A defense of pornography Share This:



By Martin Green



The debate over pornography is too often dominated by conservatives and liberals; the former castigate pornography as disgusting and corrupting, the latter defend its publication with 'free speech' arguments, but are rarely prepared to defend pornography as worthwhile and socially positive. Far too often voices â€“ and there are a growing number â€“ that argue pornography/erotica is a good thing that should be defended and celebrated are not heard.



There is a major paradox here. Never has the public acceptance of and engagement with erotica been so widespread. The consumption of pornography in all its forms is massive; it is a huge industry that could not exist in its present form without millions of people worldwide being avid consumers. But among official opinion formers, especially politicians, its stock has never been so low. Many mainstream media commentators treat producers of erotica as they would drug dealers or gangsters. Pornography is an anathema in polite society, while hundreds of millions use it in private. This is 'cognitive dissonance' on a huge scale â€“ saying one thing and doing another.



Part of the reason the anti-porn charge is so powerful is the de-facto alliance between anti-porn feminism and the religious fundamentalist right. Any rational discussion of sex is very difficult in the USA and Britain, but especially difficult when taking a pro-porn position is likely to find its advocate decried as a priori perverted or â€“ even worse â€“ misogynistic. Pornography and its advocates face among the most violent and pervasive of taboos. Millions of pornography fans have their use of it as among their most personal secrets.



Fortunately the most articulate defence of pornography today often comes from women â€“ in the first place Wendy McElroy, but also Nina Hartley, Susie Bright and Violet Blue.



The liberal position on the 'right of free speech' is something that the pornography industry will shield behind, but in the end a weak line of defence. If something is fundamentally anti-social and damaging, then free of speech arguments aren't very strong and will often falter. Only by sex-positive, pro-pornography views being openly expressed and fought for will the argument, eventually, be won.



The core of the argument â€“ what is sex for?



In any case the predominant Christian view today, especially in the growing Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, but also in the Roman Catholic Church, is that sex is to be enjoyed by married couples and is primarily about having children. In these dominant Christian traditions, sex outside or before marriage is adultery and a sin, and masturbation is also a sin. And of course pornography is also a sin because it often involves non-married sex and promotes masturbation. This is the 'hard core' religious view.



Variants of the same kind of thinking are found among many non-religious people who argue sex is for expressing love between couples (not necessarily married) and also for having children. This is a sort of 'soft core' Christian-derived view. But the actual practice of countless millions in the world reveals a contrary view â€“ that sex is a gigantic universe of pleasure to be enjoyed and consumed in multiple ways. For millions sex is for fun, as well as about having children and expressing loving relationships. Yes, countless millions of young people go out at weekends to try to pick someone up and have sex; they will probably only have one sexual encounter with that person. Millions of others enjoy sexuality and eroticism in different ways, including pornography, without marriage or children ever coming into it.



That sex is often 'just' about fun would not have come as a big surprise to our ancient ancestors. According to path-breaking research by Timothy Taylor ,â€œThe widespread lay belief that sex in the past was predominantly heterosexual and reproductive can be challengedâ€ . Taylor's book The Prehistory of Sex (1) reveals the vigorous sexual culture of Stone Age humans, where the dominant forces were â€œhunger and sexâ€ and the forms of sexual enjoyment were multiple.



Once it is conceded the religious or semi-religious mystification of sexuality is false, then objections to erotica and pornography per se collapse. There may be objections to aspects of pornography or the way it is done, but if it is conceded that enjoying sexuality can legitimately be 'just' about fun and excitement â€“ if so fundamental a human desire and need can ever have the adjective 'just' - then there can be no logical objection to using erotic images to have sexual fun. Nor any logical objection to producing such images.

Of course many non-religious opponents of pornography do indeed make other objections, utilising subsidiary arguments, and we deal with some of these objections one-by-one below.



Objection 1: Erotica is fine because it is artistic in intent, whereas porn is just about getting a sexual response and is therefore worthless



This is the most frequently deployed and intellectually reprehensible argument in the porn debate. The British art historian Kenneth Clarke used it in his famous book The Nude, although he accepted there might be 'residues' of erotic stimulation in looking at art on erotic themes.

As Wendy McElroy points out in her path breaking book (2), â€œPart of the anti-porn attempt to control the debate has been the forced distinction they've drawn between pornography and erotica. Basically, pornography is nasty; erotica is healthy. What exactly constitutes erotica is never clearly expressed. It is merely described as life affirming, while pornography is decried as degradingâ€.



Wikipedia is plain confused on the issue: â€œPornography or 'porn' is the explicit depiction of sexual subject matter with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer. It is to a certain extent similar to erotica (!), which is the use of sexually arousing imageryâ€ (!). But the editor of this article doesn't tell us to what extent porn and erotica are similar or what erotica uses sexually arousing imagery for.

MSN-Encarta says: â€œErotica is a modern word used to describe the portrayal of the human anatomy and sexuality with high-art aspirations, differentiating such work from commercial pornography.â€ That's a pretty typical exposition of the alleged distinction.



The organisers of the highly acclaimed London 2007-8 Seduced exhibition of erotica said in the exhibition programme: "The pornographic image has one job to do: to arouse for the purpose of eventual climax. It may do its job with artistry, but it does not aspire to the reach and interpretative openness of art. Pornography aims to eliminate distracting variables, such as complexity of character." But as the British feminist writer Joan Smith points out (3), this attempt at distinction is a minefield. Who is to say whether any image has 'interpretive openness' and what is artistic?



