Art and Pornography presents a series of essays which investigate the artistic status and aesthetic dimension of pornographic pictures, films, and literature, and explores the distinction, if there is any, between pornography and erotic art. Is there any overlap between art and pornography, or are the two mutually exclusive? If they are, why is that? If they are not, how might we characterize pornographic art or artistic pornography, and how might pornographic art be distinguished, if at all, from erotic art? Can there be aesthetic experience of pornography? What are some of the psychological, social, and political consequences of the creation and appreciation of erotic art or artistic pornography? Leading scholars from around the world address these questions, and more, and bring together different aesthetic perspectives and approaches to this widely consumed, increasingly visible, yet aesthetically underexplored cultural domain. The book, the first of its kind in philosophical aesthetics, will contribute to a more accurate and subtle understanding of the many representations that incorporate explicit sexual imagery and themes, in both high art and demotic culture, in Western and non-Western contexts. It is sure to stir debate, and healthy controversy.

Art and Pornography presents a series of essays which investigate the artistic status and aesthetic dimension of pornographic pictures, films, and literature, and explores the distinction, if there is any, between pornography and erotic art. Is there any overlap between art and pornography, or are the two mutually exclusive? If they are, why is that? If they are not, how might we characterize pornographic art or artistic pornography, and how might pornographic art be distinguished, if at all, from erotic art? Can there be aesthetic experience of pornography? What are some of the psychological, social, and political consequences of the creation and appreciation of erotic art or artistic pornography? Leading scholars from around the world address these questions, and more, and bring together different aesthetic perspectives and approaches to this widely consumed, increasingly visible, yet aesthetically underexplored cultural domain. The book, the first of its kind in philosophical aesthetics, will contribute to a more accurate and subtle understanding of the many representations that incorporate explicit sexual imagery and themes, in both high art and demotic culture, in Western and non-Western contexts. It is sure to stir debate, and healthy controversy.

Taking as his point of departure the authors, the audience, and the texts of Victorian writings on sex in general and of Victorian pornography in particular, Steven Marcus offers a startling and revolutionary perspective on the underside of Victorian culture. The subjects dealt with in "The Other Victorians" are not only those to have been "shocking" in the Victorian period. The way these subjects were regarded--and the way our notions of the Victorians continue to change, as the efforts of contemporary scholarship restore them to their full historical dimensions--are matters today of some surprise and wonder.

Making use, for the first time, of the extensive collection of Victoriana at the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, Marcus first examines the writings of Dr. William Acton, who may be said to represent the "official views" of sexuality held by Victorian society, and of Henry Spencer Ashbee, the first and most important bibliographer-scholar of pornography. He then turns to the most significant work of its kind from the period, the eleven-volume anonymous autobiography "My Secret Life." There follows an analysis of four pornographic Victorian novels--an analysis that throws an oblique but fascinating light on the classics of Victorian literature--and a review of the odd flood of Victorian publications devoted to flagellation. The book concludes with a chapter propounding a general theory of pornography as a sociological phenomenon.

With the publication of "The Other Victorians," understanding of this period took a giant stride forward. Most of the writers and writings discussed by Marcus belong to Victorian sub-literature rather than to literature proper; in this way the work remains connected to a consideration of the exotic sub-literature. A brilliantly written book in its own right, this work transformed the study of the Victorian period as did no other.

"Meg is a lantern guiding women through the twists and turns along this pain-filled path." --Lynn Marie Cherry, speaker and author of Keep Walking: 40 Days to Hope and Freedom After Betrayal Meg Wilson watched her world fall apart when her husband confessed to years of sexual addiction. She has intimate knowledge of the devastation that follows--and she has come through the other side. In her groundbreaking Hope After Betrayal, Meg provides reassuring counsel, compassionate insight, and wise direction. By sharing her story, talking to other women who've been in a similar situation, and turning to Scripture, Wilson has helped countless readers through the steps to recovery--and shows how you can follow that same path out of the darkness. This newly revised and expanded edition includes new lessons Meg has learned over the last decade. A compelling final chapter by Meg's husband sheds further light on the difficult road to healing from sexual addiction, and a thoughtful new appendix addresses the effect sexual addiction has on children in the home.

