pornography

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Pornography is notoriously hard to define. The word comes from the ancient Greek porne (whore) and graphien (write), so pornography is ‘writings by/or about whores’. Contemporary dictionaries give a very different definition: today pornography is considered ‘obscene material whose intention is to provoke sexual arousal’. Problems remain: how are we to define ‘obscene’? Are both James Joyce's Ulysses and Larry Flynt's Hustler ‘obscene’? The US government has thought so. At what point does explicit sex become ‘pornography’? One is tempted to agree with US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who concluded: ‘I know it when I see it.’

The category ‘pornography’ is relatively recent and postdates modern European obscenity by at least two hundred years. The first obscene book, The Raggionamenti, was composed by Renaissance Humanist, Pietro Aretino (1492-1556) between 1534 and 1536. The Raggionamenti is both a bawdy dialogue between two whores and a biting satire of Renaissance church and state. For the next three hundred years, obscene texts usually included anti-clericalism, religious skepticism, and political satire. During the eighteenth century, pornography played a particularly important role in intellectual life: dirty books were among the century's best-sellers and obscene pamphlets spread the spirit of criticism from the intelligentsia to a small, literate public. Late in the century, Donatien-Alphonse-François, Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) perfected the themes of eighteenth-century pornography in a series of violent and explicit novels that advocated a thorough rejection of all norms, be they political, moral, or religious.

The content of pornography changed in the early nineteenth century: political obscenity vanished to be replaced by a fantasy world or what Steven Marcus calls, in The Other Victorians (1966), ‘pornotopia’. The audience for obscenity, however, remained the rich: a paper-wrapped, unillustrated book cost a Victorian reader twenty guineas. The leather-bound, illustrated, limited editions printed for rich bibliophiles were even more expensive. Because it was limited to the elite, pornography had a kind of back-door respectability. Obscene texts could be found on the shelves of the British Museum and the Bibliothèque Nationale, but only in special, locked cases — the British Museum's Private Case and the Bibliothèque Nationale's Enfer — which were off-limits to working-class men, women, and children.

Rising literacy rates and the advent of national education made European elites anxious lest pornography made its way into the hands of the masses. To forestall such a possibility, governments in Europe and the US enacted the first anti-obscenity laws: the French laws of 1819, the US Customs Act of 1847, and the British Obscene Publications Act of 1857. All these acts were directed against materials cheap enough to reach ‘persons of all classes, young and old’. In the US and Europe, private crusaders like New York's Anthony Comstock (1844-1915) and France's anti-obscenity leagues railed against the evils of ‘smut’. Still, pornography proliferated: in France the number of obscene texts multiplied thirteen-fold in the latter quarter of the nineteenth century, and new pornographic media — newspapers, brochures, and naughty postcards — brought obscene images to the masses.

1910 constituted a turning point. In 1913, British and US courts admitted defeat and created a new obscenity standard. Price no longer mattered; only the ‘harm’ done by pornography. Because they sought to improve society or elevate the human spirit, ‘science’ and ‘art’ escaped the charge of obscenity. Only ‘smut for smut's sake’ (to paraphrase US Judge Curtis Bok) constituted pornography. Legal tolerance (especially of written materials) continued to grow in Britain and the US. In 1967, American courts finally lifted the ban on John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure or Fanny Hill (1749). An American attorney observed that ‘there is no longer any obscenity law as far as writing is concerned.’

However, writing was no longer the principal form of obscenity. The image replaced the word, and obscene magazines, video strips, and films were sold in bookstores, specialized cinemas, and arcades. Even the local convenience store stocked explicit magazines, making pornography available to more consumers than ever before. In response, British, Canadian, and American governments formed special commissions in the 1970s and 80s to deal with the ‘pornography issue’. In 1968, US President Lyndon Johnson established the Commission on Pornography and Obscenity, which was followed shortly thereafter by the British Home Office Departmental Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship (better known as the Williams Committee) and the Canadian Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution. In 1985, distressed by the liberal recommendations of the Johnson Commission, President Richard Nixon established a second anti-pornography commission, the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, commonly known as the Meese Commission.

The Commissions introduced two new voices into the pornography debate: feminism and social science. In the US, author Andrea Dworkin and lawyer Catherine MacKinnon argued that pornography hurt women by condoning the objectification of women, and rape. In 1975, Women Against Pornography, or WAP, was formed and a few feminists served on the 1985 Meese Commission. Meanwhile, social scientists brought laboratory studies to bear on the question of ‘harm’. Psychologists concluded that extended exposure to violent pornography produces a ‘desensitization effect’, or an appetite for increasingly violent sexual media. The social scientists also concluded that only males already predisposed to antisocial behaviour were likely to commit rape after viewing pornographic films.

What is the future of pornography? Pornography continued to move from the margins to the mainstream of twentieth-century life. Home videos and the Internet have made seedy bookstore and sordid ‘porn’ theatres obsolete. Now consumers can experience ‘hardcore’ films in the safety and discretion of their own homes. Pornography can be acquired more easily and discreetly than ever before, which argues that pornography will stay with us in the twenty-first century.

— Kathryn Norberg

Bibliography

• Hunt, L. (1993). The invention of pornography: obscenity and the origins of modernity, 1500-1800. Zone, New York.
• Kendrick, W. M. (1987). The secret museum: the history of pornography in literature. Viking, New York

See also sadomasochism.

Definition: obscene
Antonyms: clean, decent, moral, pure

Literally, ‘writing about prostitutes’: obscene publications. Female pornography is seen by feminists as a mode of oppression and exercise of power by the stronger sex. The woman's body is sexualized and various parts of her anatomy are used to provide pleasure to the male gaze. Pornography entails sexual exploitation and male violence. However, similar modes of exploitation can also be located in family life and certain state policies. Pornography is associated with the abusive and degrading portrayal of female sexuality through words and sexually explicit material. Another characteristic of pornography is the dehumanization and objectification of women's bodies.

— Suruchi Thapar-Bjorkert

pornography, a kind of fictional writing composed so as to arouse sexual excitement in its readers, usually by the repeated and explicit description of sexual acts in abstraction from their emotional and other interpersonal contexts; also visual images having the same purpose. The distinction between pornography and literary eroticism is open to continued debate, but it is commonly accepted that eroticism treats sexuality within some fuller human and imaginative context, whereas pornographic writing tends to be narrowly functional and often physiologically improbable. Further confusion arises from the questionable assimilation of the term into the distinct legal concept of obscenity, which usually governs the public mention or display of specific acts, organs, words, and supposed ‘perversions’. Several works of serious literary merit, including Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928) and James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), have been legally condemned as obscene although they do not fit most definitions of pornography. The term's etymology is of little help: it is a rather bogus 19th‐century coinage combining Greek words to mean ‘writing about prostitutes’.

Pornography (from the Greek pornographos, meaning writing about prostitutes) in modern parlance denotes writings or images primarily intended to cause sexual arousal. Controversy has raged, however, about more precise definitions, especially in relation to other kinds of sexually stimulating material. The terms ‘erotica’ or ‘erotica art’, for example, have suggested a degree of aesthetic value, often with implications of costliness, exclusiveness, and rarity. ‘Pornography’, on the other hand, has been used synonymously with ‘smut’, ‘filth’, and ‘trash’, and stigmatized as cheap and corrupting. In Western societies and Japan in the 20th century, definitions of and attitudes towards pornography changed dramatically, although often unevenly as between the provinces and the metropolis. Particularly fluid was the boundary between ‘soft’ pornography (pin-up nudes and, eventually, simulated sex acts) and the ‘harder’ variety, depicting unsimulated, ‘deviant’, and sometimes illegal activity. Changing levels of tolerance, influenced by extraneous factors such as affluence, feminism, safe-sex campaigns, and shifting attitudes towards the private sphere in relation to the state, have had legal, social, and commercial consequences. Although in the past few people referred to themselves as pornographers without apology, at the beginning of the 21st century ‘porn stars’ in some societies are celebrities. Well before 2000, moreover, photographers such as Nobuyoshi Araki and Robert Mapplethorpe acquired considerable reputations while also producing hard-core material; and fashion stars like Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin could spice their commercial work with pornographic allusions and conceits.

Notwithstanding the existence of ancient sexual materials, pornography as understood today emerged during the 18th century, although the term did not come into widespread use until the mid-19th. Its purpose has varied significantly in different cultures and eras. Between 1500 and 1800, European artists and polemicists often used the shock value of sexual activity to attack the Church, the state, or prevailing conventions and ideologies. In pre-revolutionary France, pornographic pamphlets and flyers were deployed massively against the corruption of the court and the incompetence of the monarchy. However, pleasure was also important; although a distinction needs to be made between the crude materials peddled to the masses and the sumptuous books and prints available to elites.