The false attempt to distinguish between pornography that is merely arousing and erotica that is artistic falls flat on its face confronted with one of the most popular forms of modern pornography, photographic 'art nudes'. Where does photography of the naked female form stop being erotica and become pornography? There are very high minded photography magazines that can be found in many libraries that publish sets of naked women that employ very high production values, imaginative lighting and presentation that would seem to incorporate many artistic values; yet such sets would by no means be out of place in commercial pornography sites likes Met-Art, Hegre-Art and Digital Desire â€“ much of whose content incorporates the same high production values and arguably artistic presentation.



There are thousands of individual photographers making a living out of 'art nudes', whose work certainly appears to involve artistic skills and values and is yet utterly sexually arousing.



But the attempted distinction between porn and erotica fails throughout the history of art. This has been exposed by the British art critic and illustrator Tom Lubbock in the London Independent. Talking of the late British theatre critic Kenneth Tynan he says:



â€œIf Tynan had stayed in London, and gone to a venue on the fringes of Soho, he might have found there several equally enchanting spectacles. He might have feasted his eyes on any number of well-built and clean young people. And he might have enjoyed, for example, a group scene, with at its centre a young man and a woman, both naked, sweetly making love, mouth to mouth, fingers to nipples; or another, in which a naked child whips a naked man with a topless woman looking on; or a naked woman displayed, bound in chains to a rock; or a naked woman having full sex with a large bird; or an orgy involving adults, children and animals both living and dead...



â€œThe venue I have in mind is, of course, the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. And the spectacles I've described are paintings by (respectively) Bronzino, Veronese, Ingres, Michelangelo (attrib.) and Poussin. And every day, with no admission fee and no age restrictions, the public are admitted between the hours of 10am and 6pm, and children are allowed, indeed encouraged, to look at these things. And somehow we don't notice. We're experts at not noticing. Even with our post-Freud minds, or perhaps especially with our post-Freud minds, we're inoculated against seeing what's in front of our noses.â€ (The Dirty Old Masters, Independent 20 September 2008)



The comparison of such famous nude art with pornography might seem far fetched. An amusing take on it is the campaign to keep the two famous â€“ highly erotic â€“ Titian paintings in the public domain in the UK, which means raising Â£50m. To promote the campaign the National Gallery staged a stunt involving the modern 'recreation' of Titian's Diana and Acteon â€“ the photograph involved raunchy Sex and the City actress Kim Cattrall and a posse of glamour models getting naked for the shoot, which duly appeared in national newspapers. A modern recreation involves a photograph and glamour models. That says it all.



But does the work of the grand masters of painting really involve direct sexual stimulation? Did it have the same function as pornography in producing sexual arousal? We should remember that what appears erotic and arousing depends on contemporary cultural norms. The work of people like Raphael in the 16th century was created and displayed at a time when other public images of explicit nudity did not exist and where most people had never seen more than one other person (if that) naked. The erotic arousal charge of such images at the time must have been enormous, especially as the themes are often seduction and rape. Few paintings of course went as far FranÃ§ois Boucher's Leda and the Swan that shows the swan staring intently at a very explicitly drawn vagina, but with that one prohibition usually observedâ€“ no detailed representation of the vagina - the old masters were pretty explicit.

Beyond the old masters though the attempt to distinguish between erotica and pornography falls down repeatedly when confronted with particular artists. People in North America may be surprised to know that some people in Europe have the work of Austrian Peter Fendi on their walls, and there are several internet art sites which will sell you framed versions forr your study or hall. Fendi worked in the early 19th century as a portrait painter, but did a sideline producing erotica/pornography paintings, mainly showing sex with very explicit vaginas and penises on view. The work is highly skilled, amusing and, well, artistic.



Pornography it certainly is, in droves.



We get into even more contentious terrain with fashion/nude photographer Helmut Newton. When Newton died in 2004 David Bailey said: â€œHis impact has been enormous. He was a giant of photography and he redefined the nude. Helmut came along and did something totally original. His lasting legacy will be that he was seen as a great photographer, but I suppose he will be remembered for his nudes in the same way that I am still lumbered with the '60s."



Newton's agent Tiggy Maconochie, said: "His fashion photographs were an inimitable mix of eroticism, elegance and luxurious decadence. He will continue to influence photography well into the 21st century.â€ Yes, but was his work pornographic â€“ of course it was! Wikipedia says: â€œHis works appeared in magazines including, most significantly, French Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. He established a particular style marked by erotic, stylised scenes, often with sado-masochistic and fetishistic subtexts.â€



In other words, pornography. When Violet Blue called porn film maker Andrew Blake 'the Helmut Newton of porn' she made a slight mistake. Helmut Newton was the Helmut Newton of porn. Andrew Blake is the Helmut Newton of modern internet video porn.



Yes Newton's work was elegant, stylish, beautifully produced if, like Tamara de Lempicka, hopelessly obsessed with the rich and famous; but it was utterly sexually arousing. Erotic and pornographic, same thing.



The distinction between erotica and pornography cannot be sustained because there is no authoritative way of establishing the definition of what is art and what is not.



Objection 2: Pornography degrades women by picturing them as 'sex objects'



This objection is, on the face of it, bizarre. How could erotica/pornography function if the models/performers in it were not portrayed fundamentally for their sexual attractiveness? This incidentally is also true for gay porn, where the models are all hunks or sweet boys: it has to be true, whether the models are male or female or transgender.



It doesn't mean that because people are pictured as the focus of sexual attraction they are somehow degraded or objectified.



Most of us strive, for at least some of our lives, precisely to be viewed as sexually attractive and the subject of desire. Millions upon millions would just love to be viewed as objects of sexual desire, although far fewer can achieve it than would like to (!), for reasons of age, shape or whatever. Lust is normal, wanting to be the subject of it is normal too. The very term 'sex object' is a sleight-of-hand ideological construct which uses the ambiguity of the word 'object' to imply 'dehumanised thing'. Once the term is replaced with 'subject of sexual desire' or 'focus of lust' then this mystification collapses.



