.

4. The Cultural Impact of Pornography Cannot Be Ignored or Dismissed

Pornography is not a personal indulgence detached from society. It is a social force with profound cultural consequences:
  • It reprograms sexual norms toward aggression, objectification, and transactional intimacy.
  • It fosters tolerance for violence and erodes the boundaries of consent.
  • It warps adolescent development and cripples relational empathy.
These consequences are not comparable to playing a video game or consuming junk food. To suggest otherwise is to demonstrate either deep ignorance or a disingenuous agenda.

5. Your Market-Size Argument Is a Distraction and Morally Vacuous

You cite industry revenues as if size equates to moral weight:
“Fast food is $900 billion+, video games $455 billion, PY only $15-97 billion.”
This is a classic red herring.
  • Moral wrongdoing is not measured by market cap.
  • Industries like child trafficking are small but manifestly immoral and criminal.
  • PY’s corrosive social effects despite its smaller scale illustrate how virulent and damaging it is, not the opposite.
6. You Hide Behind Libertarian Slogans, But Fail to Engage With the Depth of Harm

Your repeated refrain:
“If something is not morally wrong and not sufficiently harmful, it should not be banned.”
This principle cannot shield you from responsibility when confronted with overwhelming evidence of PY’s harms:
  • Addiction and neuroplastic damage (Voon et al., Kühn & Gallinat)
  • Increased sexual aggression (Wright et al.)
  • Real-world victims and systemic abuse (Kristof, BBC, Dines)
You refuse to engage with these empirical realities, instead retreating to abstract syllogisms that do nothing but mask your avoidance of moral responsibility.

7. You Ignore the Overwhelming Empirical Evidence — That’s Not Rigor, It’s Intellectual Bad Faith

The Pornhub scandal alone reveals a multi-million video repository of rape, trafficking, and child abuse footage monetized with impunity.
You have not grappled with this. You have not accounted for peer-reviewed studies showing PY’s links to sexual violence and neurological impairment. You sidestep sociological critiques showing cultural normalization of misogyny.
To do so is not scholarship — it is intellectual evasion.

8. Your Core Argument Is Moral Relativism Cloaked in False Equivalence

Your “If PY is bad, so is everything else” stance is not a defense; it is a surrender.
We judge each harm on its own scale, consent dynamics, cultural impact, and human cost. PY fails catastrophically on every front.
Your refusal to admit this is a testament not to your intellectual rigor, but to your moral compromise.

In Sum: You Are Defending Exploitation — Not Freedom

Your arguments do not uphold liberty. They mask degradation. They conflate private indulgence with systemic harm. They evade evidence. They collapse under minimal scrutiny.
To defend PY on this foundation is to defend a culture of violence and commodification of human bodies.

As Dante so aptly warned:

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”
You are no neutral observer, Con. You have taken a side — one that history will judge harshly.
This is not a debate of equal footing. It is a reckoning with intellectual honesty and moral clarity.
There is no middle ground here. Either we confront the realities of PY’s harms or continue to excuse them at our collective peril.

Con, hear this clearly:

Your defense is not merely a difference of opinion. It is a choice—a choice to stand with the architects of suffering, to side with a machine that grinds human dignity into dust for profit and pleasure.
Every evasive analogy, every misapplied principle, every willful ignorance you wield is a brick in the wall that imprisons real people—people with names, faces, and futures stolen by an industry you so casually excuse.
If your conscience is not pricked by the knowledge that millions endure trauma so you can argue “freedom,” then ask yourself: what freedom are you really defending? The freedom to ignore pain? The freedom to silence victims? The freedom to numb the world to cruelty?
History does not remember those who hid behind rhetoric when lives were at stake. It remembers those who dared to act, to call out injustice, and to bear witness.
You may claim neutrality, but neutrality is complicity. And the weight of that complicity will not rest lightly—not on you, not on any of us.
Will you be remembered as a defender of human dignity or as a willing accomplice in its destruction?
The choice is yours. But know this: the truth will outlast every cheap argument and every evasive syllogism. And when it does, it will demand reckoning.


Novice_II's avatar
Novice_II
Con
#6
Overview

By now, this debate is pretty one-sided, so let’s draw it to a close.
The basic framework I offered was simple:
  • If something is not morally wrong in general and does not produce sufficiently bad outcomes, we should not ban it.
  • And even if something is morally wrong (like cheating on your spouse), if it still doesn't produce adequately harmful outcomes, it should remain legal.
These two principles ground arguments A1 and A1*, and Pro hasn’t challenged either one. That’s critical. These are the first premises of both arguments, and since Pro hasn’t contested them, they’re effectively conceded.

So, the entire debate now reduces to one question: Does PY produce sufficiently bad outcomes to justify banning it? If not, then A1*[2] is true—and since the first premise is conceded, the conclusion follows. And I’ve gone further: I haven’t just cleared the bar for A1*, I’ve cleared the higher bar for A1. That is, I’ve shown PY is not morally wrong to begin with. That makes A1 sound too.

I’ve demonstrated this by comparison. I showed that the harms of PY are not greater than those of video games and are plausibly less than those of junk food. Pro hasn’t refuted this comparison—at best, he's waved it away or ignored it. But this is central. If junk food and video games aren’t bad enough to ban, and if PY is less harmful or comparably harmful, then there’s no consistent basis for banning PY either.

Goalpost Moving

At various points, Pro attempts to move the goalposts—shifting the argument away from the actual point being discussed whenever a comparison doesn’t go in his favor. Let me give a clear example.

