I "get" that you don't "get" the idea underlying the First Amendment

[DirkGently]

154. Where are these "porn yowlers?"

Obviously this OP is another entry in the ongoing DU porn wars -- which I admit I try to scrupulously avoid -- but I've yet to see anyone "yowling for the government to protect them from nekkid pitchers."

And I've probably been biased because of what I perceive as thinly veiled feminist-hatred on the part of the noisiest "free speech" yellers. And my "scare quotes" indicate BULLSHIT, if that's not clear.

On the other side, I've seen people repulsed by rape porn and the degradation of women raise social and legal concerns swiftly surrounded by a small cadre of shallow-thinking amateur Constitutional scholars who appear to smell a whiff of feminism that needs stomping out.

To the extent people make it clear they don't want bans, someone just accuses them of secretly wanting bans. First response I got in this thread said exactly that. Then, to the extent someone raises social issues about gender or exploitation, there's no intelligent reply whatever; just a fussillade of 4Chan-ish spluttering about freedom of speech and the need to "let people make poor choices."

This is shallow, unthoughtful stuff.

Rape porn? Literal physical acts, that would be rape -- that are rape -- if not for a theoretical consent which can likely never be verified?

Talking about that is some kind of ... nun-ish hooting about nekkid pictures? Har har? That's all the analysis we can muster on DU?

So .. there's not a legitimate concern of physical harm? We can't contemplate something might be wrong there? If a kid's working in a factory, we assume coercion. If a fire door is locked in the factory, we call foul. But an industry feeding a taste for hurting women, and creating "art" indistinguisable and interchangeable with rape falls right in there with political speech?

Beyond bans and physical threats to women, why would we not be open to a sociological discussion of the the rancid porn culture that revels in depictions of women as the willing objects of abuse?

We can't have that conversation AT ALL because derp derp Free Speech and all criticism equals a secret agenda to ban everything?

Obviously a lot turns on what part of which conversations people are reacting to, but I've been seeing a whole different segment of really poor argument and shallow thinking than whatever you and the OP are reacting to.