Since pornography is about creating or stimulating sexual desire, then there is no attempt to give an overall portrayal of the life or personality of the person or people depicted. In fact when this has been attempted, in Playboy's little biographical essays that explain that this extremely sexually desirable young woman likes Beethoven and modern jazz and wants to be a professor of Psychology, it seems both patronising and a hypocritical attempt to conceal the obvious; the male reader (or lesbian reader of which more below) is reading this magazine to provoke or satisfy their desire and really doesn't care much about potted biographies and even, sad to say, interviews with James Baldwin and Norman Mailer.



At this point we should perhaps deal with the argument that modern pornography doesn't just present people as sexually desirable, but is unhealthily obsessed with body parts â€“ breasts, bottoms and genitals. We deal further on with the issue of the type of body that pornography promotes as attractive, but here we'll just note that there is no human society for which we have any anthropological evidence in which women's breasts and bottoms have not been regarded as objects of sexual desire. Even if we go back 25,000 years to the famous 'Venus' figurines (the most famous being the Venus of Willendorf), they are precisely big breasted and big bottomed. There is nothing disgusting or abnormal about that. You can reinvent the world so that pornography never happened, and women's breasts would still be objects of desire and â€“ in a society were things sexual are becoming more open â€“ of display.



The 'sex object' argument fails to convince because itâ€™s based on conceptual hoodwinking that turns out to be nonsense.



Objection 3: Pornography is perverted and only used by dirty old men and other sad cases who can't have 'proper' sexual relations

The old stereotypes about porn users persist. Porn consumption is so huge today it is impossible to attempt any profile of the 'typical' porn user. Porn users can be sexually active or not, use it alone or with a partner, be heterosexual, gay or lesbian and any age from puberty upwards.



Some of the figures are extraordinary. Seventy five per cent of all German adults in a Der Spiegal survey said they used pornography sometimes. A third of men between 14 and 70 said they looked at porn on a daily basis. Some eight percent of women watch porn daily.



"Pornography, in the sense of the description and depiction of sexual activities, is something of interest to every man and woman whether he or she visits [porn sites]," said Rolf Gindorf, a sexologist and former president of the sexuality research society, based in DÃ¼sseldorf. "Our study showed that 98 per cent of men and 90 per cent of women admit to an interest in pornography."



In a Kinsey Institute Survey completed by 10,000 people, 81 per cent had accessed pornographic images in the last month, although 80% of respondents were men and porn users were more likely to reply. Other figures gave the total number of people in the US using porn websites in 2004 at about 40 million, although the figure would be higher today.

Germany and the US are of course among the leading porn consumers. Figures elsewhere would be lower. But at any rate porn consumption is absolutely massive and the old stereotypes about who uses it are false.

Retailers say 40% of all porn video hirings in the US are by women. It's clear that a high percentage of downloads at some sites are by women. Some of them, particularly accessing women-run sites like Abby Winters and Suze Randall, will be lesbians. Some heterosexual women use porn for their own private use or with husbands and boyfriends.



While some lesbians probably consume porn from the heterosexual scene where they can find mountains of sexy women, gay men have their own gigantic porn scene. The consumption of porn by lesbians is of course facilitated now by the internet. In the past buying Playboy in a newsagents or bookshop said â€œ I'm a lesbianâ€. Now it can be done in private. In addition there is the extensive CyberDyke network, that seems to have lesbian-looking women, although of course some users will be men.



It's true that more men use visual pornography than women. But there is an extensive world of pornography not generally treated as such, namely the erotic literature scene â€“ so called 'clit lit' â€“ that sells millions of sexually explicit titles each year. The books are designed to be held on one hand, so the other hand can be used for making tea, writing letters, eating chocolate or masturbating with or without a dildo. Clit lit is excluded from the 'pornography' title only if we insist that pornography must include images.



For whatever reason it seems obvious less women are turned on by images than men, and so erotica/pornography aimed at women focuses more on the written word. But what makes novels which include multiple intercourse scenes, rapes, anal intercourse and spanking just 'erotica' and internet 'art nudes' pornography? Convention, ideology, hypocrisy.

Porn use is now way beyond older men in dirty macs or young teenage males. It's everywhere and part of a much more diverse series of methods for accessing sexual pleasure.



Objection 4: Pornography leads to masturbation



It sure does. Of course the masturbation revolution of our times is in the acceptance or very widespread diffusion of the vibrator. Dildos are among humanity's oldest known artefacts, but a hundred years ago very few women had them. Nowadays dildo use figures are mind-boggling. At least 2 million vibrators are sold each year in the UK; estimates say at least 25% of women in the US have one and that 10% of US couples use them in their sex play. 7000 vibrations a minute are a really good way to get an orgasm, especially if you have some clit lit to hand. Objection 4 is no objection at all, accept to the most idiotically dull of religious fundamentalists.



Objection 5: Pornography exploits its performers and models



In the world of work exploitation is everywhere. But is there something special about porn that makes its performers especially exploited? It is certainly not true that the overwhelming majority of models and performers are directly coerced into pornography. This may happen in some third world countries, but being a porn model or actress in advanced countries is usually a career choice and one that gets often far better rewards than working in an office or factory. If there are women in Western countries who work in porn because they can't do any other type of work, they must be very few in number.



This argument often really means porn 'degrades' its actresses by making them do degrading things. That assumes that you think the depiction of nudity and/or intercourse is degrading. Another circular argument.



Objection 6: Porn promotes sexist stereotypes of women



Yes, a lot of porn does, but if you think that all modern porn reiterates the Playboy large breasted Barbie doll of yesteryear, forget it. Diversity is the word out there, especially in the 'alt porn' scene where lots of the young women look, well, ordinary â€“ although most of them have tattoos and piercings. Still there are a lot of very big-breasted women in porn. Given the emphasis that most human cultures have put on female breasts as objects of sexual desire, that is not really surprising.



