Pornography

Pornographic show announced at the entrance of a sex shop.

The term pornography or pornography (in its abbreviated form) refers to all material that represents sexual acts or erotic acts in order to provoke sexual arousal of the receiver. Since the 1970s, pornographic cinema has developed into the most typical erotic genre. Sometimes "pornography" is understood as "pornographic cinema", although erotic literature and art have by no means disappeared (see history of erotic representations).

Pornography manifests itself through a multitude of platforms, such as animation, film, sculpture, photography, comics, literature or painting, and has achieved a great boom in media, such as pornographic magazines and even audio (phone sex), and lately on the Internet.

There are 33 countries in the world that totally block access to Internet Pornography, while 28 impose restrictions.

Etymology

The word "pornography" is a neologism. Composed of the Greek words πόρνη (pórnē, 'prostitute') and γράφ- (gráph-, 'the written') and the suffix -ία (-ía, which forms abstractions, 'states of' or 'about' some subject), therefore has the meaning of "description or illustration of prostitutes or prostitution”. The oldest recorded use dates from the 1800s, in French (pornographie).

History

The XXX is used to designate pornographic material.

Pornography and erotic representations date back to the antiquity of civilization, to as early and primitive times in human history as the Paleolithic era. The modern concept of pornography, which prevails today, is defined as from the mass commercialization of erotic material in the 19th century during the Victorian Era period, abandoning its erotic-artistic character and aristocratic, or at least wealthy public, and making use of the mass production that defined the Second Industrial Revolution. Modern pornography achieves its greatest presence from the sexual revolution (Golden Age of Porn) during the 1970s, up to the present.

Background

Erotic and satirical breath of Turin, where you can appreciate pornographic scenes with supposed prostitutes, Der el-Medina, New Kingdom, Dynasty XX, Egypt (1186 - 1070 BC). Article C.2031 of the Turin Museum.

In the primitive society of the nomadic homo sapiens, belonging to the Paleolithic period, magical thinking and empirical bases are developed as foundations of primitive religions, basing human creationism on what was observed of reproductive capacities. animals. In the primitive tribes the totemic cult is established towards the anatomical structures dedicated to procreation; the cult of the uterus (cult object due to its ability to retain the fetus and its birth) and the phallic cult (considered as a "depositor of life"). Based on ancient cults, it is assumed that paleoitic Venus figurines, such as the Venus of Willendorf, evoke human admiration for genitalia, motherhood, fertility, and eroticism, through exaggerated breasts and buttocks, possibly intended to represent pornography.

Mirror cover with erotic scene (symplegma) Originally from Corinth, Greece.

In classical Indian cultures, the virtues of sexuality in various forms such as marriage, masturbation, group sex, polygamy, and homosexuality were understood. Sex was understood, especially in philosophies such as Tantra., was part of the natural human divinity and sometimes represented a path to spiritual enlightenment. According to the religious views of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, much of the religious practices and spiritual philosophies magnified the importance of sexual activity through practices and stories with strong erotic overtones; such as the Ashvamedha Yajna of the Rigveda. of Ancient Indian Sexuality, a book describing the sexual practices that were considered ideal for a heterosexual couple in marriage.

Arretina Ceramic Fragment that shows two lovers in bed, early Roman imperial period, Boston Fine Arts Museum.

Ancient Indian society was accustomed to sexuality and nudism, to the point of embodying it in much of the sacred art that adorned ceremonial centers. In the exterior reliefs that adorn Khajuraho it is possible to observe different sexual representations that represent human sexuality and sexuality between deities. they were decisive in the construction of the sexualized societies of the ancient East, directly influencing the sexual policies and morals of Japanese culture, Chinese culture and Tibetan cultures. In China, the first sexual manuals and erotic poems date from 200 BC., based on theological visions on the complementation of genders and strongly influenced by the texts of Indian culture, likewise, graphic representations of sex appear in traditional popular art as like painting and ceramics.

Scene VII of the famous mural showing variants of sex. Quartet of two men and two women in bed. The man on the left penetrates the man on his right, who receives the felation of the woman, who in turn receives the cunnilingus of the woman more on the right. The woman on the right is shown in a position of "doggy style". The dark green patches are remnants of the wall repainted. Erotic fresco of the ancient Roman city of Pompeya.

Classical societies in Ancient Greece and the ancient Roman Empire embraced human sexuality as the basis of artistic expression. In classical art, a strong artistic-aesthetic fixation is resumed by the representation of mythological beings and the representation of the human body, where the female body represented the attributes of beauty and fertility, and the male body represented the attributes of strength and virility. Within Greek mythology there were deities and stories that introduced themselves to "divine sexuality" and that resorted to themes such as polygamy, homosexuality, pedophilia, sexual abuse, master-slave relationships, the group sex, transgenderism, intersex, and bestiality. Classical art was frequently phallocentric, as it placed the genital organs at the center of works (painting, sculpture, ceramics, and mosaics), in a probably pornographic intent.

Anal sex scene at the Warren Cup

The representation of sexual scenes was common in the popular art of the Roman Empire, whose views on sexuality were morally close to the views of Classical Greece. One of the clearest examples of the sexual morality of the ancient Roman Empire are the details of the frescoes in the Suburban Baths in Pompeii, where scenes with acts of a sexual nature that include forms of group sex can be seen., female-female sex, cunnilingus and male anal sex. Other clear examples are the homoerotic details of the Warren Cup (c. 1st century) and the Roman tradition of the fascinus. Within classical erotic literature, works such as Erothikos stand out. by Plutarch, Thesmophoriazusae by Aristophanes and Satyrikon by Petronius; in addition to authors such as: Strato of Sardes, Sappho of Lesbos, Automedon, Philodemus of Gadara, Marcus Argentarius, Gayo Valerio Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, Marco Valerio Marcial, Tenth June Juvenal and Priapeos.^{[ citation required]}

In the Middle Ages, with the domination of Christianity, pornography was understood as a form of lust and, therefore, as a mortal sin; masturbation, fornication, sodomy, adultery and prostitution were considered "criminal" or "unnatural" offenses that were corrected with religious punishments and even with torture and death in the Inquisition. Art in the Middle Ages It was defined in the theocentric style, through religious allusions to biblical passages and offerings that exalted divine perfection, so that the nude and sex were incompatible with religious images. Erotic literature appears, under controversy, in the last few years. centuries of the Middle Ages in works such as Decameron (1353) by Giovanni Boccaccio, introducing erotic fiction in the postclassical periods, in addition to Facetiae (15th century) by Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini and History of Duobus Amantibus (1444) by Pius II.

16th century

Jupiter et Junon (sixteenth century)XVIAgostino Carracci.

Pornography, in a form similar to its current form (mass-produced pornography), appears in the 16th century during the print culture of the early years of the Italian Renaissance, a period in which the reproduction of literature and engravings increased considerably due to the perfection of the medieval printing press developed by Johannes Gutenberg in the 17th century. XV. The birth of pornography in the period of print culture is defined with the appearance of the pornographic engravings I Modi (1524) by Giulio Romano, engravings that were published under the direction of Marcantonio Raimondi in which 16 scenes from Greco-Roman mythology were illustrated showing nudes and explicit sex. The engravings were confiscated and destroyed according to the orders of Pope Clement VIII, who also he ordered Raimondi's imprisonment, accusing him of "immorality". The original versions disappeared, but were copied by Agostino Caracci in the mid-16th century XVI, versions that survive to date.