In Round 2, Pro claims PY plays a "role in violent sexual crime."
In response, I point out that simply being used in a crime does not make something morally wrong. Guns were used in about 76% of homicides in 2023, but using a gun in general is not morally wrong. A person using X to do Y wrongfully does not make using X to do Z harmlessly immoral.

But Pro then replies, saying: “A gun is an inert tool..."

This is blatant goalpost shifting. My argument was not that guns and PY are identical in nature—but that the fact that something is used in a crime does not, by itself, make it morally wrong to use that thing in general. Pro ignores this actual claim and instead tries to change the conversation to the intrinsic nature of guns versus PY—dodging the point entirely.

Or take another example. Pro brings up the industrial scale of PY, implying its size or reach makes it worse. In response, I show that video games and junk food are much larger industries—so if industrial scale matters, then those things should be morally worse.

But Pro shrugs this off and says: “Moral wrongdoing is not measured by market cap.”

So what was the point of bringing up industrial scale in the first place? If market size isn’t morally relevant, then Pro’s own appeal to it was irrelevant from the start. Once again, when the comparison doesn’t work in his favor, he discards the premise and tries something else. That’s moving the goalposts. It’s rhetorical sleight of hand, and it signals that he can’t defend his position consistently.

For reference on moving the goalposts:
Description: Demanding from an opponent that he or she address more and more points after the initial counter-argument has been satisfied refusing to concede or accept the opponent’s argument.

Logical Form:
Issue A has been raised, and adequately answered.
Issue B is then raised, and adequately answered.
.....
Issue Z is then raised, and adequately answered.
(despite all issues adequately answered, the opponent refuses to conceded or accept the argument.
This sort of move happens throughout the debate. Whenever I undercut a supposed harm or moral concern, Pro doesn’t defend the point. He pivots to something else. That’s not just weak debating—it’s dishonest. When a claim is directly addressed and refuted, and the response is to change the subject, that should be treated as a concession. Pro’s original concern—PY’s “role in violent sexual crime”—was shown to be irrelevant, and instead of defending it, he abandoned it. So it’s dropped.

This matters because it’s a pattern. If every time I respond to a concern Pro just moves the target, then he’s not actually building a coherent case—he’s just throwing things at the wall and retreating when they don’t stick. That’s not a winning strategy. It’s an admission that none of the arguments he’s brought forward can withstand scrutiny.

My Case

Let’s recap the structure:

A1
[1] If something is generally not morally wrong, and it does not produce sufficient negative outcomes, then it should not be banned.
[2] PY is generally neither morally wrong nor does it produce sufficient negative outcomes.
Therefore,
[3] PY should not be banned.

A1*
[1] Even if something is morally wrong, if it does not produce sufficient negative outcomes, it should not be banned.
[2] PY does not produce sufficient negative outcomes.
Therefore,
[3] PY should not be banned.

Now here’s the thing. Pro, instead of contesting A1[1] or A1*[1] directly, says things like, “this principle cannot shield you from responsibility.” But that’s not an argument against the principle—it’s just a rhetorical jab. It’s not a challenge to the logic or truth of the premise. So both first premises stand uncontested.

Which leaves the second premises.

Moral Comparisons:

I’ve argued that there's no clear morally relevant distinction between PY and things like video games, junk food, or R-rated movies. Like PY, all of these may have negative effects in certain contexts. They’re done privately, often involve explicit content (whether sexual or violent), and yet we do not consider them inherently immoral. So the line Pro wants to draw is arbitrary. There’s no coherent reason why sexual content should be treated as morally worse than violent content or addictive junk food. Unless Pro can show a morally relevant distinction, he hasn’t touched A1[2].

Impact Comparisons:

Even if one finds PY morally questionable, Pro still has to engage A1*[2], which requires showing that the negative impacts of PY are sufficiently serious to warrant banning. But again, every attempt at this has been either vague or refuted.

Pro has brought up exploitation and scandals in the industry. But that alone isn’t enough. Many major industries have had scandals—from fast food to pharmaceuticals to fashion. We don’t ban entire categories of products because of that. Instead, we go after the specific exploitative practices. The same can be done here. You don't need a blanket ban on a product to address bad behavior within its production. And exploitation Unfortunately, many industries involve some degree of labor exploitation. That doesn't mean we ban the final product—otherwise we’d need to ban half the clothes people wear. Pro needs to explain why PY is uniquely exploitative and why banning it is the right response. He’s done neither.

Health & Psychological Impacts:

The negative health effects of junk food are well-established and widespread—obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular issues, etc. And the psychological harms video games have also been noted: desensitization to violence, reduced empathy, decreased pro-social behavior.

These concerns are serious, and yet society has decided they are not enough to justify banning either. So why treat PY differently?

Saying that the impacts of PY are worse is simply arbitrary. And public policy cannot rest on arbitrary distinctions. If we are to make consistent, principled decisions, then we must judge PY the same way we judge video games, movies, or junk food—by comparing actual harms.
And on that metric, Pro loses.

Conclusion

This debate rests entirely on whether the harms of PY exceed a threshold that justifies banning it.
  • I have shown they do not.
  • I have shown those harms are comparable to (or even less than) harms we tolerate in other areas.
  • I have shown there is no principled moral difference between PY and other widely accepted forms of private, consensual expression.
  • And Pro has not seriously engaged with the structure or substance of either A1 or A1*.
The resolution fails. PY should not be banned.