Sex sells, so long as you’re not selling sex. If a curvaceous cleavage convinces you to buy a car, it’s good for the economy, but if you buy a book to hold in one hand whilst you stain the pages with the other, who benefits? You, for one, and the publisher, and, though modestly, the immodest author. If you’ve bought a magazine, then the photographers and models get their cut. It has as allover little effect as a tax refund. And of course the multi-billion-dollar porn industry, unlike Detroit, is not in dire straits. In fact, it’s thriving, and cannot keep up with the demand.

I am no great fan of pornography. I agree that it is tasteless trash. So what? Tasteless trash floods our markets. What makes pornography so special? I look on it as entertainment’s equivalent of fast food, and I do not deny that at times I enjoy ogling a beefy body, just as, in a pinch, I may succumb to the far lesser lure of a McDonald’s hamburger. But I sincerely believe that fast food does more to undermine the nation’s health than pornography has done to undermine its morals, which admittedly are in a woeful state and would be even if every one of us led a sex life that would satisfy the demands of the strictest Puritan. But pornography makes a good whipping boy (if you’re into that). Let’s face facts: over-sweetened, over-salted, high-fat foodstuffs and the chemicals used to preserve them are responsible for more heart attacks, strokes, cases of diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer, etc. than a steady diet of skin flicks has turned brains to mush.

Erotica is another matter. Well-written erotica I find as satisfying as an exquisitely executed painting, music expertly performed, or, in other literary genres, an engrossing treatment of any subject that interests me, of which there are many. Unlike pornography, erotica requires careful writing, subtlety, and characters who seem real and whom we can relate to. For pornography you only need a pretty face, oversized tits and/or a big cock. So truly well-written erotica is hard to come by (I hope you’re picking up all my intentional puns), but you could say as much for any art form.

The question is how to distinguish between erotica and pornography. I have already implied that quality is not a factor. I can recognize what I consider pornographic and what I consider erotic, but I cannot answer for anyone else, nor will I attempt to here. Some other time perhaps. Evil is no less in the eye of the beholder than is beauty, and, to paraphrase an old saw and at the same time give expression to a popular stereotype with which I do not agree, one man’s pornography may not be another man’s, one man’s erotica is often one woman’s pornography, and one woman’s erotica is all too often some man’s unstifled yawn.

Where, then, is one to draw the fine line that separates them, and who is to draw it? Before I answer that, let me question whether such a line exists or needs to be drawn at all. There, I’ve questioned it.

The Religious Right makes no such distinction. It damns it all to hell, pornography and erotica alike. It has fallen to legislators and the courts to decide for us, which they have done with a Byzantine lack of clarity and they enforce selectively (a euphemism for capriciously). Just what guidelines have they set down?

First comes “community standards”, which we see right off must undermine whatever guidelines they come up with more inexorably than the most blatant porn has undermined the morals of Joe Masturbator. And who determines these community standards, pray? Its most vocal members, who paradoxically call themselves a “silent majority”. They summarily dismiss the consumers aplenty who gobble the stuff up in secret. But why take them into account? They are by definition unworthy. I have often heard it argued that they do it in secret out of shame, because they know it’s wrong. Shame is a powerful deterrent, but it does not follow that they know it’s wrong. That piece of illogic carries as much weight as saying that homosexuals stayed in the closet for centuries because they knew it was wrong. Not “knew” – they accepted the opinion of their persecutors.

Next they tell us that pornography appeals to our “prurient interests”. Granted, but the very word “prurient” implies a foregone conclusion. The tabloids deluge us with a wealth of cheap and trashy triviality equally prurient. Spare me your song and dance about the public’s right to know. Do I have a right to know what goes on in your bedroom? It isn’t news and it’s about as trustworthy as the silliest pizza boy story. Those who think that their prurient – yes, prurient – interest in who’s having whose baby arises from their empathy with the heartache of unfortunate celebrities are deluding themselves. What titillates them is the unconscious (if they deserve that much credit) inference of the sport that went into its making. You could say as much for many popular TV situation comedies, but at least the commercials that interrupt them are the backbone of our economy.

But people, you say, don’t get off on the tabloids and TV shows. Well, not physically. But don’t you think that arousal is a more normal and wholesome reaction to a sexual stimulus than pointing and giggling? The pornography consumer does not make his purchases out of prurient interest; he buys to beat off. As for readers of erotica, their interest is esthetic, ethereal, or at worst sentimental.

