Pornography: America's New Favorite Pastime

In a culture that supports the right of free choice, groups such as the Religious Alliance Against Pornography (RAAP) will have a very difficult time spreading their message and achieving their cause. RAAP is a group trying to mobilize a sexually driven culture against porn; this is an almost unobtainable task. They might have certain luck in a few individuals but ultimately they will never be able to make pornography go away. Pornography is defined by Ros Coward as acts that are sexual and is about sexual difference according to a society’s interpretations of the pornographic (Kaite, 1995). The definition of pornography given in our text states it as any written, visual, or spoken material depicting sexual activity or genital exposure that is intended to arouse the viewer (Crooks & Baur, 2005). These are textbook definitions, but adolescents of today have completely different views, most of them finding pornography an amusing subject. A definition taken from Urban Dictionary (1999-2007) says porn is “a great American pastime. Baseball lost its title when the Internet was invented.” The term “pornography” as said by Thornburgh and Lin (2002), has no well-defined meaning. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart observed, “I can’t define it [obscenity], but I know it when I see it” (Thornburgh & Lin, 2002). Clearly, not only would this group have to work against film industries and magazine empires, but there is also the boundless amount of sexually based material on the Internet. There is also the matter of the quickly aroused male. Being a girl, I cannot confirm or deny this, but from observation men can take anything they find sexually pleasing and turn it into porn. Whether from scenes in a movie, to an advertisement billboard with a half naked woman on it, anything can be taking and made into porn, it is a matter of the person not the material. In the end I do not think that the RAAP or any group like it will ever be able to stop the flood of pornography.... [continues]

Read full essay