Pornography catapulted to the forefront of the American women's movement in the 1980s, singled out by some leading feminists as a key agent of female oppression and celebrated by others as an essential ingredient of sexual liberation. In Battling Pornography, Carolyn Bronstein locates the origins of anti-pornography sentiment in the turbulent social and cultural history of the late 1960s and 1970s, including women's mixed responses to the sexual revolution, and explains the gradual emergence of a controversial anti-pornography movement. Based on extensive original archival research, the book reveals that that the seeds of the movement were planted by groups who protested the proliferation of advertisements, Hollywood films, and other mainstream media that glorified sexual violence. Over time, feminist leaders redirected the emphasis from violence to pornography to leverage rhetorical power, unwittingly attracting right-wing supporters who opposed sexual freedom and igniting a forceful feminist counter-movement in defense of sexuality and free speech. Battling Pornography presents a fascinating account of the rise and fall of this significant American social movement and documents the contributions of influential activists on both sides of the pornography debate, including some of the best-known American feminists.

Winner of the MLA's 2016 Alan Bray Prize for Best Book in GLBTQ Studies How BDSM can be used as a metaphor for black female sexuality. The Color of Kink explores black women's representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism) from the 1930s to the present, revealing the ways in which they illustrate a complex and contradictory negotiation of pain, pleasure, and power for black women. Based on personal interviews conducted with pornography performers, producers, and professional dominatrices, visual and textual analysis, and extensive archival research, Ariane Cruz reveals BDSM and pornography as critical sites from which to rethink the formative links between Black female sexuality and violence. She explores how violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and contesting power. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and media studies, Cruz argues that BDSM is a productive space from which to consider the complexity and diverseness of black women's sexual practice and the mutability of black female sexuality. Illuminating the cross-pollination of black sexuality and BDSM, The Color of Kink makes a unique contribution to the growing scholarship on racialized sexuality.

Obscenity is central to an understanding of medieval culture, and it is here examined in a number of different media. Obscenity is, if nothing else, controversial. Its definition, consumption and regulation fire debate about the very meaning of art and culture, law, politics and ideology. And it is often, erroneously, assumed to be synonymous with modernity. Medieval Obscenities examines the complex and contentious role of the obscene - what is offensive, indecent or morally repugnant - in medieval culture from late antiquity through to the end of the Middle Ages in western Europe. Its approach is multidisciplinary, its methodologies divergent and it seeks to formulate questions and stimulate debate. The essays examine topics as diverse as Norse defecation taboos, the Anglo-Saxon sexual idiom, sheela-na-gigs, impotence in the church courts, bare ecclesiastical bottoms, rude sounds and dirty words, as well as the modern reception and representation of the medieval obscene. They demonstrate not only the vitality of medieval obscenity, but its centrality to our understanding of the Middle Ages and ourselves. Contributors: MICHAEL CAMILLE, GLENN DAVIS, EMMA DILLON, SIMON GAUNT, JEREMY GOLDBERG, EAMONN KELLY, CAROLYNE LARRINGTON, NICOLAMCDONALD, ALASTAIR MINNIS, DANUTA SHANZER

Rae Langton here draws together her ground-breaking work on pornography and objectification. On pornography she argues from uncontroversial liberal premises to the controversial feminist conclusions that pornography subordinates and silences women, and that women have rights against pornography. On objectification she begins with the traditional idea that objectification involves treating a person as a thing, but then shows that it is through a kind of self-fulfilling projection of beliefs and perceptions of women as subordinate that women are made subordinate and treated as things. These controversial essays in feminist philosophy will be stimulating reading for anyone interested in the status of women in society.

What does it mean to conceptualize pornography as a material practice rather than as speech? Mason-Grant argues that this idea, fundamental to the work of Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, has been obscured in legal wrangling and political polarization over their civil ordinance. Within the arena of legal argument, where the principle of free speech holds sway for progressive thinkers, their analysis of pornography is rendered, at worse, an apology for censorship and, at best, an argument about the social force of speech, rather than recognized as a fundamental challenge to the very idea of pornography as speech. In this book, Mason-Grant first shows how the persistent 'speech paradigm' inevitably obscures the innovative core of the Dworkin-MacKinnon critique of mainstream pornography. She then develops an alternative 'practice paradigm' that critically engages their analysis, capturing and extending its core insights about the role of pornography in sexual practice. Drawing on phenomenology of the lived body, this alternative paradigm provides a way of re-thinking how the pervasive use of mass-market heterosexual pornography contributes to the cultivation of an embodied and tacit sexual know-how that is subordinating, and raises important questions about alternative materials produced and used by sexual minorities. In her conclusion, Mason-Grant considers the implications of her analysis not for law, but for a critical pedagogy in youth sexuality education.

