The People's Porn: A History of Handmade Pornography in America

Abstract

Erotic artifacts of ivory, gold, and porcelain by skilled artists from ancient cultures can now be found in museums, where their display confers respectability. In contrast, ordinary Americans have long combatted public taboos by transforming humbler materials into handmade pornographic objects, of which a few survive. Drawing on the archives of the Kinsey Institute and private collections, Lisa Z. Sigel examines sexualized, prosaic American artifacts made of wood, bone, soap, pipe cleaners, and clay, along with samizdat fiction and everyday objects such as dolls, coins, and photographs, defaced or altered for obscene effect. Although audiences today often define pornography as slick commercial moving images, Sigel believes primitive physical artifacts are more accurate indicators of the sexual and gender issues behind explicit representations. Most of the book's examples are anonymous one-offs, which makes Siegel's narrative less a formal history than a chronological survey of demotic technologies and the motivations of unfiltered psyches. Even so, she says, “working from object to the creator and from the creator to the culture, we can get an idea of American culture and experience over time” (p. 21).