{ASSD} Erotica and Porn: More self-promotion
vinnie...@yahoo.com
between erotica and pornography. It's provoked some pretty intersting
discussion in the comments section.
http://www.livejournal.com/community/erotillectuals/156901.html
tenyari
vinnie...@yahoo.com wrote:
Hey, porn moves around on the TV, and erotica moves around in the mind.
That's all I need to know. :)
--
Tenyari - http://www.asstr.org/~tenyari/
Blog/Journal - http://www.asstr.org/~tenyari/blog/blogger.html
If he tells you "he'd slept with four girls one night, you could figure it
was about a girl and a half.
H. Jekyll
re. > http://www.livejournal.com/community/erotillectuals/156901.html
I liked the discussion on your blog. Of course the porn versus erotica
argument, like the porn versus not-porn argument, is completly
unresolvable because 'porn' is a judgement, not a description. That's
why the U.S. Supreme Court goes with the "commmunity standards" and "no
redeeming artistic (etc.) value," and "I know it when I see it"
approach.
When law enforcement or the courts want to get really specific they
simply define a behavior as illegal. For example, any photos of minors
engaging in sexual acts are illegal. Period. There's a clear line.
For everything else, it's a matter of taste amd judgement -- though
Larry Flynt, et al, are convinced that a lot of stuff that appears on
the internet (not our stories, which have First Amendment protection)
would be judged 'obscene' (the actual legal term) in courts in almost
all U.S. communities.
H. Jekyll
Pornographer?
Uther Pendragon
> http://www.livejournal.com/community/erotillectuals/156901.html
1) I couldn't get to it.
2) I'll say again what I've said before: Generally, "porn" is a term
applied to the erotica of which the speaker disapproves. (Only generally
since there are those on alt.sex.stories.* who boast of writing "porn.")
People will claim that THEIR criteria are objective, and sometime they
are. But what Smith means by "Here are the benchmarks by which anyone can
test whether particular story is porn" is merely that they have identified
the elements of which they disapprove.
A special case of this is the 'degrading to women' test. (Leaving aside
which particular descriptions of women are degrading; some women might
find "women don't really want sex with men" a degrading claim.)
--
Uther Pendragon FAQs http://www.nyx.net/~anon584c
anon...@nyx.net fiqshn http://www.asstr.org/~Uther_Pendragon
Spawn Of Satan
>redeeming artistic (etc.) value,"
as for artistic merit. So the "communtiy decides what is and isn't
obscene? What if the community is wrong? Maybe that's part of it, the
idea that (insert any large number here)of people as group can't be
wrong. Isn't any work of art what your read into it? This could
theoretically include the most innocculous image or work of art you
could imagine. It could include a completely blank canvas if the
"community" decides it is obscene. I say since it is impossible to
define obscenity, it doesn't exist.
As far as the difference between erotica and porn, I don't think there
is a difference outside of personal preference or the inherent human
need to categorize things. I can see a distinction in my mind, but I
can't define it in such a way as to call it anything other than a
personal classification.
tenyari
"Spawn Of Satan" <imbeingr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >"commmunity standards" and "no
> >redeeming artistic (etc.) value,"
> I've never liked this approach. Who decides who the "community" is and
> as for artistic merit. So the "communtiy decides what is and isn't
> obscene?
Well, obviously, it's the ladies at the bake sale for the local
protestant white church, combined with the wink and nod of the reverend
after he's dipped his fingers in a few of their pies.
katzmarek
Um, I think I generally agree with all of that.
We have an act of Parliament which attempts to define the public good.
In practice that means, beastiality, sex with minors (sub 16yo) and
'sexualised' images of children, sexual violence are not ok. Grey areas
frequently arise, such as the odd art film, which requires the chief
censor's call. In such cases he looks as the 'context' of the
'objectionable material.'
Now we're reasonably lucky that the censor is quite a switched on guy
who pisses off the 'community standards' types often. That all could
change, however, with a change of Govt.
