Objective
In recent news, porn actress and Duke University freshman Belle Knox has been getting an unusual amount of attention. She has been claiming that the porn industry should be socially acceptable. Strengthening her position, a number of individuals support her, saying that there are no moral implications in porn industry, because all have their rights to do whatever they desire with themselves. To combat this view is the objective of this post.Moral Implications
The moral concept that will be at work here is "means to an end". Using a person as a means to an end would be to deprive or ignore the distinctively human characteristics vested within that person. Slavery and rape are good examples.
To enact the concept of means to an end would be to go against the natural law, which suggests that all beings in existence should be able to live as they were made to function. For example, lions are made to hunt, and zebras are made to prance about the safari. We humans use them as a means to achieve an end that is spectacle. We do the same to fellow human beings.
When an individual is jerking off to a porn film, he or she is using the people in that movie as means to an end. The end being sexual satisfaction. Watching porn for the sake of sexual pleasure is to degrade the actors to their basic animal function - sex. This process deprives individuals of distinctively human characteristics. Depriving what is due to individuals (human characteristics, in this case) is to enact injustice.
The same goes for the actors. When an actor is working for the porn industry, the individual has degraded his self to his sexuality. They are fully aware of why people watch porn, yet they self-degrade themselves to a level of an object that can be used by others. Such an act of self-degradation is an offense against human dignity.
Certainly, all human beings can do whatever they please with themselves and with others. However, can is not synonymous to should.
No it doesn't.
