Nature Of Pornography Research Articles

The Porn Drift

The author introduces a concept he calls “the porn drift” and which describes the rift that exists between the experience of sexual intercourse as presented in pornographic moving pictures and that which is acted out in the corporeal world with another human being. He traces the cause for the porn drift to the technologically determined nature of pornography, which prevents it from conveying the most real experience involved in sexual intercourse with another human being: the tactile experience. Touching upon the historical development of pornography, he tries to understand the emergence and prevalence of the so-called “gonzo pornography” on the Internet and sees its existence as the tool for the pornographers to compensate for their genre’s inherent inability to convey the real sexual experience to the consumers. Finally, the author describes what he sees as an emerging new sexual practice that might greatly influence sex life in the new millennium, a practice defined by the merger of advanced information technology, hard-core pornography and masturbation.

‘The Act of Copulation Being Ordain’d by Nature as the Ground of all Generation’: fertility and the representation of sexual pleasure in seventeenth‐century pornography in England

To a modern reader pornography and the representation of reproduction are mutually exclusive, despite their common subject matter: sex. But seventeenth‐century pornographic texts do not conform to modern ideas about the nature of pornography. Sexual intercourse is defined as for the purpose of procreation with cataclysmic consequences resulting from its avoidance. In this period the pleasures of sex represented in the pornographic text are intimately entwined with ideas about reproduction and conception, and an understanding of the body which is temporally and culturally specific: sexual pleasure was understood as not complete pleasure if it did not have the possibility of conception. The connection between the sexual act and its reproductive function is emphasised through metaphors that connect the body and the state, or the land, emphasising that early modern social and economic stability depended on reproductive ability.

The pornography debates

This article examines the limitations of the effects model for feminist anti-pornography work. As a contribution to the on-going debate about the nature of pornography and its relationship to violence against women, this article aims firstly to identify why traditional effects research, which attempts to establish a causal relationship between pornography and violent behaviour, is a dubious ally for anti-pornography feminism. Secondly, the enduring implications of the effects model for feminist anti-pornography politics are explored. It is argued that anti-pornography feminists need to reject the effects model and return to the crucial question of how some pornographies are produced and consumed in ways that are abusive to women.

Speech Acts and Pornography

Book synopsis: The only anthology devoted exclusively to the topic of pornography and censorship that is designed as a textbook. Its aim is threefold: To make students aware of (1) the vast scope of arguments concerning both the nature of pornography and what ought to be done about it; (2) the fact that there is more than one feminist position on pornography; and (3) the complexity of arguments about free speech. Balanced and up-to-date, the book is sensitive to the variety of feminist positions on pornography without being a feminist book and is also sensitive to the complexity of free speech issues.

Vertrekpunte vir die ontwikkeling van 'n model en definisie van pornografie/(Notes on the development of a model and definition of pornography)

The author contends that there is a marked lack of clarity concerning the real nature of pornography, perhaps most clearly evident in the definitions of the phenomenon. The aim of this article is to formulate a more convincing definition, implementing some of the workable elements in existing definitions. To accomplish this the author evaluated the most important definitions of pornography against the background of a simplified linear communication model, working from the conviction that the usable as well as the unusable elements of these definitions will show up most clearly within such a scheme. The author analyses three sets of definitions, each related to the components of the preferred communication model, namely sender, message and receiver. He subsequently analyses the objective elements contained in the message factor of various standard definitions. The author finally arrives at an own personal definition of pornography: pornography is the approved portrayal of dehumanized sex.