In fact the anthropological evidence is that the bio-cultural function of breasts is as a sexual signal, and like hairlessness in humans, large breasts have emerged from sexual selection. There is no biological function in female breasts accumulating large amounts of fat. Other higher apes lactate without having prominent breasts. The present steady trend towards women having larger breasts in advanced countries may be partially to do with obesity, but I doubt that is the whole answer.



But large breasts of course are just part of it. The 'look' of most porn models very much conforms to, or is an exaggeration of, popular and fashionable looks in society at large. That is certainly true at many photo sites where the models could be a selection from any shopping street in Europe of the US. A decreasing proportion of models seem to have huge breast implants, but that of course cannot be measured accurately.



The real issue is this: are sexist stereotypes of what women should look like and how they should behave created by pornography? Or does pornography reflect stereotypes created elsewhere? I would say pornography today is much, much more open to alternative looks, and to aggressive and assertive women's roles, than for example the fashion industry or the Hollywood film industry. Few 'alt porn' models would make it into mainstream movies. The very scope of porn increasingly demands novelty, including novelty of looks and styles. Take a look at the Abby Winters site to see what I mean or a site like God's Girls. You won't find anything like the diversity of looks and styles among television news readers, fashion models or actresses in the mainstream movies.



Objection 7: Porn exploits its customers



Never have such huge numbers of people been so willingly exploited! Of course addiction to anything can seriously damage your bank balance. But the striking thing is today the relative cheapness of porn, with for example the leading video site Video Box being available for a ludicrous $10 a month. In any case, compared with the fast food, alcohol, tobacco and auto industries â€“ industries that kill people - porn is harmless. When the subway stops in the morning the guy with the heart attack hasn't had it because of too much masturbation. Given that we live in a market economy, porn is going to be provided through the market and charged for. But the porn entrepreneurs make fortunes mainly because they sell so much of their product, not because it is hugely expensive.



Objection 8: Porn leads to violence against women



This is an unproven idea and mixes up several things. The first notion is that porn portrays women as submissive and/or worthless and just objects of men's lust and use, and therefore creates an attitude towards women that legitimises violence. This is a wildly speculative idea with little evidence to back it up.



Wendy McElroy says: â€œA cause-and-effect relationship is drawn between men viewing pornography and men attacking women, especially in the form of rape. But studies and experts disagree as to whether any relationship exists between pornography and violence, between images and behavior. Even the pro-censorship Meese Commission Report admitted that the data connecting pornography to violence was unreliable.



â€œOther studies, such as the one prepared by feminist Thelma McCormick (1983) for the Metropolitan Toronto Task Force on Violence Against Women, find no pattern to connect porn and sex crimes.â€



Violence and other abuse of women is widespread in contemporary cultures and was before modern pornography, photography and the internet existed. Most of it is 'domestic violence' that has deep roots in the modern family system and the oppression of women more generally. It will take a long time to uproot it. To argue that erotic imagery 'leads to' violence against women is an assertion, nothing more.



The other part of the argument is that what is depicted in pornography â€“ for example spanking or BDSM â€“ promotes sexual violence. You could equally well argue that BDSM promotes sexual violence towards men. But the truth is that pornography users know the difference between the world of fantasy and reality. They are not really going to go out and tie up their secretary in the office and spank her; or go out and tie up their boss and whip him. That's not the way sexual fantasy works.

The world of fantasy is a private domain which cannot â€“ yet â€“ be censored. And where people play out scenarios that will never be put into action in real life. It's an open secret that many women have fantasies about being dominated and even raped, without in the least wanting it to happen in reality. Millions of women engage voluntarily is sexual play-acting that may involve them being dominated in symbolic ways. Hundreds of thousands of male BDSM fans engage in play-acting in which they are dominated and abused by women. None of this is primarily to do with porn, although experience of porn may liberate and develop the fantasy world of the user. Which is a good thing.



Finally when Joan Smith says about modern pornography, â€œWhat is really offensive is that most of the material it creates is violent, degrading and illegal, especially the huge numbers of images involving childrenâ€ (New Statesman 11 October 2007) she is saying something massively untrue. The modern porn industry has nothing to do with paedophilia, most pornography is not illegal and little of it, the stylised fake representations of BDSM excepted, is violent. Joan Smith is creating a straw person to easily smash down. Her argument doesn't stand up to a moment's examination. She puts allegations about violence and images of children together with the word 'degrading', so that word doesn't have to be substantiated from the real world of pornography.



Conclusion: the clash between mass acceptance and social anathema

So everything's OK in the porn world then? No problems? Not at all. Much of it is tedious and repetitive. Much of it is badly done. Some of it does contain idiotic stereotypes of women (and men). The production values of some of it are very poor. As Wendy McElroy has pointed out, when an industry has such a low social standing, the brightest and the most talented don't naturally gravitate towards it. Porn needs to be criticised, especially by its consumers. The trend towards more diversity in representations â€“ of people in general and women in particular â€“ needs to be encouraged. To do that, and to end the widespread hypocrisy, the social standing of pornography needs to be sharply revised â€“ upwards.