Sonetti lussuriosi (1527) and Ragionamenti (1534-1536) by Pietro Aretino were important works that defined the pornographic literature of the XVI, the XVII century and the XVIII. Sonetti lussuriosi was a politically incorrect pornographic prose incorporating the art of Giulio Romano's I Modi, which was popular among the aristocracy of the XVI. In 1558 the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre was published, another significant work of print culture in the history of pornography. In the plastic arts, influenced by Renaissance humanism, the nude and the admiration of the human body reappear, although pornographic art begins to be distinguished from simply erotic art. Artists such as Michelangelo Buonarroti incorporated notable homoerotic characteristics into scenes that are not erotic in the religious tradition, as can be seen in the Santo Spirito Crucifix (1492) which shows the image of Jesus Christ totally naked and in a neotenic adolescent body; or the tomb of Pope Julius II, a religious monument that is adorned by several completely nude male figures; this peculiar artistic current marked the transition from the religious puritanism of the Middle Ages, to the aesthetic admiration of the Renaissance. On the other hand, artists such as Hans Baldung, Giacomo Caraglio and Agostino Carracci produced more explicit and less stylized engravings that included nudes and sexual scenes..

Charon Ferrying the Shades (c. 1735) by Pierre Subleyras.

17th century

The works of Pietro Aretino continued to be very popular throughout the XVII century, being translated into different languages and distributed secretly among European aristocrats. During the XVI century, erotic literature is held back by different moral views on obscenity, which motivates authors to publish works under anonymous names and with some limitation in distribution. In the 17th century works such as L'Ecole des Filles (1655) by an anonymous author, The London Jilt (1683) by anonymous author and Erotopolis: The Present State of Bettyland (1684) by anonymous author, but attributed to Charles Cotton; the work is known for being the first work of the Merryland genre, a genre that depicts the female body with topographical analogies and that became very popular in the erotic literature of the XVIII.

18th century

In the 18th century erotic art became popular with the appearance of Rococo art and the last years of Baroque art, whose eroticism was mainly subtle and moderate, resorting to the nude and over-stylized scenes that marked feelings such as love, passion, happiness and anger. While the plastic arts were redefined with subtle and stylized eroticism, literature became more explicit and sexual due to the growing sociopolitical currents that challenged traditional religious morality, through philosophies such as anti-clericalism, atheism and the ideas of the Enlightenment..

Some erotic novels from the 18th century include: Les bijoux Indiscrets (1747) by Denis Diderot, Thérèse Philosophe (1748) by Jean-Baptiste de Boyer and La Souriciere. The Mousetrap. A Facetious and Sentimental Excursion through part of Austrian Flanders and France (1794) by "Timothy Touchit". The novel Fanny Hill (1748) by John Cleland is one of the most important erotic novels in history; the novel tells of the drama of the life of a young prostitute who falls in love with a client. Philosophical exponents such as the Marquis de Sade were important for the development of erotic literature, whose literary works such as Justine ou les Malheurs de la Vertu (1787) and Les 120 Journées de Sodome (1785), are characterized by presenting highly erotic scenarios, normally accompanied by other social situations such as sexual crimes (rape, pedophilia, sadism, mutilation and sexual abduction), as well as socially unaccepted topics for the time such as homosexuality, domination, bondage, urolagnia and coprophagy.

During the French Revolution, Queen Marie Antoinette was the product of social ridicule and her image lent itself to being depicted as a prostitute in erotic pamphlets such as Le Godmiché Royal and L'Autrichienne in Goguettes. In the same way, as a social attack, different aristocrats and clergy were represented to challenge the political regime and benefit the movement of the revolution.

19th century

The concept of pornography that we have to this day is defined in the Victorian Era of the XIX century, a concept that will take a new definition with the invention and popularity of photography to replace the works of literary fiction and plastic arts that predominated in previous centuries. Pornography, beginning in the Victorian Era, was defined by its production on a larger scale, which that motivated governments to establish laws that prohibited and regulated the production and distribution of this, based on religious traditions to promote prudence and curb vice and obscenity among society. The morality of Victorian society motivated the authors of pornography to distribute their works in the form of contraband among select clientele; on other occasions, visual pornographic works that contained nudes (especially the female nude) were marketed according to the parameters of «art», a model that would prevail until the pubic wars at the end of the 1960s.

Image of De Figuris Veneris (sixteenth century)XIX) by Édouard-Henri Avril.

Although the culture of Victorian society was defined by modesty and prudence, at the same time morals were developed that contradicted this socially understood principle, such as the underground culture of brothels and entertainment houses. Brothels, cabarets and prostitution were some of the main economic sources of the 19th century in all Europe; These establishments brought together socially unaccepted clientele for the time such as prostitutes, gamblers, alcohol consumers, transvestites, homosexuals and Afro-descendants, creating a small social concentration that was formed parallel to Victorian morality. The distribution of pornography was carried out mainly in a in specialty stores in the 19th century, when the costs of photographic printing dropped significantly to mass-produce pornography with methods mass-produced such as Halftone Printing, also at the point where photography became very popular (circa 1845, when the daguerreotype became popular); the main consumers of pornography in these types of establishments were upper-class men.

Given this growing popularity of the consumption of pornographic material and the frequency in places of commercial sex, different political laws began to be applied that prosecuted any type of immoral behavior. In 1857, the crown of the United Kingdom published the Obscene Publications Act, as part of the reforms and legal petitions obtained by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose result implied the criminalization of all pornographic material and propaganda. that promoted immoral acts for the time (contraception, free love and homosexuality) and the arrest of its distributors on charges of "immorality". Similarly, in 1873, the Comstock laws were published in the United States, laws that they had the same objective and sought the regulation of pornography and immoral acts, as well as being fundamental in the birth of the radical feminist agenda for the criminalization of birth control as a female right.

Photograph by Auguste Belloc (c. 1855).

The fact that pornography was criminalized led to its irregular distribution in the form of smuggling, likewise, pornographic works began to appear on the market under anonymous authorship. Works such as My Secret Life (1888) and the publication The Pearl (1879-1880) were the subject of legal disputes as "obscene literature". In pornographic photography Authors appear such as: Jean Marie Canellas, Jean Louis Marie Eugène Durieu, Wilhelm von Plueschow, Auguste Belloc, Charles Gilhousen, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Louis Jean-Baptiste Igout, Max Koch, Pierre Louÿs, Gaudenzio Marconi, Félix-Jacques Moulin and Louis- Camille d'Olivier. In related fields, illustrators such as Martin van Maële and Édouard-Henri Avril made completely pornographic illustrations to illustrate erotic novels and political-social satires in independent publications.

