I recently discovered three advice email messages in the spam folder – which I feel really shitty about and I apologize. This letter came in mid-August, and while it’s been almost 2 months since it was sent, I wanted to answer it and discuss here because the romance/porn accusation is unfortunately perennial. That said, I don’t know if this person is still in this relationship and I don’t have an update.
Dear Smart Bitch Sarah:
I have a general question for anyone who also loves romance that may be willing to help me untangle a sticky situation in my current relationship. I’ve loved romance novels since I was in my early teens, and they have become a pretty big part of my life since then. Unfortunately, I’m in a bit of a pickle with my boyfriend over the fact that I read them.
You see, he has admitted that at one point he was addicted to pornography, but literally threw all of his stuff away when we decided to move in together. I respect this decision on so many levels, and I’m very appreciative since I’ve had relationships where porn really became an issue, BUT, my otherwise amazing and wonderful boyfriend asked me a few days ago what the difference was between porn and my romance collection.
His argument seemed sound, citing that the sex is graphic and since women have a more emotional relation to sex than men sometimes, romance novels are essentially porn for women. I’d never really thought of it that way, though yes, there certainly have been some books I’ve read that have made me tingly in all the right places. Of course telling him that I don’t read the books for the sex would be like saying that I don’t look at Playboy for the pictures, but rather the articles. I appreciate the sex, even if it isn’t necessarily my main reason for buying the book. In fact, some of my favorite romance novels may have only one or two sex scenes in the whole 400 pages,
but certainly in the genre that isn’t completely normal, and it’s not like I can promise never to read a sex scene in a novel that has a half naked man on the cover (another item he puts on his list of why romance is like porn).
It’s obvious to me that he really wants me to stop reading them and possibly even get rid of the ones that I have, and I’m completely torn as to what to do. I LOVE my romance novels and they have been a constant companion during so many good and horrible times in my life. However, I don’t know how to explain it to my boyfriend that his sacrifice of something he loved (porn) is different than his asking me to get rid of my romance novels. I also don’t know how to argue that my novels really aren’t some specialized form of porn when they do have such graphic sex scenes in them…I put a temporary patch on the problem, explaining that my romance novels were kind of like watching a television show on HBO or Showtime. They have some pretty intense love scenes, but that isn’t the only reason you watch the show…
This is such a specialized argument that we are having that I just HAD to submit it here and see what everyone had to say. Surely some other readers have had this problem? Or have some advice on how to handle it?
Signed,
Conflicted
Dear Conflicted:
Before addressing your attempts to change his perception of the genre, I want to address his behavior. By asking that you get rid of something that is clearly very important and meaningful to you, he is attempting to limit your behavior based on his own limitations, and that is not fair or respectful of you. His decision to get rid of his pornography collection may have been, and I am presuming here, because his desire was becoming an addiction to porn, and it was causing him harm. Your romance novels do not function in the same way: you said yourself, they do not cause you harm but help you through difficult emotional times.
But in what way is your reading romance novels offensive to him? In other words, how is what you read bothersome to him? Just because he is your boyfriend does not give him the right to tell you what you can and cannot read. Moreover, his pornography problem is his problem, not yours. Is your romance collection somehow attractive to him and he feels uncomfortable with his desire to read one?
Obviously, he is incorrect about the genre. Romances are not pornography. Granted, the half-naked dudes on the covers do not help this argument, but you yourself explained the best possible defining difference: not every romance has sex scenes, and romances are not just about the coming together of fiddly bits which then come together. In fact, your explanation was stellar, that some romances are like HBO or Showtime television series, where the love scenes are intense thanks to the wild freedom of cable, but those scenes are not the reason you’re tuning in. The point is, the emotional courtship is always present in a romance; the sex is not. Reading a romance is not merely about sexual gratification and arousal, and therefore romances are not porn. Anyone who picks up Georgette Heyer looking for Jenna Jameson is going to be woefully and comically disappointed.