Footnotes



1) The Prehistory of Sex, Timothy Taylor, First Estate 1997

2) Wendy McElroy â€“ A Womanâ€™s Right to Pornography, St Martins Pres, 1995

3) Joan Smith, Sex Lies and Videotape - Back to category overview Back to news overview Older News Newer News



Much mainstream thought about pornography in Western society is either explicitly or implicitly informed by the Judeo-Christian tradition. That tradition treats human beings as essentially sinful, and the original sin of course took place in the Garden of Eden and involved sex. Despite the attempt by some contemporary Christians to finesse the point, eating the forbidden fruit and treating with the devil who appeared in the form of a serpent (!) is a metaphor for having sex.In any case the predominant Christian view today, especially in the growing Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, but also in the Roman Catholic Church, is that sex is to be enjoyed by married couples and is primarily about having children. In these dominant Christian traditions, sex outside or before marriage is adultery and a sin, and masturbation is also a sin. And of course pornography is also a sin because it often involves non-married sex and promotes masturbation. This is the 'hard core' religious view.Variants of the same kind of thinking are found among many non-religious people who argue sex is for expressing love between couples (not necessarily married) and also for having children. This is a sort of 'soft core' Christian-derived view. But the actual practice of countless millions in the world reveals a contrary view â€“ that sex is a gigantic universe of pleasure to be enjoyed and consumed in multiple ways. For millions sex is for fun, as well as about having children and expressing loving relationships. Yes, countless millions of young people go out at weekends to try to pick someone up and have sex; they will probably only have one sexual encounter with that person. Millions of others enjoy sexuality and eroticism in different ways, including pornography, without marriage or children ever coming into it.That sex is often 'just' about fun would not have come as a big surprise to our ancient ancestors. According to path-breaking research by Timothy Taylor ,â€œThe widespread lay belief that sex in the past was predominantly heterosexual and reproductive can be challengedâ€ . Taylor's book The Prehistory of Sex (1) reveals the vigorous sexual culture of Stone Age humans, where the dominant forces were â€œhunger and sexâ€ and the forms of sexual enjoyment were multiple.Once it is conceded the religious or semi-religious mystification of sexuality is false, then objections to erotica and pornography per se collapse. There may be objections to aspects of pornography or the way it is done, but if it is conceded that enjoying sexuality can legitimately be 'just' about fun and excitement â€“ if so fundamental a human desire and need can ever have the adjective 'just' - then there can be no logical objection to using erotic images to have sexual fun. Nor any logical objection to producing such images.Of course many non-religious opponents of pornography do indeed make other objections, utilising subsidiary arguments, and we deal with some of these objections one-by-one below.Objection 1: Erotica is fine because it is artistic in intent, whereas porn is just about getting a sexual response and is therefore worthlessThis is the most frequently deployed and intellectually reprehensible argument in the porn debate. The British art historian Kenneth Clarke used it in his famous book The Nude, although he accepted there might be 'residues' of erotic stimulation in looking at art on erotic themes.As Wendy McElroy points out in her path breaking book (2), â€œPart of the anti-porn attempt to control the debate has been the forced distinction they've drawn between pornography and erotica. Basically, pornography is nasty; erotica is healthy. What exactly constitutes erotica is never clearly expressed. It is merely described as life affirming, while pornography is decried as degradingâ€.Wikipedia is plain confused on the issue: â€œPornography or 'porn' is the explicit depiction of sexual subject matter with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer. It is to a certain extent similar to erotica (!), which is the use of sexually arousing imageryâ€ (!). But the editor of this article doesn't tell us to what extent porn and erotica are similar or what erotica uses sexually arousing imagery for.MSN-Encarta says: â€œErotica is a modern word used to describe the portrayal of the human anatomy and sexuality with high-art aspirations, differentiating such work from commercial pornography.â€ That's a pretty typical exposition of the alleged distinction.The organisers of the highly acclaimed London 2007-8 Seduced exhibition of erotica said in the exhibition programme: "The pornographic image has one job to do: to arouse for the purpose of eventual climax. It may do its job with artistry, but it does not aspire to the reach and interpretative openness of art. Pornography aims to eliminate distracting variables, such as complexity of character." But as the British feminist writer Joan Smith points out (3), this attempt at distinction is a minefield. Who is to say whether any image has 'interpretive openness' and what is artistic?The false attempt to distinguish between pornography that is merely arousing and erotica that is artistic falls flat on its face confronted with one of the most popular forms of modern pornography, photographic 'art nudes'. Where does photography of the naked female form stop being erotica and become pornography? There are very high minded photography magazines that can be found in many libraries that publish sets of naked women that employ very high production values, imaginative lighting and presentation that would seem to incorporate many artistic values; yet such sets would by no means be out of place in commercial pornography sites likes Met-Art, Hegre-Art and Digital Desire â€“ much of whose content incorporates the same high production values and arguably artistic presentation.There are thousands of individual photographers making a living out of 'art nudes', whose work certainly appears to involve artistic skills and values and is yet utterly sexually arousing.But the attempted distinction between porn and erotica fails throughout the history of art. This has been exposed by the British art critic and illustrator Tom Lubbock in the London Independent. Talking of the late British theatre critic Kenneth Tynan he says:â€œIf Tynan had stayed in London, and gone to a venue on the fringes of Soho, he might have found there several equally enchanting spectacles. He might have feasted his eyes on any number of well-built and clean young people. And he might have enjoyed, for example, a group scene, with at its centre a young man and a woman, both naked, sweetly making love, mouth to mouth, fingers to nipples; or another, in which a naked child whips a naked man with a topless woman looking on; or a naked woman displayed, bound in chains to a rock; or a naked woman having full sex with a large bird; or an orgy involving adults, children and animals both living and dead...