The nude was one of the natural characteristics of artistic Impressionism, dedicated to portraying simple and everyday scenes that expressed the vision of its author. That same natural nudity formed a new standard of beauty in Victorian society during the second half of the XIX century, modifying the moralities that society perceived in the nude and incorporating it into a new criteria of commercial art. This new artistic perspective facilitated the distribution of pornography, removing its original purpose and reclassifying it as a work of art. The work Olympia (1863) by Édouard Manet is one of the most significant works of Victorian erotic art due to its negative reception and the legal controversies it generated in artistic society, as it is the image of a courtesan in complete nude. Impressionist painters such as Edgar Degas, Max Liebermann, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Henry Scott Tuke stood out in the artistic current of Impressionism for portraying everyday scenes such as bathing and children's games on the beach, which contained, necessarily, nude scenes in their images.^{[citation needed]}

Naked with a flute (c. 1895) of Wilhelm von Gloeden.

Another popular rationale for the legal distribution of pornography was for "illustrative purposes". Pornography and nudity were common in studies and essays in scientific journals and illustrative encyclopedias, such as those studying tribal societies during the European occupation of Asia and Africa in the 19th century XIX, showing the regional traditions and canons of beauty among these ethnic groups. In this trend, the photographs and illustrations by J. Garrigues, Jean Geiser, Rodolphe Neuer, P. Madeleine and Lehnert & Landrock, who devoted themselves to the exploration of ethnic societies in South Asia for the description of their customs, taking photographs of local women in their traditional attire in an erotic way; These photographs were of great social commotion due to the differences between the heavy Victorian clothing, and the light clothing and the practice of topless among women of ethnic groups in tropical areas.

The Great Pornography Epidemic, French Illustration of the CenturyXIX.

Around 1890, pornographic photography became very popular among middle-class and upper-class men, consisting mainly of photographs of women completely nude or semi-nude in solo and with softcore, it is from 1890 that a greater number of hardcore photographs begin to appear with penetrative sex or oral sex between a man and a woman on most occasions. Pornography continued to be distributed illegally, mainly gay male pornography, which consisted of images of thin men between the ages of 20 and 25, mostly completely nude. Gay pornography, due to the illegal nature of homosexuality in countries such as England and the United States in the XIX century, was mainly commercialized as art, so its authors sought the representation of scenes from Greco-Roman mythology so that it would have a more artistic character and that it would highlight the "Greco-Roman beauty" that formed the sophisticated aesthetic of the nascent gay culture.

The Lumière brothers' cinematograph appears commercially in the year 1895. It is a year after the commercial publication when the first pornographic film appears. The first stag film (an old term used for pornography before its legalization in 1968) was the French film Le Coucher de la Mariée (1896), directed by Léar and produced by Eugène Pirou, a film that stars Louise Willy, a cabaret actress, doing a striptease and having sexual relations with a man. The stag films were a great leap forward contemporary pornography, since they introduced a new voyeuristic character so that the viewer can feel as if they were physically present in the scene, in addition to popularizing the video as the main medium for the publication of commercial pornography that is still in use to this day.

20th century

In the XX century, pornography went through different legal and social confrontations that defined the contemporary concept that exists today. During the first half of the XX century, pornography was totally prohibited by different laws in the United States and England (main producers and consumers of Pornography in the 20th century and the XXI) that regulated its distribution. After the sexual revolution in the 1960s, it began to spread more widely, due to the weakening and annulment of the laws that regulated it at the end of the 1960s, influenced by the current of the search for sexual rights that motivated the movement of the Sex Revolution.

From 1970, society began to get used to the various forms of sexual expression, including pornography, so pornography began to be distributed massively in different media such as video, characterized by a short or medium duration and with very low production costs. The evolution of video has been instrumental in the development of pornography in the 20th century.

Pre-code era (1900-1929)

Commercial cinema began to flourish in the early years of the XX century from simple short films that were shown in theaters (low-cost, low-capacity traveling theaters) that were popular in the United States and England between 1900 and 1920. A Free Ride (1915) directed by "A Wise Guy" (in English, a daring , a rude ) is one of the first surviving pornographic films to date, introducing and popularizing surviving themes in current pornography such as simple arguments that connect the sexual scenes, as well as positions and practices such as voyeurism and the threesome. In photography, between 1900 and 1929, artists such as Edward Streichen, Fred Holland Day, Heinrich Zille, Anne W. Brigman, Julian Mandel, Stanislaus Walery, and Jean Agélou.

The Pre-code period was the period before the Hays Code (1934-1966) in which the regulation of audiovisual media and cinema was not regulated by any government law in the United States, so films begin to exploit lewd themes such as explicit sex, nudity, crime, violence and drugs. This period without legal regulation allowed the broad and primitive development of pornographic cinema towards the mid-1920s, a period which ends with the institution of the Hays Code in the 1930s and the crisis of the economic boom in 1929. Other aspects that allowed the development of pornography between 1910 and 1920 was the sexualized culture of the flapperwoman. i>, the birth of the American cabaret and the commercial institution of sex in advertising for the sale of mainly male consumption products such as alcohol and tobacco.

Bernard Natan is one of the first known directors of pornography, abandoning anonymity and achieving a wide variety of titles, in which he himself sometimes acted, which introduced themes such as bisexuality, homosexuality and masochism to pornographic cinema. Le ménage moderne du Madame Butterfly (1920) is considered the first pornographic film to portray homosexual sexual activity (male-male sex and female-female sex), a film that was starred by Bernard Natan himself and other discredited actors. Some pornographic films (some considered historical films or classified in the lost film category) between 1905 and 1930 include: La Coiffeuse (1905), Mousquetaire au Restaurant (c. 1920), L'Atelier Faiminette (1921), Agenor Fait un Levage (1925), L'Heure du Thé (1925), La Voyeuse (c. 1924), La Fessée à l'École (c. 1925), Mr. Abbot Bitt at Convent (c. 1925) and Massages (1930).

In the 1920s, on the jazz scene, irregularly distributed publications called Biblia de Tijuana (English: Tijuana bible) appeared, publications of great popularity between the years 1920 and 1940 that were characterized for featuring drawn sex scenes involving characters with personalities from political life, movie celebrities, and copyrighted characters, such as Fleischer Studios characters, Walt Disney Animation characters, and turn-of-the-century newspaper comic strips. (A somewhat similar, but luxurious, example in Spain was Los Borbones en pelota.) Betty Boop, created by the Fleischer brothers of Fleischer Studios, is a clear example of the sexualized culture of the Pre-code period and the direct basis of the erotic comic, a character representing a sexualized woman of the Jazz Age (known as flappers), which had to be redesigned in a "less provocative" to the Hays Code entry.

The nude and eroticism in art, between 1900 and 1930, were completely introduced and normalized as an artistic technique and a frequent element in the plastic arts, appreciable in the Fauvist paintings of group dances by Henri Matisse and the precisionist paintings of sailors urinating or masturbating by Charles Demuth. The nude in art ceased to represent great controversy because it was about artistic works that tried to emphasize the natural beauty and aesthetic perfection of the human body.

