What is or what is not porn? And, who or what gets to decide what is or is not porn?

[Yavin4]

We keep having these intense debates and threads, but we don't even have a definition of porn. Your definition of porn will be different from my definition of porn, and that will be different from another person's definition.

For example, this year's Cannes film festival's Palme d'Or winner is the film, "Blue is the Warmest Color", and it features a very explicit lesbian love scene. The movie has caused a controversy. Some say it exploitative, yet it won the Palme d'Or.

If we cannot even agree on what is or is not porn, then how can we really have a debate about it?

[rrneck]

1. I think debate it intensified because we can't agree.

We will never reach a reasonable consensus on exactly what porn is. There are too many cultural variables to codify it.

[Comrade Grumpy]

2. I decide, and I know it when I see it. So there.

[NaturalHigh]

3. Good point.

I have my own definition of pornography, as I'm sure almost everyone does. Personally, I don't like it and don't watch it. What consenting adults watch, though, is none of mine or anyone else's business.

[spin]

4. For example is 'Fifty Shades of Gray" porn. ...

Bestselling 'mommy porn': '50 Shades of Grey'
March 13, 2012 | 9:47 am

The novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" by E.L. James has been propelled by its e-book sales to bestseller status. Published by a small Australian press, it has had a hard time making its way to bookstores, but readers are getting it however they can. Mostly, that's been digitally.

"Fifty Shades of Grey" is about a 22-year-old college literature student, Anastasia, a virgin who falls for a 28-year-old entrepreneur, Christian Grey, who gets a sexual charge out of being in charge. It's explicitly tie-me-up, tie-me-down; sometimes a necktie is not just for tying around necks.

The New York Times calls the book "mommy porn." Jezebel, which posts some not-safe-for-work excerpts, explains that "Fifty Shades of Grey" owes a great debt to the bestselling "Twilight" series.

- See more at: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2012/03/bestselling-mommy-porn-50-shades-of-gray-.html#sthash.XgbqhjmL.dpuf

I should state that I have never read the book and have little interest in it but I recently talked to a 17 year old girl who was absolutely fascinated with the series. She also enjoyed the twilight series.

[loli phabay]

6. vampire porn has grown in a big way from the twilight series.

[Katashi_itto]

17. How Twilight Should Have Ended

Twilight...Twilight..give me five mins alone with a Twilight Vampire...I'll give you non consensual violence...

[loli phabay]

20. lol, i would rather it be the winchesters.

[Katashi_itto]

22. Lol!

[awoke_in_2003]

63. I watched these with the wife...

just to be with her. The appearance of Blade would have made it funner for me

[Katashi_itto]

64. Agree!

[NoOneMan]

24. Alyssa Milano was doing vampire porn long before Twilight was a bad idea in a shitty writer's head

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109723/

[loli phabay]

25. yup, but it is growing due to the twilight generation, at least in my opinion.

[NoOneMan]

27. Its just a fad. It will go the way of Harry Potter wizard porn soon

[loli phabay]

29. i dont know, the vamp porn has been around a long time and will prob go on for a long time

I think it touches a dark place inside people sexuality.

[spin]

33. Ann Rice helped to start the modern vampire craze with 'Interview with a Vampire" ...

which led to a great series of well written vampire novels.

However, she also wrote a series of what could easily be described as pornographic novels.

The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy

The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy is a series of three novels written by American author Anne Rice under the pseudonym of A. N. Roquelaure. The trilogy comprises The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty's Punishment and Beauty's Release, first published individually in 1983, 1984 and 1985 in the United States. They are erotic BDSM novels set in a medieval fantasy world, loosely based on the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty. The novels describe explicit sexual adventures of the female protagonist Beauty and the male characters Alexi, Tristan and Laurent, featuring both maledom and femdom scenarios amid vivid imageries of bisexuality, homosexuality, ephebophilia and pony play. The trilogy was a bestseller, outearning the author's commercially successful first novel Interview with the Vampire.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleeping_Beauty_Trilogy

I enjoy reading well written novels of all types but I have avoided both the Twilight series and the Fifty Shades of Gray as many reviewers on Amazon said they were poorly written. I did read the Sleeping Beauty trilogy which was well written but a bit too strong for my tastes.

[Mojorabbit]

52. Love Ann Rice

I am reading her werewolf series now.

I have no problem with porn in general. I have problems with labeling women sluts etc and dehumanizing them which is prevalent on porn sites. I worry about women being exploited and harmed. There has to be a way to address these points. Women are not just receptacles. I think these things lead to a general disrespect for women and a failure to recognize that women are human beings with all that that entails.

[spin]

61. I have to agree. (n/t)

[bluestateguy]

79. Exit to Eden too

The movie was not great, but the book is fantastic.