â€œThe venue I have in mind is, of course, the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. And the spectacles I've described are paintings by (respectively) Bronzino, Veronese, Ingres, Michelangelo (attrib.) and Poussin. And every day, with no admission fee and no age restrictions, the public are admitted between the hours of 10am and 6pm, and children are allowed, indeed encouraged, to look at these things. And somehow we don't notice. We're experts at not noticing. Even with our post-Freud minds, or perhaps especially with our post-Freud minds, we're inoculated against seeing what's in front of our noses.â€ (The Dirty Old Masters, Independent 20 September 2008)The comparison of such famous nude art with pornography might seem far fetched. An amusing take on it is the campaign to keep the two famous â€“ highly erotic â€“ Titian paintings in the public domain in the UK, which means raising Â£50m. To promote the campaign the National Gallery staged a stunt involving the modern 'recreation' of Titian's Diana and Acteon â€“ the photograph involved raunchy Sex and the City actress Kim Cattrall and a posse of glamour models getting naked for the shoot, which duly appeared in national newspapers. A modern recreation involves a photograph and glamour models. That says it all.But does the work of the grand masters of painting really involve direct sexual stimulation? Did it have the same function as pornography in producing sexual arousal? We should remember that what appears erotic and arousing depends on contemporary cultural norms. The work of people like Raphael in the 16th century was created and displayed at a time when other public images of explicit nudity did not exist and where most people had never seen more than one other person (if that) naked. The erotic arousal charge of such images at the time must have been enormous, especially as the themes are often seduction and rape. Few paintings of course went as far FranÃ§ois Boucher's Leda and the Swan that shows the swan staring intently at a very explicitly drawn vagina, but with that one prohibition usually observedâ€“ no detailed representation of the vagina - the old masters were pretty explicit.Beyond the old masters though the attempt to distinguish between erotica and pornography falls down repeatedly when confronted with particular artists. People in North America may be surprised to know that some people in Europe have the work of Austrian Peter Fendi on their walls, and there are several internet art sites which will sell you framed versions forr your study or hall. Fendi worked in the early 19th century as a portrait painter, but did a sideline producing erotica/pornography paintings, mainly showing sex with very explicit vaginas and penises on view. The work is highly skilled, amusing and, well, artistic.Pornography it certainly is, in droves.We get into even more contentious terrain with fashion/nude photographer Helmut Newton. When Newton died in 2004 David Bailey said: â€œHis impact has been enormous. He was a giant of photography and he redefined the nude. Helmut came along and did something totally original. His lasting legacy will be that he was seen as a great photographer, but I suppose he will be remembered for his nudes in the same way that I am still lumbered with the '60s."Newton's agent Tiggy Maconochie, said: "His fashion photographs were an inimitable mix of eroticism, elegance and luxurious decadence. He will continue to influence photography well into the 21st century.â€ Yes, but was his work pornographic â€“ of course it was! Wikipedia says: â€œHis works appeared in magazines including, most significantly, French Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. He established a particular style marked by erotic, stylised scenes, often with sado-masochistic and fetishistic subtexts.â€In other words, pornography. When Violet Blue called porn film maker Andrew Blake 'the Helmut Newton of porn' she made a slight mistake. Helmut Newton was the Helmut Newton of porn. Andrew Blake is the Helmut Newton of modern internet video porn.Yes Newton's work was elegant, stylish, beautifully produced if, like Tamara de Lempicka, hopelessly obsessed with the rich and famous; but it was utterly sexually arousing. Erotic and pornographic, same thing.The distinction between erotica and pornography cannot be sustained because there is no authoritative way of establishing the definition of what is art and what is not.Objection 2: Pornography degrades women by picturing them as 'sex objects'This objection is, on the face of it, bizarre. How could erotica/pornography function if the models/performers in it were not portrayed fundamentally for their sexual attractiveness? This incidentally is also true for gay porn, where the models are all hunks or sweet boys: it has to be true, whether the models are male or female or transgender.It doesn't mean that because people are pictured as the focus of sexual attraction they are somehow degraded or objectified.Most of us strive, for at least some of our lives, precisely to be viewed as sexually attractive and the subject of desire. Millions upon millions would just love to be viewed as objects of sexual desire, although far fewer can achieve it than would like to (!), for reasons of age, shape or whatever. Lust is normal, wanting to be the subject of it is normal too. The very term 'sex object' is a sleight-of-hand ideological construct which uses the ambiguity of the word 'object' to imply 'dehumanised thing'. Once the term is replaced with 'subject of sexual desire' or 'focus of lust' then this mystification collapses.Since pornography is about creating or stimulating sexual desire, then there is no attempt to give an overall portrayal of the life or personality of the person or people depicted. In fact when this has been attempted, in Playboy's little biographical essays that explain that this extremely sexually desirable young woman likes Beethoven and modern jazz and wants to be a professor of Psychology, it seems both patronising and a hypocritical attempt to conceal the obvious; the male reader (or lesbian reader of which more below) is reading this magazine to provoke or satisfy their desire and really doesn't care much about potted biographies and even, sad to say, interviews with James Baldwin and Norman Mailer.At this point we should perhaps deal with the argument that modern pornography doesn't just present people as sexually desirable, but is unhealthily obsessed with body parts â€“ breasts, bottoms and genitals. We deal further on with the issue of the type of body that pornography promotes as attractive, but here we'll just note that there is no human society for which we have any anthropological evidence in which women's breasts and bottoms have not been regarded as objects of sexual desire. Even if we go back 25,000 years to the famous 'Venus' figurines (the most famous being the Venus of Willendorf), they are precisely big breasted and big bottomed. There is nothing disgusting or abnormal about that. You can reinvent the world so that pornography never happened, and women's breasts would still be objects of desire and â€“ in a society were things sexual are becoming more open â€“ of display.The 'sex object' argument fails to convince because itâ€™s based on conceptual hoodwinking that turns out to be nonsense.Objection 3: Pornography is perverted and only used by dirty old men and other sad cases who can't have 'proper' sexual relationsThe old