The presentation of erotic behaviour intended to cause sexual arousal, typically using film, graphic, or written media. It is widely considered to be a demeaning representation of sexuality and the body. Most authorities distinguish between soft and illegal hard core pornography, but many, especially feminists, argue that the softer version should be banned as well. In the US, pornography is a major industry - bigger, for example, than the film and record industries combined. There is evidence to suggest that pornographic material which shows women enjoying rape, degradation, or other forms of sexual violence may encourage men to become sexually violent. However, difficulties of definition and changing social attitudes have led to problems of control and law enforcement.
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Pornography (from Greek πόρνη (porni) "prostitute" and γραφή (grafi) "writing"), more informally referred to as porn or porno, is the representation of the human body or sexual activity with the goal of sexual arousal.
In general, "erotica" refers to portrayals of sexually arousing material that hold or aspire to artistic or historical merit, whereas "pornography" often connotes the prurient depiction of sexual acts, with little or no artistic value. The line between "erotica" and the more pejorative term "pornography" is often highly subjective. In practice, pornography can be defined merely as erotica that is perceived as "obscene". This leaves legal actions by those who oppose pornography open to wide interpretation.
Pornography may use any of a variety of media — printed literature, photos, sculpture, drawings, sound recording, film or video, and may even be performed in a live venue, possibly in front of a live audience.
Terminology
The concept of pornography as understood today did not exist until the Victorian era. Pornography can also be contrasted with ribaldry, which uses sexual titillation in the service of comedy. The definition of pornography is highly subjective, with generally accepted works of art such as Michelangelo's David being considered pornographic by some people. In a sense therefore, the definition of pornography is as much (or more) to do with the viewer's motive and response, as with the actual material, content or creator's intention.
A secondary distinction is sometimes made between softcore pornography and hardcore pornography. Softcore pornography generally includes materials that feature nudity, sexually suggestive scenes, and simulated sex, while hardcore or X-rated pornography contains close-ups of aroused genitalia and sexual activities including penetration.
In some American jurisdictions the depiction of urination or defecation contributes to the conclusion that a particular image is pornographic (see e.g. Another term that is often confused with "pornography" is obscenity, a legal term used in many US states meaning artistic material (any media, any genre) that has no reasonable real artistic merit and appeals to the "prurient interest" and patently offends reasonable prudent people in the community. Arizona prosecuted distributors of a pornographic film called "Taboo American Style" in 1989 on the grounds that it was not merely pornographic but obscene, which would be a crime to distribute under Arizona law. Most of what has been considered obscene in the USA has been pornography, thus the terms are often confused. (See Legal Aspects of Pornography, below.)
Technology
Mass-distributed pornography is as old as the printing press. Almost as soon as photography was invented, it was being used to produce pornographic images. Indeed some claim that pornography has been a driving force in the development of technologies from the printing press, through photography (still and motion) to video, satellite TV and the Internet. Calls to regulate or prohibit these technologies have often cited pornography as a concern.
Video: Betamax, VHS, DVD, and future formats
Throughout its entire history, the movie camera has been used for pornography, and with the arrival of the home video cassette recorder the pornographic movie industry experienced massive growth and spawned adult stars like Ginger Lynn, Christy Canyon, and Traci Lords (later found to have been under the legal age of 18 during most of her tenure in the industry). One could now not only watch pornography in the comfort and privacy of one's own home, but also find greater choices available to satisfy specific fantasies and fetishes.
It has been suggested that, among other things, Sony Betamax lost the format war to VHS (in becoming the general home video recording/viewing system) because the adult video industry chose VHS instead of the technically superior Sony system.
Erotic film producers are expected to play a major role in deciding the next DVD standard.
With the arrival of affordable consumer-level video cameras, or camcorders, members of the public had the means of producing their own pornographic or erotic films.
Consequently, two pornographic movements evolved. So called amateur pornography remains one of the most important pornographic genres.
The technology of the cheap hand-held camera liberated the pornographic film maker from the studio, and gave birth to the second development, gonzo pornography.
Video and computer games
Pornographic computer games have also existed almost since the start of the industry — some of the earliest were Mystique's Atari 2600 video games, including Custer's Revenge, Beat Em and Eat Em and Gigolo. The Japanese company Hacker International, which also published games under the name Super PIG, produced several pornographic titles for the Nintendo Famicom — three of these, renamed to Bubble Bath Babes, Hot Slots and Peek-A-Boo Poker, were distributed in the USA by Panesian.
These games largely disappeared from the marketplace as the industry matured and the user base broadened, due primarily to increased production cost and complexity, severely limited distribution options (most national retailers such as Wal-mart and Target do not stock games with the Adults Only rating), and potential legal issues associated in developing a game without official sanction and/or licensing from the respective console manufacturers.
In contrast to the console market, niche PC developers have continued to produce adult games with pornographic content.
Photo manipulation and computer-generated images
Some pornography is digitally manipulated in sophisticated image editors, such as Adobe Photoshop. This practice ranges from applying mild changes to photographs to improve the appearance of the models, such as removing skin defects and improving the brightness and contrast of the photo, to extensive editing to produce photomorphs of non-existent creatures such as catgirls or hippogriffs, or images of celebrities who may not have consented to be filmed for pornography, doing things they have never done, with people they have never met..
