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Notes -
Rewatched this part of the debate - this was directly in response to (compressed)
Destiny's using a lot of hyperbole, but it's not really dishonest, as it's in response to Megan unreasonably conflating porn and prostitution while arguing they're bad due to risk of exploitation. It'd be more dishonest if it was unprompted, because he'd be implying megan was conflating them - but she kinda was!
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His first hypothetical is a direct question of: "if there was a company with no exploitation, would you be fine with i?t", in response to her bringing up exploitation in the past. She waffles on this question. He then explains he's asking because he's heard her claim she wants almost all pornography outlawed - and he believes quite a bit (i'd guess >25-50% from his statements) of existing online sexual content weighted by revenue is currently not exploitative, so her arguments don't justify the claims she's made elsewhere.
Then
I think this is also reasonable from Destiny. He's trying to figure out what the shape of her view is - how much does the 'woman' part really contribute? It's not implied that 'if she thinks prostitution/porn is bad, she must think it's bad for men', as it kinda is in your hypothetical - she's free to take either direction in the fork.
You could argue this is somewhat dishonest - maybe she thinks female matters a bit but there are other factors too - even so, it's a more reasonable claim than every inference Megan has made in the past five minutes of the debate. But it's not dishonest in the context of a broader claim that he's making, and has explicitly said - even if he wins on every factual argument Megan makes, she'll keep jumping from argument to argument (as she has) because she isn't in this due to arguments.
The massive difference between Destiny's argument and your example is - his hypotheticals are in direct response to claims Megan has made. In your dialogue, Destiny brings in the 'female' and 'children' distinctions - in the above dialogue, Megan introduces the 'vulnerable' and 'female' distinctions.
About then she ragequits.
I mean, you're not entirely wrong. Destiny's approach here isn't actually going to tease out why Megan dislikes porn, it's just going to make her look stupid. It's probably better to assume she means 'female vulnerability makes a bad situation worse', even if that is a steelman, and debate that instead (while still mentioning that you're doing that). I think you can do that while still making her look stupid, although idk if my video would blow up like his did!
I think I would have, instead of going all logic-bro, told detail-rich stories about the kind of solo-content only onlyfans model destiny mentions, or boyfriend and girlfriend who make content with themselves and threesomes, and then gotten her to directly denounce those, and then explored the tension between her claims of exploitation and the stories.
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Aside from that last sentence, this is a funny discussion because neither of us care about the object-level issue of 'was destiny slightly dishonest in the debate', unlike CW questions, it's just exploring a very mild disagreement out of technical interest in the disagreement.
Yeah I think we're on the same page, or close enough anyways. Still, I do have a few quibbles.
Well what she says is that selling sex is selling sex. His immediate response is to bring up porn which isn't selling sex. You could look at this as an attempt to pinpoint her position, but to me it seems more like a disingenuous argumentative tactic. At this point in the discussion he knows what her central point is, and is choosing to call her out on these little details rather than engaging with it at all.
I think her claims make a lot more sense in the context of her original claim, which was that the porn industry has a lot of exploitation. That is the most important reason porn is unethical, as she has stated, and he goes looking for another one as if she hasn't provided one already.
She comes up with reasons porn is bad, he finds exceptions, rinse and repeat. I'd have more charity towards him if he engaged with any of her points rather than finding exceptions to all of them. Of course, she can defend herself (well, she can't, but it's her job to) and if she were competent she could have called him out on that better.
In the end this terrible muddled mess is kind of what they both asked for though. They both make money stirring up controversy, not discovering truth, and in that they're both experts regardless of their skill at debate.
I'm fascinated at how much you and @curious_straight_ca dissected this exchange. I'll repost a relevant comment I made elsewhere that also includes how I would construct an "honest" version of Murphy's objections:
The lead up to this particular exchange is relevant because Murphy was first arguing that sex work is bad because it's coercive, and it's by definition coercive because it involves someone having sex they wouldn't otherwise have were it not for the money offered. Destiny offers the obvious rejoinder that if you accept that premise, then ALL jobs are also "by definition coercive" as well. There's some anti-capitalists that actually agree with this premise but Murphy doesn't and so she finds herself having to add yet another qualifier to her argument, this time about how women are much more vulnerable during sex. Similarly, there are radical feminists that actually believe that ALL heterosexual sex is "by definition coercive" because it's penetrative and occurs within a patriarchal system where consent is impossible. Murphy has to be aware of these arguments, but as an unapologetic heterosexual woman, she doesn't want to concede that. At this point my impression is she quit because she ran out of pivots.
There's a pattern here. She just moves on to another, then another, then another etc. all without any acknowledgement. It's hard to tell what she actually believes in because she just keeps mechanistically cycling through her repertoire! The "coercive because money" argument got immediately thrown out without any acknowledgement and never made a re-appearance, and that's because Murphy knew she'd have to admit that all jobs are coercive. We didn't get much of an epilogue for the "coercive because sex" argument, but I'm guessing she realized she'd have to admit that hetero sex is at least somewhat rapey. I also gather that after already confirming she believes males engaging in sex work is also unethical, she realized she wouldn't be able to offer a reason for that position (I can't think of one based on what she said, but maybe you can?).
If I had to construct an honest form of the basic tenets of her argument, it might be something like this:
"Wage work has an element of coercion, because you're doing work you would otherwise refuse to do freely. Sex also has an element of violence and coercion for women in particular, given how much more vulnerable they are. Taken individually, neither is necessarily a problem because of [reasons]. But there's a symbiotic magnification of the harms that occurs when these two aspects are combined together into what we know as the sex trade. This crosses a line over what we should deem as ethical and acceptable behavior."
I may not agree with the conclusion but I think the argument is perfectly reasonable! If I had to guess, the reason Murphy doesn't adopt this framework is because it would necessarily require her to curtail some of her overall position. For example it would require her to concede at least some scenarios where the sex trade is not unethical (e.g. male prostitutes, OF model playing with toys, etc.).
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Yeah, close enough.
I actually don't think exploitation is the main reason porn is unethical - it's that it subverts the productive instinct towards reproduction in favor of something meaningless. But I don't think the puritan moral rage you generally see from reactionaries at this is a well-calibrated way to fight it.
Destiny's been a lot better in the past few years at attempting to discover truth instead of stirring up controversy, and most of his conversations aren't heated or adversarial like this one was (whereas in the past he was a lot more debate bro-ish). Imo ideally, heat/conflict and accuracy don't have to be incompatible, but a lot of social incentives make them so in practice.
Yep, agreed. I meant to imply that Meghan's view was that exploitation is the main issue, not that that was my own view.
Do you have any good examples of Destiny being more fair? I'd love to see one. Ideally he'd be interviewing / debating someone across the aisle (rather than just someone who is a Marxist rather than a socialist for example).
here he's talking to right-wingers - https://youtube.com/watch?v=AOcbaUaxHSA
He reads excerpts from studies from his phone! The discussions stays almost entirely at the object-level with details.
(edit: in the interest of not misrepresenting, this is more science-heavy than his usual debates, but it's the first one i clicked on)
It's not perfect, but in terms of 'being fair', given the circumstances it's pretty good imo.
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