This turning into a good thread (kiss of death!).   

I think Fred and I are amazingly on the same track.   Pornography is more pernicious and pervasive, mainly because it affects our relationships with a broad class of people i.e. the whole object class of our sexuality.  Prostitution affects our relationships with a narrow class - i.e. the supplier of services.   The effects are those of dehumanisation and objectification.  These are generally considered undesirable views to hold of our fellow humans.  And therefore society calls into action one of its correction mechanisms - shame.  Biker is right in saying that this relies on a feeling of similarity - if you don't think like us you are "outside" the group.  This is interesting because it has a very claose connection with attitudes to proz'n'porn. Outsidership is generally not a pleasant feeling - which is precisely what dehumanisation and objectification are all about.   If you exclude the subjects of pictures/tales or the worker satisfying (hopefully) your needs from your normal relations with people, the you too will be excluded from society in a similar way.   

And of course there is the counter mechanism of compassion, in two ways that I can immediately think of.... Firstly, one may feel sorry for someone whose normal sexual affairs are such that they need recourse to proz'n'porn, and given the circumstances may be inclined to moderate the condemnation.  Secondly, we may feel compassion towards the workers involved.  Despite the seductions of the porn industry, I get the impression that prostitution is not the sort of occupation that many people would engage in if some other were available.  And seeing for example the 'playmates' of Hugh Heffner doesn't exactly convince me that they have made the most of their human gifts and abilities.

This last point of course broadens the topic into what do we consider to be 'right' in peoples activities.  I have obviously suggested that human flourishing at an individual level is a primary criterion.  Some may propose that the values that we as a culture use to measure this are themselves to be set aside and that simply satisfying our own inward-looking desires should be the 'touchstone'.  This I think does not work in the case of p&p, since not even the most dyed in the wool libertarian would go for 'individualism' without something like the Harm Principle (Mill's 'do what you like EXCEPT cause harm to another').   The compassion mechanism prompts us to note that by making a market for sex-related activity we are preying on the survival needs of underclasses, and preventing them developping in other more self fulfilling ways.    Even if we go 'up market' to Playboy or high-class hookers, where the glossy propaganda is that 'they could be anything - this girl is a qualified cancer surgeon - but they CHOOSE to do this' or 'look how much MONEY they make', I suggest that the subjects are still wasting their abilities..... 

Ok, here is why I ask the question: Prostitution always existed and was always moreless accepted if not a legal activity while pronography practicaly inexistant. In the Middle Age prostitution was an accepted practice even if moraly condemned. There was officialy 40 prostitutes for 1000 inhabitants in west european cities. This was huge by comparision to today in the same regions. But no one dared producing articraft openly pornographical. Masturbation was sin much worse than having a prostitute.

I wondered why. But it makes sens. Today more than ever.

Pornography is reaching out to much more poeple than prostitution, thus have a much bigger impact on society.
It's cheap and you can find it everywhere. For real sex, you need to move a little bit more and, even more difficult find somebody to your taste.

Pornography also allows the exhibition of fantasms and situations much more difficult to realise in reality with real poeple. Or requires from the sexworker more degradating acts and less protection than a normal prostituted intercourse would. Prostituted intercourse are most of the time the same, based on local habits while pornography is virtualy without boundaries.

Not only pornography is affecting many more poeple, but it affects them with images much more sick and perverse than what a prostitute would do.
I'm not saying prostitution is good. No it's also bad and in its modern form, often sordid, frustrating and degradating for both the worker and the client.
What I'm saying is that pronography have more devastating effect on the minds than prostitution due to its larger audiance, cheap access, ubiquity and especialy perverse nature.

I guess New York Governer Spitzer wishes you were his boss.

His ordeal kinda makes my point.........these things ruin lives.........

Yeah, but ultimately its the woman's choice. (Or the man's - there's gay porn too).

I guess New York Governer Spitzer wishes you were his boss.

His ordeal kinda makes my point.........these things ruin lives.........

Lives can be ruined in many ways.

The fact that it can cause big problems for public figures is more a function of the reaction of the public than the actual moral implications of the act.