As someone who was a stripper, a dominatrix, and a small time porn director, I can tell you that my biggest pet peeves is broad generalizations when it comes to who these women are. There are CERTAINLY problems in the industry. But many of those problems could be remedied if all the anti-porn feminists stopped treating adult workers like they are less human and less intelligent than other women. Anti-porn feminist demonization of sex workers contributes to their marginalization, which in turn contributes to their shitty working conditions.

I really wish that all the people who "take issue" with the sex industry actually started talking to its so-called victims instead of speaking for them. There are three issues when it comes to porn:

(1) the representation of female sexuality (in the case of straight porn)
(2) the problem of unrealistic body portrayals.
(3) the working conditions of the model.

* The second issue is identical to advertising, film, and other heavily photoshopped industries. Here's a place where I actually think porn can help, if a variety of body types are shown. In advertising, you can take less risks because you have a billion dollar product to sell. In porn, if you want to show hirsute models with a little cellulite, you can. The marketing schema for the industry (hirsute, blonde, asian, thick, chubby, mature) is the biggest sticking point for this. But marketing in general also uses a similar schema for its models (blonde, asian, black) that is just as objectifying and compartmentalizing.

* The first issue is interesting because not only does porn take cues from what people want in "real life", in "real life" people take cues from their porn. People fetishize porn and it becomes a part of their sex lives. I don't see anything inherently wrong with that in any way. The only problem is with such a wide variety of sexual fantasies presented on the internet with no context, a violently anti-woman man or group of men could use pornography as a justification of their behavior.

For example, most people are pretty okay with any kind of behavior between two consenting adults: we know that a wife may whip her husband or a man may spank his girlfriend. But when the latter is played out on the internet (a male actor spanking a female actress) it takes on the weight of sexist propaganda in the minds of anti-porn feminists. Even if the majority of people who watch it are healthy, normal people into this particular kink (male and female), we fear that it could fall into the hands of violent men. My feeling is that violent men who hate women are going to be violent with or without porn.

* The third issue "the poor, drug addicted street girl" is ALWAYS just bandied about for rhetorical effect. Most anti-porn feminists have never talked to a stripper or a prostitute. (To be fair, most "pro-porn" feminists haven't either and all too often they glamorize our lives.) Labor issues around sex work are extremely complicated. There are enormous gaps in working conditions between strippers, prostitutes, porn stars, and dominatrixes. It's like comparing the working conditions of the waitstaff at a local diner, the head chef at a fine restaurant, and a taste-tester who works for a foodie magazine.

Lastly, sex work has historically been a field that is overrepresented by blue collar feminine lesbians who couldn't get work elsewhere because of discrimination. Just a little something extra to chew on.