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Pornography

Table of contents

1 Introduction 2 Legal situation 3 Anti-pornography movement 4 Is there a link between pornography and sex crimes? 4.1 Study: Japanese pornography and sex crimes 5 History 6 Pornographic conventions 7 Pornography around the globe 7.2 Pornography in the United States 7.3 Pornography in Europe 7.4 Pornography in Asia 7.5 Pornography in Turkey 8 Magazines 9 Publishers 10 Studios 11 Erotic authors 12 Famous pornographic movies 13 Personalities 14 Specialized forms of pornography 15 See also 16 External links and references

Introduction

In its original meaning, pornography was literally "writing about prostitutes", from the classical roots πορνη and γραφειν. It was, however, a made-up word coined in England about 1850 that had a spurious air of age and scholarship about it. There is no evidence that anyone at that time, or earlier, was writing about prostitutes per se except as they figured as characters in written erotica of that epoch. It quickly came to mean writing about anything sexual, especially in a base manner, when the creation, presentation, or consumption of the material was for sexual stimulation. The term now refers to sexually related material of all kinds, both written and graphical. The term "pornography" often has negative connotations of low artistic merit, as compared to the more esteemed erotica. Euphemisms such as adult film, adult video and adult bookstore are generally preferred within the industry producing these works (namely the adult industry). Pornography can also be contrasted with ribaldry, which uses sexual titillation in the service of comedy.

Sometimes a distinction is made between softcore pornography and hardcore pornography. The former generally refers to materials which feature nudity and some sexually suggestive scenes, while hardcore or X-rated pornography contains close-ups of genitalia and sexual activities. Within the industry itself, classification breaks down even further. X, double X, 2.5X and triple X. The distinctions might be lost on most people, but the precarious legal defintion and differing standards at different outlets (pay cable channelse like Cinemax versus the Playboy Channel versus domestic home video versus foreign markets) cause producers to shoot and edit different cuts of films and screen those cuts first for their legal teams. Primarily the internal rating decision is made by looking at exposure of an erect penis, inclusion and duration of close up shots of genitals and penetration, types of penetration, and presense or lack of an external ejaculation.

It is sometimes argued that the display of urination or defecation contributes to the conclusion that an image is pornography (see e.g. Arizona Criminal Code [1], 9f, 11), in combination with [1], A2, and for Utah [1], 8h).

Legal situation

The legal status of pornography varies widely. While child pornography is illegal almost everywhere, most countries allow at least some form of pornography. Soft core pornography is usually tame enough to be sold in general stores and (in some countries) to be shown on TV.

Most countries attempt to restrict minors' access to hard core materials, so that it is only available in adult bookstores, via mail-order, in some countries over special satellite TV channels, and sometimes in gas stations. Many of these efforts have been rendered moot by the wide availability of internet pornography. Most western countries have some restrictions on pornography involving violence or animals.

There are recurring urban legends of snuff movies, in which murders are filmed for pornographic purposes. Extensive work by law enforcement officials to ascertain the truth of these rumours have been unable to find any such works.

• In 1966 in Denmark, the ban on written pornography was lifted and in 1969, Denmark was the first country in the world to legalise (hard core) picture pornography.

• The Netherlands have the most liberal rules: pornography is sold openly at normal newsstands and material involving animals is legal.

• In Sweden material involving animals is de-facto legal but subject to animal-welfare laws. Porn movies can be viewed beginning at age 15, and there are no age restrictions for magazines.

• In the United States, hard core pornography is legal unless it meets the Miller test of obscenity, which it almost never does. Certain types of material/acts have been self-regulated out of mainstream porn so as to avoid legal headaches. Pornographic materials may not be made available to persons under 18 years of age. Some attempts at restricting pornography on the internet have been struck down by the courts; see internet pornography.

• In Australia, regulation of pornography has increased somewhat under the Howard government, but remains reasonably widely available. See censorship in Australia.

• In France, movies containing extreme violence or graphical pornography are considered X rated, may not be seen by minors and are shown only in specific theaters. Pornographic services incur special taxes on revenue (33% for X rated movies, 50% for pornographic online services). Whether or not some movies should be X rated is controversial; for instance, in 2000, the explicitly violent and sexual movie Baise-moi was initially not considered X rated (only "restricted") by the French government, but this classification was overturned by the Conseil d'État ruling on a lawsuit brought by associations supporting Christian and family values.

• In the United Kingdom, hard core pornography was illegal until 1999.

• Hard pornography remains illegal (but tolerated) in Norway.

• In Japan until the mid-1990s, no genitals could be shown, but there is no taboo regarding sex and violence and also much less general concern about portraying teenagers as sexual beings (this applies to both out-and-out pornography and works dealing with other themes). Until recently, Japanese law prohibited the depiction of pubic hair in depictions of any forms of nudity, whether it be pornographic or not. For example, Japanese editions of men's magazines such as Playboy had to have any photographs visible signs of pubic hair airbrushed out. This prohibition may explain some visual characteristics of many manga or anime where pubic hair is absent from nude pictures.

• In Singapore pornography is illegal; even Playboy is banned.

• In the Republic of Ireland pornography was illegal until the mid-1990s.

• In the Russian Federation illegal production and distribution of pornography is explicitly prohibited, but because State Duma has repeatedly failed to pass a law regulating sexual materials, these issues remain in a grey area. De jure all pornography is allowed (including child porn), but de facto there are some limitations on where it can be sold and bestiality and child porn are de facto prohibited. Openly sold erotic magazines usually do not display nipples and pubic area on covers.