[Katashi_itto]

65. Gilbert Gottfried Reads Fifty Shades of Grey

[spin]

75. That was funny. (n/t)

[loli phabay]

5. best definition i heard is, what i like is erotica what you like is porn

I think this kinda rings true

[eridani]

13. And what THEY like is dirty disgusting filth

I do think there is a difference between 'icky' and 'criminal' though. If it's just unappealing to you personally, it's icky. If people are being raped or tortured, that's criminal.

[Kurska]

14. And if that rape is simulated or that torture consensual.

What do you do?

I don't think anyone is arguing for actual depictions of rape or unwilling people being tortured, the question is how to classify fiction.

[eridani]

43. Now this is getting more difficult

There is some stuff that should be out of public view, but not private view. Do pedophiles use simulated sex with kids as alternative to real sex with kids, or as a stimulus and motivator for same? Have no idea how to find out--where would you even find people who are willing to admit to being sexually attracted to kids, but who keep their orientation strictly at the fantasy level?

[Kurska]

44. My assumption is that people generally use violent pornography and fantasy as a substitute.

I think that is supported by research that shows that as porn consumption has gone up, sexual assaults have gone done. If there was a casual relationship between viewing fiction and performing a behavior, you wouldn't be able to go on a shopping trip without having multiple shootouts.

The pedophile question is a really rough one though. I want to say if no real kids are involved, it isn't my business deal, but there is no denying I am massively uncomfortable with it. I've thought about it though. Robots that look like humans and that you can have sex with aren't that far off, what is to stop someone from making one look like a child?

[eridani]

45. There isn't really any definitive research here

Correlation does not equal causation. I'm thinking that Lewis Carroll and the founder of the Boy Scouts were probably pedophiles, but as far as anyone know, neither ever laid a hand on any kid. The problem is with people who combine the orientation with a sense of entitlement to anything that gets them off. Pedo-porn may not work as a substitute for that type.

[Kurska]

47. True, but the lack of correlation can be indicative of no causation.

If porn consumption did increase the incidence of rape, then it makes no sense to have a massive drop in violent sexual crime from the 70's to now (this is true of all crimes, not just sexual crime). So while the correlation make no suggest that porn reduce rape, it does provide evidence that porn does not cause rape.

[Kurska]

7. Oh it is simple

We'll have judges or some kind of council arbitrarily determining what is or isn't porn, just like we had in the good ole days. There really isn't any other way of doing it. Does your movie have a great deal of sexually explicit material and deal with the topic of rape? If some judge decides it is without artistic merit then to jail you go.

Of course the "anti" side will never actually tell you this is how it will have to happen. They'll continue to pretend that every video is produced with a clear "porn or not porn" label on it and by banning porn all the violent porn will just magically disappear.

Mmmm, I love the smell of fascism in the morning.

No wait it makes me sick

[loli phabay]

8. we need an organisation to rate it, i suggest PETA

People enjoying togetherness artistically.

[Kurska]

10. How bout NAZIS

National Association for zealous interpretation of standards.

[Niceguy1]

39. so far the

Reasearch I have done for these threads has been fun lol

[Kurska]

9. My favorite book is a love story between a college football player and a college student

Both guys, lovely moving story that speaks to a lot of the insecurities of youth and the process of coming out. It also gave a very interesting look inside locker room culture and what it means when you have to hide who you are.

Yet it had several very very very, graphic descriptions of sex. That would cause most people to label it as porn, I suppose if it also had tried to deal with the topic of rape some people on DU would support banning it.

Short answer, there isn't really a good way to tell the difference. You can only really set up some kind of council to judge material or get judges to do it. That is how we did it in the old days with obscenity laws. That is how we'd have to do it again.

Or we could keep it the way we currently have it and not ban any kind of fiction, despite how much we personally may despise it. Crazy talk right?

[pipoman]

11. ...

The phrase "I know it when I see it" is a colloquial expression by which a speaker attempts to categorize an observable fact or event, although the category is subjective or lacks clearly defined parameters. The phrase was famously used in this sense by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964). In explaining why the material at issue in the case was not obscene under the Roth test, and therefore was protected speech that could not be censored, Stewart wrote:

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. [Emphasis added.]
—Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964), regarding possible obscenity in The Lovers.

The expression became one of the most famous phrases in the entire history of the Supreme Court.[1]

Stewart's "I know it when I see it" standard was praised as "realistic and gallant"[2] and an example of candor.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

[Kurska]

12. So yeah, a Judge decides.

And if a judge decides your story dealing with sexual themes is without artistic merit, you go to jail.

That is how bans on pornography work.

[pipoman]

15. A little group of judges actually..

SCOTUS decides many, many things..

Especially limitations on civil rights/liberties..

[Kurska]

23. A small group of elite individuals deciding what is legal artistic expression

Is far more disturbing and perverse than the most disgusting consensual human sexual behavior imaginable.