What troubles me most about your letter is that your boyfriend, whom one would assume loves you, is asking you to give up something you love because he is not comfortable with it for his own personal reasons. He is attempting to assert control over you and your decisions, and dictate your behavior. I can’t even fully express how many OHSHIT sirens that sets off in my brain. That is the issue that needs to be addressed, and not necessarily by giving your paperbacks the heave-ho just to appease him. Whatever his reasons for getting rid of his porn collection may have been, they do not give him the right to control what you read. If he looks at romance and sees nothing but the sexuality of the cover and the cover copy that might promise titillation, he needs to read a few to form a more educated opinion. But if he looks at your romance novels as a barrier to his own comfort and demands that you stop reading them and get rid of them all so he feels better about himself, then you and he have a serious conversation ahead of you.
It sounds to me that he considers himself to have a pornography addiction, much like a person addicted to gambling. There are support groups for these problems, and while I am not an expert on sexual or gambling addiction, I do think his demand of you indicates a possible need for more direct help. If the presence of romance novels makes him uncomfortable because he thinks they are pornographic and he wants you to get rid of them, despite knowing how important they are to you personally, then the problem is not with the books, but with him, and his respect and understanding of you.
Controlling behavior is not healthy nor loving. That cornerstone of romance, that the hero love the heroine for who she is without demanding she change who she is, applies absolutely in real life, and absolutely without a doubt applies to you.
ETA: I have an update from Conflicted via email:
“Wow…I can’t believe in such a short amount of time, such a heated and exhaustive conversation has come from my email.
First, Thank you to everyone who has given an opinion, I like to think I’m open minded, and I like to get multiple points of view.
Second, I haven’t had a chance to read every entry on here, but I did want to address some specific concerns that people were having:
1. My boyfriend got rid of his collection independent of my desire or concern. In fact, it was something that he was working on removing from his life before we even got together. Did I appreciate the decision? Absolutely. Did I ask him to do anything with his porn? No. He has told me that at one point he would spend more than 12 hours with his porn a day, which I agree really does qualify as an addiction. I know that this is probably a battle that will continue throughout our relationship, but I do love him and respect him enough to work through these issues with him. As for porn itself, I don’t really have a problem with anyone having or using porn in a way that is satisfying to themselves and respectful to their partner. In my previous relationships where porn had become a problem, it wasn’t the porn itself, but the blatant and vocal comparison of my attributes to the women in the porn that became an issue. This isn’t the situation in my current relationship, and I can’t say that I know where everything would have landed if he hadn’t been getting rid of his porn already, but I do know that I have watched porn at times in my life, and don’t begrudge anyone who wants to use it. It is entirely the intensity of his addiction and my respect for him as a partner that has made it become such a pivotal topic of concern in our relationship.
2. Control. While it seems that some responders took my comment that my boyfriend is otherwise amazing as an excuse to ignore controlling behaviors, I would like to clarify. He hasn’t ever asked me to get rid of my books, merely asked me what the difference was between porn and my romances. This in turn gave me the impression that he was uncomfortable and probably would respect my getting rid of my collection. It is a matter of mutual respect, not control that urged me to submit my question here. I will be the first to admit that our relationship has ups and downs, we have had a couple really big fights since my email, but he is very respectful of my feelings, and is the first to admit when he is wrong. I have been in several controlling and unhealthy relationships, which is why I simply have to clarify that he is the first partner I’ve had that I felt actually respected my feelings and needs.
Now, that said, the issue has been moot since I sent my first email as I have not had time to read, but I have not gotten rid of my collection, and am hopeful that as our relationship has strengthened, he will feel more comfortable talking about it if he has problems, and that I will feel more assertive to explain my position. I think what really bothered me when he first brought it up was the fact that I really didn’t have a good grasp on how to respond. I struggled to find the words to explain the difference between porn and romance, but with all of these responses, surely I will be better equipped to be eloquent in my answers.
I am definitely going to continue to read the responses here, and I would be happy to answer any other questions that arise.
Respectfully and Gratefully,
Conflicted
PS: I do have a Nook, and don’t intend on buying the explicitly covered paperbacks either way, just as a sign of courtesy. Not hiding them for sure, just not flashing half naked men his way every two minutes. And, he seemed mildly satisfied with my comparison of romances to HBO. I do hope that if he were to bring it up again, I could ask him to read one of my novels and also use some of the advice I’ve received here.”
