Commonly colloquially referred to as “porn,” Pornography can be defined as any material whether visual written or otherwise consisting of sexually explicit material and whose purpose is sexual arousal. Even though it is something that has been there in various forms for centuries, it has never been available as it has in the last few decades mainly because of the internet. The internet is by far the main source of Pornography even though it is still available in other forms such as in magazines, audio, and literature among others. The ever growing internet accessibility around the world has made the industry spread very rapidly. Pornography is a graphic exhibition of human sexuality one that can be traced as far back as the majority of other forms of human intelligence signs. All through the ages, pornography has developed and evolved, but it was in the 20th century that it made its way into almost all aspects of the modern society (Marcus 211). To date, many societies are yet to form a uniformly acceptable opinion regarding the impacts of pornography. According to some activists, it is a good way through which individual can effectively explore their sexuality. There are others who regard pornography as the source of all evil and as such should be eliminated. However, neither of the two opposing sides is yet to offer a solid rationale for their stand. The ever growing rates of failed marriages, as well as increasing sex-related crimes, is, however, an indication that even though a moderate exposure may be harmless, excessive exposure can have some very devastating impacts on the life of not only the individual but also the society at large.
Pornography’s very definition is subjective and as such its history is almost impossible to conceive. For instance, in one society imagery might be viewed as erotic or religious while in another the same might be condemned as pornography. As such European travelers to India around the 19th century were shocked by what they saw as pornographic representations of sexual intercourse and contact on the Hindu temples (Marcus 211). Similarly, the majority of contemporary Muslim societies use the “pornography” label on many television programs and motion pictures which are unobjectionable in the Western setting. As such, from such observation one can conclude that pornography depends on an individual or a society’s point of view or understanding of nudity. Frank depictions of sexual behaviors commonly involving religious aspects were historically quite common in many societies. For instance, in ancient Rome and Greece, phallic orgiastic scenes depictions and imagery were widely common though it is most unlikely that they were meant to fulfill anything to do with the psychological or social function of contemporary pornography. However, the modern use might be possible in certain celebrated erotic manuals such as the “Ars amatoria” by Ovid, a Roman poet, a piece on sensual arousal, seduction, and intrigue (Malamuth 54). As such, apart from depending on a society perspective, pornography also has a sense of time since it is something that has ever the centuries grew and evolved.
Pornography from feminist, artistic, social, cultural, social gay, religious angles is differently defended, criticized as well as defined. Historically, obscenity has never been protected in the first amendment, and few of the materials has been labeled as obscenity by the courts. Pornography is currently a multibillion-dollar industry. The media and novel technologies, starting with the printing press and continuing via home video, film, cable television, digital imaging, and the internet they have all historically worked to expand this industry (Marcus 211). Different groups in the society have had varied opinions regarding pornography and what it means. One very vocal group are the feminists who have for long engaged in a wide-ranging debate with the majority terming the industry as a key contributor of sexist beliefs exploiting sexuality and oppressing women while others consider it a potential laboratory genre, insisting on the importance of maintaining sexuality imagination freedom. In the recent past, sexuality and sexual violence and objectifying images mainly based on pornographic conventions have increasingly pervaded the mainstream culture further increasing the fears of the impacts. Under legal terms, pornographic is referred to an obscenity. It is a term that implies the depiction of the act and not the act itself, and as such it does not include live exhibitions such as striptease and sex shows. It has been debated as a form of artistic expression of a person’s body. According to the religious perspective particular from the religious sects such as the Roman Catholicism, pornography is the degradation of a person’s body, an immoral act of showing the body or any associated sexual act (Malamuth 54). However, despite all these claims, there are still a lot of people of people who still consume the content. It is estimated that about 7 out of every 10 or 69% of the hours in all internets spending is used in accessing the pornographic materials. Further, a third of all the internet users today visit sexual sites and thus it is clear that the public patronage of pornography remains high.