As a gay man, I remember when such groups of judges consistently banned and imprisoned people for fiction that merely put to print the sexual feelings inside of me. They of course, did this out of the "societal good" and even often with the expressed goal of reducing rape. You see, these judges thought gay people are sex perverts who go grab and sodomize kids if you allow them to get their sexual deviancy engine turning (which is apparently how some people view men in general these days).

I never want to return to those days, not for gay people and not for anyone.

[DonCoquixote]

30. Thank you

Those of us who defend some pprn are not doing it because we are sick perverts (though admittedly, some of us are.) It is because the minute you let people define porn, you allows a backdoor way in for the biblethumpers and mullahs, who do not have women's interests in mind at all.

Yes, there is nasty porn without redemption at all, which will die if no one buys. Then there is stuff that sounds like pron, but tends to make the New York Times (erica jong, fear of lying) Anne Rice, etc) The line is thin, and it was thin long before 50 shades of Gray started being sold atWal-Mart.

[Kurska]

36. Exactly right

We'll never be able to define porn. So if we ban porn as a vague class of explicit material, we better be prepared for some people to start to make some very questionable judgement about what is porn.

If I do not defend speech that I may personally find disturbing or wrong, who am I to ask for assistance when other consider my speech thusly?

[pipoman]

58. Who is the idiot who has you believing there is going to be a porn ban?

The question of "what is porn" has been asked and answered by SCOTUS and the answer is "community standards" in all but the most vile of victimization "art"..

[Kurska]

70. Are you really not familiar with the law that started this whole mess on DU? n/t

[pipoman]

74. no

[Kurska]

76. We are all discussing a UK law

Which ostensibly purports to ban rape porn (porn which show graphic depictions of real rape), but was written so broadly that it includes "rapes" in which the two participants are roleplaying consensually.

No one is saying that real videos of rape shouldn't be banned, but others are taking extreme umbridge to the idea that owning a video of a fictional crime could send someone to prison. Moreso, other people are rightly pointing out the difficulty in determining what does or does not qualify as pornography. Like I've been saying, ultimately if you decide to address the topic of rape in any fiction you write in the future in the UK, you better pray that some judge doesn't decide it is without artistic merit, because pornography that involves rape sends you to prison.

[pipoman]

57. I am a devout civil liberatarian..

trying to figure out what has been deemed illegal that you guys are referring to? Seems SCOTUS precedent has pretty much left this question to state and local.."community standards"..Back in 1984, I was firmly in Flynt's corner and still am to this day..What is the concern?

[pipoman]

54. Do you believe society

would evolve more quickly without the courts? I don't. The public would have put Larry Flynt under the prison..The public demands justice where none is due. No, perfect it isn't, better than mob rule it is. At the same time you speak of gay people all over the planet were treated as badly or worse...to this day death is the penalty for being gay in some societies..who would you prefer define the line? certainly you agree there should be a line?

Oh, and what is it you are seeking in porn you are unable to find? Last I looked I couldn't find anything was banned beyond criminal behavior on film..

[Kurska]

55. Oh yeah man, because I don't want judges determining artistic value I want total anarchy.

What a crazy strawman.

The way things are now, there is no official judge of legitimate artistic expression in society. It is up to the individual to determine whether they personally find FICTIONAL material obscene or not. There is a prohibition on providing children sexually explicit material, but there are zero limits on what adults can produce or consume insofar as fiction material with fictional characters. I'd rather keep things that way. Provided a work of art is entirely fictional or the illegal behavior simulated, it isn't the business of anyone to decide if such work should be legal or not. Saying that I don't want the court to become the offical judge of artistic value in society, does not mean that I want mob rule to be doing it either. I've clearly articulated my stance of allowing individuals to publish whatever fiction they want and leaving it up to individuals to determine if they wish to consume that fiction or not. If you can actually argue against that position, fantastic, but if you can't I'd appreciate if you did not invent positions for me.

And no I don't think there needs to exist a "line" for consensual sexual behaviors. The fact that you appear to (or that was what I got from your post, at least), say more about you than it does about me.

"Oh, and what is it you are seeking in porn you are unable to find? Last I looked I couldn't find anything was banned beyond criminal behavior on film.."

Ridiculous question, I'm saying we have freedom of expression in fiction and I'd prefer to keep in that way. Insinuating that that means I want to view real acts of criminal behavior isn't even worth responding to.

[pipoman]

56. Trying to figure out what you are on about?

Who is censoring you or some "art" you are referring to? What has been deemed illegal that you think shouldn't? For the most part, determination of obscenity has been left to "community standards". The only censoring I am aware of is victimization or in some cases simulated victimization..

[Kurska]

69. My lord, to see people talk of censoring "simulated victimization".

As if it has suddenly become okay to ban fiction, I'm done talking to you have a wonderful life.