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.
The creation of highly realistic computer-generated images creates new ethical dilemmas. The existence of faked pornographic photos of celebrities shows the possibility of using fake images to blackmail or humiliate any individual who has been photographed or filmed, although as such cases become more common, this effect will likely diminish. Finally, the generation of entirely synthetic images, which do not record actual events, challenges some of the conventional criticism of pornography. It also challenges the traditional notion of evidence:at present, it is possible to prosecute producers of child pornography without doing violence to the First Amendment, because the film is evidence that an adult has had sex with a child.
Until the late 1990s, digitally manipulated pornography could not be produced cost-effectively. 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.
Mainstream movies like Troy, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the Star Wars prequel films give an idea of what is possible: if a director can imagine something in sufficient detail, the director can put it on a screen.
Internet Distribution
Some wildly successful internet entrepreneurs operate pornographic internet sites. As well as conventional photographic or video pornography, some sites offer an "interactive" video game-like entertainment. Due to the international character of the Internet, it provides an easy means whereby consumers residing in countries where pornography is either taboo or entirely illegal can easily acquire such material from sources in another country where it is legal or remains unprosecuted.
The low cost of copying and delivering digital data boosted the formation of private circles of people swapping pornography. With the advent of peer-to-peer file sharing applications such as Kazaa, pornography swapping has reached new heights. Free pornography became available en masse from other users and is no longer restricted to private groups. Large amounts of free pornography on the Internet is also distributed for marketing purposes to encourage subscriptions to paid content.
Since the late 1990s, "porn from the masses for the masses" seems to have become another new trend. Cheap digital cameras, increasingly powerful and user-friendly software, and easy access to pornographic source material have made it possible for individuals to produce and share home-made or home-altered porn for next to no cost.
History
Pornography is as old as civilization but the concept of pornography as understood today did not exist until the Victorian era. Soon after, England’s and the world's first laws criminalizing pornography was enacted in the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. 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."
Legal status
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 possession of Child pornography is illegal in almost all countries, and most countries have restrictions on pornography involving violence or animals.
Most countries attempt to restrict minors' access to hardcore materials, limiting availability to adult bookstores, mail-order, via television channels that parents can restrict, among other means. There is usually an age minimum for entrance of 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 irrelevant by the wide availability of Internet pornography.
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. This material often ends up on the Internet and viewed by people in countries where this constitutes child pornography, creating challenges for lawmakers wishing to restrict access to such material.
Some people, including pornography producer Larry Flynt and the writer Salman Rushdie, have argued that pornography is vital to freedom and that a free and civilized society should be judged by its willingness to accept pornography.
Anti-pornography movement
Opposition to pornography generally, though not exclusively, comes from several sources: law, religion and feminism. Some critics from the latter two camps have expressed belief in the existence of "pornography addiction."
Legal objections
Distribution of obscenity is a Federal crime in the United States, and also under most laws of the 50 states. Child pornography is illegal.
In explaining its decision to reject claims that obscenity should be treated as speech protected by the First Amendment, in MILLER v.
Attorney General for Ronald Reagan, Edwin Meese, also courted controversy when he appointed the "Meese Commission" to investigate pornography in the United States; their report, released in July 1986, was highly critical of pornography and itself became a target of widespread criticism.
In the United States in 2005, Attorney General Gonzales made obscenity and pornography a top prosecutorial priority of the Department of Justice - "Attorney General Gonzales' priority: porn, not terrorists", Daily Business Review, 8-2005.
Religious objections
Fundamentalist religious tradition generally limits sexual intercourse to the express function of procreation. Additionally, many religious groups view pornography as contributing to 'immoral' behavior in society.
Feminist objections
Feminist critics of pornography, such as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, generally consider it demeaning to women. They believe that most pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation, and coercion of women, reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and sexual harassment, and contributes to the male-centered objectification of women. Some feminists distinguish between pornography and erotica, which they say does not have the same negative effects of pornography. However, many Third-wave feminists and postmodern feminists disagree with this critique of porn, claiming that appearing in or using pornography can be explained as each individual woman's choice, and is not guided by socialization in a capitalist patriarchy.
Effect on sex crimes
It has been theorized that there may be a link between pornography, particularly violent pornography, and an increase in sex crime.
What has been seemingly overlooked is the lower per capita crime rate and historically high availability of pornography in many developed European countries (e.g. Netherlands, Sweden) leading a growing majority conclude that there is an inverse relationship between the two: more pornography availability in a society equates to less sexual crime.
Effect on sexual aggression
In the 70's and 80's, mainstream feminists such as Dr. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin criticized pornography as essentially dehumanizing women and as likely to encourage violence against them. It has been suggested that there was an alliance, tacit or explicit, between anti-porn feminists and fundamentalist Christians to help censor the use of or production of pornography.
Some researchers have found that "high pornography use is not necessarily indicative of high risk for sexual aggression," but go on to say, "if a person has relatively aggressive sexual inclinations resulting from various personal and/or cultural factors, some pornography exposure may activate and reinforce associated coercive tendencies and behaviors.".