Photography revolutionized access to and ownership of images. The desire to make photographic portraits prompted many technical improvements—especially shorter exposures and various forms of retouching—that facilitated the depiction of naked bodies and sexual scenarios. One of the earliest official records of the making and distribution of pornographic photographs, the celebrated Dossier BB3 (1855-68), originated in Paris, a long-established production centre for licentious materials. By 1841 photographers there were creating both nude studies for artists (académies) and, probably, pornographic images. While the former tended to feature figures in classical poses or settings, the latter often showed genitals and sexual acts, and/or simulated eye contact between subject and viewer. But for legal reasons the borderline was often blurred, and in the mid-and later 19th century both types of picture could be found for sale in cafés, dance halls, brothels, print shops, and photographic studios, along with printed pornography and sex aids. Documents like Dossier BB3, and the careers of photographers like Bruno Braquehais (1823-75), reveal a highly developed industry, with a complex distribution system, lucrative exports, and a model pool that included prostitutes, seamstresses, shop girls, actresses, and other entertainers. Across the Channel, a police raid on the premises of the London photographer Henry Hayler in 1874 yielded c. 130, 000 obscene photographs and 5, 000 lantern slides. Pornography, like portraiture, kept in step with evolving photographic technology, and microphotography, stereographs, cartes de visite, and eventually postcards all rapidly found pornographic uses. Hand colouring made photographs more lifelike, and even dignified pornography with fashionable ideals of beauty, such as flushed cheeks or ruby lips. Together with popular travel photographs during the second half of the 19th century came representations of exotic peoples, often nude or semi-nude. Viewing non-white, non-Western bodies, once exclusively an aristocratic privilege, became popular at world fairs, in souvenir photographs, and at peepshows like the Kaiserpanorama. (Pornographic scenes in fake or semi-fake Oriental surroundings were already an established genre).

It was in the decade or so before 1914 that the photo-pornography industry probably reached its peak. Morality campaigners identified numerous specialized firms active throughout Europe, and in more remote places like North Africa where models were cheap and regulations lax. Given the efficiency of international communications, bringing the product to market was straightforward. Exactly how much material was in circulation is impossible to estimate, given the perennial problems of definition: for some commentators, ‘pornography’ ranged from crudely explicit images to saucy postcards and reproductions of old-master nudes. But by the early 1900s most big-city police forces had mountains of banned material, and on 4 May 1910 the scope of the problem was acknowledged by the conclusion of an international treaty. On the ‘demand’ side of the equation was pervasive sexual repression (vividly recalled by memoirists like Stefan Zweig), minimal sexual education, and the criminal sanctions against certain sexual practices. In these circumstances, pornographic photographs could probably be found everywhere from schools and barracks to gentleman's clubs and the smoking rooms of stately homes. (The upper end of the market continued to be partly served by graphic artists.) By 1914, photography was capable of capturing even the most frantic sexual callisthenics, and constructing fantasy scenarios from harem orgies to boarding-school flagellation. Doubtless the bulk of the trade was in relatively stereotyped, ready-made material. However, some commercial photographers had always been ready to produce bespoke images for clients arriving with their own partners and equipment, and the antecedents of late 20th-century boudoir photography go back at least to the belle époque. At the most exclusive level, finally, on the problematical borderline between pornography and erotic photography, were gentleman-amateurs like the French writer Pierre Louÿs, who had the imagination, money, and technical skill to produce erotica at home.

Especially from the 1920s onwards, titillating images could be found in physical culture (or naturist) magazines, Hollywood films, ‘pin-ups’, and playing cards. Sexually stimulating writing could be found in literary works by acclaimed authors and playwrights as well as pulp fiction and advertising. More explicit photographs, often sold in packs, depended on sequencing to build a loose storyline. Alongside these images were photographs of sexy 1940s Hollywood stars, often featured in men's magazines like Esquire and forces publications like Yank. A post-1945 landmark was the launch of Hugh Hefner's Playboy in 1953, featuring nude photographs of Marilyn Monroe and other voluptuous women and celebrating guilt-free sexual adventure. Helen Gurley Brown gave the same advice to single women in her book Sex and the Single Girl (1962) and Cosmopolitan. A new singles culture emerged during the prosperous and permissive 1960s. The pornographic magazine industry continued to flourish during the last quarter of the 20th century, with the proliferation of publications devoted to special areas of interest along with an explosion of hardcore material on film, video, and the Internet.

In addition to these industrially produced and mass-circulated images, the second half of the 20th century was also the era of home-made pornography. First Polaroid instant photography; then home video; finally digital imaging eliminated the high-street laboratory. Couples could now make explicit images of themselves or friends without fear that they might be copied by strangers or, worse, alert the police. Home pornography also became an object of exchange, with journals like the Italian Coppia moderna in the 1970s and 1980s publishing samples, often of dire technical quality, of domestic pornography (‘Polaroid wives’) submitted by couples hoping to meet kindred spirits. By the year 2000, however, these transactions were increasingly being superseded by the webcam and the Internet.

Despite resistance in some quarters, sexuality and pornography now feature prominently in many academic disciplines. Early scholarly investigations focused on censorship, beauty, and the difference between pornography and erotica. Originally dealing primarily with the female body as an object, feminist scholarship has expanded to address the gaze, fragmentation, agency, pleasure, and power. Feminists opposed to both censorship and pornography have tended to view power as a central issue, articulated as the tension between male viewers and female subjects, or between opposing feminist camps. Some pro-censorship feminists, conservative Christian groups, and right-wing politicians have blamed pornography for violence against women in contemporary society, although the scientific evidence is, at best, inconclusive. Controversy about pornography was prominent in the American ‘culture wars’ of the 1990s, involving politics, law, religion, and art. Much of the conflict was played out through the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Photographers dealing with controversial subject matter, such as sexuality and religion, had their funding revoked. Work by Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe became key examples, for anti-NEA right-wing politicians, of the type of art that should not be supported by taxpayers. A tendency to conflate the representation of nude children with child pornography affected reputable artists, including Jock Sturges and Mapplethorpe, and art administrators like Dennis Barrie who was prosecuted for exhibiting Mapplethorpe's work at Cincinnati's Contemporary Art Center. At the beginning of the 21st century, concern about paedophilia in both the USA and elsewhere has created a climate in which photographing children or adolescents (even by parents) may lead to conflict with the law.

— Jennifer Pearson Yamashiro/Robin Lenman

Bibliography

• Mendes, P., and Ovenden, G., Victorian Erotic Photography (1973).
• Dubin, S., Arresting Images: Impolite Art and Uncivil Actions (1992).
• McCauley, E. A., Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris 1848-1871 (1994).
• Bright, D. (ed.), The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire (1998).
• Childs, E., Suspended License: Censorship and the Visual Arts (1998).
• Ault, J., and Yenawine, P. (eds.), Art Matters: How the Culture Wars Changed America (2000).
• Gilardi, A., Storia della fotografia pornografica (2002).
• Sigel, L., Governing Pleasures: Pornography and Social Change in England, 1815-1914 (2002).
• Willis, D., and Williams, C., The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (2002).
• Mahon, A., Eroticism and Art (2005)

The definition is controversial: roughly an obscene representation or display, especially of human sexuality, produced to provide an occasion for fantasy. The condition that the representation should be obscene distinguishes pornography in principle from erotic art. The legal problems arise because although some human fantasies may be innocent and pleasurable, others are pleasurable to some without being innocent, and ministering to them involves representing different sections of the community (especially women and children) in degrading and humiliating lights, as victims of violence, etc. When this is so there is an argument for censorship, from the right of such groups to equal concern and respect. This argument is distinct from a general moralistic distaste for the material in question, and distinct from the contested consequentialist argument that the existence of such material helps to promote violence. The extent to which other values are infringed by such censorship is controversial.

The definition of pornography, loosely understood as written or visual images intended to excite sexually, has been notoriously slippery, and Americans have never all agreed on the boundaries of what is pornography, and on the extent to which it should be regulated. In the 1990s, hard-core pornography was widely accessible and often depicted nonconsensual sexual intercourse in violent graphic images, whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century that which was merely "immoral" or "sensational," such as a hazy drawing of a seminude woman, was viewed as pornographic. Thus, historically a far broader range of literature and visual images was subject to legal governmental regulation, from erotic photographs to literary classics. A provision of the 1842 Tariff Act restricted "obscene" pictures and prints from entering the United States. The government became more interested in pornography during the Civil War, when soldiers began trading and collecting French postcards of pictures of nude and seminude women. The U.S. postmaster general in 1865 received a limited right to confiscate "obscene" materials in the mail. The Comstock laws of 1873 went further by making it illegal to sell or distribute through the mail a multitude of images in literature and art, as well as information on birth control or abortion.