stereotypes about porn users persist. Porn consumption is so huge today it is impossible to attempt any profile of the 'typical' porn user. Porn users can be sexually active or not, use it alone or with a partner, be heterosexual, gay or lesbian and any age from puberty upwards.Some of the figures are extraordinary. Seventy five per cent of all German adults in a Der Spiegal survey said they used pornography sometimes. A third of men between 14 and 70 said they looked at porn on a daily basis. Some eight percent of women watch porn daily."Pornography, in the sense of the description and depiction of sexual activities, is something of interest to every man and woman whether he or she visits [porn sites]," said Rolf Gindorf, a sexologist and former president of the sexuality research society, based in DÃ¼sseldorf. "Our study showed that 98 per cent of men and 90 per cent of women admit to an interest in pornography."In a Kinsey Institute Survey completed by 10,000 people, 81 per cent had accessed pornographic images in the last month, although 80% of respondents were men and porn users were more likely to reply. Other figures gave the total number of people in the US using porn websites in 2004 at about 40 million, although the figure would be higher today.Germany and the US are of course among the leading porn consumers. Figures elsewhere would be lower. But at any rate porn consumption is absolutely massive and the old stereotypes about who uses it are false.Retailers say 40% of all porn video hirings in the US are by women. It's clear that a high percentage of downloads at some sites are by women. Some of them, particularly accessing women-run sites like Abby Winters and Suze Randall, will be lesbians. Some heterosexual women use porn for their own private use or with husbands and boyfriends.While some lesbians probably consume porn from the heterosexual scene where they can find mountains of sexy women, gay men have their own gigantic porn scene. The consumption of porn by lesbians is of course facilitated now by the internet. In the past buying Playboy in a newsagents or bookshop said â€œ I'm a lesbianâ€. Now it can be done in private. In addition there is the extensive CyberDyke network, that seems to have lesbian-looking women, although of course some users will be men.It's true that more men use visual pornography than women. But there is an extensive world of pornography not generally treated as such, namely the erotic literature scene â€“ so called 'clit lit' â€“ that sells millions of sexually explicit titles each year. The books are designed to be held on one hand, so the other hand can be used for making tea, writing letters, eating chocolate or masturbating with or without a dildo. Clit lit is excluded from the 'pornography' title only if we insist that pornography must include images.For whatever reason it seems obvious less women are turned on by images than men, and so erotica/pornography aimed at women focuses more on the written word. But what makes novels which include multiple intercourse scenes, rapes, anal intercourse and spanking just 'erotica' and internet 'art nudes' pornography? Convention, ideology, hypocrisy.Porn use is now way beyond older men in dirty macs or young teenage males. It's everywhere and part of a much more diverse series of methods for accessing sexual pleasure.Objection 4: Pornography leads to masturbationIt sure does. Of course the masturbation revolution of our times is in the acceptance or very widespread diffusion of the vibrator. Dildos are among humanity's oldest known artefacts, but a hundred years ago very few women had them. Nowadays dildo use figures are mind-boggling. At least 2 million vibrators are sold each year in the UK; estimates say at least 25% of women in the US have one and that 10% of US couples use them in their sex play. 7000 vibrations a minute are a really good way to get an orgasm, especially if you have some clit lit to hand. Objection 4 is no objection at all, accept to the most idiotically dull of religious fundamentalists.Objection 5: Pornography exploits its performers and modelsIn the world of work exploitation is everywhere. But is there something special about porn that makes its performers especially exploited? It is certainly not true that the overwhelming majority of models and performers are directly coerced into pornography. This may happen in some third world countries, but being a porn model or actress in advanced countries is usually a career choice and one that gets often far better rewards than working in an office or factory. If there are women in Western countries who work in porn because they can't do any other type of work, they must be very few in number.This argument often really means porn 'degrades' its actresses by making them do degrading things. That assumes that you think the depiction of nudity and/or intercourse is degrading. Another circular argument.Objection 6: Porn promotes sexist stereotypes of womenYes, a lot of porn does, but if you think that all modern porn reiterates the Playboy large breasted Barbie doll of yesteryear, forget it. Diversity is the word out there, especially in the 'alt porn' scene where lots of the young women look, well, ordinary â€“ although most of them have tattoos and piercings. Still there are a lot of very big-breasted women in porn. Given the emphasis that most human cultures have put on female breasts as objects of sexual desire, that is not really surprising.In fact the anthropological evidence is that the bio-cultural function of breasts is as a sexual signal, and like hairlessness in humans, large breasts have emerged from sexual selection. There is no biological function in female breasts accumulating large amounts of fat. Other higher apes lactate without having prominent breasts. The present steady trend towards women having larger breasts in advanced countries may be partially to do with obesity, but I doubt that is the whole answer.But large breasts of course are just part of it. The 'look' of most porn models very much conforms to, or is an exaggeration of, popular and fashionable looks in society at large. That is certainly true at many photo sites where the models could be a selection from any shopping street in Europe of the US. A decreasing proportion of models seem to have huge breast implants, but that of course cannot be measured accurately.The real issue is this: are sexist stereotypes of what women should look like and how they should behave created by pornography? Or does pornography reflect stereotypes created elsewhere? I would say pornography today is much, much more open to alternative looks, and to aggressive and assertive women's roles, than for example the fashion industry or the Hollywood film industry. Few 'alt porn' models would make it into mainstream movies. The very scope of porn increasingly demands novelty, including novelty of looks and styles. Take a look at the Abby Winters site to see what I mean or a site like God's Girls. You won't find anything like the diversity of looks and styles among television news readers, fashion models or actresses in the mainstream movies.Objection 7: Porn exploits its customersNever have such huge numbers of people been so willingly exploited! Of course addiction to anything can seriously damage your bank balance. But the striking thing is today the relative