Bombshell Era (1930-1959)

The Hays Code came into force in 1934 as a measure to reduce the representations considered immoral in the audiovisual media that had prevailed in the first decades of the life of cinema. After having been the pastime of a very limited group, pornography became a controversial and negative topic in American society in the first half of the century XX, due to the religious liking for "to put an end to vice and sin" from religious philosophies such as evangelical Christianity and the Latter-day Saint Movement, in addition to government intervention and the post-war culture that understood masturbation as a destructive method that damaged the physical health of men, developing methods and cures alternatives ranging from the consumption of "miraculous" (Graham Crackers and Corn Flakes, both commercial successes), to electroshock therapy (used to treat conditions considered mental illnesses at the time, such as transgenderism and homosexuality).

Cover Weird Tales (March 1938)

Motion picture pornography becomes virtually non-existent until the late 1950s, when the Hays Code begins to weaken. Instead, eroticism found its way into softer artistic versions such as the tabloid stories of the pulp, the endomorphic design of superheroes in the Golden Age of Comics, and pin-up art. i>. Works considered obscene would be confiscated or closed, in addition to a prison sentence for the author, which made sexually explicit works anonymous and irregularly distributed, or simply subject to general censorship regulations. In the 1930s and 1940s, an exploitative form of cinema became popular, marketed as Cautionary cinema, featuring sensationalized stories featuring explicit sex, drug use, prostitution, homosexuality, fornication, miscegenation, and abortion., as a measure to alert parents to the "dangers" to which their adolescent children were exposed; the films were highly commercially successful.

Pulp literature became very popular from the 1930s, characterized by its simple binding, its cheap distribution, its striking covers with erotic or violent scenes and its stories focused on the fiction of exploitation such as sex, drug use, the occult and violence. The comic was consecrated in the 1930s with the massive publication of supernatural characters fighting criminals, characters with muscular bodies and tight outfits that generated several controversies in later years with Fredric Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent (1954) in which it was claimed that the design of the comics contained references to nudity, fascism, communism and homosexuality (theories that go hand in hand with political opposition to Nuclear Terror and conform to the policies of McCarthyism). In pulp literature, genres such as Spicy and Saucy became popular, a genre dedicated to the male heterosexual audience that portrayed fantastic stories starring by an adventurous, brave and violent male character who was dedicated to fighting dangers to rescue a female character in danger, giving rise to the periodical literature dedicated to gentlemen (Gentlemen's Magazine). In 1947 Bizarre magazine appears under the direction of John Willie, a magazine specializing in fetish photography that launched the model Bettie Page to fame, but which disappeared a few years later due to economic problems and legal controversies.

Cover Yank, the Army Weeklywith Betty Anne Cregan (1945).

Starting in the 1930s, the so-called "Magazines for Gentlemen" with editorials such as Gentlemen's Quarterly in 1931 and Esquire in 1933, magazines that years later dedicated their pages to the publication of erotic photography to attract the male audience Heterosexual. The "gentlemen's magazines" with erotic content were born in the United States during World War II, emerging as a moral incentive (moral booster) distributed by government agencies for male soldiers on the war fronts and as a way of advertising to attract male attention in enlistment and voluntary combat. The distribution of pin-up art magazines among members of the United States Army and Marines arises with the army magazine Yank, the Army Weekly, in order to represent an incentive for soldiers not to contract sexual services with prostitutes and not to acquire a sexually transmitted disease such as syphilis, a disease that strongly affected world troops during World War II World Cup and which was stopped with the successful incorporation of penicillin as a treatment in the mid-1940s.

The pin-up or cheesecake was a distinctive style of painting and photography that predominated in the period of censorship against pornography between 1890 and 1950, having its greatest production between 1940 and 1950; pin-up art was characterized by presenting provocative images of women, in a way that is not considered obscenity or pornography, accentuating glamour, beauty, coquetry and naivety, art in which which highlights the works of Gil Elvgren. The term bombshell was a popular term between 1940 and 1950, used to define what is now known as a female sex symbol i>), defining show business actresses who made fame for their beauty such as Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and Bette Davis, as well as pin-up artists such as Frances Rafferty and Jane Greer.

In the complex history of the legalization of pornography in the US, and what is obscene is prohibited to date (2018), nudity was considered permissible if it was for reasons other than sexual arousal: for medical purposes, For example. Under the pretext that nudism, already a fairly developed movement, exists for health reasons and certainly never for any erotic purpose, a wave of nudist magazines appeared. Some were productions of well-known nudist organizations, but others of less clear origin. There were specialty stores. Whatever the purpose of the editor, sometimes nothing clear, it is more than clear that the consumption of these magazines was almost always for erotic purposes. They disappeared when nudity in magazines like Penthouse became legal.

Something similar happened with the beefcake magazines, in which almost naked young men offered themselves as muscle studies or similar things. After World War II and with the arrival of the Baby Boom, American culture and the American Way of Life emerged, and with it, their ambitions to strengthen the country for the war that was coming with the Soviet Bloc, for which the government began to promote campaigns to introduce the culture of sport and physical activity in order to strengthen the soldiers. Faced with this growing culture of health, they began to appear some catalogues, treatments and innovative products for burning calories and improving muscle mass, as well as magazines specialized in fitness and bodybuilding that assumed these practices as typical of masculinity. In this scenario arises the male counterpart of the pin-up, the beefcake, a style of photography and related publications that portrayed muscular men in athletic poses with the superficial intention of distributing said pamphlets like a fitness magazine, but with the occultly homosexual view of its author and designed for open consumption by gay and bisexual men. In beefcake art, artists such as Bob Mizer, George Quaintance and Danny Fitzgerald stand out, as well as publications such as Physique Pictorial and The Male Figure that featured in a similar format, a modeling catalog in which the photos of young bodybuilders appeared, with a list of their capacities and their measurements and, frequently, posing in a thong or jockstrap to evade the censorship rules and the allegations of homosexuality and sodomy. Sometimes some element of the scene was used, the reproduced Greek column being frequent.

In 1952 the Supreme Court of the United States determined that the cinema was protected by the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution (case Joseph Burstyn, Inc v Wilson ), emphasizing freedom of expression as an element of production in the audiovisual media, which will give way to the birth of exploitation cinema in the coming years. In 1953, Playboy magazine appeared, a magazine founded by Hugh Hefner with the intention of vindicating the sexual lifestyle of the man of middle class, a magazine that became the first mass-distribution pornographic magazine in the same year with the Marilyn Monroe centerfold, although the magazine was in various obscenity controversies until 1957.

Cover The Third Sex [chuckles]The third sex] (1959), by Artemis Smith, pseudonym of Annselm Morpurgo.

After World War II, youth groups that opposed the philosophies of the government and its military policies appeared, crystallizing into subcultures such as the greasers and the hipsters in the 1940s, whose identity included the musical appreciation, consumption, and relaxed sexuality, giving way to the Beat Generation. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Alfred Kinsey published a series of demographic studies in which he considered masturbation and homosexual attraction, studies that revolutionized American thought and triggered homosexual movements by reflecting that masturbation and homosexuality were much more frequent than previously believed. The Beat Generation was characterized by extensive criticism of the policies of the American government and conservative society, introducing themes such as agnosticism, alternative spirituality, drug use and a general idea of tolerance towards segregated races and the LGBT, current where authors such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs stand out.