Production and violence against women
According to Dr. Diana Russell, "When addressing the question of whether or not pornography causes rape, as well as other forms of sexual assault and violence, many people fail to acknowledge that the actual making of pornography sometimes involves, or even requires, violence and sexual assault."
In 1979, Andrea Dworkin published Pornography: Men Possessing Women, which analyzes (and extensively cites examples drawn from) contemporary and historical pornography as an industry of woman-hating dehumanization.
U.S. Government Commissions
The then available evidence as to the influence of pornography was assessed by two major Commissions established in 1970 and 1986, respectively.
In 1970, the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography concluded that "there was insufficient evidence that exposure to explicit sexual materials played a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior."
In general, with regard to adults, the Commission recommended that legislation "should not seek to interfere with the right of adults who wish to do so to read, obtain, or view explicit sexual materials."
A large portion of the Commission's budget was applied to funding original research on the effects of sexually explicit materials. One experiment is described in which repeated exposure of male college students to pornography "caused decreased interest in it, less response to it and no lasting effect," although it appears that the satiation effect does wear off eventually ("Once more"). Morton Hill, Lockhart said, "When these men have been forgotten, the research developed by the commission will provide a factual basis for informed, intelligent policymaking by the legislators of tomorrow"
President Reagan announced his intention to set up a commission to study pornography, apparently with the goal of obtaining results more acceptable to his conservative supporters than the conclusions of the 1970 Commission.
In 1986, the Attorney General's Commission on pornography, called reached the opposite conclusion, advising that pornography was in varying degrees harmful. At the end of the workshop, the participants expressed consensus in five areas:
"Children and adolescents who participate in the production of pornography experience adverse, enduring effects," "Prolonged use of pornography increases beliefs that less common sexual practices are more common," "Pornography that portrays sexual aggression as pleasurable for the victim increases the acceptance of the use of coercion in sexual relations," "Acceptance of coercive sexuality appears to be related to sexual aggression," "In laboratory studies measuring short-term effects, exposure to violent pornography increases punitive behavior toward women" According to Surgeon General Koop, "Although the evidence may be slim, we nevertheless know enough to conclude that pornography does present a clear and present danger to American public health"Japan, which is noted for its large output of rape fantasy pornography, has the lowest reported sex crime rate in the industrialized world, which has led some researchers to speculate that an opposite relationship may in fact exist—that wide availability of pornography may reduce crimes by giving potential offenders a socially accepted way of regulating their own sexuality.
A case study: Japan
Milton Diamond and Ayako Uchiyama write in "Pornography, Rape and Sex Crimes in Japan" (International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 22(1): 1-22. Christensen (1990) argues that to prove that available pornography leads to sex crimes one must at least find a positive temporal correlation between the two. The absence of any positive correlation in our findings, and from results elsewhere, between an increase in available pornography and the incidence of rape or other sex crime, is prima facie evidence that no link exists. But objectivity requires that an additional question be asked: "Does pornography use and availability prevent or reduce sex crime?" Indeed, it appears from our data from Japan, as it was evident to Kutchinsky (1994), from research in Europe, that a large increase in available sexually explicit materials, over many years, has not been correlated with an increase in rape or other sexual crimes. Some in Japan have blamed the increase on violent pornography and indeed, some sex offenders report having been inspired by themes in commonly available pornography.
Stereotypes
Pornographic work contains a number of stereotypes. Although pornography targeted at heterosexual males often includes interaction between females, interaction between males is rarely seen. In heterosexual pornography the choice of position is naturally geared to giving the viewer the fullest view of the woman, making the reverse cowgirl position, and the man holding the woman in a "dog-and-lamp-post" position among the most popular.
Pornography by and for women
"We came up with the idea for the Feminist Porn Awards because people don't know they have a choice when it comes to porn," said Chanelle Gallant, manager of Good for Her and the event's organizer.
Some recent pornography has been produced under the rubric of "by and for women". Village Voice;6/8/2006
Production and distribution 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 plays in political circles are matters of controversy. Pornography is now a major part of life for some, with many couples swearing by it to relieve themselves sexually.
Economics
United States: In 1970, a Federal study estimated that the total retail value of all the hard-core porn in the United States was no more than $10 million Although the revenues of the adult industry are difficult to determine, by 2003, Americans were estimated to spend as much as $8 to $10 billion on pornography. The majority of pornographic video is shot in the San Fernando Valley, which acts as a center for various models, actors/actresses, production companies, and other assorted businesses involved in the production and distribution of porn.
In 1998, Forrester research published a report on the online 'adult content' industry, which estimated at $750 million to $1 billion in annual revenue.
Sub-genres
In general, softcore refers to pornography that does not depict penetration, and hardcore refers to pornography that depicts penetration.
Some popular genres of pornography:
Amateur pornography Fetish pornography Homosexual pornography (gay pornography; lesbian pornography) Orgy pornography Race-oriented pornography (e.g. Asian, black, Latino, interracial) Voyeur pornography (e.g. hidden camera pornography, "upskirt" pornography)
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