SEB, I totally agree that there are a ton of different topics falling under this very big umbrella (12 hours of *anything* a day would have been a relationship non-starter for me) but…
I guess I assume that if you choose to live with someone, you value their opinion so not every request is a bid for control. My husband and I always try to tell each other what the other should or shouldn’t do, but then we both burst out laughing and go have sex instead.
@AnTigress:
I’m not comfortable with your repeated use of the word “titillate” here. Media is a thing, not a command, how we respond to it is a choice, and finding a picture attractive is not at all the same thing as using it as porn—just as observing to yourself that a particular man is attractive is not at all the same as ogling or sexually propositioning him.
Yes, intent matters, but the end-user’s intent is just as important as the creator and manufacturer’s. Does something intended to be porn from the design on down usually make for better porn, or products whose most obvious purpose is porn? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean homemade versions can’t also be functional.
In regards to porn vs erotica, “sex with relationship context” is typically considered a subset of porn as much as your “distillation/essence of sexuality” descriptor is. (Which I need to remember. I really like your phrasing here.) I absolutely agree that it’s useful to distinguish among different kinds of sexual-themed media (especially if you are shopping) and I’d love it if people would quit it with labeling things as “women’s porn” and instead adopted “erotica” to mean porn depicting “sex with stories/context”, but I’m afraid I can’t see myself ever saying to someone, “oh, that’s not porn, that’s erotica” anymore than I can picture myself saying, “that’s not seafood, that’s shellfish.”
Sue:
Is it? By whom? Possibly yet another AE/BE (American English / British English) divergence. Because definitions have shifted as social mores and legislation have changed, the most sensible approach is to base the definitions on the original etymologies. I cannot see the category as ‘pornography’ with erotica as a sub-set. To me, all work with sexual content is the broad class, because it deals simply with an aspect of human (and all animal) life, and pornography is a sub-classification within it.
Intention or design has only a partial influence on the quality of the final product. It is possible to redeem a poor original concept by very skilled execution, or to ruin a brilliant one by sloppy technical work. This takes us into the dangerous shoals of the ‘art-versus-craft’ debate, of course, which is always good fun.
‘Titillate’ is a very mild word, so I’m not sure what your objection is. It does not in any way imply any ‘command’! Perhaps you could explain this more fully, as I really don’t get your point here. 🙂
Of course the end-user’s intention is as important as that of the artist: it is the balance of the two, their relationship, that creates the dialogue. A book or a painting that is never shown to anyone, that is kept secretly by its creator, has no true life or existence. When we read or look at something created 200, or 2000, years ago, we can be sure that the artist/audience dialogue will be slightly different from any that the artist could originally have envisaged. This is why art and literature is infinite, because those dialogues are ever-changing, even though there is an unchanged and unchangeable basis.
IcePrincess, I can agree in certain situations, but I have seen too many women (and men, for that matter) who don’t have the maturity or strong sense of self to draw the line when “told” what to do by their partners. Even here, Conflicted says in the comments that the point is now moot as she doesn’t have time for reading anymore.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but I wonder about her no longer having time for reading, what was once an important part of her life, something she loved. The timing seems dodgy: Boy “strongly suggests” to girl that she stop reading. She rationalizes that she stopped for her own reasons, but ultimately boy got what he wanted (and I can’t understand what he could possibly get out of it BUT control – unless someone can better explain a good thing the boy gets out of her not reading a certain genre, especially as she has Nook to “hide” the questionable covers?).
This may be a complete misunderstanding on my part (sorry to be speculating so much about you, Conflicted!), but it is fun to psychoanalyze, and I think we can all learn alot by examining these fine lines between reasonable requests from partners vs. the slippery slope down to freaky-psycho emotionally abusive relationships. Not that I’m saying anything specific, here. Just wild speculation for the sake of discussion!
And honestly, IcePrinces, the way you describe your relationship sounds ideal to me 😉
Here’s my disconnect with that statment: shellfish is a subset of seafood. So what you’re saying, to my eyes, is that erotica is a subset of porn.
Whereas I feel that porn and erotica are both subsets of sexually-focused writing. sexual writing = seafood, porn = mackerel, and erotica = shrimp
In a nutshell, Suze. That is exactly how I see it. And that classification is strongly supported by the etymologies of the words.