cheapness of porn, with for example the leading video site Video Box being available for a ludicrous $10 a month. In any case, compared with the fast food, alcohol, tobacco and auto industries â€“ industries that kill people - porn is harmless. When the subway stops in the morning the guy with the heart attack hasn't had it because of too much masturbation. Given that we live in a market economy, porn is going to be provided through the market and charged for. But the porn entrepreneurs make fortunes mainly because they sell so much of their product, not because it is hugely expensive.Objection 8: Porn leads to violence against womenThis is an unproven idea and mixes up several things. The first notion is that porn portrays women as submissive and/or worthless and just objects of men's lust and use, and therefore creates an attitude towards women that legitimises violence. This is a wildly speculative idea with little evidence to back it up.Wendy McElroy says: â€œA cause-and-effect relationship is drawn between men viewing pornography and men attacking women, especially in the form of rape. But studies and experts disagree as to whether any relationship exists between pornography and violence, between images and behavior. Even the pro-censorship Meese Commission Report admitted that the data connecting pornography to violence was unreliable.â€œOther studies, such as the one prepared by feminist Thelma McCormick (1983) for the Metropolitan Toronto Task Force on Violence Against Women, find no pattern to connect porn and sex crimes.â€Violence and other abuse of women is widespread in contemporary cultures and was before modern pornography, photography and the internet existed. Most of it is 'domestic violence' that has deep roots in the modern family system and the oppression of women more generally. It will take a long time to uproot it. To argue that erotic imagery 'leads to' violence against women is an assertion, nothing more.The other part of the argument is that what is depicted in pornography â€“ for example spanking or BDSM â€“ promotes sexual violence. You could equally well argue that BDSM promotes sexual violence towards men. But the truth is that pornography users know the difference between the world of fantasy and reality. They are not really going to go out and tie up their secretary in the office and spank her; or go out and tie up their boss and whip him. That's not the way sexual fantasy works.The world of fantasy is a private domain which cannot â€“ yet â€“ be censored. And where people play out scenarios that will never be put into action in real life. It's an open secret that many women have fantasies about being dominated and even raped, without in the least wanting it to happen in reality. Millions of women engage voluntarily is sexual play-acting that may involve them being dominated in symbolic ways. Hundreds of thousands of male BDSM fans engage in play-acting in which they are dominated and abused by women. None of this is primarily to do with porn, although experience of porn may liberate and develop the fantasy world of the user. Which is a good thing.Finally when Joan Smith says about modern pornography, â€œWhat is really offensive is that most of the material it creates is violent, degrading and illegal, especially the huge numbers of images involving childrenâ€ (New Statesman 11 October 2007) she is saying something massively untrue. The modern porn industry has nothing to do with paedophilia, most pornography is not illegal and little of it, the stylised fake representations of BDSM excepted, is violent. Joan Smith is creating a straw person to easily smash down. Her argument doesn't stand up to a moment's examination. She puts allegations about violence and images of children together with the word 'degrading', so that word doesn't have to be substantiated from the real world of pornography.Conclusion: the clash between mass acceptance and social anathemaSo everything's OK in the porn world then? No problems? Not at all. Much of it is tedious and repetitive. Much of it is badly done. Some of it does contain idiotic stereotypes of women (and men). The production values of some of it are very poor. As Wendy McElroy has pointed out, when an industry has such a low social standing, the brightest and the most talented don't naturally gravitate towards it. Porn needs to be criticised, especially by its consumers. The trend towards more diversity in representations â€“ of people in general and women in particular â€“ needs to be encouraged. To do that, and to end the widespread hypocrisy, the social standing of pornography needs to be sharply revised â€“ upwards.Footnotes1) The Prehistory of Sex, Timothy Taylor, First Estate 19972) Wendy McElroy â€“ A Womanâ€™s Right to Pornography, St Martins Pres, 19953) Joan Smith, Sex Lies and Videotape - http://www.newstatesman.com/art/2007/10/sex-pornography-exhibitionhttp://www.newstatesman.com/art/2007/10/sex-pornography-exhibition Printer Friendly Wendy McElroy - Sunday 04 January 2009 - 23:10:21 - Permalink Defending pornographyBy Martin GreenThe debate over pornography is too often dominated by conservatives and liberals; the former castigate pornography as disgusting and corrupting, the latter defend its publication with 'free speech' arguments, but are rarely prepared to defend pornography as worthwhile and socially positive. Far too often voices â€“ and there are a growing number â€“ that argue pornography/erotica is a good thing that should be defended and celebrated are not heard.There is a major paradox here. Never has the public acceptance of and engagement with erotica been so widespread. The consumption of pornography in all its forms is massive; it is a huge industry that could not exist in its present form without millions of people worldwide being avid consumers. But among official opinion formers, especially politicians, its stock has never been so low. Many mainstream media commentators treat producers of erotica as they would drug dealers or gangsters. Pornography is an anathema in polite society, while hundreds of millions use it in private. This is 'cognitive dissonance' on a huge scale â€“ saying one thing and doing another.Part of the reason the anti-porn charge is so powerful is the de-facto alliance between anti-porn feminism and the religious fundamentalist right. Any rational discussion of sex is very difficult in the USA and Britain, but especially difficult when taking a pro-porn position is likely to find its advocate decried as a priori perverted or â€“ even worse â€“ misogynistic. Pornography and its advocates face among the most violent and pervasive of taboos. Millions of pornography fans have their use of it as among their most personal secrets.Fortunately the most articulate defence of pornography today often comes from women â€“ in the first place Wendy McElroy, but also Nina Hartley, Susie Bright and Violet Blue.The liberal position on the 'right of free speech' is something that the pornography industry will shield behind, but in the end a weak line of defence. If something is fundamentally anti-social and damaging, then free of speech arguments aren't very strong and will often falter. Only by sex-positive, pro-pornography views being openly expressed and fought for will the argument, eventually, be won.The core of the argument â€“ what is sex for?