In a way, it would be good if things went backwards. I used to enjoy the
'indecency' trials of the late sixties/early 70s. Pickets, demos,
people getting their kit off outside the court room, good fun! ;)
Don
Spawn Of Satan
corcumstances that it is a neccessary evil. Even then I believe it
should be drastically drawn back. In the case of national security or
personal information I find it acceptable, but just about all else it
should be done away with. Wirting this it strikes me that I'm not sure
if I see a definite difference between privacy and cencorship. Am I
alone in thinking this?
>Grey areas
>frequently arise, such as the odd art film, which requires the chief
>censor's call.
>who pisses off the 'community standards' types often.
Especially since Bush and "The MIghty League of Conservatives". Pretty
much community standards seem to coincide with which party is in power
at the capitol. Don't even get me started on the Attourney General.
Bradley Stoke
Ever since D.H. Lawrence's famous essay on the subject, people have
tried to distinguish between porn and erotica basically on the
understanding that porn is bad and erotica is good. Essentially, the
notion is that erotica inspires, whereas porn is nothing more than the
raw material of masturbation.
Personally, I don't think the distinction between the two is anything
more than a semantic game. There are plenty of instances of erotica
used for the same purposes as the most tacky of porn and plenty of what
is ostensibly porn which has come to be considered as erotica.
We live in an age where we desperately want to reduce everything to
easily defined concepts, whilst there are those, whose works of art can
be found in prestigious art galleries and or whose fiction can be found
in literary omnibuses, who strive to explode these distinctions.
The stuff I write and present here on ASSM and elsewhere is well
described as "sex fiction". Whether it is art, and therefore "erotica",
or smut, and therefore "porn", I don't know. However, if something
achieves what it intends to achieve or, even better, achieves something
rather more than it intended, then that thing is of value whether it is
called "porn" or "erotica".
Generally, this discussion is more interesting for what it says about
those who express opinions than for anything else. On the one hand, it
reveals those who have snobbish attitudes which clothe their guilt
about the pleasure they get from something erotic (even more so if they
masturbate to it). On the other hand, it reveals those who are so
tortuous in their attempts to embrace everything that they leave any
semblance of critical faculties behind.
With regards to sex fiction, the most erotic is rarely the most
explicit and extreme, but often being explicit and extreme is what
makes a piece of fiction the most like "art" especially when it
abandons any attempt at being "erotic". The most erotic fiction I've
read has been by authors like Anais Nin, Sarah Waters, Georges
Batailles and, on ASSM, oosh. The most filthy and disgusting (and
therefore pornographic) has been by authors like Thomas Pynchon,
William Burroughs, the Marquis de Sade and, on ASSM, alocer loki.
Which is art and which is wank is another question.
Bradley Stoke
--
http://www.asstr.org/~Bradley_Stoke
katzmarek
Yeah, I saw a doco on Larry Flynt recently so I got to witness firsthand
some of the religious fervour, particularly among local justice and law
enforcement. (Ironically, Hustler was banned for many years, here.
Partly this was due to the costs envolved in getting it unbanned versus
prospective sales. Under the old, now extinct laws, it wasn't worth the
distributor's time)
Politically, the Christian Right do not figure large. The only Party in
Parliament that has any kind of 'Christian' agenda have to cloak
themselves as a 'family values,' type party. On the strength of tax
breaks for families and other benefits they gained a bit of traction. As
a minor coalition partner, however, they haven't a lot to say for
themselves nowadays and'll likely be crucified in the next election.
But in this small town of about 18,000 people there's a Helluva lot of
churches. Coming from the big city, it surprised me. Still, the
overwhelming majority of ppl don't attend church. Fully half, I'd
suspect, would claim no religious affiliation.
There's a natural resistance to extreme views in the Kiwi character, I
think.
Don
Tesseract
Pornography is a genre of entertainment, as is mystery or science
fiction, among many others. Few of these genres are completely self
contained. You can have a science fiction mystery or a pornographic
mystery or pornographic science fiction, for example. And entertainment
covers writing, movies, still pictures, audio recordings, live
productions and the more classic arts such as painting and sculpture.