"There is much of value in Jenkins' work. He manages to discuss CP calmly, while at the same time making clear his personal revulsion, an achievement in itself in an area characterized by so much hysteria."
-- "The Journal of Sex Research"

"Magnificently readable social science on a widely misunderstood subject."
--"Booklist"

"A useful introduction to the methods that the kiddie-porn community uses to hide its activities...a smart history of the child-porn industry"
"--The Washington Monthly," Nov. 2001

"This is a troubling book that exposes how child pornography has found a safe haven on the Internet. Philip Jenkins's innovative research methods let him explore and map the secret electronic networks that link individuals whose deviance seems not just outrageous, but incomprehensible. Jenkins shows how culture and social structure emerge in a virtual--and decidedly not virtuous--world. This book raises profound questions about the nature of deviance in an electronic future."
--Joel Best, University of Delaware

"A disturbing, thought-provoking study"
--"Library Journal"

"A detailed yet engaging account . . . . Engrossing"
--"Liberty," Jan. 2002

Perhaps nothing evokes more universal disgust as child pornography. The world of its makers and users is so abhorrent that it is rarely discussed much less studied. Child pornographers have taken advantage of this and are successfully using the new electronic media to exchange their wares without detection or significant sanction. What are the implications of this threat for free speech and a free exchange of ideas on the internet? And how can we stop this illegal activity, which is so repugnant that eventhe most laissez-faire cyberlibertarians want it stamped out, if we know nothing about it?

Philip Jenkins takes a leap onto the lower tiers of electronic media in this first book on the business of child pornography online. He tells the story of how the advent of the internet caused this deviant subculture to become highly organized and go global. We learn how the trade which operates on clandestine websites from Budapest or Singapore to the U.S. is easy to glimpse yet difficult to eradicate. Jenkins details how the most sophisticated transactions are done through a proxy, a "false flag" address, rendering the host computer, and participants, virtually unidentifiable. And these sites exist for only a few minutes or hours allowing on-line child pornographers to stay one step ahead of the law. This is truly a globalized criminal network which knows no names or boundaries, and thus challenges both international and U.S. law.

Beyond Tolerance delves into the myths and realities of child pornography and the complex process to stamp out criminal activity over the web, including the timely debates over trade regulation, users' privacy, and individual rights. This sobering look and a criminal community contains lessons about human behavior and the law that none interested in media and the new technology can afford to ignore.

This text addresses the following two questions: "What kinds of problems can the law solve?" and "What kinds of problems does the law create?" Using these questions as starting points, Meier and Geis evenhandedly explore the role and function of law relating to six major issues that often divide Americans today: prostitution, drug use, homosexuality, abortion, pornography, and gambling. Statutes and public opinion have shifted dramatically over recent decades in regard to these behaviors. The book details these developments and offers explanations of why they have occurred. Some people view all or some of these behaviors as acts that ought to be permitted, as part of individual freedom. Others find one, some, or all of them to be genuine threats to the country's social and moral fiber and believe that they ought to be criminalized. Still others maintain that action ought to be taken to limit some of the behaviors, but that using the criminal justice system is not the best way to proceed. Meier and Geis' provocative book offers sophisticated, in-depth discussions of these issues, then reviews the conflicting opinions about the proper role of criminal law in dealing with them. It is written in straightforward, jargon-free language, providing an ideal background for exploring the facts and views regarding what are often contentious concerns. Criminal Justice and Moral Issues increases student understanding through the abundant use of relevant illustrations, examples, and case studies.

Debate about what constitutes obscenity and how -- if at all -- it should be regulated has been at the center of the "culture wars" of the past two decades. While literature abounds on the contemporary politics of obscenity, there has been little inquiry into the historic origins of these issues. Focusing on New York City in the first half of the twentieth century, Andrea Friedman's "Prurient Interests" considers the ways in which the evolution of obscenity debates in decades past has significantly affected today's controversies.

Exploring motion pictures, burlesque, and Broadway theater -- three forms of entertainment that were regularly condemned by anti-obscenity activists in the early 1900s -- Friedman traces the creation of a modern system of obscenity regulation in New York City. Friedman also shows how the rise of the concept of "democratic moral authority" -- the idea that obscenity should be regulated according to the standards of the "average person" and that the mechanisms of regulation should themselves be controlled by the people -- displaced middle-class women as anti-obscenity crusaders. At the same time, it offered inroads to male religious figures who were able to portray themselves as representatives of the people.

