The Future of Pornography

I used to oppose pornography on the grounds Andrea Dworkin et al claimed - that it exploited and hurt women. I didn’t oppose erotica however, because I made the false distinction between it and porn, which I explore below. That said, I soon came to realise the ambiguities here, that there was no clear distinction and that it was possible art could be censored. At the time though, I felt this was a risk that should be taken. So what if a little art was censored if pornography was prevented? Obviously, being pro-censorship meant I had to maintain a hard attitude towards free expression... That meant being anti-free speech at the time too, believing that race, sexuality and gender hate speech should be censored.

Censorship

However, I came to understand that censorship is deeply problematic. Who is the censor? Why are they censoring? Unless that censor was me I couldn’t exactly trust the censor. But couldn’t I trust them more than the pornographer and the hateful antagonist? At first I thought so, but censorship of expression is control of thought by stifling thought. Free speech, no matter how vile, allows for free dialogue and debate. It allows fictions and prejudice to be addressed in public, where lessons can be learned. Censorship limits the interaction and development of ideas, to correct those that are wrong, and its limits freedom to choose for oneself, to be ones own censor. Certainly, it is good to have suggestions and recommendations for those who are less informed, but no reviewer should have the power to stop a person seeing, saying or listening to anything. A good essay on the negative effects pro-censorship feminists have had on sexual liberation can be found here.

Pornography then becomes a matter of free choice. But choices aren’t always good. Aren’t there still women - and indeed men - who are being exploited and hurt? are they still not representing a distorted form of human sexuality and fetishistic or conformist aesthetics? Similiar questions can be ask of how the nude is presented in art.

With regards to the first question - almost all employment involves some form of exploitation, and degrees of pain. The important thing is not to rob sex workers of the only work they may have, but to ensure they are protected like everyone else. Certainly, sex work will involve illegality and violence, but so will work in finances. The second question is more serious. There’s a porn genre for every kind of look and act, but one could almost make a case for egalitarianism out of this... The fat and ugly are marketed as desirable at best, though as freakish sex-objects at worst.

The genre’s vary more widely in representation of sexuality and aesthetic than I first understood. Indeed, with more and more women making porn, even more representations are on the market; www.suicidegirls.com is one fine example of a female run porn site with a high female membership percentage.

Erotica?

Some porn tries to be thematically complex and when it succeeds it is renamed "erotica". The difference between porn and erotica has always puzzled me. I put it down to porn being about the sexual act, and erotica being about love. But this was my own arbitrary distinction which didn’t fit with how porn and erotica were presented and sold.

I think that he distinction between pornography and erotica is actually a class distinction that is communicated via the distinct standards of aesthetic and intellectual content attributed to each form, standards which also imply distinct degrees of taste and intelligence in the consumers of these forms. There is no intrinsic superiority of one form over the other: both are essentially aids to sexual arousal and masturbation.

"The metaphoric oppositions of the penthouse and the gutter, upstairs and downstairs, high and low classes, elite and popular culture, are all thought through the same high-low culture metaphor." (quote from AlterNet.)

Perhaps my "against" stance to porn and "for" stance to erotica was part of my old elitist notions of "high" and "low" culture.

Trust

Despite the issues, whether the woman involved was being harmed was, and is, my central concern. A porn pictures can reveal the context of action. Often, the look on a woman’s face seems to be enough to reveal the situation - satisfaction? pleasure? boredom? humiliation? pain? But these are always guesses. Is it real?

The main point here is that there's also a market for the appearance of dominance or abuse, and skilled actors know how to leverage that as well, creating the opposite problem. Is it faked?

The point here is that porn is essentially untrustworthy. The viewer can only guess at what the reality is. One could be viewing terrible abuses masked as great fun or vice-versa. This is my main political objection to porn/erotica. When it involves live actors, it is essentially a lie. But this is not enough to call for its censorship.

This problem of trust and untruth is also applicable to other products and advertising.