Pornography is usually differentiated from erotica by the fact that it involves the portrayal of the act in a sensational way with its whole focus on the physical act with the intention of arousing a quick and intensive reaction. However, erotica involves the display of sexuality with high artistic aspiration with a focus on emotions and feelings. In the past, pornography involved a concept of viewing woman and a man having sex shown through internet sources or DVDs. However, today, the understanding and concepts around the pornography have greatly widened. Sexually arousing and explicit depictions and stories have historically been part of the human culture in its erotic and usually simultaneously with political, folkloric, artistic and sacred contexts. The modern forms of pornography started to emerge in the 16th century where it merged explicit sexual representations which challenged some traditional moral norms. It was at the time to a large extent the terrain of the male elites and acted as a representation of their desires and viewpoints (Marcus 211). After the World War II, the US started retreating from some of its efforts in regulating sexuality following emerging movements for social justice, new sexological research, development of the contemporary consumer economy and reproductive technologies. The scaled downregulation allowed for the emergence of the modern-day pornographic industry. For instance in 1953 playboy was launched after which several men’s magazines, the large-scale dissemination, and productions of video, as well as films, followed. The period after was marked with the burgeoning of the pornography industry through h mainstream and entrenchment by the new technology available at the time. The Supreme Court has since 1957 held that the law does not protect obscenity under the First Amendment (Simon 203). For instance, in 1973 the court gave a three-part ruling on how to identify or label any material as obscenity. In the ruling, the judge stated that before labeling the material as obscenity, one would have to show if the average person using modern community standards would term the materials indecent, whether the materials considered as a whole falls short of serious literary, artistic and scientific value or whether the material is patently offensive. As such, the bar for labeling any material as obscenity was set considerably very high a situation that allowed the rapid expansion of the industry.
According to Bogart, the industry is so huge that in the contemporary times, Fortune 500 corporations such as General Motors and AT"T own affiliates which are involved with the pornography production (168). It is generally not easy to obtain the exact data regarding the size of the industry. However, it is estimated that Pornography result in profits of between $5 billion and 10 billion in the US alone and over $50 billion globally. The legal war against the industry has virtually halted a key highlight of this being a 2005 pornography case filed by the federal government against a production company called Extreme Associates which had been featured in the “American Porn,” a 2002 PBS Frontline documentary. The company has an internet site for members and is controversial for making films where men degrade, rape, sexually torture and even kill women (Bogart 168). However, the case against the company was dismissed by a U.S District Court arguing that there was no dispute that the material produced was in any way obscene. He even went ahead to rule that laws on obscenity were interfering with the freedom to liberty, speech, as well as privacy and that the law should not depend on a universally accepted moral standard or code in prohibiting such materials.
Pornography is commonly linked to the deliberate explicit and arousing sexual imagery which sets it against the traditional patriarchal religious orientations which usually associate sin with sexuality while at the same time equating strictly regulated sexual behavior and chastity in heterosexual marriages with holiness or purity. According to the antipornography patriarchal positions, family values is the byword and condemns any nonmonogamous and nonheterosexual sexuality, women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy and all sexual representations (Simon 203). However, this heterosexist morality has been largely criticized by some pornography advocates who consider themselves as “pro-sex.” Others have also defended pornography by insisting that this is an issue under the First Amendment. The two groups seem to defend varied adult consensual sexual behaviors and sexuality representations as a way of expression and free speech. The groups consider this freedom crucial to the imaginations as an element of all of the art as well as a potentially radical force toward social changes.
The majority of the feminist population hold that sexuality must be reconceptualized, destigmatized as well as defined in a manner that refuses sexist moralities. Linking sexuality with sin is an aspect of specifically patriarchal societies. In a society like this, female reproduction and sexuality is controlled and regulated, such as the designation of a woman as the sexual “other” and a man standing in for the generic human through authorizing heterosexuality as well as centering this heterosexuality is allegedly innate gender roles of female submission and male supremacy (Marcus 211). These are societies which promote conditions imposing a sexual form of double standards where some women associated with financially powerful men are selected for socially acceptable inferior status in the otherwise male-dominated families while other women, girls, young men, and boys are channeled into pornography and prostitution. Patriarchal societies offer men either officially or otherwise more leeway on sexual behaviors, prostitution, and even pornography. Historically, institutions geared towards men’s needs and desires are the necessary patriarchal marriage dark aspect as well as the moralistic sexual modesty impositions. Conventional and pornography morality through seemingly opposite work in a similar way in ensuring female subordination and stigmatization, male domination and men’s access to women.
In the opinion of some feminists, sexuality including pornography and prostitution is destigmatized form of sex work according to this point of view, pornography, sexuality, and prostitution can be channeled through which a woman can show agency as well attain fiscal as well as sexual independence. According to those linked to what is termed as unusual culture such as lesbian, gay, and heterosexual and transgendered viewpoints as well as practices which challenge conservative views, free and open sexual representation is crucial in communicating culture and history, and that social disapproval towards pornography is essentially based in opposition to sexual diversity and freedom (Meger 118). Pornography mainstream cultural critics highlight the ways contemporary pornography has become continually ubiquitous. According to their viewpoint pornography can damage relationships between individuals resulting in unrealistic and usually oppressive beauty and sexual ideas. In their view, pornography limits sexual imagination and can promote obsessive and addictive responses and increasing serves as erroneous sex education for teenagers and children.