From the 1870s through the mid-1930s, legal regulation of printed material and motion pictures was at its most restrictive. During this era the Supreme Court did not use arguments based on free speech and the First Amendment to challenge or modify obscenity laws and postal restrictions on literature or visual images. Until 1957 the Court accepted with only slight modification the British 1867 definition of "obscenity," which based censorship rulings on whether the written or spoken word (or visual representation) was intended to "deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands such a publication might fall." In effect, the Supreme Court upheld a definition of obscenity that created a standard for culture based on the lowest common denominator of acceptability—one that would not impair the moral development of children.

Before 1933 some novels that are now regarded as classics could not be distributed in the United States. The situation changed dramatically for literature in that year when federal judge John M. Woolsey, ruled that Irish author James Joyce's Ulysses was not obscene, arguing that the work should be taken as a whole, and prosecutors could not quote passages out of context as proof a book was obscene. On its first case against motion pictures in 1915, the Supreme Court ruled that the movie industry was a profit-inspired business, not an art form, and therefore subject to regulation. This allowed censorship by review boards before distribution of movies to the public by any state or local government that deemed it necessary or desirable. Beginning in 1934 the movie industry practiced rigorous self-regulation, through the Motion Picture Association of America and its Production Code, trying to avoid federal censorship.

At the turn of the century, censorship was popularly viewed as a device for social change. Groups such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union joined vice societies to advocate censorship of literature and art. The American public has continued to support laws restricting the access of youth to pornographic films, as well as harsh action against anyone who creates or distributes child pornography. Like earlier reformers, Americans in the 1990s argued that censorship was necessary to protect children and family values. With Miller v. California, however, which was decided by the Supreme Court in 1973, the only adult pornography subject to governmental regulation became that which an "average person" deemed was without literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. The so-called LAPS test was weakened in 1987 when the Court in Pope v. Illinois ruled that because community views varied, "reasonable person" should be substituted for "average person." Combinations of sex and violence soon began permeating not only low-budget pornographic films but mass-distributed movies, videos, and magazines, making violent portraits of adult sex readily available. By the 1990s pornographic materials were a $10 billion operation in the United States alone.

Late-twentieth-century adherents of the women's movement had divided opinions about pornography. Because of increasing violence against women, some feminists believed that pornography, especially images depicting violence against women or nonconsensual sex, are often harmful to female actors and, more broadly, to all women. This belief in the danger of pornography is based on the assumption that male viewers watch and read pornography as if it were a manual or an instruction guide to behavior, including relations between the sexes. Although the most extreme antipornography activists asserted that men learn to rape by watching and reading pornography, no study has proven a direct link; however, many researchers have indicated that pornography diminishes male sensitivity to women's legal rights including the right to withhold consent to sex. Feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin oppose pornography both as "injurious speech," because it condones and encourages violence against women, and as a violation of women's civil rights. In the 1980s they successfully lobbied for ordinances in Minneapolis, Bellingham (Washington State), and Indianapolis. All were subsequently ruled unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds.

Anticensorship feminists who focus on the First Amendment argue that pornography should remain a protected form of speech. Rejecting the idea that people respond to pornographic movies or books by trying to emulate the characters, they argue that pornography may serve as a safety valve, preventing violence against women by serving as a form of fantasy and as "safe sex." Some anticensorship feminists also doubt the efficacy of censorship and dislike its tendency to be used against such political minorities as homosexuals. They suggest that pornography's most objectionable images could be counteracted if feminist women and men produced their own pornography that challenged patriarchal and/or heterosexual notions about women's place in society. Anticensorship feminists point out that violence against women was a problem before pornography became as available and graphic as it has since the 1960s and conclude that banning pornography would probably not solve the physical abuse of women.

In the early twenty-first century, advances in computer technology raised new challenges regarding the definition and control of pornography. Pornography proliferated on the internet, and computer imaging technology sometimes made it difficult to distinguish which images depicted acts between real people, and which were simply computer-generated. Whereas anticensorship laws generally protected people who wished to post or download sexually graphic images, using or creating child pornography was generally not protected, because it depicted illegal acts between legal minors. But debate arose over computer-generated images of children engaged in sexual acts: some argued that because no actual children were involved in making the images, they should be legal; others argued that the difficulty in distinguishing between "real" and computer-generated images made this course of action dangerous. Continuing advances in computer and communication technology are likely to prompt further debates over the definition and distribution of pornography.

Bibliography

Assiter, Alison, and Avedon Carol, eds. Bad Girls and Dirty Pictures: The Challenge to Reclaim Feminism. Boulder, Colo.: Pluto Press, 1993.

Baird, Robert M., and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, eds. Pornography: Private Right or Public Menace? Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1998.

Cate, Fred H. The Internet and the First Amendment: Schools and Sexually Explicit Expression. Bloomington, Ind.: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 1998.

Cornell, Drucilla, ed. Feminism and Pornography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Stan, Adele M., ed. Debating Sexual Correctness: Pornography, Sexual Harassment, Date Rape, and the Politics of Sexual Equality. New York: Delta, 1995.

By the time the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) penned his infamous Philosopher in the Bedroom (1795), there was little doubt that obscene, erotic, sexually explicit writing had become a well-established and profitable genre. Books, pamphlets, and prints were sold in the capital cities of Europe, and authors and publishers were occasionally prosecuted for the production of such lascivious material. Readers recorded their responses to such works and even joked about them, as the French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) would do in his Confessions, as books designed to be read with only one hand. The term pornography, however, had yet to be invented to describe this sort of material, though only a decade later the French bibliographer Étienne-Gabriel Peignot (1767–1849) would talk about "sotadic or pornographic" books when describing works that had been censured due to their moral impropriety in his Dictionnaire critique, littéraire et bibliographique des principaux livres, condamnés au feu, supprimés ou censurés (1806). The English equivalent of this work did not appear until the mid-nineteenth century. The crystallization of a terminology for this kind of erotic and obscene literature and imagery at the beginning of the early modern era reflected the importance of the period in bringing such material into being.

The origins of pornography are highly debated, in part because determining such origins depends on our ability to find people in the past reacting negatively to the circulation of sexually explicit material. The erotic statuary and poetry of Greco-Roman culture, with its celebration of the god Priapus (identified by his large, erect penis) and its explicit depictions of male and female sodomy, became "pornographic" to a later age that saw them as the embodiment of a kind of sexual libertinism condemned by Christianity. Antonio Beccadelli's Hermaphroditus (1425), for example, was burned in several Italian cities because its poetic dialogue between a penis and a vagina, dedicated to Cosimo de' Medici, future ruler of Florence, was considered morally offensive. Renaissance humanists delighted in writing priapic poems in imitation of ancient erotic poetry; the twenty-two editions of the ancient Carmina Priapea in circulation by 1517 suggest how popular these writings were in the early days of printing. Yet the fact that such works were published in Latin generally made them socially acceptable because they were intended for an educated audience. By contrast, eighteenth-century invocations of priapic cults seem far more "pornographic" because they were written in more accessible prose accompanied by engravings that recreated vividly the ancient rituals of erotic worship.

In the early decades of the sixteenth century, two works composed by Pietro Aretino (1492–1556) challenged the humanist approach to ancient sexuality by bringing the discussion of sex and society into the marketplace. Aretino's Sonnetti lussuriosi (Lecherous sonnets, 1527), written to accompany the engraver Marc'Antonio Raimondi's sixteen images depicting different sexual positions, became the quintessential image of "Renaissance pornography" as a reinvention of ancient Greco-Roman paintings of whores coupling with their clients. Today only one copy of this text survives, although dozens of imitations of the "Aretine postures" competed with each other during the next two centuries, increasing the number of sexual positions to well over forty. More powerfully, Aretino's Ragionamenti (Dialogues, 1534–1536) invented the idea of erotic initiation as a conversation between an old whore and a young girl. Later works such as Ferrante Pallavicino's La retorica delle puttane (The whore's rhetoric, 1642) and John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748–1749), more popularly known as Fanny Hill, elaborated on the theme that whores, as society's sexual experts, were best able to converse about this subject. Aretino's reputation as a pornographer grew steadily across the centuries. Eighteenth-century readers delighted in works such as Aretinus Redivivus—a book listed in a 1745 London indictment against a bookseller known for his stock of lewd books—L'Arétin français, par un member de l'académie des dames (The French Aretine, by a member of the ladies' academy, 1787), and Le petitneveu de l'Arétin (Aretino's grandnephew, 1800).

The themes of early modern pornographic writing are, like most pornography, highly repetitive. The sodomitical rituals of the schoolroom, the sexual antics of convents, the amours of rulers, and, of course, whorish conversation defined the terrain. What changed primarily were the availability of this material to a reading public and the willingness of readers to talk about it. Renaissance pornography was defined by a handful of works, primarily associated with Aretino and his Venetian associates, and it was only retrospectively described as pornography. We need to contrast this situation with the dramatic increase in erotic publications in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Consider the famous case of the English diarist Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) who first saw L'escole des filles (1655), a popular French erotic work that chastely presented itself as a "school for girls," at his bookseller's on 13 January 1668. He thought it was lewder than the popular La puttana errante (Wandering whore), often attributed to Aretino, and finally gave in to the temptation of buying it on 8 February. The next morning he read it at home, recorded its ability to arouse him, and then burned it. Pepys, in other words, was a connoisseur of erotic writing, even as he sought to present himself as a reader who ultimately did the right thing by refusing to keep such works at home. He knew where to find such works, he knew what to do with them, and he recorded his excitement and his shame.