There is nothing inherently wrong, inherently bad, about pornography,
or any other genre. There may be problems with certain productions or
implementations. such as harming childern in producing some images. But
blaming the wider genre for problems of a very small segment is not
logical or helpful.
To be more specific, pornography is sexual. It is designed to get a
sexual response, or sexual feeling, from the consumer, as any good
entertainment should get some kind of an emotional response from its
consumer. Thus it covers the sex act and related matters, such as
foreplay, including visual foreplay. This means that publications such
as Playboy has pornography. It also has other material in its written
sections.
Erotica is a subset of pornography. Based on what I've seen that people
call erotica, it covers what is also called soft porn. It is less
blatant, more subtle. But it is not something separate, just a subset.
--
Tesseract
Tesseract
Spawn Of Satan wrote:
> I'm not a fan of any sort of censorship, but I realize in certain
> corcumstances that it is a neccessary evil. Even then I believe it
> should be drastically drawn back. In the case of national security or
> personal information I find it acceptable, but just about all else it
> should be done away with. Wirting this it strikes me that I'm not
sure
> if I see a definite difference between privacy and cencorship. Am I
> alone in thinking this?
Personal information should always be private and only be made public
with the consent of the person. A very narrow exception can be made for
individuals that aspire to be public figures, such as politiciand, and
even then only material that directly relates to the public interest.
Prurient interest in a politician's private life, just because it is
titillating, is not sufficient.
National security is a good reason to keep secrets, on the face of it.
But stuff swept under that rug include state secrets that are only
secret because they may embarrass the state. And some of these secrets
may threaten the security of some politicians, though not the state.
Then there is the withheld information and lies spun to hidden agendas
of people in power.
Beyond that, censorship must be very limited. A major problem is once
you have a set of criteria to allow censoring in one area, you can get
criteria creep until you are censoring just about everything.
A good argument can be made to restrict some material from children
until they are mature enough to properly understand it. But so much
material is freely available, both about sex and about violence,
through sources such as advertising that the more blatant material
would hardly make a difference.
About the only area left to debate is material calling for violence
against segments of society, or against the state itself. Not debating
the need for these actions, but a direct call to arms.
That seems a reasonable restriction here in North America. And, from
here it seems a resonable restriction on Iraq, though many Iraqis see
their country occupied by an invading army. I'm sure most of those
occupying soldiers truly believe they are helping to build a better
society.
But consider another occupation: the German occupation of France. From
our perspective the French Resistance was a Good Thing. From the German
perspective at the time, it was a bad thing. Any rules we, the winners
of that war, create for our society today, that would, if we apply them
to that period of history,
make the French Resistance a bad thing, have to be suspect.
> >Grey areas
> >frequently arise, such as the odd art film, which requires the chief
> >censor's call.
> >we're reasonably lucky that the censor is quite a switched on guy
> >who pisses off the 'community standards' types often.
> It's maybe a little more complicated over here accross the pond.
> Especially since Bush and "The MIghty League of Conservatives".
Pretty
> much community standards seem to coincide with which party is in
power
> at the capitol. Don't even get me started on the Attourney General.
Community standards are not based on the majority view, but the most
vocal view. Could these be people with too much free time on their
hands?
But the US is weird. They can't "make love, not war" because their
media can "show war but not love." Height of ridiculousness was last
Sunday's "60 Minutes" where they did an article about a philosopher
that wrote a book about Bullshit. They said "BS" and "bull <beep>" but
not "bullshit" and kept this up for 15 minutes.
--
Tesseract
Spawn Of Satan
are so uptight about obsenity and "foul" language. It seems to me that
we just about the most backwards country in the world in this regard.
>The most erotic fiction I've
>read has been by authors like Anais Nin, Sarah Waters, Georges
>Batailles and, on ASSM, oosh.
that Trilogy by Anne Rice (written under a psuedonym) I believe they
were about Sleeping Beauty and her novel Belinda (also written under a
psuedonym).
H. Jekyll
> Bradley Stoke wrote:
> > Vinnie
> >
> >
> > Ever since D.H. Lawrence's famous essay on the subject, people have
> > tried to distinguish between porn and erotica basically on the
> > understanding that porn is bad and erotica is good. Essentially, the
> > notion is that erotica inspires, whereas porn is nothing more than
> the raw material of masturbation.