In their opposition on censorship, anti-pornography feminists argue that pornography is an institution that is historically misogynist and one whose being implies that men dominate women. They also argue that it not only degrading and humiliating to women but it also brands a woman as an object of sex in a world which considerers sex adversative to spirit and mind. Further, the viewpoint also emphasizes that sex is defined in a sexist way by the mainstream pornography naturalizing and normalizing female submission and male dominance and by virtue of its voyeuristic and ocularcentric base fosters an objectifying and fetishistic view of the sexual subject and the body. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin are among the most recognized individual around this topic for their radical feminist approach to the issue of pornography (Gelber " Adrienne 467). The two proposed a decree which would have nothing to do with censorship or police action bout one which would allow civil suits and complaints to be brought forward by individual complainants. This was through their model Civil-Rights Antipornography Ordinance which defined pornography in a manner that differentiated it from general sexual explicit materials. According to the two, pornography comprises materials which signify the explicit and sexually graphic subservience of men or women, transsexuals even children used in place of women. The majority of the feminists associate the underlying themes and practices in pornography to other forms of oppression.
There has been ongoing research on the role of mass-medicated pornography in causing unwanted or harmful social impacts such as the furthering violence against women and sexism or/and the readiness to endure such violence. Other topics of interest include profiles of individuals working in the industry and those who actually accept and enjoy it as well as the potentially addictive aspects of the material (Marcus 211). Research on the effects and uses of pornography has been done involving experimental studies, anecdotal evidence from personal stories and interviews, statistical data and polling confirming the link between undesirable social phenomena and the use or existence of pornography. A total of two presidential commission have in the past been involved in studying the effects of the material one beginning in the 1980s and an earlier one which started in 1960s (Meger 118). The first study established that there are no considerable destructive impacts while the other one established that sex is degrading and that violent pornography normalize sexist attitudes and as such resulted in actual violence. The conclusions made by the studies have since been subjected to wide-ranging debates, for instance, one involving the validity of the information obtained necessarily contrived lab experiment often having male students, the challenge of defining common terms such as the political bias of the researchers, peoples’ unwillingness to accurately report their behavior and degradation among others.
Feminist researchers at the international level have pointed out connections between slavery, sex trafficking, and pornography and its usage in conquest where there is the imposition and pornography is made of dominated women and men. For instance, during the war between Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia, forces affiliated to Serbia systematically raped women as a genocide tactic, and this was linked to pornography because the rapes were videotaped and photographed. Sexual torture recorded then displayed as a form of war pornography was also practiced against the prisoners in the U.S. by the USA troops in 2003 at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (Simon 197). Investigators afterward showed photos of male Iraqis citizens sexually being tortured and humiliated by the troops. According to feminist activists, pornography is often used to boost the invalidating troop’s morale as well as destroying the self-regard of the occupied people in the case of war.
Pornography is today widely consumed in whichever form be it print, audio or via the internet in many societies around the world. It has not only enormously grown as an industry in itself but also in mainstream imagery. This is because today, other media outlets use common pornographic themes and images in music videos, to publicize celebrities and events, in video games and even to advertise various products. It has also become a legitimate topic both as a subject of college classes and academic study. In the effort to redefine sexuality through the feminist projects, there has been an increase in erotic images and stories targeting the female audience. Those identified with queer communities and some feminists have started producing what they deem as subversive pornographies which challenges both the conventions of mainstream and traditional morality, sexist pornography. For instance, through featuring conventionally beautiful models, by celebrating the body, pleasure, and sexuality, by valorizing nontraditional nonheterosexist practices and gender roles, by stressing women’s sexual agency and desire and by acknowledging gay, transgender and lesbian desires and realities. Some support this expansion of the industry as a reflection of greater sexual autonomy for women and a social attitude liberation towards sexuality. However, there are those who argue that pornography mainstreaming does not reflect or produce any freedom but rather a representation of a backlash against the liberation movement of women and fosters the commoditization of sexuality.
Work Cited
Bogart, Leo. Commercial culture: The media system and the public interest. Routledge, 2017. 165-189.
Gelber, Katharine, and Adrienne Stone. "17. Constitutions, gender and freedom of expression: the legal regulation of pornography." Constitutions and Gender (2017): 463-532.
Malamuth, Neil M., ed. Pornography and sexual aggression. Elsevier, 2014. 54-325.
Marcus, Steven. The other Victorians: A study of sexuality and pornography in mid-nineteenth-century England. Routledge, 2017. 211-258.
Meger, Sara. "The political economy of sexual violence against men and boys in armed conflict." Sexual Violence Against Men in Global Politics. Routledge, 2018. 118-132.
Simon, William. "Pornography: Social Scripts and Legal Dilemmas." Sexual Conduct. Routledge, 2017. 197-214.
