Philosophy
Thinking more about the romance novel topic from yesterday. Fairly often, a new report comes out with statistics regarding the purchasing of pornography and the gender breakdown always has a staggering imbalance. The question today is whether those figures under-report women by not considering the staggeringly large romance novel market to be pornography.
Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famous said of obscene materials,
Romance novels do not have the same social meaning as (other?) pornography. My undergraduate logic professor's wife was one of the more famous romance writers of the time. This was to say something very different than "my prof's wife is a pornographer." But what is the difference?
Is it that the sexual fantasies are written and not graphic? Is it that there are no real people involved, so the questions of exploitation are not raised? If computer graphic capabilities allowed for the creation of empirically indistinguishable photos and films that were entirely created without human actors or models, would this then make the two morally equivalent? Is it that standard pornography serves to enforce an unfair patriarchal social system that historically has and continues to privilege men whereas trashy novels are, by in large, aimed at the housewife market, the very starting point of the contemporary feminist movement with Betty Friedan's work in The Feminine Mystique, that is, it doesn't feed into social injustice, but brings a little pleasure to those who are among the most anesthetized in our culture?
What do you think? Is there is difference in kind or just degree? If it is a difference in kind, on what grounds?
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Philosophy
Paging Justice Stewart: Are Romance Novels Porn for Middle Aged Women?
Thinking more about the romance novel topic from yesterday. Fairly often, a new report comes out with statistics regarding the purchasing of pornography and the gender breakdown always has a staggering imbalance. The question today is whether those figures under-report women by not considering the staggeringly large romance novel market to be pornography.
Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famous said of obscene materials,
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."This, of course, ought to strike everyone as insufficient. We need to have some sense of the necessary and sufficient conditions if we are to speak of inclusion or exclusion meaningfully.
Romance novels do not have the same social meaning as (other?) pornography. My undergraduate logic professor's wife was one of the more famous romance writers of the time. This was to say something very different than "my prof's wife is a pornographer." But what is the difference?
Is it that the sexual fantasies are written and not graphic? Is it that there are no real people involved, so the questions of exploitation are not raised? If computer graphic capabilities allowed for the creation of empirically indistinguishable photos and films that were entirely created without human actors or models, would this then make the two morally equivalent? Is it that standard pornography serves to enforce an unfair patriarchal social system that historically has and continues to privilege men whereas trashy novels are, by in large, aimed at the housewife market, the very starting point of the contemporary feminist movement with Betty Friedan's work in The Feminine Mystique, that is, it doesn't feed into social injustice, but brings a little pleasure to those who are among the most anesthetized in our culture?
What do you think? Is there is difference in kind or just degree? If it is a difference in kind, on what grounds?
- Why Isn't Violence Considered Pornographic?
It's interesting that the newest purity pledge being required of Republican presidential candidates includes an anti-pornography element. By "pornography," what they intend is surely images of nudity or sexual activity designed to arouse. But why...
- What's The Difference?: Potter Stewart Edition
...
- But What About The Women?
Kyler Robinson The Republic of Plato, 1984 and Brave New World are three books containing a common outlook on social systems and social organization. While all literary works have some sort of social system as a background in which they are set, the social...
- Titillation And Future Box Office Poison And Failure
Why bother with protesting this Sundance film entry for it may have distribution issues despite the message. "Lovelace: a feminism-free 'feminist' critique of the pornography industry" The biopic of 70s porn star Linda Boreman edits out a crucial...
- Deceased--bob Guccione
Bob Guccione December 17th, 1930 to October 20th, 2010 Bob Guccione...opposite end to the elite Playboy. Money and the sexual revolution allowed Bob Guccione's Penthouse magazine to prosper. Near clinical gynecological home entertainment and robust...