I think that is what Sue is saying, and I think she is mistaken. The main class is ‘sexual’: writings or depictions that feature sexuality in some form or another. Within that class, the sexual content may relate to eros (sexual LOVE, that is, emotional relationships), or ‘writings about whores’, pornography, that is, sex for its own sake, detached from personal relationships.
As a typology, that makes perfect sense. The suggestion that the over-arching class is pornography violates the basic meaning of that word, because content that deals with sexual love cannot be a subset of content that deliberately excludes all personality and emotion.
None of this has any effect, one way or the other, on the acceptability or otherwise of any class (I think that all are acceptable, personally), nor on the skill with which they are fashioned, which can run the gamut from brilliant to execrable in all cases.
🙂
If he quit his porn reading that’s good for him, but he can’t put his porn habit on the same level of her reading habit. Besides, he met her as a romance reader when they started the relationship, why should this be an issue between them by now?
First he wants her to quit reading romance novels, what next? this should be a red flag for Conflicted.
Loving someone doesn’t give you the right to change someone’s habits. And if someone isn’t willing to cope with the loved one’s habits, why be in such a relationship?
I’ve never really made a hard distinction between romance and porn. Romance novels were one of my early sources of porn (I could check them out the library, for a start), and it was some time, and thanks to this site, before I actually read one for the plot. And the sweetest, most romantic story I’ve ever read was a graphic novel that also had the majority of the page count as sex scenes. Trying to define the borders between erotica, pornography, romance, obscenity and something of another genre that has a bit of sex in it will always be an exercise in frustration—sooner or later, you have to say essentially “I know it when I see it!” or “Porn is erotic material that I happen to not like.” So I don’t worry about it, and try to read / watch that which appeals to me, and doesn’t exploit any real people.
WRT the original poster, perhaps a solution might be to make erotic material something to look at or read as a couple? So it feels to him less like something a partner does instead of the relationship, which may be his concern based on his own past excess, and more something that can enhance it. (I’m not a relationship expert, so take that with a pinch of salt, of course. 🙂 )
I think most people covered the topic extremely well. (I am always awed by the number of well-written and smart responses in posts at this site.)
Lindlee @ 10.07.10 at 10:58 AM: I tried your experiment; it’s really hard to find a random sex scene if you don’t already know where they are. TV lied to me; I’m having trouble recovering from my shock. 🙂
C.H. Scarlett (sorry, this got really long):
I have a problem with this because it creates an either/or. I think Barbie is harmful (especially racially); I think Vogue is harmful (especially for body image). This does not mean I don’t also think porn is harmful, especially in the two ways Ann Somerville already linked to. It’s not like each item was created in a vacuum and has had no impact on each other. Porn and magazines both have started the trend of making sexualized women look like sexualized girls (get rid of all pubic body hair, create an emancipated look, uses images of wide and/or fearful eyes), and each has also just skipped the women part and gone immediately to sexualizing young girls.
I am never, ever, ever going to defend a rapist and/or child molester, ever. I work with the victims. I am a victim. I have to work very hard to temper my immediate response, which is something along the lines of “burn them all”.
I also want to clarify right up front and say I do not think all porn is bad, and I definitely don’t think the idea behind porn (work to sexually stimulate and/or arouse someone) is bad. I respect the fact and right that porn does something for a lot of people, and it doesn’t make them bad/wrong/disgusting.
But as Ann Somerville said, to pretend the entire industry is consumed (and I’ll add participated in) by consenting adults is harmful, dangerous, and blatantly not true.
Porn is both a component and visual medium of rape culture. Sexual slavery, human trafficking, sexual abuse, rape, and forced prostitution are all part of the porn industry, as a consequence of, as a component of, as an effect of.
