Pornography

Pornography is explicit sexual writing or visual materials, often considered obscene by the majority.

Pornography (from the Greek pornographos, the writing of harlots) is explicit sexual writing or visual materials, often considered obscene. Some members of the society have always regarded any distribution of pornography as potentially dangerous and corrupting, particularly to younger people.

Both the laws and public attitudes regarding pornography are in a constant state of flux simply because no adequate definition of “obscene” has yet been established.

Until recently, no scientific studies had been published which attempted to determine whether or not pornographic materials did, in fact, have detrimental effect on those who read or viewed them. Thus, opinions were based largely on cultural traditions and ignorance. Now, at least two excellent studies are available.

The first is that of the Danish Forensic Medical Council, carried out at the request of the Minister of Justice and the Danish Parliament and published in 1966. The second is the report of the United States President’s Commission on obscenity and pornography (Bantam Books), published in 1970. The findings of this commission had the “distinction” of being rejected by both the president and Congress before they were even published.

Both the Danish and the United States studies were in depth, and even included actual experiments carried out with human subjects. Their findings, which are remarkably in agreement, have at least some scientific validity. The following excerpts neatly illustrate the main findings.

An excerpt from the report of the Danish Forensic Medical Council:

“School age children will apparently often show an interest in and be able, to a large extent, to ‘understand’ pornography; but the sexual role of the child is by now so fixed that one can scarcely reckon with further means, such as pornography, changing the sexual learning of the child in any essential respect. Nor is there any reason to suppose that such further influence can cause the development of neurosis or the mental suffering in the child”.

“To sum up, the council will hereafter state that, as far as the council is aware, no scientific experiments exist which can lay a basis for the assumption that pornography or “obscene” pictures and films contribute to the community of sexual offences by normal adults or young people. On the basis of psychiatric and child-psychiatric experience it can neither be assumed that sexual learning, the development of personality and the ordinary attitude to sex and to ethical – sexual norms either in children or adults, can be detrimentally affected means in question (pornographic literature, pictures and films). This statement holds good regardless of whether the pornographic writings, pictures, etc., are of normal or sexually perverted content”.

(Source: Webhealthcentre.com)