From a concerned reader:

I’m curious –what kind of household and what kind of parents have a child grow up to post porn? I understand that anyone can be interested in porn from any kind of religious background and home –but those with good relationships with their parents whose parents disapproved of porn and other immorality –such offspring would be ashamed and not use porn to decorate a website.

So I’m not writing to be judgmental but to inquire –what were you taught about the proper place for nudity? Are you a direct product of your parents’ values –or in rebellion to them?

First off, because the world revolves around whatever definition is in vogue at the time...

Here is a first, simple definition. Pornography is any material (either pictures or words) that is sexually explicit. This definition of pornography may pick out different types of material in different contexts, since what is viewed as sexually explicit can vary from culture to culture and over time. "Sexually explicit" functions as a kind of indexical term, picking out different features depending on what has certain effects or breaks certain taboos in different contexts and cultures. Displays of women's uncovered ankles count as sexually explicit in some cultures, but not in most western cultures nowadays (although they once did: the display of a female ankle in Victorian times was regarded as most risqué). There may be borderline cases too: do displays of bared breasts still count as sexually explicit in various contemporary western cultures? However, some material seems clearly to count as sexually explicit in many contexts today: in particular, audio, written or visual representations of sexual acts (e.g., sexual intercourse, oral sex) and exposed body parts (e.g., the vagina, anus and penis-especially the erect penis).

Makes one wonder to whom you may have been addressing with, "what kind of parents have a child grow up to post porn?" Do you see any images depicting sexual intercourse, oral sex, vaginae, balloon knots, or erect penises, decorating my website? Barely a nipple.

What I'd like to know is what kind family you grew up in--what kind of parents you had, dear reader--that nudity is judged to be a bad thing. I'm glad my parents never transfered their sexual hang-ups (if they had any) unto me. I'm also glad they sufficiently instilled the lesson to not be hypocritical about being judgmental.



See also: Movie Day at the Supreme Court or "I Know It When I See It": A History of the Definition of Obscenity

Labels: nudity, porn, sexuality

Posted by Ahenobarbus on Saturday, May 26, 2007 at 2:15 PM | Permalink