A lot of studies have gone into discussing and dissecting the relationship between sexual violence, rape, child molestation and porn. (I’m not really talking about the person who once in a blue moon watches porn, but someone who habitually – though not necessarily addicted to – watches porn.) Studies have been done that show the dehumanization of women in porn have lead to men who trivialize and are desensitized to rape, have a distorted sense of consent, and develop an appetite for increased levels of violence. (I read a quote, which I sadly don’t remember verbatim, from a producer of porn who remarked that every year the porn he is charged with creating becomes more and more violent and dehumanizing because acceptability levels increase and demand grows for more “out there” stuff as what was once “hardcore” has become “mild”.) Studies have also been done showcasing the use of porn in child molestation, in that rapists talk about how they use it to incite themselves into committing acts, that they use it during their crimes, and that porn has made certain crimes seem more acceptable. (This is going back to the increasing habit of mainstream porn using women to look and act like young girls.)
Again, this is not in anyway to excuse people who commit rape and/or child molestation. And it’s also not to say porn causes them to commit these acts. These studies are pointing out there is a correlation that cannot be ignored though.
I do agree that we have a taboo against talking about sex even as our mediums have more and more sex in them. The problem is we’ve created a culture with an unhealthy view of what sex, consent, and sexuality is. I’m not blaming porn for what we’ve done to sex in society, but I do think it has contributed and advances what has already been done.
As for cleaning it up…a lot of groups have been trying. But porn is a multi-billion dollar industry, and I’m not holding out much hope the global society is going to stand up to it. You said, “I am talking about adult women here, not young girls,” [in relation to waxing] but I don’t get how they can be separated. Both groups are being given the same bombardment of ideals, and both groups are also actively searching for it. (Teen girls look at porn, just like teen boys. Should parents be having talks with both groups of kids? Hell yeah. Do they? Not necessarily. Whether it’s because they don’t care, don’t know, or whatever reason, a lot of kids learn about sex through their friends and the media, hardly the place of healthy sexual behavior and portrayal. And while parents can help point out the good versions of the bombardment, it doesn’t necessarily mean the kid can and/or will listen and/or be able to filter everything else out.)
I think porn can be sex-positive, can be used to great effect and affection in a sexual relationship (with someone(s) else, or just your hand/favorite toy), and can be fun. But I think the industry as a whole is very harmful.
Definitions are actually important. Living as we do in a period where there is a pretty no-holds-barred attitude to printed material relating to sexuality, it is all too easy to forget that only 50 years ago, much of that material would have been illegal: writer and publisher would have been prosecuted for issuing it. Lady Chatterley’s Lover (I class it as a novel with sex, rather than an erotic novel or pornography) was first published in 1928 — but only in France, so that only those men wealthy enough to travel abroad regularly could obtain it and (literally) smuggle it back into the UK. You have no idea what a cause celèbre the 1960 trial was, and how people rushed out in their hundreds of thousands to buy the paperback edition at 3/6d! We should not forget hard-won freedoms. They can be withdrawn again, a fact that all feminists should bear in mind at all times.
Of course these things are difficult to define, but that’s precisely what makes them interesting and worth thinking about. Trying to establish the parameters and to draw distinctions that are NOT dependent on personal taste alone, but have objective validity, greatly improves our understanding.
lol…that totally brought to mind the scene in Lethal Weapon 4 where Riggs picks up Lorna’s book and starts reading about how the hero made the heroine’s “womanhood reach peaks that would rival the highest Himalayas”.
I don’t have any advice on the situation, seeing as I have never been involved in anything similar. However, I do think that romance can sometimes be porn for women, but that it is not always the case. I had a total asshat professor as an undergrad that likened romance novels to porn wrapped up in a utopia-esque bow. i remember watching most of the guys and some of the girls nod as he analyzed an entire genre based on his supposition. all i could do was hope that nobody could tell that i read romance novels, since most of them already didn’t take me seriously because I was the lone liberal in a class full of conservatives. I couldn’t imagine what they would have thought of me if they knew what I like to read.
Orangehands: I agree. More than with other industries, there is a need for porn consumers to do their research and support professional and respectful producers over sleazy and exploitative ones.
[quote=“AgTigress”]It is? By whom?
When actors and erotic film makers are interviewed, they identify with belonging to the “porn industry.”