In the 1950s, more explicit pulp genres appeared, such as Men's Adventure, a genre dedicated to male audiences that contained unreal stories that claimed to be true, starring a surviving man in stories of death, attacked by animals, women eager for sex, communist armies, etc. Thus, at the end of the 50s, other more explicit approaches also appeared, such as those of the Greenleaf Publications publishing house, a publisher of anonymous authors which was involved in various controversies in its history for publishing pornographic stories and, frequently, with allusions to explicit sex, group sex, casual sex, adultery, miscegenation, murder, BDSM and homosexuality.

In 1957 the Supreme Court of the United States determined that the Hicklin Test (parameters to consider a work as obscene) was invalid and that it would be considered in the event that the material was classified as obscene by a majority standard and lacked value (Roth v United States). This case allowed the commercial sale of fine art quality pornography, which would cease to be art when it featured exposed female genitalia (jurisdiction over male nudity as obscene continued until 1962), kicking off the semi-legal period of straight male pornography known as the Pubic Wars and allowing magazines like Playboy to continue in the market into the 1960s as a "art photography" magazine. 3. 4; and respectable journalism articles.

Sexploitation era (1960-1969)

In the early 1960s, the Hays Code begins to weaken due to artistic insistences on First Amendment protection and new standards of obscenity (sex is different from obscene) that They appear after legal modifications in US laws, giving rise to the Golden Age of Sexploitation, a current of exploitation cinema that emphasizes sexual details and nudity, with a B movie production and shown in special theaters called grindhouse (direct antecedents of the porn cinemas that emerged in the 1970s, dedicated to presenting exploitation films and forced to follow admission rules that limited admission to older persons of age).

Promotional Promises! (1963).

The Sexploitation genre was highly popular in the 1960s, using erotic advertising that barely covered official censorship requirements and warned that entry was restricted to adults; despite its legal attachments, sexploitation cinema was frequently embroiled in obscenity controversies. Some films in the genre include: The Twilight Girls (1961), Nude on the Moon (1961), Daughter of the Sun (1962), House of Women (1962), Satan in High Heels (1962), Scum of the Earth! (1963), Lorna (1964), Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Mudhoney (1965), I Am Curious (1967), Space-Thing (1968), The Smashing Bird I Used to Know (1969), Language of Love (1969) and The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet (1969). Sexploitation reached its maximum level of production in the 1970s with the arrival of Porno Chic, making use of new genres such as Nunsploitation, Women in Prison and Nazisploitation.

In 1962 the Supreme Court of the United States determined, after withholding some beefcake magazines from the postal flow as obscene and "unshippable", that the male nude should to conform to the same parameters of obscenity that had been applied to the female nude since 1957 (MANual Enterprises v. Day). company COLT Studio Group, a producer of gay pornography that would have great importance in the period of porn chic and the AIDS crisis), in whose publications he appeared under the pseudonym Rip Colt and experimental filmmakers like Kenneth Anger with Scorpio Rising (1964) and Andy Warhol with films like Blow Job (1964), Vinyl (1965) and Flesh (1968). In the mid-60s, a formal version of the LGBT liberation movement appeared, which intensified from 1969 on in the Stonewall riots, characterized by defending the idea that the effectiveness of the movement is based on sexual visibility. Gay culture brought to light the leather subculture, an underground sexual subculture characterized by the greaser influence and hypermasculinism, which flourished until the 1970s.

The hippie subculture is central to the development of the sexual revolution and the transition of social ideals to the period of cultural postmodernism, as they imposed a philosophy of relaxed sexuality that was inclusive and tolerant of Socially condemned topics such as fornication (changing the matrimonial ideals towards women that linked them to chastity and modesty), interraciality (changing social views on the mixture of races and favoring the movement for civil rights in the United States), homosexuality (favoring the political emergence of LGBT identity and its subsequent social movements) and alternative sex (popularizing ideas that redefined sexual practices such as tantric sex, spiritual sex, group sex, casual sex and heteroflexibility). The second wave of feminism was born in the second half of the XX century with the international publication of Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex; 1949) by Simone de Beauvoir in 1953. The movement was influenced by the free sale of oral contraceptives and the appearance of literature that critically analyzed positions on sexism, procreative freedom, and traditional gender roles in women as the essays Sex and the Single Girl (1961) by Helen Gurley Brown and The Feminine Mystique (1963) by Betty Friedan.

In the year 1965 the English magazine Penthouse appeared under the direction of Bob Guccione, but it achieved international reach with the publication in the United States in 1969 with the main intention of competing with the content of the Playboy magazine , characterized by much more risky photography that showed female genitalia and pubic hair, in an attempt to attract the male audience that was looking for more risqué scenes. In the years that followed, Penthouse redefined pornography, including hardcore photography featuring penetrative sex, as well as being the first magazine to graphically depict female vulvas and anuses.

In 1969 the United States Supreme Court dropped charges against a man who possessed video pornography for personal use (Stanley v Georgia). In the same year, Denmark becomes the first country to legalize pornography, which led to the high production of films with pornographic material between 1970 and 1974.

Porno chic (1970-1989)

The recent legalization of pornography in Denmark allowed the production of two seminal documentaries in the history of pornography: Censorship in Denmark: A New Approach (1970) and Sexual Freedom in Denmark (1970), documentaries that were publicly shown in the United States. Censorship in Denmark: A New Approach (1970) contained different forms of pornography and real sex, initiating the category of real sex (English: unsimulated sex) in cinematography mainstream that challenged concepts such as simulated sex, although this category already had some antecedents in European films such as Un Chant d'Amour (1950), Gift (1966) and the documentary series They Call Us Misfits (1967). The documentaries evaded US censorship policies for their "educational content" as it formalized an issue of "social importance", redefining American morals on the open display of pornography. At the beginning of the 70s, a large number of erotic or pornographic films began to be produced in Denmark in The most notable are the Bedside-films film series (1970-1976) and the Zodiac-films film series (1973-1978).

Promotional poster of the film Deep Throat (1972).

Mona the Virgin Nymph (1970) was the first pornographic film to gain wide distribution and gross revenue. The film tells of a woman named Mona who promises her mother to remain a virgin until marriage; Due to legal controversies, the original film had to be shown without acting credits, under an anonymous production (it would later be revealed that it was produced by Bill Osco and directed by Michael Benveniste and Howard Ziehm) that distributed it to various porn theaters and theaters grindhouse in major cities in the United States. A year later, Boys in the Sand (1971) became the first gay pornographic film with the highest open distribution and highest grossing, as well as being the first pornographic film to display acting credits and the first pornographic film to parody a film title (parody of the film title The Boys in the Band).

