Upvote:1
Buddhism explains what brings suffering/unhappiness & what brings happiness/non-suffering (rather than 'criticizes").
I watched a documentary recently that said the average career time of a p**n actress is 3 months; that each year, many girls & ladies attempt a career in p**n but only a tiny minority continue. Many p**n stars have drug addiction or commit suicide. In Buddhism, p**nography is considered harmful behaviour because it leads to suffering & an inability to find contentment.
While some girls may be genetically (naturally) predisposed to be prostitutes or p**n actresses, Buddhism does not say this disposition brings lasting happiness or freedom from suffering.
For example, in former times, when society was morally conformist & there were only a literal few women engaged in p**n, the famous women without inhibitions, such as Marilyn Monroe, were officially diagnosed with mental illness.
I most think p**nstars love money rather than love sex although the classic stereotype of a p**n star is a lonely child-abused girl looking for love & self-affirmation. It is obviously the on-screen "illusion" that "p**nstars love sex" that makes watching p**nography appealing & a money-making industry.
In the documentary I watched, a girl said she tried p**n because she could earn US$100,000 per year rather than $8.50 per hour working in Burger King. But she quit after spending so much money on costs and because she fell in love with a low-level industry guy and wanted to get married.
Upvote:2
Buddhist practice doesn't start from the premise that the world is a just and fair place; rather, it aims to reveal that all conditioned existence is marked by suffering. Suffering is the real problem and assigning blame doesn't help to alleviate it. It's also not particularly helpful to consider what-if scenarios like "would I still be to blame if I had a tumor and couldn't control my actions?" I have enough real problems without imagining new ones
See, reality doesn't happen to someone else and it doesn't happen somewhere else or at some other time. Reality happens right here, right now. This is not a hypothetical practice, this is a real practice and it deals with a real problem, the suffering that marks every passing moment, the clinging that creates it and the out-of-control mind that is churning away with these thoughts. Not, "who's to blame for that?", but "who's to blame for this?" Maybe drop the blame and just look for the cause. Maybe drop the cause, too. Just look.
Ultimately, Buddhist practice urges us to investigate this matter thoroughly, to find the root of suffering. And then, remove it. Perhaps this whole sordid affair is predicated on a misunderstanding, a subtle delusion that got out of control. The Buddha suggests that there is such a cause to suffering and that it is possible to remove it. The path of practice is prescribed as a way to purify this mind and reveal, with full clarity, the reality of this situation.