By the late seventeenth century the publication of pornography shifted decisively from Italy to northern Europe. The English, Dutch, and French increasingly played a greater role in its production and dissemination. Early works were reprinted and translated, and new works reached a much wider audience. Pornographic writings did not remain entirely static in their content; they began to reflect new social issues. Popular French works such as Jean Barrin's Venus dans le cloître (Venus in the cloister, 1683) and the Histoire de Dom Bougre, portier des Chartreux (The history of Don Bougre, the gatekeeper of Chartreux, 1741), which recounted the lesbianism of the convent and the voracious sexual appetites of male clergy, respectively, took up the old theme of anticlericalism with new vigor in the post-Reformation era. Other works reflected the fascination with new philosophies, such as materialism, that allowed people to think about the human body as an anatomical machine, as was the case with the popular Thérèse philosophe (1748) and Cleland's controversial Fanny Hill. At the same time, pornography increasingly became a means of attacking political authority. The culmination of this final development can be found in the numerous pornographic satires of the sexual life of Marie Antoinette (1755–1793), wife of the French King Louis XVI (ruled 1774–1792) in the 1790s. The French queen was dead by the time Sade wrote his violent apotheosis of sexuality in the mid-1790s, thus he was left to imagine an impersonal world of sex and violence that sought to dissect virtually every pretension of earlier erotic works to offer a message beyond pure materialism. These were the books that Peignot had in mind when he talked about "sotadic or pornographic" works that had been condemned over the centuries.

Bibliography

Barkan, Leonard. Transuming Passion: Ganymede and the Erotics of Humanism. Stanford, 1991.

De Jean, Joan. The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France. Chicago, 2002.

Foxon, David. Libertine Literature in England, 1660–1745. New Hyde Park, N.Y., 1965.

Frantz, David O. Festum Voluptatis: A Study of Renaissance Erotica. Columbus, Ohio, 1989.

Ginzburg, Carlo. "Titian, Ovid and Sixteenth-Century Codes for Erotic Illustration." In his Myth, Emblems, Clues, translated by John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi, pp. 77–95. London, 1990.

Goulemot, Jean Marie. Forbidden Texts: Erotic Literature and Its Readers in Eighteenth-Century France. Translated by James Simpson. Philadelphia, 1994.

Hunt, Lynn, ed. The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800. New York, 1993.

Kendrick, Walter. The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture. New York, 1987.

Moulton, Ian Frederick. Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England. Oxford, 2000.

Naumann, Peter. Keyhole und Candle: John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure und die Entstehung des pornographischen Romans in England. Heidelberg, 1976.

Talvacchia, Bette. Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture. Princeton, 1999.

Thompson, Roger. Unfit for Modest Ears: A Study of Pornographic, Obscene and Bawdy Works Written or Published in England in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century. Totowa, N.J., 1979.

Turner, James Grantham. Schooling Sex: Libertine Literature and Erotic Education in Italy, France, and England 1534–1685. Oxford, 2003.

Wagner, Peter. Eros Revived: Erotica of the Enlightenment in England and America. London, 1988.

—PAULA FINDLEN

The representation in books, magazines, photographs, films, and other media of scenes of sexual behavior that are erotic or lewd and are designed to arouse sexual interest.

Pornography is the depiction of sexual behavior that is intended to arouse sexual excitement in its audience. During the twentieth century, Americans have debated whether pornographic material should be legally protected or legally banned. Those who believe pornography must be protected argue that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, including sexual expression. Traditional opponents of pornography raise moral concerns, arguing that the First Amendment does not protect expression that corrupts people's behavior. More recently, some feminists have advocated suppressing pornography because it perpetuates gender stereotypes and promotes violence against women.

Pornography has been regulated by the legal standards that govern the concept of obscenity, which refers to things society may consider disgusting, foul, or immoral, and may include material that is blasphemous. Pornography is limited to depictions of sexual behavior and may not be obscene.

The U.S. Supreme Court has established that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. The more troublesome question has been defining what is and is not obscene. In 1957 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 77 S. Ct. 1304, 1 L. Ed. 2d 1498, stated that obscenity is "utterly without redeeming social importance" and therefore is not protected by the First Amendment. The Roth test for obscenity is "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient [lewd or lustful] interest." The Roth test proved difficult to use because every term in it eluded a conclusive definition.

The Supreme Court added requirements to the definition of obscenity in a 1966 case involving the bawdy English novel Fanny Hill. In Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413, 86 S. Ct. 975, 16 L. Ed. 2d 1, the Court concluded that to establish obscenity, the material must, aside from appealing to the prurient interest, be "utterly without redeeming social value" and "patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description of sexual matters." The phrase "utterly without redeeming social value" allowed a loophole for pornographers. Expert witnesses testified that there was at least a shred of social value in the depiction of sexual behavior and social relations.

The Supreme Court established the basic legal standard for pornography in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S. Ct. 2607, 37 L. Ed. 2d 419 (1973). Chief Justice Warren E. Burger stated in Miller that pornographic material would be classified as obscene if it met three criteria: (1) the work, taken as a whole by an average person applying contemporary community standards, appeals to the prurient interest; (2) the work depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way; and (3) the work, when taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Burger emphasized in Miller that only hard-core pornography could be designated as patently offensive. He listed examples of patently offensive descriptions or representations, including representations of "ultimate sex acts" and "masturbation, excretory functions and lewd exhibition of the genitals."

Based on Miller, the law distinguishes between hard-core pornography and soft-core pornography, which involves depictions of nudity and limited and simulated sexual conduct. Because it is not as graphic or explicit as hard-core pornography, soft-core pornography is protected under the First Amendment.

Child pornography, whether hard-core or soft-core, is treated severely under the law. In 1982 the Supreme Court, in New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 102 S. Ct. 3348, 73 L. Ed. 2d 1113, held that child pornography is not a form of expression protected under the Constitution. It found that the state of New York had a compelling interest in protecting children from sexual abuse and found a close connection between such abuse and the use of children in the production of pornographic materials. In 1990 the Court went even further in upholding a state law prohibiting the possession and viewing of child pornography (Osborne v. Ohio, 495 U.S. 103, 110 S. Ct. 1691, 109 L. Ed. 2d 98).

In the 1980s some feminists began an attack on pornography and the way the Supreme Court had structured the legal debate using the First Amendment. Led by law professor Catharine A. MacKinnon and writer Andrea Dworkin, they proposed that women be permitted to sue pornographers for damages under civil rights laws. In 1982, in an alliance with political conservatives opposed to pornography, MacKinnon and Dworkin convinced Indianapolis officials to pass a municipal ordinance based on their civil rights approach. The ordinance described pornography as "a discriminatory practice based on sex which denies women equal opportunity in society" and defined it as "the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women, whether in pictures or words," especially in a violent or degrading context. The ordinance made unlawful the production, sale, exhibition, and distribution of pornography and gave anyone injured by a person who has seen or read pornography the right to bring a civil suit against the maker or seller.

Supporters of the ordinance argued that the legislation was a civil rights measure whose purpose was to fight sex discrimination. In their view the ordinance regulated conduct rather than free speech and thus did not violate the First Amendment. They argued that even if pornography was viewed as speech, it should be treated as a low-value form of speech that was not entitled to First Amendment protection.

All of these arguments were rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Hudnut v. American Booksellers Association, Inc., 771 F.2d 323 (7th Cir. 1985). The court agreed that pornography affected how people view the world and their social relations but observed that the same could be said of other speech, including expressions of racial bigotry. Yet these kinds of expression are protected as speech because to do otherwise would give the government control of "all institutions of culture" and allow it to be the "great censor and director of which thoughts are good for us." The court, adhering to the definition of obscenity first articulated in Miller, ruled that the ordinance's definition of pornography would cover many works that are not obscene because it would not take the value of the work as a whole into account or consider the work as a whole. The court of appeals' decision effectively ended this approach to the regulation of pornography.

In the 1990s attention has been paid to the new ways technology can supply pornography. The use of computer bulletin boards and the Internet to distribute pornography nationally and internationally led to the enactment of the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) (47 U.S.C.A. § 223). The CDA was designed to outlaw obscene and indecent sexual material in cyberspace, including the Internet. In Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 117 S. Ct. 2329, 138 L. Ed. 2d 874 (1997), the Supreme Court overturned provisions of the CDA prohibiting transmission of obscene or indecent material by means of a telecommunications device. The Court held that the provisions represented a content-based restriction, in violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.

