When my brother was a baby, he just loved seeing other babies. It was adorable. My mom bought him a baby doll for his first birthday and he was thrilled with it. Loved that doll.

I gots a question. And I have no idea why it suddenly occurred to me to wonder about it now other than terrible boredom, but anyway.

Why is it legal for Hustler and other pornographic entities to solicit and pay girls to have lots of sex with men on camera, but it's not generally legal for said men to pay those same girls for the sex straight up? And if it's something to do with the middle man, what about more amateurish pornographic enterprises, where a single man pays many women to have sex with him while he films it for distribution?

Is it something to do with spreading of disease? Must all hardcore pornographic models go through some sort of regulatory thing in order to perform? Is there any reason that exact same regulation system, assuming it exists, can't be extended to prostitution, and shouldn't be?

I'm not talking about the legality of the distribution of the pornography, which I understand falls under free expression et cetera. I'm wondering about the legality of the production of hardcore pornography. It seems to be straight-up prostitution, which is generally, technically, illegal.

Why is it legal for Hustler and other pornographic entities to solicit and pay girls to have lots of sex with men on camera, but it's not legal for said men to pay those same girls for the sex straight up?

Dude. I had totally been thinking about this since watching Pornucopia, in which I discovered that, unlike in the soft porn to which I was accustomed, in real porn, they actually do have sex.

Huh. Under the wikipedia entry for "porn actor" I see this:

Attempts in the 1970s to outlaw pornography in the U.S. by prosecuting porn stars for prostitution failed, as the courts made a distinction between someone who took part in a sexual relationship for money, and the act of portraying a sexual relationship as a performance for money.

I'm not sure that makes sense to me. Or, rather, why the first is considered worse than the second. It seems a little strange to me.

Then again, much in the law seems strange to me.

ETA: Also, wow, P-C, you really have led a pretty sheltered life, huh? I think I knew that harcdore porn contained actual sex and such before I hit puberty. The wonders of the internet, and being savvy enough to cover my tracks.

Also, wow, P-C, you really have led a pretty sheltered life, huh?

I was a naive little boy who turned into a slightly less naive young man.

I mean, I knew sex scenes in movies weren't real, and it was pretty obvious the sex in soft porn wasn't real, and I really had little experience with hardcore porn. I surreptitiously caught some Playboy Channel stuff one summer, but this was when I was in the mid-teens.

FIRST WORLD PROBLEM ALERT:

I have a really bad itch but my nails are too nicely manicured to scratch it effectively.

No, seriously.

Brenda, do you have a wooden ruler or something you can use as a scratching tool?

I have a really bad itch but my nails are too nicely manicured to scratch it effectively.

Definitely the first world problem of the week winner.

You mock my pain.

Weeps.

Maybe I'll go outside and scratch against a tree like a bear.

I have a really bad itch but my nails are too nicely manicured to scratch it effectively.

I find that when I've bitten my nails too short to scratch effectively, that my DH comes in handy.