It should surprise nobody that Amy Fisher, the “Long Island Lolita,” now out of jail for shooting her lover’s wife, married and in her mid-thirties, is outfitted with nifty breast implants and making money shooting porn films. At least her notoriety is being exploited in a manner that does not confer true celebrity status for her misconduct, unlike, for example, Michaele Salahi, who has been featured in glamour shots by the national media as a  direct result of her crashing a White House social event with her equally shameless husband. Amy was dismissive of her part-time porno career in a recent interview, and the woman she shot in the head, Mary Jo Buttafuoco, suggested in a follow-up interview that Fisher was ethically clueless (a not too far-fetched conclusion, all things considered), and that the fact that she made her living being photographed performing various sex acts despite being the parent of small children proved it.

This got me thinking about pornography..no, no, wait!—I mean about the ethics of pornography. I think mothers with small children doing porn films is ethically questionable, but that involves the personal values of the porn performers. Studies suggest that excessive viewing of pornography can be harmful, but excessive eating and video game playing can also be harmful…that doesn’t make pornography itself wrong. And while it is true that porno film performers are often exploited, underpaid and wrongly treated in the industry, that means the porno industry can be unethical, not necessarily the product of the industry itself. The product itself can be unethical, obviously, if performers are used against their wills or without informed consent, under-age, or are harmed in any way. Pornography that encourages cruel or dangerous activities is unethical.

Many, no doubt, would say everything connected to pornography is unethical. I think this is the Ick Factor at work. The fact that something is repugnant for various reasons doesn’t always mean that ethics is one of the reasons, though we tend to think so. Something can be repugnant to individuals but ethical in a societal context.

Do those in the porn industry think about, care about, or practice ethics? It there such a thing as ethical porn?

Apparently so: there’s are recent article about it here (WARNING: This is not a site for the kids, the sexually modest, or the easily offended.)and here, the latter focusing on the importance of consumers of porn only purchasing films showing the performers behaving responsibly (as in wearing condoms to avoid giving each other STPs). I think this makes sense, and is admirable. Every profession and industry should consider the ethics issues that attend it.