See: Censorship; Freedom of Speech; Movie Rating; Roth v. United States; Telecommunications; Theaters and Shows; X Rating.

Quotes:

"What I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing-cards when you're a kid, and pornographic playing-cards when you're older. It's that when you're a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy." - Edward Albee

"There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, Did you get an erection? If the answer is Yes from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic." - W. H. Auden

"A widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction." - J. G. Ballard

"At male strip shows, it is still the women that we watch, the audience of women and their eager faces. They are more obscene than if they were dancing naked themselves." - Jean Baudrillard

"Pornography is the quadraphonics of sex. It adds a third and fourth track to the sexual act. It is the hallucination of detail that rules. Science has already habituated us to this microscopics, this excess of the real in its microscopic detail, this voyeurism of exactitude." - Jean Baudrillard

"Pornographers are the enemies of women only because our contemporary ideology of pornography does not encompass the possibility of change, as if we were the slaves of history and not its makers. Pornography is a satire on human pretensions." - Angela Carter

See more famous quotes about Pornography

Books, photographs, magazines, art, or music designed to excite sexual impulses and considered by public authorities or public opinion as in violation of accepted standards of sexual morality. American courts have not yet settled on a satisfactory definition of what constitutes pornographic material. (See obscenity.)

• Occupations and Job Titles

"Porn" redirects here. For other uses, see Porn (disambiguation).

Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter. Pornography may use a variety of media, including books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video, and video games. The term applies to the depiction of the act rather than the act itself, and so does not include live exhibitions like sex shows and striptease. A pornographic model poses for still photographs. A pornographic actor or porn star performs in pornographic films. If dramatic skills are not involved, a performer in porn films may be also be called a model.

A distinction is often made between erotica (the portrayal of sexuality with high-art aspirations, focusing also on feelings and emotions) and pornography (the depiction of acts in a sensational manner, with the entire focus on the physical act, so as to arouse quick intense reactions).^[1][2]

Pornography has often been subject to censorship and legal restraints to publication on grounds of obscenity. Such grounds and even the definition of pornography have differed in various historical, cultural, and national contexts.^[3] With the emergence of social attitudes more tolerant of sexuality and more specific legal definitions of obscenity, an industry for the production and consumption of pornography arose in the latter half of the 20th century. The introduction of home video and the Internet saw booms in a worldwide porn industry that generates billions of dollars annually.

A distinction is made between hardcore and softcore pornography. Softcore pornography can generally be described as focusing on nude modeling and suggestive, but not explicit, simulations of sexual intercourse, whereas hardcore pornography explicitly showcases penetrative intercourse. The consumers of porn (particularly hardcore) are assumed to be men, and thus most production targets their presumed tastes.

Contents 1 Etymology 2 History 3 Sub-genres 4 Economics 4.1 Non-commercial pornography 5 Technology 5.1 Computer-generated images and manipulations 5.2 3D pornography 6 Production and distribution by region 7 Legal status 8 Effect on sexual crime 9 Statistics 10 Anti-pornography movement 10.1 Feminist objections 10.2 Legal objections 10.3 Religious objections 11 See also 12 References 13 Further reading 13.1 Advocacy 13.2 Opposition 13.3 Neutral or mixed 14 External links

Etymology

A French caricature on "the great epidemic of pornography."

The word is similar to the modern Greek πορνογραφία (pornographia), which derives from the Greek words πόρνη (pornē, "prostitute" and πορνεία - pornea, "prostitution"^[4]), and γράφειν (graphein, "to write or to record", derived meaning "illustration", cf. "graph"), and the suffix -ία (-ia, meaning "state of", "property of", or "place of"), thus meaning "a written description or illustration of prostitutes or prostitution". No date is known for the first use of the word in Greek.

"Pornographie" was in use in the French language during the 1800s. The word did not enter the English language as the familiar conjunction until 1857^[5] or as a French import in New Orleans in 1842.^[6]

History

The Venus of Willendorf, a figurine with exaggerated sex organs

Oil lamp artifact depicting coitus more ferarum.

For more details on this topic, see History of erotic depictions.

Depiction of sex by Édouard-Henri Avril.

Depictions of a sexual nature are as old as civilization with depictions such as the venus figurines and rock art existing since prehistoric times.^[7] But the concept of pornography as understood today did not exist until the Victorian era. For example the French Impressionism masterwork by Édouard Manet, titled Olympia was a nude picture of a French courtesan, literally a "prostitute picture". It was controversial at the time.

Nineteenth century legislation eventually outlawed the publication, retail and trafficking of certain writings and images regarded as pornographic, and would order the destruction of shop and warehouse stock, meant for sale. However, the private possession of and viewing of (some forms of) pornography was not made an offence until recent times.^[8]

When large scale excavations of Pompeii were undertaken in the 1860s, much of the erotic art of the Romans came to light, shocking the Victorians who saw themselves as the intellectual heirs of the Roman Empire. They did not know what to do with the frank depictions of sexuality, and endeavored to hide them away from everyone but upper class scholars. The moveable objects were locked away in the Secret Museum in Naples and what could not be removed was covered and cordoned off as to not corrupt the sensibilities of women, children and the working class.

Fanny Hill is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel."^[9] It is an erotic novel by John Cleland first published in England in 1748.^[10][11] It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history.^[12] The authors were charged with "corrupting the King's subjects."

The world's first law criminalizing pornography was the United Kingdom Obscene Publications Act 1857 enacted at the urging of the Society for Suppression of Vice. The Act, which applied to the United Kingdom and Ireland, made the sale of obscene material a statutory offence, giving the courts power to seize and destroy offending material. The Act did not apply to Scotland, where the common law continued to apply. However, the Act did not define "obscene", leaving this for the courts to determine. Prior to this Act, the publication of obscene material was treated as a common law misdemeanour^[13] and effectively prosecuting authors and publishers was difficult even in cases where the material was clearly intended as pornography.

The Victorian attitude that pornography was for a select few can be seen in the wording of the Hicklin test stemming from a court case in 1868 where it asks, "whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences." Despite the fact of their suppression, depictions of erotic imagery were common throughout history.^[14]

Pornographic film production commenced almost immediately after the invention of the motion picture in 1895. Two of the earliest pioneers were Eugène Pirou and Albert Kirchner. Kirchner directed the earliest surviving pornographic film for Pirou under the trade name "Léar". The 1896 film, Le Coucher de la Marie showed Louise Willy performing a striptease. Pirou's film inspired a genre of risqué French films showing women disrobing and other filmmakers realised profits could be made from such films.^[15][16]

Sexually explicit films were soon characterised as obscene and rendered illegal. Those that were made were produced underground by amateurs starting in the 1920s, primarily in France and the United States. Processing the film by commercial means was risky as was their distribution. Distribution was strictly private.^[17][18] Denmark was the first country to legalize pornography in 1969, which led to an explosion of commercially produced pornography. It continued to be banned in other countries, and had to be smuggled in, where it was sold "under the counter" or (sometimes) shown in "members only" cinema clubs.^[17]

Sub-genres

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2010)

Main article: List of pornographic sub-genres

Former hardcore porn star Penny Flame in a cheesecake image (no penetration, genitals not visible, no nudity, but implicitly sexually suggestive content)

In general, softcore refers to pornography that does not depict penetration (usually, genitals are not shown on camera),^[19] while hardcore refers to pornography that explicitly depicts penetration.^[20]

Pornography is classified according to the physical characteristics of the participants, fetish, sexual orientation, etc., as well as the types of sexual activity featured. Reality and voyeur pornography, animated videos, and legally prohibited acts also influence the classification of pornography. The genres of pornography are based on the type of activity featured and the category of participants, such as:

• Alt porn
• Amateur pornography
• Ethnic pornography
• Fetish pornography
• Group sex
• Reality pornography
• Sexual-orientation-based pornography
  • Straight porn (unless otherwise stated this is assumed in this article)
  • Gay pornography
  • Lesbian pornography
  • Bisexual pornography
• Softcore pornography (including glamour photography, cheesecake and other salacious images of women or men)

Economics

Main article: Sex industry

Revenues of the adult industry in the United States are difficult to determine. In 1970, a Federal study estimated that the total retail value of hardcore pornography in the United States was no more than $10 million.^[21]

In 1998, Forrester Research published a report on the online "adult content" industry estimating $750 million to $1 billion in annual revenue. As an unsourced aside, the Forrester study speculated on an industry-wide aggregate figure of $8–10 billion, which was repeated out of context in many news stories,^[22] after being published in Eric Schlosser's book on the American black market.^[23] Studies in 2001 put the total (including video, pay-per-view, Internet and magazines) between $2.6 billion and $3.9 billion.^[24]

A significant amount of pornographic video is shot in the San Fernando Valley, which has been a pioneering region for producing adult films since the 1970s, and has since become home for various models, actors/actresses, production companies, and other assorted businesses involved in the production and distribution of pornography.