In the United States, a 1968 Supreme Court decision which held that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes caused Congress to fund and President Lyndon Johnson to appoint a commission to study pornography. The commission's report recommended sex education, funding of research into the effects of pornography, restriction of children's access to pornography, and recommended against any restrictions for adults. The report was widely criticized and rejected by Congress.

In 1983, prosecutors in California tried to use pandering and prostitution state statutes against a producer of and actors in a pornographic movie; the California Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that these statutes do not apply to the production of pornography (People v. Freeman (1988) 46 Cal.3d 41). Some speculate that this decision implictly condones pornography and was one of the reasons most modern American porn is produced in California.

"Evidence of the harm of exposure to sexually explicit images or words in childhood is inconclusive, even nonexistent. The 1970 U.S. Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, the 'Lockhart' commission, uncovered no link between adult exposure to pornography and bad behavior and called for the dismantling of legal restrictions on Erotica." - Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors

The feminist position on pornography is divided. Sex-positive feminists view pornography as a crucial part of the sexual revolution which led to women's liberation, and see conservative views of morality as designed to fortify an oppressive status quo. Other feminists, most vocally Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, see pornography as degradation of women which leads to violence against women. They have attempted to create laws which allow sexually abused and otherwise affected women to sue pornographers in civil court. One such attempt in Indianapolis was struck down by the US Supreme Court in 1986. In a 1992 decision, the Canadian Supreme Court upheld the Canadian obscenity law, accepting the feminist argument that the law is intended to create gender equality and prohibits materials that harm women, rather than "immoral" materials. Dworkin herself favors a civil law approach and opposes all criminal pornography prohibitions.

The criticisms of Linda Boreman, who herself worked as a porn actor under the name Linda Lovelace, focus on the exploitative practices of the porn industry, rather than on pornography's societal effects.

Is there a link between pornography and sex crimes?

It has long been theorized that there may be a link between pornography, particularly violent pornography, and an increase in sex crime. This theory has relatively little empirical support and indeed Japan, which is noted for violent 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, namely, that wide availability of pornography may reduce crimes by giving potential offenders a socially accepted way of regulating their own sexuality.

Study: Japanese pornography and sex crimes

Milton Diamond and Ayako Uchiyama write in "Pornography, Rape and Sex Crimes in Japan" (International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 22(1): 1-22. 1999) [1]:

Our findings regarding sex crimes, murder and assault are in keeping with what is also known about general crime rates in Japan regarding burglary, theft and such. Japan has the lowest number of reported rape cases and the highest percentage of arrests and convictions in reported cases of any developed nation. Indeed Japan is known as one of the safest developed countries for women in the world (Clifford, 1980). (...)

Despite the absence of evidence, the myth persists that an abundance of sexual explicit material invariably leads to an abundance of sexual activity and eventually rape (e.g., Liebert, Neale, & Davison, 1973). Indeed, the data we report and review suggests the opposite. 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?" Both questions lead to hypotheses that have, over prolonged periods, been tested in Denmark, Sweden, West Germany and now in Japan. Indeed it appears from our data from Japan, as it was evident to Kutchinsky (1994), from research in Europe and Scandinavia, 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. Instead, in Japan a marked decrease in sexual crimes has occurred.

History

Nude human beings and sexual activities are depicted in some paleolithic art (i.e. Venus Figurines), however it is not certain that the purpose was sexual arousal, the images may have had instead a spiritual significance. There are numerous pornographic paintings on the walls of ruined Roman buildings in Pompeii. One notable example is a brothel in which the various sexual services are advertised in murals above each door. In Pompeii you can also see phalluses (an erect penis and testicles) engraved in the sidewalks, pointing the way to the prostitution and entertainment district, to aid visitors in finding their way (see Erotic art in Pompeii).

Pornographic comic books known as Tijuana bibles began appearing in the US in the 1920s.

In the second half of the 20th century, pornography became available in "men's magazines" such as Playboy. These magazines usually featured nude or semi-nude women, sometimes engaging in the act of masturbation. Other magazines evolved into more explicit displays, featuring sexual penetration, lesbianism and homosexuality, group sex, and fetishes.

The movie camera has been used for pornography throughout its history, and with the arrival of the home video cassette recorder the pornographic movie industry grew massively, people being able not only to view pornography in the privacy of their own home without having to go out to a theater, but also to make their own pornography.

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. However, such games are no longer produced for current consoles, largely due to the increased costs and potential legal problems associated with developing a game without the approval of the console manufacturer - most pornographic titles are now released only for home computers and are most often simple puzzle games or Japanese hentai adventure games.

With the arrival of the Internet, the availability of pornography increased greatly. Many of the most successful internet entrepreneurs are those who operate pornographic internet sites. As well as conventional photographic or video pornography, some sites offer "interactive" video-game-like entertainment. Due to the international character of the Internet, it provides an easy means for consumers of pornography that is illegal in their country to simply acquire such material from sources in another country where it is legal or not prosecuted. See internet pornography.

The almost-zero cost of copying and shipping of digital data boosted the formation of private circles of people swapping pornography. In leet speak, it is usually referred to as pr0n.

This type of exchange is especially popular for material that is illegal, most notably child pornography.

With the advent of peer to peer file sharing applications such as Kazaa, pornography swapping has reached new heights. Free pornography is available en masse from other users and is no longer restricted to private groups.

Pornographic conventions

In the cheaper magazines the copy accompanying the text is often derogatory to the female subjects: references to sluts, slags and whores abound.

Pornography around the globe

Pornography in the United States

A few large companies operating out of Source | Copyright