# What Is Pornography?



## ocotillo (Oct 17, 2011)

I read an article on the subject this evening (Linked by another participant) that really touched a nerve with me. 

My youngest is majoring in art history and she has entire textbooks that we have to hide from the prudish eyes of my wife's ultra conservative Christian family when they come to visit.

On one hand it's humorous that anyone would consider a chronological history of the human form in art to be "Pornography," but on the other hand, dancing around their sensibilities does get old after awhile.

The word, "Pornography" comes to us from the French _pornographie_, which in turn is derived from the Greek, πορνογραφος. (pornographos)

It's a compound word formed by fusing πορνή (Prostitute) with γραφος (writing) and literally meant "Writings of prostitutes."

Unlike Greek terms of recent origin like "photograph" this is a real, bonafide ancient word that was used in speech. It described sexually explicit stories produced for prurient entertainment. 

It had nothing directly to do either with nudity or the depiction of the human form in art. In contrast to Western society in the post Victorian era, the Greeks were not prudes when it came to the human body. 

The author of the article I read drew a casual connection between the adoption of the word into English and the invention of the modern photograph. Maybe he should stick to soccer.

The word entered the English vocabulary in America via the French speaking section of New Orleans in the early 1800's and it described the established form of prurient literature at the time, which was still the written word.

This isn't to say that pictures and photographs cannot also qualify as pornography or that words don't change and evolve over time. But that is no reason to bastardize the term to mean whatever you want it to mean.

For example, I don't know if all of you get the same banner advertising that I do on this site, but a picture I keep seeing is an advert for Eden Fantasys which shows an attractive young woman with long brunette hair in a black camisole. She's balanced on her hands and knees with her back arched in a frankly sexual pose.

Is this picture pornographic?










All of us inject a little subjective perception into the words we use, but those perceptions are subordinate to a set of objective definitions compiled into a book we call a "Dictionary."

And by objective definition, the picture above is not pornographic. Pornography is by definition obscene and/or sexually explicit. 

Even outright nudity does not in and of itself qualify as pornography. If it did, not only would many of the great works of art be pornographic, but my old EMT training manual and the National Geographic would as well.

A person may object and say, "The pictures in your EMT manual were not intended to be sexually arousing." While that's true, this is simply a backhanded attempt to reinject subjective perception into the definition. Written and visual material either meets the objective definition of pornography or it does not. You don't need to know the person who presented it or what their intent was to make that assessment.

To me, it seems that promoting the idea that the swimsuit edition of sports magazines is pornography deligitmizes the entire question of whether it is deleterious to marriage because it's obvious that the author or authors are not being honest with their use of the term and are promoting a purely religious agenda. I can find virtually identical reasoning in the writings of Islam. 

Both approaches hearken back to the days when a woman could spend a day in the stocks for letting her ankles show.


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## Enchantment (May 11, 2011)

For certain purposes, e.g., legality's sake, there is an objective definition of what is considered pornographic.

However, from an individual perspective, it is going to be very subjective as to what a person considers pornographic.


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## Mr B (Feb 6, 2009)

It is eye candy for (mostly) men. A nice change from the regular day to day if you have a sexual partner and a sexual partner itself if you don't. 

It is used by men who do not have a sexual partner and/or men who find partner sex unpleasant for any number of reasons.


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## ocotillo (Oct 17, 2011)

Enchantment said:


> For certain purposes, e.g., legality's sake, there is an objective definition of what is considered pornographic.


Do objective definitions exist just for esoteric purposes like law or do they exist for the sake of language itself?

For example, would it be possible to discuss trigonometric functions with someone who not only does not agree with you that the sum of two and two is four, but won't tell you what they believe it really is? 

In both mathematics and language, if you can't agree with someone on the basic building blocks, further communication becomes almost impossible




Enchantment said:


> However, from an individual perspective, it is going to be very subjective as to what a person considers pornographic.


I agree and hope I was clear on that. 