The pornography industry has been considered influential in deciding format wars in media, including being a factor in the VHS vs. Betamax format war (the videotape format war)^[25][26] and in the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD format war (the high-def format war).^[25][26][27]

Non-commercial pornography

As well as the porn industry, there is a large amount of non-commercial pornography. This should be distinguished from commercial pornography falsely marketed as featuring "amateurs". The Alt Sex Stories Text Repository focuses on prose stories collected from Usenet.

Technology

Mass-distributed pornography is as old as the modern printing press. Almost as soon as photography was invented, it was being used to produce pornographic images. Some claim^[who?] that pornography has been a driving force in the development of technologies from the printing press, through photography (still and motion), to satellite TV, other forms of video, and the Internet. With the invention of tiny cameras and wireless equipments voyeur pornography is gaining ground. Mobile cameras are used to capture pornographic photos or videos, and forwarded as MMS, a practice known as sexting.

Computer-generated images and manipulations

Digital manipulation requires the use of source photographs, but some pornography is produced without human actors at all. The idea of completely computer-generated pornography was conceived very early as one of the most obvious areas of application for computer graphics and 3D rendering.

Until the late 1990s, digitally manipulated pornography could not be produced cost-effectively. In the early 2000s, it became a growing segment, as the modelling and animation software matured and the rendering capabilities of computers improved. As of 2004, computer-generated pornography depicting situations involving children and sex with fictional characters, such as Lara Croft, is already produced on a limited scale. The October 2004 issue of Playboy featured topless pictures of the title character from the BloodRayne video game.^[28]

3D pornography

Due to the popularity of 3D blockbusters in theaters such as Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon, companies are now looking to shoot pornography movies in 3D. The first case of this occurred in Hong Kong, when a group of filmmakers filmed 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy released in April 2011.^[29][30]

Production and distribution by region

Main article: Pornography by region

The production and distribution of pornography are economic activities of some importance. The exact size of the economy of pornography and the influence that it has in political circles are matters of controversy.

In the United States, the sex film industry is centered in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. In Europe, Budapest is regarded as the industry center.^[31][32][33]

Legal status

Further information: Pornography by region

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The legal status of pornography varies widely from country to country. Most countries allow at least some form of pornography. In some countries, softcore pornography is considered tame enough to be sold in general stores or to be shown on TV. Hardcore pornography, on the other hand, is usually regulated. The production and sale, and to a slightly lesser degree the possession, of child pornography is illegal in almost all countries, and some countries have restrictions on pornography depicting violence (see e.g. rape pornography) or pornography depicting sex of a human with an animal, or both.

Pornographic entertainment on display in a sex shop window. There is usually a minimum age to go into pornographic stores.

Most countries attempt to restrict minors' access to hardcore materials, limiting availability to sex shops, mail-order, and television channels that parents can restrict, among other means. There is usually an age minimum for entrance to pornographic stores, or the materials are displayed partly covered or not displayed at all. More generally, disseminating pornography to a minor is often illegal. Many of these efforts have been rendered practically irrelevant by widely available Internet pornography. A failed US law would have made these same restrictions apply to the internet.

In the United States, a person receiving unwanted commercial mail he or she deems pornographic (or otherwise offensive) may obtain a Prohibitory Order, either against all mail from a particular sender, or against all sexually explicit mail, by applying to the United States Postal Service. There are recurring urban legends of snuff movies, in which murders are filmed for pornographic purposes. Despite extensive work to ascertain the truth of these rumors, law enforcement officials have been unable to find any such works.

Some courts have applied US copyright protection to pornographic materials.^[34][35] Although the first US Copyright law specifically barred obscene materials, the provision was removed in subsequent extensions of copyright. Most pornographic productions are theoretically work for hire meaning pornographic models do not receive statutory royalties for their performances. Of difficulty is the changing views of what is considered obscene, meaning works could slip into and out of copyright protection based upon the prevailing standards of decency. This was not an issue with the copyright law up until 1972 when copyright protection required registration. When congress changed the law to make copyright protection automatic and for the life of the author, some courts have held it effectively granted copyright protection to pornography because materials once considered obscene might no longer be considered as such. Congress's decision also made ascertaining the copyright status of pornographic materials nearly impossible because of the secrecy conferred to the identity of the models and producers.

Some people, including pornography producer Larry Flynt and the writer Salman Rushdie,^[36] have argued that pornography is vital to freedom and that a free and civilized society should be judged by its willingness to accept pornography.

The UK Government has criminalised possession of what it terms "extreme pornography" following the highly publicised murder of Jane Longhurst.

Child pornography is illegal in most countries, with a person most commonly being a child until the age of 18 (though the age does vary). In those countries, any film or photo with a child subject in a sexual act is considered pornography and illegal.

Effect on sexual crime

Main article: Social effects of pornography

Research concerning the effects of pornography is inconclusive on the issue of crime. Some studies support the contention that the viewing of pornographic material may increase rates of sexual crimes, while others have shown no effects, or a decrease in the rates of such crimes. However, most of these studies focus on various correlations, and correlation does not imply causation.

Statistics

More than 70% of male internet users from 18 to 34 visit a pornographic site in a typical month.^[37]

Anti-pornography movement

Main article: Anti-pornography movement

Opposition to pornography comes generally, though not exclusively, from three primary sources: law, religion and feminism.

Feminist objections

Main article: Feminist views of pornography

Feminist critics of pornography, such as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, generally consider it demeaning to women. They argue that the pornographic industry contributes to violence against women, both in the production of pornography (which they charge entails the physical, psychological, or economic coercion of the women who perform in it, and where they argue that the abuse and exploitation of women is rampant) and in its consumption (where they charge that pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation, and coercion of women, and reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and sexual harassment).^{[38][39][40][41]} They charge that pornography presents a severely distorted image of sexual relations, and reinforces sex myths; that it always shows women as readily available and desiring to engage in sex at any time, with any man, on men's terms, always responding positively to any advances men make.^[42]

Legal objections

See also: Legal objections to pornography in the United States

Religious objections

Main article: Religious views on pornography

Religious organizations have been important in bringing about political action against pornography.^[43] In the United States, religious beliefs effect the formation of political beliefs which concern pornography.^[44]

See also

Pornography portal

• Adult movie theater
• Adult non-pornographic website
• Carnography
• Cartoon pornography
• COPINE scale
• Erotica
• Golden Age of Porn, Porn chic
• History of erotic photography
• List of authors of erotic works
• List of men's magazines
• List of porn stars
• List of pornographic book publishers
• List of pornographic magazines
• List of pornographic movie studios
• Lust
• Pornography addiction
• Sex in advertising
• Sex-positive feminism
• Sex worker
• Stanley v. Georgia — Right to pornography
• Women's erotica
• X rating, sometimes styled as XXX

