In the wake of mass shootings in America,
there are a number of scapegoats that are awesome.
Often trotted out in place of actually doing something about the guns
that are used to do these crimes, video games,
violent TV shows, and movies, those are very common ones.
But let's not forget that sometimes they will go to something they love to kick
about in the culture wars quite often, which is pornographic materials.
And in the wake of the devastating, you've all the shootings,
some politicians have used the continued access to pornography that young
men have as an excuse to not talk about guns and things like that.
And I wanted to invite onto the show someone who's written about this recently
for the daily beast, journalist, and
former adult actress or Snow welcome back to the damage report.
>> Hey, thanks for having me.
>> Always glad to have you on really appreciate your work here.
So there were multiple politicians like these are influential people,
heads of some of the states that see violence like this,
that immediately began blaming pornography, correct?
>> Absolutely.
They began correlating pornography to these mass shootings and
there really is no correlation at all.
>> Well, it seems like if you're trying to figure out what variable would be
responsible.
Trying to pinpoint something that basically everyone has access to and
mostly everyone consumes,
it would seem like that wouldn't be a great place to start.
>> All right, but it's Republicans are looking for villains,
and pornography has traditionally been the scapegoat.
It is an easy scapegoat, it's one that multiple groups can get behind,
and sure it's not great for American families, right?
We could argue that, but does it have anything to do with mass shootings or
I don't know a public health crisis, right?
We do have some real public health crisis going on, but it's not pornography.
>> Well, why do you think that it is such an easy target for
them that they feel like that they can attack this industry and
not feel like they're risking anything and doing so?
>> It's very easy to get behind,
pornography has a bad reputation, right?
It's only very recently come into the mainstream,
we typically vilify people who go into the pornography business,
we vilify it in terms of what it does to the American family, right?
We don't see it for what it is,
which is a form of entertainment,
it's just [LAUGH] It's so easy to target one and
sorry, I don't know where I was going with that.
>> [LAUGH] No, it's okay, I get frustrated by the news sometimes too.
So I know that you spoke to a number of former and current performers about what
they think about this, and I definitely wanna get to that in one moment.
But from your point of view, because I know you referenced that it's more in
the mainstream, I have my own thoughts about that.
But from your point of view,
how mainstream would you say it is in comparison to a couple of decades ago?
>> I mean, the fact that we're even talking about it right now in
the mainstream press that was unheard of two decades ago.
I think the internet has really ushered that in, and also articles,
we now have journalists covering the porn industry, that is a beat.
We are recognizing it as a form of entertainment,
which has always been right?
But only I would say in the last decade have we really started recognizing it for
what it is.
That it is in fact a legal business, a business just
like any other, it's regulated, it's taxed.
And I think probably two or three decades ago,
we saw it as a CD black market underground.
>> Yeah, definitely.
And so as I said, I know that you spoke to a number of performers,
what do they think about being used as scapegoats after these tragedies?
>> A lot of performers see it as a misdirection.
Again, they're very easy to blame, it's easy to say,
hey, porn is bad, God, I'm so sorry.
>> [LAUGH] This isn't live if you wanna reset, it's totally cool we can edit.
>> No, thank you.
No, I just, it's kids have kids have an easy time accessing porn,
but it's not so much porn, it's free porn.
And so I think that becomes this issue,
because then kids are consuming porn, video games.
And it becomes a very easy thing to blame as opposed to what's really going on,
that we have a mental health crisis in this country.
And that is much harder to focus on because how do you fix that?
It's easy to focus on porn and say porn is the issue,
because if porn is the issue, then we have a solution.
And what we don't have is a solution for the mental health crisis going on,
that's far more complicated.
>> Yeah, and of course, I can't say that the access is necessarily universal, but
I would imagine in many countries around the world there is easy online
access to pornography.
And for the most part we don't see this sort of violence in a lot of countries
that have a lot of pornography, either that they consume from other countries.
Or that have their own domestic pornographic industries,
it doesn't seem like they're struggling with this sort of violence.
>> All right, but they also have far different gun control laws,
it is very easy to go get an assault rifle that doesn't
exist in other countries, it's regulated.
>> And I forget if it was you in the article or someone that you reference.
But it also seems to me that as you cite that there are politicians saying that
we should ban it at least stop kids from getting access to pornography.
That we already know that most of these shooters are young men,
they usually feel ostracized or as outsiders for one form or another.
We know that there's like this rise of this in cell culture, it feels like
cutting off like one of the few aspects to expression of sexuality that they have,
it seems like that would be dangerous.
They seem to be missing that when they're proposing that as a solution at
least, I think.
>> All right, absolutely, and I did make that comment.
Do we really wanna take away masturbation material from these young men and
create further frustrations?
Sure, take away masturbation material and arm them, that sounds safe.
>> Exactly, yeah.
And I would also guess by the way that if you were to do a search in the history of
Paul go Sir Pritzker, some of these other politicians.
I imagine that they probably have a bit more personal experience with pornography
than they're willing to admit publicly.
>> Absolutely, and we see that with each scandal that comes out.
>> Exactly, yeah.
Well, look, especially when you have these people who they're working,
sex work is work.
They're fulfilling a demand is one of the most popular forms of entertainment
to see them scapegoated.
After so much violence to imply that these people that have nothing to do with
are responsible for this continued death I find to be so disgusting.
And so I'm glad that The Daily Beast has someone like you who's willing to give
that perspective and talk to the actual performers,
so I really do appreciate your work.
And for anyone watching this, the article is available on The Daily Beast as well as
a lot of other work that aura does.
So thank you for your work and for joining us, we really do appreciate it.
>> Yes, thank you.
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