My issue isn’t so much with the words as how you used them in your sentences, i.e. “things verbing people”. I hear (often in conversations with very conservative people) a lot about how viewing certain objects (clothing that shows your shoulders and knees, pictures of attractive people, the existence of condoms, etc) is the direct cause of undesirable actions and expectations (as opposed to people being responsible for themselves and their opinions), a concept that I find insulting and frustrating to no end. I sincerely apologize if this was not your meaning, but your phrasing made me wonder if that was how you were interpreting my posts.
You see, presenting porn as anything that that titillates us ignores the very real difference between finding a scene sexy and the expectation that you will literally use that scene to stimulate your sexual fantasies/libido, and the latter is essential in my definition of porn vs not-porn. Again, I’m sorry if I misunderstood you.
Regarding subsets: you are correct about my opinion. Mind you, I do NOT see the word porn as “deliberately excluding all personality and emotion”, in and of itself. That classification is confusing to me, actually. “Porn” tells me the media type, not the product’s subject or quality, not whether it will feature love, genuine affection, whores, silliness, artistry, fleshed-out characters vs cardboard cut-out ones, science fiction aliens with tentacles, an actual plot, actors who are married in real life, actors whose bodies are “normal” not Barbie-wannabes ….. and also not whether it depicts healthy sex vs degrading, exploitative, or non-consensual sex. This is why I don’t have a problem calling erotica porn. It’s good porn, porn I’d like to see more of.
Setting aside the debate about depictions of sex with and without emotional context and what difference that makes, I do think there’s one way (or another way) in which romance is comparable to porn:
Romance depicts men the way women wish they were, porn depicts women the way men wish they were. There’s a certain lack of respect and objectification in both cases. Yes this is a gross and unfair oversimplification (of both romance and porn), but I do think it’s important to recognize that both genres are about the viewer’s/reader’s fantasies. Some viewers/readers can consume the fantasy without it distorting their view of reality and others can’t. There’s nothing wrong with either kind of objectification (ie looking to someone else to gratify your fantasies) as long as you recognize that the someone else is first a person with their own point of view and has no responsibility to engage with your fantasy. Treating another person *only* as an object is not ok.
If a woman is in a relationship just because she likes having someone treating her a certain way, buying her the obligatory heart-shaped box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day, etc, but she has no interest in who he is as a person, his values and dreams and goals, she’s treating him as only an object. I’m not in any way suggesting that this is on a par with sexual violence/coercion, either morally or psychologically, I just want to make the very limited point that sometimes women objectify men too, and sometimes this is ok and sometimes it’s exploitative.
ps – It seems to me that romances written in the last 5-10 years make more of an effort to depict men realistically. Has anyone else noticed this, or have I lost touch with what men are like in real life? (again, recognizing that this is a gross oversimplification b/c not all men are the same, etc)
Sarah – You’re not wrong; I’ve noticed a few romances lately in which the men actually had realistic flaws that didn’t make them somehow “vulnerable” for the hurt/comfort scenario. It’s a nice change.
I think that while romances do often depict an “idealized” man, they make an effort to make that idealized man three-dimensional and realistic, whereas I wouldn’t say pornography makes that effort for women.
That said, I often wish I could find more romances where the heroines aren’t young and stunningly beautiful, and the heroes aren’t big and muscular and handsome and well-endowed. I’m not young and stunningly beautiful, and I’ve been attracted to plenty of men who weren’t cover model material. Are romance novels trying to tell me that only the young and beautiful get to live happily ever after? It’s kind of a depressing meta-message. I would eagerly read about less physically perfect heroes and heroines. While it seems to be tradition to make practically every romance hero a Fabio clone, this reader does not require that (in fact I dislike it).
Oh for heaven’s sake! The 1st Amendment deals with freedom of speech. It is not restricted to whatever is currently deemed politically correct speech. In the Victorian era, Faellie’s statement would’ve been considered extremely mild. In Elizabethan times, it would have been prudish.
Times change. The right for Faellie to express her opinion does not. I vote for freedom of speech even for people I disagree with.
Can we focus on the issue without name calling? Just a thought. For people who believe in the right to an individual thinking thoughts that don’t always agree with their thoughts.
Merry: thanks for the defence.