Deep Throat (1972) is enshrined as the most widely distributed and grossing pornographic film of the 1970s, enshrined as an icon of the sexual revolution and an icon of porn chic (Golden Age of Pornography), period in which viewing pornography became chic (stylish, classy, popular). Deepthroat included a absurd plot that connected the sexual scenes, as well as a chillout soundtrack with various tracks from genres such as funk and lounge. The film had a wide reach in the United States and other countries, although it was subject to the jurisdictions on pornography, for which reason its exhibition was prohibited in some locations in the United States. The film contained pseudonymous credits such as "Lou Perry" for producer Louis Peraino and "Linda Lovelace" for lead actress Linda Susan Boreman, plus occasional humor and humorous background sound effects such as bells and pyrotechnics to emphasize Lovelace's orgasms.

After the riots at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, the LGBT community gained greater social visibility, in this trend a new culture of gay men emerged in California known as Castro clone, a culture that appropriated the characteristics of the homosexual man of the working class. In the same way, the leather subculture, which had been kept secret for several decades since World War II, came to popular culture, a fundamental subculture in the perspective homosexuality of pornography and the sex industry. Tom of Finland is the maximum icon of leather, responsible for positioning leather and other fetishes (sailors, workers, bikers and cowboys ) within the imaginary of gay pornography with its comics and hypermasculinist art that exalted the size of the genitals and buttocks of its characters and that emphasized hypersexualized scenes of rough sex, BDSM and cruising.

In 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States determined that to consider a work obscene, the parameters of the Miller Test must be followed: (1) if an average person, considering standards " of the community", regards the work, in its entirety, as a work of prurient interest; (2) if the work portrays, in an offensive way, acts whose depiction is clearly prohibited by law; and (3) if the work, taken as a whole, lacks literary, artistic, political, or scientific value (Miller v California). The work would only be considered obscene when all three of these parameters were present, which ultimately allowed for the "legality of pornography", as most film and print works did not meet these three parameters. This legal modification and the popularity of VHS as a home device, allowed the massive distribution of pornography in this format until the late 1990s, when the Internet began to gain popularity and the DVD format became industrialized.

Promotional Farmer's Daughters (1976).

Some significant pornographic films of the porn chic period after Deepthroat include: Behind the Green Door (1972), The Devil in Miss Jones (1973), Resurrection of Eve (1973), The Cheerleaders (1973), Memories Within Miss Aggie (1974), The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann (1974), Flesh Gordon (1974), Sensations (1975), The Story of Joanna (1975), A Dirty Western (1975), Alice in Wonderland (1976), Through the Looking Glass (1976), The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), Spirit of Seventy Sex (1976), Inside Jennifer Welles (1977), Debbie Does Dallas (1978), Pretty Peaches (1978), Inside Désirée Cousteau (1979), Taboo (1980), Talk Dirty to Me (1980), Insatiable (1980), Nightdreams (1981), Café Flesh (1982) and Reel People (1984). Some producers of porn chic include Bill Osco, Alex de Renzy and Radley Metzger; some actors include: Linda Lovelace, Marilyn Chambers, Annette Haven, Georgina Spelvin, John Holmes, Johnnie Keyes, Kay Parker, Robert Kerman, Annie Sprinkle, Candida Royalle, Juliet Anderson, Harry Reems, John Leslie, Ron Jeremy, Paul Thomas, Desireé Cousteau, Jennifer Welles, Gloria Leonard, Billy Dee, Lisa De Leeuw, Jacqueline Lorains, Colleen Brennan, Nina Hartley, Seka, Traci Lords, Taija Rae, and Vanessa del Río.

Some gay pornography films in porn chic include: Nights in Black Leather (1973), That Boy (1974), Kansas City Trucking Co. (1976), El Paso Wrecking Corp. (1978), A Night at the Adonis (1978), THE. Tool & Die (1979) and The Bigger the Better (1984). Jean-Daniel Cadinot is one of the most famous gay pornography producers of the porn chic period. Some porn chic actors include: Zebedy Colt, Jamie Gillis, Peter Berlin and Jack Wrangler.

In the era of exploitation and gore cinema, in the 70s a film appeared that defined feminist positions on pornography, Snuff (1976). The film portrayed the story of a woman involved in an occult sect in a region of Argentina, who is murdered after being sexually abused by men of unknown identity. The film, despite having real sex scenes, was not classified as a pornographic film and was promoted as a snuff film (months later it was discovered that the murder seen in the film was staged, although it popularized the legends real-life murder scenes in the movies and, of course, the term snuff in popular culture). The film sparked feminist criticism for portraying the senseless murder of an innocent woman who is sexually abused, fueling criticism of sexism in pornography and the subjugation of women for the pleasure of men in the sex industry and prostitution. This philosophy intensified the feminist sex wars (feminist debates between the 1970s and 1980s that dealt with positions on issues such as pornography, the sex industry, prostitution, homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, and BDSM). and divided feminism into two ideologies: anti-pornography feminism that considers pornography as a sexist symbol of repression and subjugation of women, and pro-sex feminism that considers pornography as a representation of empowerment and autonomous sexual freedom of women.

Given the new feminist scenes and the diversity of opinions about pornography, Playgirl magazine appeared in 1973, establishing itself as the first pornographic magazine with a feminist focus (defining what is now known as feminist pornography or female friendly). Playgirl appears focused on heterosexual women as a counter-sexist response to Playboy magazine, as it was characterized by beefcake style photographs of physically attractive men (reason for which a considerable percentage of its consumers are gay men) and, occasionally, photographs of hardcore scenes that were more sensitive to female taste, as they emphasized eroticism and other sensual elements that contrasted with the crude pornography from publications such as Playboy, Hustler and Penthouse.

Pornography from 1990-2008

Cover My First Sex Teacher Vol. 18.

DVD pornography appeared in the mid-1990s, allowing for greater distribution of erotic material. Between 1995 and 2000, several companies producing pornography joined the Internet and opened the official sites of their brands, such as Playboy magazine in 1994 and Hustler magazine in 1995. That same year, the videoconference service that made possible the capitalization of live cams and cyber sex services was incorporated into the Internet. Anonymity, accessibility, and affordability made the Internet an unpurchasable repository of pornography starting in the 2000s, allowing its users access to content, videos, photos, games, and services such as sex cams and hookups, although it also allowed anonymous reach of illegal pornography.

At the end of the 1990s, actress Jenna Jameson was crowned as The Queen of Porn. Jameson became the face of the pornography industry with a fifteen-year career (1993-2008) that placed her as the most famous pornographic actress with more than 100 films including: Up and Cummers 11 (1994), Flashpoint (1998), Virtual Sex with Jenna Jameson (1999) and Brianna Loves Jenna (2001). The best-selling pornographic film in history is the sex tape by Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.