I'm not the world's best communicator, but what I attempted to point out above is that the individual subjectivity you mention must of necessity take a back seat to the anchor points we've established in the English language that help us to all stay on the same page. --Else the entire concept of language suffers. 

As a general observation, (Not directed at anybody in particular) there was a time when it wasn't just what we could do with our bodies that constituted obscenity; the human body itself and especially the female body was considered obscene. 

An extreme example of this today are the more conservative sects of Islam, where women must completely cover themselves in public starting at puberty:










Historically, this mindset has been used to enslave and repress women and it was only when these attitudes started to erode that women as a group gained any real status in Western society. 

So when someone writes an article on the harmful effects of pornography in marriage, I'm willing to read it with an open mind. But when it becomes apparent that they consider women in swimsuits to be pornographic, it's hard to take them seriously.


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## Mr_brown (Oct 17, 2011)

I like to think of pornography as anything you don't want to look at after you get off. Art would be the opposite


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## annagarret (Jun 12, 2011)

Porn comes in so many different ways. That's the problem it's not black and white but also gray. My husband has a friend who loves my feet and always wants to touch and rub them, is that porn to him? I am thinking it's a foot for goodness sake, but my husband explains the whole fetish thing to me. Should I not ever wear sandals anymore???:scratchhead:

The other day in church my attractive friend and her attractive daughter were sitting next to each other and my husband and I were behind them. The daughter touched her mothers hair by moving it behind her shoulders. I noticed my husbands eyes as he watched and then looked away and down. Later I asked him if that could be sexy and he said yes. I did not judge him. I would have never thought that touching pretty hair in church could be sexually arousing. 

I feel for men, stimuli are everywhere. It must be difficult to concentrate on anything.


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## ocotillo (Oct 17, 2011)

annagarret said:


> Porn comes in so many different ways. That's the problem it's not black and white but also gray.


Well, that's kinda the idea I was arguing against here on linguistic grounds. The entire concept of language crumbles if everybody is free to coin their own subjective definition of a word. That's why we have dictionaries to keep us all on the same page.

When the idea that pornography includes anything and everything that may cause sexual arousal is taken to its logical conclusion, you end up with the Muslim swimming pool picture I posted above where everything has to be covered.


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## stoney1215 (Jun 18, 2012)

ocotillo said:


> I read an article on the subject this evening (Linked by another participant) that really touched a nerve with me.
> 
> My youngest is majoring in art history and she has entire textbooks that we have to hide from the prudish eyes of my wife's ultra conservative Christian family when they come to visit.
> 
> ...


aaahhhhh !!!!!! the million dollar question ... pornography is subjective to who ever is answering the question . some like your wifes parents , have very narrow views . others like myself have much more lenient views . for the record mine is photograph , drawing , painting , or video of actual penetration of any kind . 

the question that i am concerned with is why does someone else get to determine for me what is and isnt pornography . i think i am more than capeable of deciding for myself . 

on another note . why do you feel the need to hide your artwork in your own home . they are guests and could just as easily stay at a hotel or not visit .


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## Chris Taylor (Jul 22, 2010)

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."
—Justice Potter Stewart

I don't think it's a case of determining what is pornography for you, it's that they have determined it for themselves. And then the question is what do you do about it?

My mother hates cats. When she comes to visit, we lock the cats up in the other room. My aim is to make my mother's visit as comfortable and enjoyable for everyone.

If the "art history" makes your in-laws uncomfortable, just put the books away for a while.


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## kingsfan (Jun 4, 2012)

Mr B said:


> It is eye candy for (mostly) men. A nice change from the regular day to day if you have a sexual partner and a sexual partner itself if you don't.
> 
> It is used by men who do not have a sexual partner and/or men who find partner sex unpleasant for any number of reasons.


I look at pron on occassion (I'd say once a week for a few minutes to half an hour) and it is certainly not because I find my sexual partner unplesant.


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## Mr B (Feb 6, 2009)

It's something that has saved a lot of sexless marriages from breaking up especially if it is the wife that is refusing. It allows men to blow off sexual steam without having to actually come in physical contact with a woman other than their wives.


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