DEFINITIONS

It is necessary to any discussion of pornography to first define it. This author finds that the best definition to date has been supplied by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon:

1. “Pornography” means the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or words that also includes one or more of the following:

a. women are presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things or commodities; or

b. women are presented as sexual objects who enjoy humiliation or pain; or

c. women are presented as sexual objects experiencing sexual pleasure in rape, incest, or other sexual assault; or

d. women are presented as sexual objects tied up or cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt; or

e. women are presented in postures or positions of sexual submission, servility, or display; or

f. women’s body parts-including but not limited to vaginas, breasts, or buttocks-are exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts; or

g. women are presented being penetrated by objects or animals; or

h. women are presented in scenarios of degradation, humiliation, injury, torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual.

2. The use of men, children, or transsexuals in the place of women in (a)-(h) of this definition is also pornography for purposes of this law.

3. “Person” shall include child or transsexual.

 

For the purposes of this website, pornography is defined more simply as commercially produced sexually explicit material that is intended to cause sexual arousal and facillitate masturbation. This website addresses photographic pornography (films, videos, still photos). While other kinds (written, animated, etc.) are certainly not endorsed here, it is my belief that photographic pornography is qualitatively different and more harmful in that it requires for its manufacture the direct use of real people. It is also by far the most popular type.