Pornography on the Internet

Public video host sites Pornhub, RedTube and YouPorn appear in the second half of the years 2000, currently brands managed by the computer intelligence company Manwin Media (MindGeek). Manwin Media is the largest online pornography company in the world with porn studios such as Brazzers, Men.com, Digital Playground, Reality Kings, Mofos, JuicyBoys and Tranny Surprise, as well as video sharing pages mentioned below. Online pornography studios currently register their sales in subscriptions and guaranteed access memberships, in addition to the fact that most incorporate online stores that offer the company's own productions in DVD or Blu-ray format, as well as sex toys, clothing, memorabilia, etc. The vast majority of pornographic studios incorporate HD technology for filming their productions, in addition to advertising on video host sites and online dating and hookups services. Sites like Vimeo and Tumblr, due to their less strict content terms, allow the circulation of pornography on their sites, despite not being pornographic sites, which denotes a new culture (XXX Generation) accustomed to pornography.

The distribution of these films over the Internet began around 2008. First by membership, then by sale or rental of digital copies (files). Platforms such as Pornhub, RedTube, YouPorn, Tube8, XTube, Spankwire, Keezmovies, Extremetube, Sextube and GayTube, and smaller ones.

Types of pornography

Although various classifications can be made according to the participants, the theme or the postures, a very widespread way of grouping the pornographic genres is from less to more explicit (either the poses or the actions represented). This way they would be:

Softcore

It is the pornographic genre in which the sex scenes are not shown explicitly. In film and television, in particular, it does not include close-ups of genitalia (male or female) and does not show penetration and fellatio in detail. Actors or models usually cover a part of their bodies. This genre has been practiced and is practiced by many more or less famous women and men, such as Demi Moore in the movie Striptease. It is also used in advertising, although this use has been criticized by feminist organizations.

Hardcore

It is the most extreme pornographic genre, since it explicitly shows the sexual act, be it vaginal, anal or oral, or with devices or any other type of utensils.

This type of pornography is subdivided according to sexual orientation: heterosexual, homosexual (male or female), and bisexual. The first pornographic films and the vast majority of current films are heterosexual; gay movies are the second most sold and produced. There is also the variant of the transsexual gender and zoophilia (sexual acts with animals).

Mediumcore or mainstream pornography

It is one where the models show the entire body in more or less provocative postures.

The famous magazines Playboy or Penthouse are perhaps the best-known examples of this type of pornography. Despite the existence of classifications that place them in the previous section.

Post-porn

Postporn or postporn deliberately seeks to subvert the rules of traditional porn (and, with it, the models of sexuality that sustain it) for political purposes (serving as a means to articulate other possible sexualities, outside the hegemonic canons).

The concept of "postporn" was introduced by erotic photographer Wink van Kempen and popularized by activist, sex worker, and artist Annie Sprinkle. It takes place in the 1990s in the US and Canada connected with queer activism and post-feminism. It emerged as a new statute of sexual representation: through a deconstruction of heteronormativity and naturalization, Sprinkle made us think in sex as an open category for the use and appropriation of pleasure beyond the framework of victimization of censorship and taboo. The movement is active today and it turns out to correspond to a creative and revolutionary environment that calls us to reflect on what a pornographic image is, what gender is, and everything that, ultimately, is raised by the so-called transfeminism

It is the job of post-pornography to make other sexualities and other sexual practices leap into the public and, therefore, political arena; Her critical discourse reviews the history of porn from post-feminism and homosexual struggles to gain a space for the representation and consumption of sexuality and allow the visibility of the other, previously absent in pornography. Postporn, understood as a proper representation of the queer movement, houses empowerment dynamics at its center, closely related to appropriation strategies; it is a seizure of power in itself, but also a representation of possible appropriations and therefore a creator of dissident realities of the normative discourse.

Child pornography

Child pornography is any representation of minors of either sex in sexually explicit conduct. They can be visual, descriptive representations, such as in fiction, or even sound.

"Pornography" It is a difficult term to define, however when it comes to child pornography, it is expressly defined in the optional protocol of the Convention on the Rights of the Child of the United Nations Organization in the following terms:

Article 2

For the purposes of this Protocol:

(c) Child pornography means any representation, by any means, of a child engaged in explicit, real or simulated sexual activities, or any representation of the genital parts of a child for primarily sexual purposes.

Legality

World map of pornography (18+) lawsPornography is legalPornography is legal with some restrictionsPornography is illegalInformation not available

The legal status of pornography depends on each country and the type of material. In some countries all forms of pornography are illegal, while others have very liberal laws on adult pornography. Actors who participate in pornographic films must be of legal age.

• In the United States, in fact almost everything is legal except child pornography; since 2000, there has been only one case of a defendant pornographer, Max Hardcore (Paul Little), who served three years in prison for his extreme films, where abused actresses, extreme sexual acts, often with urine, and adult actresses who pretended to be minors. Restrictions that have been self-imposed by companies force actors to undergo regular medical examinations in order to detect sexually transmitted diseases, especially AIDS, although other diseases such as simple herpes abound. The county of Los Angeles, center so far (2016) of the American porn industry, has imposed the use of the condom in the shooting of pornographic films; many companies, who believe that condom films are sold badly, talk about moving. Sex with animals is not filmed, for fear of a process; movies with urine or feces come from small specialized companies, which do not attempt to sell their products to the public.
• Child pornography is prohibited in all countries.^{[chuckles]required]}
• Many laws restrict pornography that shows violent acts or animals.
• In some Islamic countries, all types of pornography are illegal, to the extent that it may affect even banknotes (e.g. a French ticket that reproduced the well-known picture Freedom leading the people was considered pornographic in some fundamentalist countries, as in this work the female central character shows an uncovered chest.^{[chuckles]required]}
• All forms of pornography are illegal in the People ' s Republic of China. As well as in North Korea.

Opinions on pornography

Salman Rushdie defends pornography as an indicator of freedom of expression.

Currently there is a school of thought that considers pornography as a new art form, which aims to show the beauty of human sexuality^{[citation required]}. Those who hold this view point out that many forms of art were initially belittled, undervalued or misunderstood, as was the case with the Post-Impressionist artworks of the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, who was never recognized as having any significant value to his works during his life. So much so that even a lady of her time used one of her paintings to cover a hole in her chicken coop. They state that the world is constantly changing and has always changed, that interests change or new interests appear, and art changes and new forms of art appear^{[citation required]}.

Some people, such as pornography producer Larry Flynt and writer Salman Rushdie, have argued that pornography is vital to freedom and that a free and civilized society should be judged based on its willingness to accept pornography. This theory is reinforced by the fact that very few dictatorial regimes allow or have allowed pornography; whether these are confessionals, like Francisco Franco's Spain, or communists, like Democratic Kampuchea.^{[citation required]}

On the other hand, its existence provokes a rejection in certain cultures or sectors that have antagonistic principles to it. Some objections raised by opponents of pornography are as follows:

• It can become a pernicious addictive vice for the individual.
• That's degrading for the woman. However, this argument has lost some strength since pornographic productions specially designed to please the female audience have begun to be made. In addition, several American porn actresses have said in public that for them it is not degrading; on the other hand, it is argued that women should have the option to do something degrading, if well paid ^{[chuckles]required]}.
• Which is used for commercial purposes.
• That pornography exploits libido, erotizing the brain.
• It induces people without a trained criterion to object to the opposite sex.
• That individuals with poor moral and cultural formation can be induced by their reading or visualization, to explore their own libidinous fantasies by transgressing ethical values and considering it offensive to good customs.
• That pornography is only for individuals with a trained criterion.
• That decays the sexual act as the ultimate manifestation of love.
• That, being a manifestation of sexual anguish, caused by social repression, would reverse the act of all eroticism in the cotidianity of life as a couple, thus causing dissatisfaction and desire for new experiences.