References

1. ^ Erotica is Not Pornography, William J. Gehrke, The Tech, 1996-12-10.
2. ^ "h2g2 - What is Erotic and What is Pornographic?". BBC.co.uk. 2004-03-29. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2163070. Retrieved 2012-01-14. 
3. ^ H. Mongomery Hyde (1964) A History of Pornography: 1–26.
4. ^ List of Greek words starting with πορν- (porn-) on Perseus.
5. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary. Etymonline.com. Retrieved on 2011-04-21.
6. ^ history of the word pornography | podictionary – for word lovers – dictionary etymology, trivia & history. podictionary (2009-03-13). Retrieved on 2011-04-21. Archived from the original on 2011-05-11.
7. ^ Richard Rudgley (2000). The lost civilizations of the Stone Age. Simon and Schuster. pp. 195–. ISBN 978-0-684-86270-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=vhSHn-B89A0C&pg=PA195. Retrieved 2011-04-21. 
8. ^ H. Montgomery Hyde A History of Pornography. (1969) London, Heinemann: 14.
9. ^ Foxon, Libertine Literature in England, 1660–1745, 1965, p. 45.
10. ^ Wagner, "Introduction", in Cleland, Fanny Hill, 1985, p. 7.
11. ^ Lane, Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age, 2000, p. 11.
12. ^ Browne, The Guide to United States Popular Culture, 2001, p. 273, ISBN 0-87972-821-3; Sutherland, Offensive Literature: Decensorship in Britain, 1960–1982, 1983, p. 32, ISBN 0-389-20354-8.
13. ^ From the precedent set by R. v. Curl (1729) following the publication of Venus in the Cloister.
14. ^ Beck, Marianna (May 2003). "The Roots of Western Pornography: Victorian Obsessions and Fin-de-Siècle Predilections". Libido, The Journal of Sex and Sensibility. http://www.libidomag.com/nakedbrunch/archive/europorn07.html. Retrieved 2006-08-22. 
15. ^ Bottomore, Stephen; Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan eds. (1996). "Léar (Albert Kirchner)". Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. British Film Institute. http://www.victorian-cinema.net/lear.htm. Retrieved 2006-10-15. 
16. ^ Bottomore, Stephen; Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan eds. (1996). "Eugène Pirou". Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. British Film Institute. http://www.victorian-cinema.net/pirou.htm. Retrieved 2006-10-15. 
17. ^ ^{a b} Chris Rodley, Dev Varma, Kate Williams III (Directors); Marilyn Milgrom, Grant Romer, Rolf Borowczak, Bob Guccione, Dean Kuipers (Cast) (2006-03-07). Pornography: The Secret History of Civilization (DVD). Port Washington, NY: Koch Vision. ISBN 1-4172-2885-7. http://www.kochvision.com/product.aspx?number=741952635291. Retrieved 2006-10-21. 
18. ^ Corliss, Richard (March 29, 2005). "That Old Feeling: When Porno Was Chic". Time Magazine (Time inc). http://www.time.com/time/columnist/corliss/article/0,9565,1043267,00.html. Retrieved 2006-10-16. 
19. ^ Martin Amis (2001-03-17). "A rough trade". Guardian.co.uk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4153718,00.html. Retrieved 2012-02-29. 
20. ^ "P20th Century Nudes in Art". The Art History Archive. http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/modern/20th-Century-Nudes.html. Retrieved 2012-02-29. 
21. ^ President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. Report of The Commission on Obscenity and Pornography 1970, Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office.
22. ^ Richard, Emmanuelle (2002-05-23). "The Naked Untruth". Alternet. Archived from the original on 2004-09-28. http://web.archive.org/web/20040928182112/http://www.alternet.org/story/13212/. Retrieved 2006-09-08. 
23. ^ Schlosser, Eric (2003-05-08). Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-618-33466-7.  Schlosser's book repeats the $10 billion figure without additional evidence
24. ^ Ackman, Dan (2001-05-25). "How Big Is Porn?". Forbes.com. Forbes.com. Archived from the original on 2001-06-09. http://web.archive.org/web/20010609221146/http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html. Retrieved 2007-11-08. "$2.6 billion to $3.9 billion. Sources: Adams Media Research, Forrester Research, Veronis Suhler Communications Industry Report, IVD" 
25. ^ ^{a b} Mearian, Lucas (2006-05-02). "Porn industry may be decider in Blu-ray, HD-DVD battle". Macworld. Mac Publishing. Archived from the original on 2006-07-12. http://web.archive.org/web/20060712001523/http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/05/02/pornhd/index.php?lsrc=mwrss. Retrieved 2007-11-08.  Ron Wagner, Director of IT at a California porn studio: "If you look at the VHS vs. Beta standards, you see the much higher-quality standard dying because of [the porn industry's support of VHS] ... The mass volume of tapes in the porn market at the time went out on VHS."
26. ^ ^{a b} Lynch, Martin (2007-01-17). "Blu-ray loves porn after all". The Inquirer. Incisive Media Investments. Archived from the original on 2007-11-07. http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/01/17/blu-ray-loves-porn-after-all. Retrieved 2007-11-08. "By many accounts VHS would not have won its titanic struggle against Sony's Betamax video tape format if it had not been for porn. This might be over-stating its importance but it was an important factor. ... There is no way that Sony can ignore the boost that porn can give the Blu-ray format." 
27. ^ Gardiner, Bryan (2007-01-22). "Porn Industry May Decide DVD Format War". FOXNews.com – Technology News (Ziff Davis Media). Archived from the original on 2007-02-10. http://web.archive.org/web/20070210100959/http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245638,00.html. Retrieved 2007-11-08. "As was expected, the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show saw even more posturing and politics between the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD camps, with each side announcing a new set of alliances and predicting that the end of the war was imminent." 
28. ^ "Playboy undressed video game women – Aug. 25, 2004". CNN. 2004-08-25. http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/25/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/. Retrieved 2006-08-26. 
29. ^ "Hong Kong filmmakers shoot 'first' 3D porn film". Yahoo. 2010-08-08. Archived from the original on 2010-08-15. http://web.archive.org/web/20100815211905/http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100808/wl_asia_afp/hongkongjapanchinafilmpornography_20100808051130. Retrieved 2010-08-08. 
30. ^ "Hong Kong filmmakers shoot 'first' 3D porn film". Asian Sex Gazette. 2012-01-17. http://www.asiansexgazette.com/asg/china/china07news20.htm. Retrieved 2010-08-17. 
31. ^ “Strange and wonderful” Budapest — Where the living is increasingly pleasant...and still very cheap. Escapeartist.com (1989-09-11). Retrieved 2011-04-21.
32. ^ Sex trade moguls thrive by the Blue Danube – World, News. The Independent (1996-07-21). Retrieved 2011-04-21.
33. ^ The Art and Politics of Netporn » Abstract. Networkcultures.org. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
34. ^ Goussé, Caroline (2012-02-16). "No Copyright Protection for Pornography: A Daring Response to File-Sharing Litigation". Intellectual Property Brief. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
35. ^ Masnick, Mike (2011-11-04). "Court Wonders If Porn Can Even Be Covered By Copyright". Tech Dirt. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
36. ^ Baxter, Sarah; Brooks, Richard (2004-08-08). "Porn is vital to freedom, says Rushdie". Times Online (London: Times Newspapers). Archived from the original on 2007-11-08. http://www.webcitation.org/5TD5Q8UAz. Retrieved 2007-11-08. "Pornography exists everywhere, of course, but when it comes into societies in which it’s difficult for young men and women to get together and do what young men and women often like doing, it satisfies a more general need.... While doing so, it sometimes becomes a kind of standard-bearer for freedom, even civilisation." 
37. ^ Statistics on Pornography, Sexual Addiction and Online Perpetrators and their Effects on Children, Pastors and Churches. Safefamilies.org. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
38. ^ Shrage, Laurie. (2007-07-13). "Feminist Perspectives on Sex Markets: Pornography". In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
39. ^ Mackinnon, Catherine A. (1984) "Not a moral issue". Yale Law and Policy Review 2:321-345. Reprinted in: Mackinnon (1989). Toward a Feminist Theory of the State Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-89645-9 (1st ed), ISBN 0-674-89646-7 (2nd ed). "Sex forced on real women so that it can be sold at a profit to be forced on other real women; women's bodies trussed and maimed and raped and made into things to be hurt and obtained and accessed, and this presented as the nature of women; the coercion that is visible and the coercion that has become invisible—this and more grounds the feminist concern with pornography".
40. ^ "A Conversation With Catherine MacKinnon (transcript)". Think Tank. 1995. PBS. http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript215.html. Retrieved 2009-09-01. 
41. ^ MacKinnon, Catharine (1987). Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 147.
42. ^ Jeffries, Stuart (2006-04-12). "Stuart Jeffries talks to leading feminist Catharine MacKinnon". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/apr/12/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety. 
43. ^ Sherkat and Ellison, 1997, "The Cognitive Structure of a Moral Crusade", Social Forces 75(3), p. 958.
44. ^ Sherkat and Ellison, 1999, "Recent Developments and Current Controversies in the Sociology of Religion", Annual Review of Sociology 25, p. 370.

Further reading

Advocacy

• Susie Bright. "Susie Sexpert's Lesbian Sex World and Susie Bright's Sexual Reality: A Virtual Sex World Reader", San Francisco, CA: Cleis Press, 1990 and 1992. Challenges any easy equation between feminism and anti-pornography positions.
• Betty Dodson. "Feminism and Free speech: Pornography". Feminists for Free Expression 1993. May 8, 2002
• Kate Ellis. Caught Looking: Feminism, Pornography, and Censorship. New York: Caught Looking Incorporated, 1986.
• Susan Griffin. Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge Against Nature. New York: Harper, 1981.
• Gever, Matthew (1998-12-03). "Pornography Helps Women, Society". UCLA Bruin. http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/1998/12/pornography-helps-women-societ. Retrieved 2011-07-03. 
• Gregory, Michele. "Pro-Sex Feminism: Redefining Pornography (or, a study in alliteration: the pro pornography position paper)". Witsendzine.com. http://witsendzine.com/musings/michele/ppp.htm. Retrieved 2011-07-03. 
• Andrea Juno and V. Vale. Angry Women, Re/Search # 12. San Francisco, CA: Re/Search Publications, 1991. Performance artists and literary theorists who challenge Dworkin and MacKinnon's claim to speak on behalf of all women.
• McElroy, Wendy (2000-06-29). "You Are What You Read?". Lewrockwell.com. http://www.lewrockwell.com/mcelroy/mcelroy14.html. Retrieved 2011-07-03.  Defends the availability of pornography, and condemns feminist anti-pornography campaigns.
• McElroy, Wendy. "A Feminist Overview of Pornography, Ending in a Defense Thereof". Wendymcelroy.com. http://www.wendymcelroy.com/freeinqu.htm. Retrieved 2011-07-03. 
• McElroy, Wendy. "A Feminist Defense of Pornography". Council for Secular Humanism. http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/mcelroy_17_4.html. Retrieved 2011-07-03. 
• Newitz, Annalee (May 8, 2002). "Obscene Feminists: Why Women Are Leading the Battle Against Censorship". San Francisco Bay Guardian. http://www.sfbg.com/36/32/news_womenvscensorship.html. Retrieved 2011-07-03. 
• Strossen, Nadine. Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex and the Fight for Women's Rights. ISBN 0-8147-8149-7. 
• Blumen, Jonathan (November 1995). Nadine Strossen: Pornography Must Be Tolerated. 1. http://www.spectacle.org/1195/strossen.html. 
• Tucker, Scott (1991). "Gender, Fucking, and Utopia: An Essay in Response to John Stoltenberg's Refusing to Be a Man". Social Text (27): 3–34.  Critique of Stoltenberg and Dworkin's positions on pornography and power.