[pipoman]

73. So in other words, nothing...

nothing has been censored that you believe shouldn't be. You are just complaining and concerning of something which hasn't happened, eh?

[madinmaryland]

16. I define porn as explicit sex, regardless of the orientation of the people involved.

[Yavin4]

28. Okay. That's your definition, but most people would consider simulated sex as porn

They'd go so far as saying that HBO is porn.

[madinmaryland]

31. That's erotica. nt

[madinmaryland]

34. Which is more pornographic about this picture...

Gun porn or just disgusting porn???

[loli phabay]

35. i would not call it porn myself.

[madinmaryland]

37. It's definitely gun porn.

[loli phabay]

38. nah, i think its not even that, more humerous at his expense.

[Fumesucker]

41. I've read that the photo was done tongue in cheek as a parody

Have no idea if it's true or not but I could easily see someone doing that.

[Kurska]

40. Is this that violent porn I've heard so much about?

Because I sure feel like my eyes were just assaulted.

[loli phabay]

42. rofl

[Katashi_itto]

66. Ok I have one for you. Is this Fantasy Porn or Gun Porn?

[Stinky The Clown]

18. The debate needs to start at an even more fundamental definition: is porn, prima facia, good . . . .

. . . . bad or neutral?

Personally, I think porn is largely neutral. It is easier to define when it is seen that way. When we overlay the debate about definition with morality or sensibilities, we erode badly the ability to define it.

[madinmaryland]

32. But what is porn? You have to define it first.

[NoOneMan]

19. That movie looks hot

[WinkyDink]

21. Really? Even the Roman Empire knew how to define it. Are we going to re-examine other definitions?

Gee, what is a "vice"? I wonder what "charity" really comprises.

And what IS "health-care," anyway?

[NoOneMan]

26. The Roman Empire was right about everything

Nothing like seeing a fine woman slip out of her sexy stola

[dimbear]

46. It means 'pictures of prostitutes.'

Seems to have slipped over the centuries.

[Bucky]

48. The Supreme Court said "I know it when I see it," which is a refreshingly honest admission.

But that was the 70s for ya

[pipoman]

59. 60's actually..1964..Jacobellis v. Ohio

[bluestateguy]

81. They use the Miller Test now

"I know it when I see it" was intellectual weakness from Potter Stewart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test

[Bucky]

49. By the way, are you sure the award it won wasn't the "Palm de Rosey"?

[Tuesday Afternoon]

50. I think they meant

the Palm de Hairy . . .

[Boom Sound 416]

51. If it's in focus, it's porn

[pipoman]

60. Japan?

Home of the most unbelievable censorship of porn laws I know of..pixelization of the weirdest parts and tiny little bars...LOL...those wacky Japanese..

[Boom Sound 416]

71. Agreed, but that's irrelevant to focus

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

53. And thus the Pope.

We need a holy arbiter for such things.

See how easy that was.

[marshall]

62. Why nt just argue about the ethics of porn?

Or is porn always inherently unethical? Is child porn on the same par as adult hardcore porn? Is bondage porn, even when simulated, the same as seemingly consensual porn? Is it the content of the porn that dictates its ethical value, or is it the nature of its manufacture?

Those seem like valid questions to me.

[JVS]

67. I don't need a definition of porn because it is just a subcategory of speech

And since I believe in free speech, I have no need to single out a subcategory of it.

[Zambero]

68. Porn is not limited to sex

The act of obsessing and fantasizing as a means of displacing functional reality can be directed in many other ways. We are hearing more about "food porn" and "gun porn", for example. Then again, as there are no set standards for what a "porn threshold" sexual or otherwise might be, it becomes an exercise in subjectivity (and very likely futility) to determine whether or not to to assign the porn label.

[BainsBane]

72. There are legal definitions of porn

You can look up the definition for your state or how the federal courts define it.

I will point out that this discussion was not just about "porn" but rape porn in which someone is sexually violated.

[RandySF]

77. What ever it's called....

Let's respect peoples freedom and privacy 's it involves consenting, adult participants

[bluestateguy]

78. The porn prohibitionists will decide. And they will let you know what you are allowed to see.

And if you disagree, you are a misogynistic pig.

[xulamaude]

80. "a very explicit lesbian love scene"

by which I assume you mean sex scene.

To the extent that I paid any attention to it, I am aware that there were lesbian and/or feminist objections to the fact that a man directed the film, self-identified heterosexual women played the roles and that the sex scenes appeared to have been constructed for the "male gaze".

It was interesting to me to see one of the most viewed articles at The Hollywood Reporter (the day I looked at it anyway) was a very, very short one, so much so that I'd call it a blurb, in which 3 or 4 lesbians who had viewed the film were quoted. Highly, highly viewed.

Male directed and co-adapted 'lesbian sex' on film is very popular these days.