Although criticism of pornography has been extrapolated exclusively towards conservative or religious sectors, this false idea can be counterargued based on the publication of multiple studies from the academic world, and that during the last decades some authors report effects adverse effects caused by pornography. In turn, certain sectors of feminism have been opposed to pornography.

Some religious sectors also label pornography as immoral and consider that sex is reserved for married couples, and that the proliferation of pornography leads to an increase in what they call immoral behavior in society^{[citation required]}. Religions with a large number of adherents throughout the world, such as Catholicism, condemn the existence of pornography. For example, for this religion, the sexual act must be oriented to be a source of mutual happiness that helps to unite a heterosexual couple and that through this act procreation occurs. Islam and Buddhism are also presented as opposed to pornography.

Some feminist critics consider that pornography degrades women by using them as sexual objects for the enjoyment of men, since in fact, in the vast majority of films and photographs, men have a dominant role. They also criticize it for being overwhelmingly aimed at a male audience, generally heterosexual, and therefore offering a very one-sided vision of sexuality.

There is usually a special rejection, in relation to pornography in its hardest aspect, such as that which exploits sadism, sadomasochism, bestiality, pedophilia, coprophilia or necrophilia.

Other studies that have highlighted the negative consequences of pornography include:

• Professors Dolf Zillman of the University of Indiana and Jennings Bryant of the University of Houston found that repeated exposure to pornography results in diminished satisfaction with the couple, a decrease in the valuation of fidelity and a greater increase in the importance of uncommitted sex.

Jenna Jameson, the Queen of the Porn. With more than 200 films, she is the most successful porn actress in history.

• A study conducted by Dr. Reo Christensen of the University of Miami in Oxford, Ohio found that pornography leaves the impression on the spectators that sex is not related to privacy; it is not related to love, commitment or marriage; that strange forms of sex give the greatest satisfaction (such as zoophilia) and that irresponsible sex has no adverse consequences.

• In addition, a series of studies conducted by doctors Elizabeth Oddone-Paolucci and Mark Genuis of the National Foundation for Family and Education Research (National Foundation for Family Research and Education), as well as Dr. Claudio Violato of the University of Calgary, noted numerous changes in perceptions of sexuality and sexual conduct after repeatedly exposing volunteers to pornography (i.e., six weekly sessions). These include the trivialization of rape as a criminal offense, increased insensitivity to female sexuality and discontent with sexual relations.

In contrast, some other studies have shown no link between pornography and sexual violence. This is the case of the sociological study by Canadian researcher Simon Louis Lajeunesse, associate professor at the University of Montreal, who after investigating the subject for two years came to the conclusion that for most users it is rather a question of satisfying a marginal fantasy due to its monosexuality (original expression of the French philosopher Michel Foucault) and that it would be abusive to extrapolate pathological cases. The findings of his study were, in summary, the following:

• Of all those interviewed (a total of two thousand university students, especially women), a group of 20, all heterosexuals, accepted to speak of their habits of seeing pornography.
• All respondents indicated they were looking for pornography on the Internet.
• Practically all males watch pornographic videos, but that doesn't affect their relationships with women or their sexual behavior. For example, boys looking at pornography are not, in fact, more sexually violent than those who do not look at them.
• A significant difference was that singles consumed twice more pornography (three sessions of 42 minutes per week, on average) than those living in couples (1.7 sessions of 27 minutes, on average).
• Single or not, almost everyone sees pornography alone, and they do not want to share that intimate moment with any other person, even with their partner.
• Some of the pornography users integrate it into a wider program.
• Another frequent behavior is that males usually select the scenes they like and oppress the "fast advance" button (FFWW) in which they dislike or are not interested. This is, in the latter case, scenes of violence or, also, collective ejaculations, which users often considered "repugnant".
• Men look for fantasies in pornography that they had already had when they had their first sexual encounter, in general around the age of 12. However, his "guion" vanishes when he meets reality.
• In the opinion of the author of the study, men clearly separate their fantasies from real life.
• Both the mirror hypothesis (the assumption that porn users will want to carry out, in real life, what they saw on screen) as the catarsis hypothesis (which indicates that pornography frees users from some inches and "purifies" the viewer) can be objected.

Feminist Opinions

As it happens with prostitution, feminism has divided opinions regarding pornography, this debate is part of the feminist debates on sexuality that begin with the 1980s.

A current, called abolitionist and represented by Catharine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin, will use pornography as a model to explain the political and sexual oppression of women. Under Robin Morgan's slogan "pornography is the theory, rape is the practice", they condemn the representation of female sexuality carried out by the media as a form of promotion of gender violence, sexual submission and women's politics.

The other current, called prosex and of which Ellen Willis is one of the pioneers, criticizes the complicity of abolitionist feminism with the patriarchal structures that repress and control the body of women in society Heterosexual. For Willis, abolitionist feminists return to the State the power to regulate the representation of sexuality, granting double power to an ancestral institution of patriarchal origin. The results of the anti-pornography movement in Canada resulted, according to Beatriz Preciado, in censorship against films and publications from minority sexualities, especially lesbian representations (due to the presence of dildos) and sadomasochistic lesbians (which the state commission considered vexatious to women), while stereotypical representations of women in heterosexual porn were not censored.

Reduced sales

In recent years, the world's production of pornography has been hit hard by the problem of online unauthorized copying, which has made porn available to many at extremely low cost. On online video sites like (YouPorn, RedTube), file hosting services (RapidShare, Mega), p2p networks (BitTorrent, MLDonkey), and other sites users can watch or download all kinds of porn films, from small fragments from 10 minutes long, to full-length movies of 1 hour or more, completely free of charge, which has caused huge financial losses to the industry.^{[citation needed]}

In the United States, the world's leading producer of porn, major companies have reported declines in profits of between 25% and 40%. In late 2010, rumors were swirling that the major studios had been forced to lay off numerous actors and actresses and cut production, while the smaller studios had disappeared. In Europe the situation seems to be similar.

In Latin America, unauthorized copying of such materials has had significant effects in Brazil and Argentina, the two main producing countries of the genre in the region. In the first, the company Brasileirinhas admitted in 2008 that its sales had fallen considerably, although without mentioning numbers, while 100% Vídeo, the main video store chain in the country, decided to remove porn DVDs from its stores. shelves, due to low customer demand. In Argentina, meanwhile, of the two producing companies that existed in 2009, one ceased its activities and the other is about to close.

There are also other reasons, apart from unauthorized copies, that have caused the crisis in the pornographic industry: on the one hand, the proliferation of small producers, autonomous in some cases, and private recordings, with little or no for profit, posted on the internet. Both cases are related to the recording, editing and distribution facilities that digital media allow.