Finally, in order not to be deemed pornography an accused work must have “redeeming social value”. Another foregone conclusion: that without it, sex is by definition evil. Does anything other than sex require “redemption” in the free world? Certainly not the tabloids. Or war. Or raking in millions while thousands go homeless and without medical care and starve in your own back yard. Moreover, the expression itself smacks of Stalinism. Art must further the agenda of the party in power. Just what is a redeeming social value anyway? Keeping the masses content and submissive contributes mightily to the stability of a society. So, bread and circuses, but nothing that might appeal to their prurient interests.

I cannot let the subject go without a nod to the idea that pornography induces perverts to rape, molest children and commit other acts of sexual malfeasance. No doubt it happens. But other factors, underlying factors we cannot legislate against – anger, frustration, mental instability, etc. – also trigger these heinous crimes, and I argue that without them pornography would be impotent. Perverts aren’t perverts because they use pornography, they use it because they’re perverts, and many people who use it aren’t.

Fact: when Denmark legalized pornography sexual crimes decreased by about 85%. Holland legalized it with the same result, but the rate went up again when they reinstated some strictures in response to a public outcry. The anti-pornography league says that what works in Europe won’t work in America (the same argument made against national health care). It may not, but it does show that it isn’t pornography that causes the crimes. Monsters like Ted Bundy who say that viewing smut pushed them to do what they did are making excuses for themselves by putting the responsibility elsewhere.

The “logic” used to justify the claim that pornography encourages sexual crimes runs like this. Pornography treats women as objects. (An aside: this also applies to gay porn, but less well, because the object and consumer are usually one and the same.) The statement is accurate. Pornography does treat women as less than human beings. It follows that pornography perpetuates the way our society denigrates them, consigns them to a man’s control. Perpetuates. Pornography is not the disease; it’s a symptom. True, we treat many illnesses symptomatically, but we do not consider the treatment a cure. If you eliminate pornography from your community you have not de-perved the local perverts or accomplished anything except to make yourself more comfortable.

I’ve heard it all. We must protect our children from corrupting influences. Come again? Consenting adults buy and use pornography. Absolutely, children require our guidance and protection, and should not be exposed to material that stirs up urges and feelings latent within them that they cannot yet comprehend. But those urges will not remain latent forever, and when they surface heaven help the unfortunate teenagers who cannot comprehend them. Pornography is not a suitable source of enlightenment. But it amazes me what “pernicious” information the thought police would protect them from. Harmless stories that contain not a single sexual act. God forbid they should learn about reproduction, or that people of the same sex care for each other, or what the human body looks like!

Not only children’s literature is targeted. Anything that touches on sex is suspect. Any author who takes it as a subject must want to seduce and ultimately corrupt us, and of course we’re too weak to resist. As if a murder mystery writer approves of murder! Just see what masterpieces they have succeeding in suppressing in the past. Ulysses, for example, as if anyone who read it to get off on the erotic (i.e., dirty) parts would ever get that far. Lolita – definitely not for children (though it would enlarge their vocabulary immensely) – as innocent and moral a book as Pride and Prejudice, and as scathing a portrayal of how people let self-interest guide their actions, and with not one passage written to arouse us, and whose humor serves to make the horror bearable.

There’s more. Pornography offends some people. Fine, be offended. Better yet, avoid it and spare yourself the agony. Pornography is an attack on the family. Show me. Every society that has abandoned its traditions and let another gain a foothold has declined and ultimately perished. The Roman Empire is a prime example. Exactly – they adopted Christianity. And the list goes on.

Notice that I have not argued freedom of speech or of the press or of the right to privacy. (Wouldn’t it be delicious to argue in favor of orgies under the rubric of freedom of assembly?) My target here is the hypocrisy and the gall of people who would tell me what I may and may not read or look at. I leave it to the pornographers to defend their freedom of expression and their inalienable right of pursuing the happiness of making money – lots of it. If the demand dried up and pornography vanished from the face of the earth, I would not miss it. I would not miss it if prices soared beyond my ability to pay for it or if I lived where I would have to drive even an hour to find it. But it enrages me that some self-righteous asshole forbids it to me when it’s right there, whether or not I hanker for it.

                 

Stanley Ridge, a native New Yorker, has for over 30 years made his home in the Midwest, where he teaches in a small liberal arts college.  He also works as a literary translator.  His life as a professor and scholar, father of two wayward sons, owner of a large, friendly dog, and for over five years partner of a beautiful man, keep him very very busy.  He devotes much of the little spare time he has to writing and somewhat less of it to his duties on the editorial team of two m2m on-line literary magazines.  He likes to travel and has spent nearly a quarter of his life abroad, mostly in French-speaking countries.

The Religious Right damns it all to hell, pornography and erotica alike. It has fallen to legislators and the courts to decide for us, which they have done with a Byzantine lack of clarity and they enforce selectively (a euphemism for capriciously).