Porn/erotica and the Future

There are more complexities on the horizon in the guise of solutions.

Animated porn/erotica is already with us. But it isn‘t realistic. Computer generated 3D porn will one day be an option and these simulations will look real (and eventually also smell and feel real). Any graphic sexual action, depicting any person/s in any kind of context will be able to be designed. Any kind of porn/erotica, even child porn/erotica, rapes and sexual murders could be depicted without harming any actors - graphic sexual destruction of any kind would be more easily available. So too could very beautiful, very arousing and complex porn/erotica with rich emotions, subtle plot complexities and interesting ideas. All will be artificially but realistically produced as computer pictures harmlessly feeding fantasy.

But does everything become tolerable if its artificial? Is everything artificial harmless? Would such representations be harmful to the viewer? Here we have the flip side to the question of who is the censor. Instead the question is - who is the viewer? Underlying both questions is the question - what are the social and psychological effects of pornography?

However, the psychological damage inflicted on viewers of simulated abuse, rape and murder is a contentious issue and the effects no doubt very from person to person. This is an issue of perception, psychology and the reality/medium interface, which is and will be increasingly complex. Its takes us back to Dworkins claim that porn incites sexual violence, but there is no clear connection between these. The debate still rages: incitement? catharsis? pure fantasy?

Trust again

Artificial porn will eventually be so real you won’t be able to tell whether it was artificial of not. And then once again there would be the same problem: porn/erotica would be completely untrustworthy as the reality of the situation became ambiguous. Unless there were guarantees (and who has ever heard of those in the porn/erotica industry or any industry?) you get the same problem! What are you really seeing?

This problem of trust would result from two major issues. First of all, I imagine that such programming would be costly, and the programmers would need to be skilled. Simulating realistic sexual interaction between persons would be a difficult thing to programme. This would make the porn/erotica costly, making it accessible only to big industry members. There would be no amateurs or small-scale pornographers in the artificial sector, and so less competition and all the problems that entails for the consumer and industry in general. Second, if the artificial porn is too expensive, this means that poorer competitors are still going to use real people. This means two things: real abuse will not stop and artificial porn/erotica will be mixed with real porn/erotica, compounding the issue of trust. Is the slasher porn/erotica you are watching involving real people or computer animation? With this disturbing question in your mind, trust becomes an even more pressing issue.

Finally, I’m not considering the problem of porn/erotica actors, directors etc. being out of work here - for the legitimate non-abusive part of the industry, this is obviously a problem. The spaces are plugged by just a few programmers who can do the work of the actors, filming crew, etc - though perhaps not story writers?

It is possible however, that the programmes that allow pornographers to make porn/erotica in the future will become cheap, user friendly and thus accessible enough for non-programmers to use. If these programme reach the stages of accessibility imagined here (or beyond) then people will be writing it themselves. People will be able to design their own fantasies without the need for the industry (as one might do today with a camera and some very willing friends). Porn/erotica will become easier then drawing or writing your own porn/erotica and I imagine people will exchange it too. Bad news for the industry, good news for self expression.

Mimetoids

If porn/erotica is able to depict totally believable/realistic forms then there is no reason why simulated actors would not populate our movies, TV shows, pop bands (re: today’s cartoon pop bands and computer animated movies). These fictions will gain huge fan bases, people will love them, they’ll gather fortunes etc. (How possible is it that one might run for president?). Here is the foreshadowing of a whole new kind of personality/celebrity which raises more questions like: who takes the credit/profit/power? How might they influence people? How might the blurring between reality and fiction on this level affect our culture? Artificial people won’t be robots first, but mimetic fictional representations (mimetics) designed on computers or "mimetoids." Mimetoids will no doubt increase the untrustworthiness of all representational media. You see might see pictures of a genocidal war on TV - but were the corpses real people or mimetoids? No only will porn/erotica be even less trustworthy than it is today, but so will all media.

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