Opposition

• Carse, A., 1995, "Pornography: An Uncivil Liberty?", Hypatia 10(1): 155-182. An argument for approaches to end harm to women caused by pornography.
• Hill, J. 1987, "Pornography and Degradation", Hypatia 2: 39-54. A critique of the pornographic industry within a Kantian ethical framework.
• Michael Kimmel. "Men Confront Pornography". New York: Meridian—Random House, 1990. A variety of essays that try to assess ways that pornography may take advantage of men.
• Secondary Negative Effects on Employees of the Pornographic Industry, by Shelley Lubben
• MacKinnon, C., 1984, "Not a Moral Issue", Yale Law & Policy Review 2(2): 321-345. An argument that pornography is one element of an unjust institution of the subordination of women to men.
• MacKinnon, C., 1989, "Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: 'Pleasure under Patriarchy'" Ethics 99(2): 314-346.
• Vadas, M., 1987, "A First Look at the Pornography/Civil Rights Ordinance: Could Pornography be the Subordination of Women?", The Journal of Philosophy 84(9): 487-511. A defence of the Dworkin-MacKinnon definition and condemnation of pornography employing putatively relatively rigorous analysis. See (Parent, 1990) in the same publication for a criticism of this paper.
• Vadas, M., 1992, "The Pornography / Civil Rights Ordinance v. The BOG: And the Winner Is...?", Hypatia 7(3): 94-109.]", Hypatia 84(9): 487-511. An argument that pornography increases women's vulnerability to rape.
• Williams, B. (ed.), 1988, Pornography and Sexual Violence: Evidence of the Links, London: Everywoman. A representation of the causal connections between pornography and violence towards women.
• Linda Williams: Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (University of California Press, 1989). Expanded Paperback Edition: University of California Press, 1999, ISBN 0-520-21943-0
• Linda Williams (ed.): Porn Studies, B&T, 2004, ISBN 0-8223-3312-0

Neutral or mixed

• Carole Vance, Editor. "Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality". Boston: Routledge, 1984. Collection of papers from 1982 conference; visible and divisive split between anti-pornography activists and lesbian S&M theorists.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pornography

Look up pornography in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Government

• Kutchinsky, Berl, Professor of Criminology: The first law that legalized pornography (Denmark)

Religion

• Pornography entry in Human Nature: Science and Catholic Doctrine wiki

History

• Patricia Davis, Ph.D., Simon Noble and Rebecca J. White (2010), The History of Modern Pornography

Sociology

• Diamond, M. and Uchiyama, A. (1999), Pornography, Rape and Sex Crimes in Japan, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 22(1): 1–22.
• Pornography and Censorship in: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Commentary

• American Porn Interactive web site companion to a Frontline documentary exploring the pornography industry within the United States.
• The Impact of Porn on Men, by Antonella Gambotto-Burke

v t e Photography Technical terms Angle of view Aperture Chromatic aberration Circle of confusion Color temperature Depth of field Depth of focus Exposure Exposure compensation Exposure value F-number Film format Film speed Focal length Guide number Hyperfocal distance Metering mode Perspective distortion Photograph Photographic printing Photographic processes Reciprocity Red-eye effect Science of photography Shutter speed Sync Zone System Genres Aerial Architectural Black-and-white Commercial Cloudscape Documentary Erotic Fashion Fine-art Forensic Glamour High speed Landscape Lomography Nature Nude Photojournalism Pornography Portrait Post-mortem Senior Social documentary Sports Still life Stock Street Vernacular Underwater Wedding Wildlife Techniques Afocal photography Bokeh Contre-jour Cyanotype Exposing to the right Fill flash Fireworks Harris shutter High speed Holography Infrared Kite aerial Long-exposure Macro Mordançage Multiple exposure Night Panning Panoramic Photogram (Kirlian) Print toning Redscale Rephotography Rollout Sabatier Effect Stereoscopy Stopping down Sun printing Tilt-shift Time-lapse Ultraviolet Vignetting Composition Diagonal Method Framing Geometry and symmetry Headroom Lead room Rule of thirds Simplicity Equipment Camera (Pinhole Rangefinder SLR Still TLR Toy View) Darkroom (Enlarger Safelight) Film (Base Format Holder Stock) Filter Flash (Beauty dish Cucoloris Gobo Hot shoe Grid Monolight Snoot Soft box Umbrella Wireless sync) Lens Manufacturers Monopod Movie projector Slide projector Tripod Tripod head Zone plate History Analog photography Autochrome Lumière Box camera Calotype Camera obscura Daguerreotype Dufaycolor Heliography Painted photography backdrops Photography and the law Timeline of photography technology Visual arts Digital photography Digital camera (D-SLR Comparison of D-SLRs MILC Digital camera back) Digiscoping Digital versus film photography Film scanner Image sensor (CMOS APS CCD Three-CCD camera Foveon X3 sensor) Photo sharing Pixel Color photography Color Color film (Print Slide) Color management (CMYK color model Color space Primary color RGB color model) Photographic processing C-41 process Cross processing Developer Dye coupler E-6 process Fixer Gelatin silver process Gum printing K-14 process Print permanence Push processing Stop bath List of most expensive photographs List of photographers Photography museums and galleries (category) Portal WikiProject

v t e Outline of human sexuality Physiological events Erection Insemination Orgasm Female and Male ejaculation Pregnancy Sexual arousal Health and education Birth control Condom Reproductive medicine Andrology Gynaecology Urology Safe sex Sex education Sex therapy Sex surrogate Sexual dysfunction Erectile dysfunction Hypersexuality Hyposexuality Sexually transmitted disease Sexual medicine Identity Gender identity Sexual identity Sexual orientation Law Age of consent Criminal transmission of HIV Incest Obscenity Public indecency Sexual assault Sexual harassment Sexual misconduct Sexual violence History Feminist Sex Wars History of erotic depictions Sexual revolution Relationships and society Anarchism and love/sex Family planning Marriage Paraphilia Polyamory Promiscuity Romance Sexual abstinence Sexual addiction Sexual attraction Sexual capital Sexual ethics Sexual objectification By country India China Ancient Rome the Philippines Japan South Korea United States (teen) Sexual activities Anal sex Bareback BDSM Child sex Child sexual abuse Child-on-child sexual abuse Creampie Fingering Group sex Masturbation Mechanics of sex Non-penetrative sex Mammary intercourse Facial Footjob Frot Heavy petting Handjob Sumata Oral sex Anilingus Cunnilingus Fellatio Irrumatio Stimulation of nipples Orgasm control Pompoir Quickie Sex positions Sexual abuse Rape Sexual violence Sexual fantasy Sexual intercourse Foreplay Sexual penetration Sexual sublimation Virtual sex Cybersex Dirty talk Sex industry Adult video game Sex tourism Child Female Erotica Pornography Prostitution Survival sex Sex museum Sex shop Sex toy doll Strip club Religion and sexuality Islam Christian demonology Mormonism Daoism Sex magic Animal sexual behaviour Human sexuality Portal:Sexuality Sexology Sexual slang

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - pornografi

Nederlands (Dutch)
pornografie

Français (French)
n. - pornographie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Pornographie

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - πορνογραφία

Italiano (Italian)
pornografia, letteratura porno

Português (Portuguese)
n. - pornografia (f)

Русский (Russian)
порнография

Español (Spanish)
n. - pornografía

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - pornografi

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
黄色读物, 色情出版物, 黄色印刷品

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 黃色讀物, 色情出版物, 黃色印刷品

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 도색문학

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ポルノ小説, ポルノ, エロ本, 春画, エロ写真

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) خلاعه, فسق‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮פורנוגרפיה, תועבה, ספרות/צילום זימה‬

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