Coleen Singer, Sssh.com Porn For Women and Couples
A couple years back, I wrote a post about how the rediscovery of sexually-explicit tiles in the ruins of a 18th Century English pub served to remind us that pornographic depictions are in no way an invention of modern pornographers – and that our predecessors on the planet have always been interested in sex and depictions thereof, which goes a long way in explaining how there ended up being over 7 billion of us humans now blessing the world with our presence.
Read on…
Naturally, there is all sorts of similar evidence of humanity’s historic fascination with sexually-explicit depictions which is far older than the randy tiles found on Fleet Street, with some of the earliest erotic cave paintings dating back over 25,000 years before the start of the Common Era.
Bonfire of the NIMBYs
Of course, it’s also true there’d be way more historical evidence of erotica, if not for zealous extremists who so fear erotic expression, they come to believe the only proper response to a sexually-explicit depiction is to destroy it.
In discussing the museum’s latest exhibit, Hardcore: A Century and a Half of Obscene Imagery, Museum of Sex director of exhibitions Mark Snyder noted a lot of modern folks “think we invented hardcore porn, but it’s really something that people have been creating for a very long time.”
Of course, for as long as people have been creating pornography, other people have been coming along to rain on the porn parade.
“While I’m sure there was more of this happening,” Snyder said, at the time referring specifically to Victorian era erotica, “there are very few relics that still exist.”
Thankfully, some of the same people who had the gall to collect erotica in previous centuries also took measures to protect their collections from being entirely destroyed by anti-porn crusaders – like the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded by Anthony Comstock in 1873.
According to the Hardcore exhibition, Comstock “was personally responsible for destroying 160 tons of erotic material.”
While I’m not sure how much the pornography of the his day weighed in terms of a per-piece average, but even if a lot of what Comstock destroyed was marble statuary pieces, 160 tons still is one hell of a lot of eradicated erotica.
Part of the exhibition is a wall of some 120 photographs discovered inside the walls of a Brooklyn brownstone. Were they stashed there by their owner to avoid having them destroyed by Comstock and his like-minded buzzkills? The answer is lost to history, but it seems a reasonable theory, given the zest and zeal with which the NYSSPV went about its campaign of vice-tromping vandalism.
Today’s Porn And Digital Resiliency
These days, anti-porn crusaders face a challenge the likes of which Comstock probably couldn’t even have conceived: Porn which can’t be destroyed.
Sure, you can stack up DVD boxes and set them on fire, but in all likelihood, the video files on those DVDs exist in a variety of other forms, including digital masters sitting on a hard drive somewhere, backup copies of those uncompressed masters and various compressed versions strewn about on websites, thumb drives, mobile devices, etc. etc.
The best modern anti-porn crusaders can hope for is having individual pornographic works declared legally obscene in a court of law, thereby opening the door for punishing those who created and distributed the works, as well as others who might do so in the future, despite the court’s finding holding the material to be obscene. And sure – the court might even order ever known copy of the material in the possession of the defendant(s) to be destroyed, as well, but that’s not going to have much impact on the potentially millions of people who have acquired a copy of the depictions at issue prior to the material being subjected to prosecution.
That’s the best they can hope for in terms of destroying the porn, I mean; unfortunately, destroying the lives of people associated with said porn remains a clear – and occasionally implemented – option.
This Decline In Moralist Groups’ Impact Is Not a Bad Thing
Several years ago, I read an article about how the group Morality In Media (which recently rebranded itself as the “National Center on Sexual Exploitation”) was struggling to raise as much money as it once did, possibly due to a decline in the appeal of its message.
For social conservatives, it was a terrible sign, maybe even a confirmation of their long-held theory that increasing tolerance for things of which they don’t approve – like porn, homosexuality and critical thought – would increase and expand, eventually turning the natural moral order of the world on its head, entirely.
If you’re the kind of person who thinks this country should value individual liberty, privacy and personal choice over mindless adherence to centuries-old proclamations of scripture, however, the decline of “organized morality” is a mighty fine thing.
After all, when you boil it down to its core, a movement which seeks to impose a certain view of what is (and isn’t) moral is fundamentally anti-liberty. Such a movement looks at our body of laws and policies and says: “This isn’t good enough; my fellow humans must have fewer choices in how and what they watch, listen to, read and/or fuck.”
Generation DALABUGNOS
There’s little doubt in my mind many of my fellow Americans strongly disapprove of porn, but there’s even less doubt that more Americans than ever before either actively consume and enjoy porn, or fall into the population I call the “DALABUGNOS” – which in this context stands for: “Doesn’t Actually Like Any Porn, But Ultimately Gives Not One Shit.”
What I think the Moral Majoritarians of the world fail to grasp is if the force of their laughably restrictive moral convictions stem from the fact they represent a “majority,” then their relevance falls to right around zero should it ever come to pass that the majority actually disagrees with them.
Guess what, Pat Trueman and company: That time has come – and now you simply find yourself reaping the harvest of having been hostile, self-righteous, overly-judgmental dicks for your entire lives.
The anti-porn crusaders might think they can sway the DALABUGNOS, but while the DALABUGNOS might look down their noses at porn consumers, my hunch is they have even less use for prudish pricks and disingenuous dickheads who constantly make outrageous claims about porn causing every societal ill from sexual assault to income inequality.
In other words, Trueman and Company, porn is here to stay, whereas groups like yours which are likely to struggle for both funding and relevance from here on out.
Sucks to be you, I guess…. But from where I sit, quite frankly, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer would-be theocrat.
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