Elucidation of my position may be appropriate. I have no objection to erotica (using AgTigress’s definition). I have no objection to porn (I used “pron” on my earlier post because of work computer issues) which is written. I have no objection to porn people produce, in any form, for their own/their personal contacts’ use (although because it involves relationships I think this is more likely to come under AgTigress’s category “erotica”.)
As a feminist and humanist, I have very great objections to the porn industry based on pictures of real people, for reasons which orangehands set out very eloquently. Appearing in porn is not a safe or good way to earn a living – I’m a trades union activist and I’ve seen (and tried to prevent/find remedies for) the damage even reasonably good working conditions can do to people, so I’m clear about the likely physical and emotional consequences for the actors involved in the porn industry. A further possible point against the porn industry is that the evidence is that a very high proportion of prostitutes have been sexually abused as children, and I suspect that the same is true of a significant proportion of porn actors, although I haven’t seen evidence on that.
I’m pretty clear that consuming commercial porn is also damaging to at least some people – the probable addiction of Confused’s boyfriend is a minor example. Attitudes on what it is acceptable to consume change through the ages, as Merry suggested, and the current social acceptability/pervasiveness of porn is just another point on this circuit.
Nowhere in my original post did I say or imply anything which is in contradiction to the First Amendment – the fact that something is not prohibited by law does not mean that it cannot be advised against. Porn involving children or unconsented violence is of course evidence of a criminal offence.
First, Sue, thank you for your reply, clarifying your interpretation of some of my comments. They help a lot. There is probably a linguistic gulf here between an elderly speaker of British English and a younger (I presume) speaker of American English. Let me assure you most emphatically that I absolutely was NOT at any point suggesting that:
I find that point of view as distasteful and specious as you do. People are responsible for their own actions. Inanimate things do do things to animate ones, all the time, the way a shoe blisters a heel, but that is not a comment or suggestion on how the animate creatures might react.
The other cause of misunderstanding is that while I was talking almost exclusively about written texts, with the occasional digression into the (static) visual arts, you and many others have been talking about film, which is a different animal altogether. No wonder you found my definitions questionable, when I was defining written material and you were thinking about performances. I wasn’t even speculating about whether Conflicted’s boyfriend was slavering over a film, over pictures of breasts and crotches in a magazine, or over written accounts of endless sexual conjugations; I was thinking about novels, because those were the things that Conflicted was being asked to define and possibly to give up as a quid pro quo.
It is quite impossible to apply the kind of classificatory framework to a play or a film that can be applied to a novel or a painting. For a start, that one-to-one ‘creation/reception’ relationship does not apply. A novelist speaks directly to each reader. Each reader will respond slightly differently, so there are many dialogues, but they have some clarity of purpose. In a film, the original story may be by one person (though not always!), but by the time it has been received, interpreted and passed on by scriptwriters, producer, director, designers of settings and costumes, camera and lighting staff, and of course, the actors, it will have changed a thousand times. In a public showing, the multiple audience is also a factor, since the reponses of some viewers will influence others (e.g. laughing at a joke). The whole thing is a crowd scene at every phase. The ‘creator’ is a many-headed Hydra, and the consumer of the result cannot engage with a single mind.
Faellie, in her post above, is also talking about film. I bow out of that debate entirely, because I am not especially knowledgeable on the subject, nor am I much interested in it. I do think it is a pity if the term pornography becomes defined only as ‘sexually explicit films’, though, because it is a useful and quite precise word when applied to written material. But nobody can stop language in its headlong course, alas. 🙂
Romance isn’t porn for women. Martha Stewart is porn for women. I remember the first time ever I saw her on TV. She was effortlessly whipping together a croque-en-bouche. Not a bead of sweat or a hair out of place. No mess to clean up.
A man looks at a woman in a sex film and thinks “I could do her.”
A woman looks at a croquembouche in progress and think “I could do that.”
Honey, nobody without a huge wallet or a huge staff can do that.
That’s porn.
Unfortunately, I’m in a bit of a pickle with my boyfriend over the fact that I read them.
I don’t think it matters in the slightest bit whether the romances are porn or not. The important thing is, you don’t feel you have a problem with them. Just because he has an issue doesn’t mean everyone has an issue. It’s like an alcoholic believing everyone else should give up alcohol.