As "Prurient Interests" vividly illustrates, many of the elemental arguments that censorship advocates still employ today were first delineated in this period: the capacity of certain forms of entertainment to encourage violence against women, to corrupt the minds of young audiences, and to spread homosexuality. Friedman's innovative study enriches our understanding of the obscenity debates still raging at the close of the millennium.

This study is not written as a diatribe against eroticism or a moral crusade to stamp out sex. It is intended as an attack, rather, on a multi-billion pound international industry that, it argues, systematically abuses and degrades women, an industry whose product is at the root of cases of routine discrimination and horrific violence. Many writers, both women and men, have contributed to this collection. Each has their own view, but they all hold two beliefs in common: opposition to censorship and the conviction that until pornography is eradicated, women's status in society can never be equal to men's. They argue that the regulation of pornography under the Obscene Publications Act is intentionally ineffective, permitting the mass-marketing of women's genitals and anuses, and the sale of rape and sexual assault as "entertainment" for men, but censoring art, literature and homosexuality. Many of the contributors argue instead for sex discrimination legislation to enable civil actions against the pornography industry where pornography could be proved to have caused harm, or for legislation like the Race Relations Act where pornography could be shown to have incited sexual hatred an

This collection of eleven new essays contains the latest developments in analytic feminist philosophy on the topic of pornography. While honoring early feminist work on the subject, it aims to go beyond speech act analyses of pornography and to reshape the philosophical discourse that surrounds pornography. A rich feminist literature on pornography has emerged since the 1980s, with Rae Langton's speech act theoretic analysis dominating specifically Anglo-American feminist philosophy on pornography. Despite the predominance of this literature, there remain considerable disagreements and precious little agreement on many key issues: What is pornography? Does pornography (as Langton argues) constitute women's subordination and silencing? Does it objectify women in harmful ways? Is pornography authoritative enough to enact women's subordination? Is speech act theory the best way to approach pornography? Given the deep divergences over these questions, the first goal of this collection is to take stock of extant debates in order to clarify key feminist conceptual and political commitments regarding pornography. This volume further aims to go beyond the prevalent speech-acts approach to pornography, and to highlight novel issues in feminist pornography-debates, including the aesthetics of pornography, trans* identities and racialization in pornography, and putatively feminist pornography.

For much of the 20th century, the underground pornography industry - made up of amateurs and hobbyists who created hardcore, explicit "stag films" - went about its business hounded by reformers and law enforcement, from local police departments all the way up to the FBI. Rumors of this illicit activity circulated and became the stuff of urban myth, but this period of pornography history remains murky. Let's Go Stag! reveals the secrets of this underground world. Using the archives of civic groups, law enforcement, bygone government studies and similarly neglected evidence, archivist Dan Erdman reconstructs the means by which stag films were produced, distributed and exhibited, as well as demonstrate the way in which these practices changed with the times, eventually paving the way for the pornographic explosion of the 1970s and beyond. Let's Go Stag! is sure to point the way for countless future researchers and remain the standard work of history for this era of adult film for a long time to come.

Imagine watching an action film in a small-town cinema hall in Bangladesh, and in between the gun battles and fistfights a short pornographic clip appears. This is known as a cut-piece, a strip of locally made celluloid pornography surreptitiously spliced into the reels of action films in Bangladesh. Exploring the shadowy world of these clips and their place in South Asian film culture, Lotte Hoek builds a rare, detailed portrait of the production, consumption, and cinematic pleasures of stray celluloid. Hoek's innovative ethnography plots the making and reception of Mintu the Murderer (2005, pseud.), a popular, Bangladeshi B-quality action movie and fascinating embodiment of the cut-piece phenomenon. She begins with the early scriptwriting phase and concludes with multiple screenings in remote Bangladeshi cinema halls, following the cut-pieces as they appear and disappear from the film, destabilizing its form, generating controversy, and titillating audiences. Hoek's work shines an unusual light on Bangladesh's state-owned film industry and popular practices of the obscene. She also reframes conceptual approaches to South Asian cinema and film culture, drawing on media anthropology to decode the cultural contradictions of Bangladesh since the 1990s.