The Adult Industry and Europe's False Morality

Introduction

Europe likes to see itself as a space of progressive values, human rights, and enlightened ethics. In political speeches and strategic documents, it is full of words about dignity, equality, and individual freedom. But when the gaze turns towards the adult industry, this confidence suddenly recedes. Instead of clear rules, silence ensues. Instead of protection, moralizing. Instead of responsibility – hypocrisy.

The adult industry in Europe does not reveal a lack of morality. It reveals false morality.

A society that consumes but does not acknowledge

Europe is one of the largest consumers of adult content and services in the world. The market is stable, demand is constant, digital infrastructure is developed. And yet this same society behaves as if the industry does not exist – until a scandal, violence, or moral panic occurs.

Sex work is accepted as consumption, but not as work. It is allowed as long as it remains invisible, fragmented, and voiceless. But when workers demand rights, safety, or organization, they become a problem. This double standard is the core of Europe's false morality.

Moral condemnation as a political excuse

Europe's moral stance towards the adult industry often serves as an excuse for inaction. Instead of regulation, condemnation is offered. Instead of systemic solutions, slogans about protection are repeated, which are rarely realized in practice.

Condemnation is cheap. Regulation is demanding. Regulation means acknowledging reality, taking responsibility, and facing one's own contradictions. Therefore, politics prefers to resort to moral debates that change nothing, except maintaining existing power relations.

False concern for victims

One of the most common arguments against regulating the adult industry is concern for victims. But this concern is often selective and instrumentalized. There is talk of human trafficking, coercion, and abuse – but rarely about how the absence of clear rules actually enables these phenomena.

When the industry is pushed into a gray zone, victims are less visible, reports are rarer, responsibility is dispersed. False morality thus presents itself as protection, but in reality maintains conditions in which protection is least possible.

Banking and digital expulsion

Europe's false morality is not only reflected in legislation but also in the practice of financial and digital institutions. Accounts are closed, payments rejected, profiles deleted – often without legal process or clear justification.

The adult industry is thus excluded from the infrastructure that society itself uses every day. This expulsion is not a consequence of illegality, but of reputational risk. Morality becomes a filter that determines who has access to the economy and who does not.

Who bears the consequences?

The consequences of false morality are not borne by institutions, but by individuals. Workers who are left to unstable conditions. People who do not have access to legal protection. Communities forced to improvise their own security mechanisms.

Initiatives like Dobra Družba do not arise because they want conflict with Europe, but because Europe has long refused to look reality in the face. Self-organization is not an ideological gesture, but a response to a systemic void.

Morality without responsibility is not ethics

Europe has a choice. It can continue with a moral discourse that changes nothing, or admit that the adult industry exists and that the same questions apply to it as to any other form of work: safety, rights, responsibility, and dignity.

Morality that does not take responsibility for the consequences of its decisions is not ethics. It is a comfortable pose. And as long as Europe prefers to maintain an image rather than solve real problems, the adult industry will remain a mirror in which its most unpleasant face is seen.

Not because sex is the problem.

But because hypocrisy is the problem.