-- Sometimes you just need porn, ya know? Erotica won't do the trick.
-- I don't think there are wide gaps in all our positions, here. Now
it would be nice to hear from someone who's not an alt.sex netizen, an
ordinary Joe or Joline, maybe even someone from the other side (bless
their little hearts).
hj
Kenn 'Jazz' Booth II
> As far as published mainstream erotica the best I've read has been
> that Trilogy by Anne Rice (written under a psuedonym) I believe they
> were about Sleeping Beauty and her novel Belinda (also written under a
> psuedonym).
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
-- Smoovious
--
_______________________________________________________ _/azz /|/|aster _____
Kenn "Jazz" Booth II The Imperium, VGAP host
mail: ja...@grnet.com mail: impe...@strixy.com
ICQ : #26588685 IRC : UnderNet #VGAplanets
Tim Merrigan
IMHO they're different words for essentially the same thing. OTOH some
people draw a line of literary quality, with higher quality stories
being erotica and lower quality ones being porn.
--
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America,
and to the republic which it established, one nation, from many peoples,
promising liberty and justice for all.
Feel free to use the above variant pledge in your own postings.
Tim Merrigan
Tim Merrigan
What about the Attorney General? He may have defined torture out of
existence (as used by the UCMJ torture ban), but I haven't noticed him
doing anything about censorship (well, not sexual censorship, anyway).
Note: I'm talking about the current Attorney General Gonzalez, you may
be thinking of the former Attorney General Ashcroft.
vinnie...@yahoo.com
>
> What about the Attorney General? He may have defined torture out of
> existence (as used by the UCMJ torture ban), but I haven't noticed him
> doing anything about censorship (well, not sexual censorship, anyway).
>
> Note: I'm talking about the current Attorney General Gonzalez, you may
> be thinking of the former Attorney General Ashcroft.
>
I think I saw something on this topic recently...Oh, here it is!
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.sex.stories.d/msg/efaa03069abed3db?hl=en
Summary: crusading reporter Vinnie Tesla posted a bunch of links about
the Justice Department announcing in May that they've created a new
Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, and Gonzales has said on the record
that he wants to continue fighting porn.
> "Enforcement is absolutely necessary if we are going to protect citizens from unwanted exposure to obscene materials," Gonzales recently told federal prosecutors. He directed U.S. attorneys to report back by late July on effective ways to crack down on obscenity and what tools the prosecutors might need.
One sex-worker friend of mine has been hit hard by the new "child porn"
laws, which now require her to keep full records of all her webcam
shows. It's not about child porn--it's about making the lives of smut
producers prohibitively difficult and expensive.
Denny Wheeler
>Tim Merrigan wrote:
>
>>
>> What about the Attorney General? He may have defined torture out of
>> existence (as used by the UCMJ torture ban), but I haven't noticed him
>> doing anything about censorship (well, not sexual censorship, anyway).
>>
>> Note: I'm talking about the current Attorney General Gonzalez, you may
>> be thinking of the former Attorney General Ashcroft.
>>
>I think I saw something on this topic recently...Oh, here it is!
>
>http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.sex.stories.d/msg/efaa03069abed3db?hl=en
>
>Summary: crusading reporter Vinnie Tesla posted a bunch of links about
>the Justice Department announcing in May that they've created a new
>Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, and Gonzales has said on the record
>that he wants to continue fighting porn.
>
>> "Enforcement is absolutely necessary if we are going to protect citizens from
>>unwanted exposure to obscene materials," Gonzales recently told federal prosecutors.
>>He directed U.S. attorneys to report back by late July on effective ways to crack down
>>on obscenity and what tools the prosecutors might need.
"Well, sir, for a starter, it'd really help if you'd get rid of that
pesky First Amendment thing."
"We're working on it."
--
-denny-
"Do your thoughts call ahead or do they just arrive at your mouth unannounced?"
"It's come as you are, baby."
-over the hedge