DanHagen.com

Let me be quick to emphasize: In no way do I recommend viewing pornography. If it’s going to degrade your mind and destroy your life to any degree, I suggest that you refrain from it and all of it’s forms.

Now that that’s over with, I’m going to bring up something - something that’s been irritating me recently. It’s a misconception that a lot of people seem to have. Of course, I’m not saying that everyone has this problem (many people who read this blog probably do not); however, with my upbringing and the dominant religion in my area, many of my local peers give me the impression that they are a bit confused. That, or maybe it’s just me.

I’ll start out with one question: What is pornography?

Last night I was conducting an interesting social experiment via instant messaging - I didn’t even intend for it to be an experiment at first - but I was rotating certain images for my display picture, and a couple of the girls on my contact list willingly gave me their reactions.

To explain, there is an artist I know of who is named Howard David Johnson (his website is crap, but his paintings are gorgeous). Because I am a sucker for fantasy-themed paintings and chicks that look like fairies, I decided to use a couple of his images as my IM avatar. For good measure, the women depicted in some of his paintings are somewhat “revealing” if you will.

Take a look at the image to the right. One of my friends (who is a girl) was talking to me when I set it as my display picture, and upon seeing it, she exclaimed “That image is a bit frightening!”

I was shocked at this comment… and I was also interested as to why she had such thoughts. When I asked her about it, I got the response “She’s a bit revealed.”

If you are reading this, you may be thinking: “Huh? How is this relevant? That picture is certainly nothing pornographic.” You know what? You are exactly right, my friend. It certainly isn’t pornographic. My friend here probably didn’t think of it as porn either; however, she was still under the impression that it was bad or “inappropriate”.

I suppose that there are one or two things that I may need to explain. For one thing, whether the above image is pornography or not depends on your actual definition of pornography. So, let’s backtrack. What is pornography?

Let’s look at the first and foremost definition, which is also probably the most obvious:

any sexually explicit writing and/or picture intended to arouse sexual desire.

Alright. Makes sense, doesn’t it? For now, I’m going to dismiss the idea that porn is bad “because it arouses sexual desire”. After all, sex is a part of human nature and life altogether. I could get in a huge discussion about morals and religious belief, but that’s a whole different story. Instead, I’m going to give a different definition of pornography that further illustrates my point.

something that makes sex look inappropriate and dirty.

Woah. I feel like I’m starting to get somewhere with this.

As I said, sex is a part of natural life. Life is a series of chemical reactions, and life’s ultimate goal in nature is to thrive and reproduce. I think most people would agree that the power to create human life is pretty amazing, and if it didn’t exist, then we would not exist. If you are spiritual at all, you would also likely agree that the ability to give birth is a sacred and God-given power, right? Right. I won’t go too far into religion - I’m only cementing the idea that sexual reproduction is obviously a pretty big thing… something that people can take for granted.

From that perspective, pornography is bad in the sense that it takes sex and turns it into something perverse. From the latter definition, we know that the above image is, again, not porno (considering the fact that it barely even contains anything relating to it).

Let’s take another step up. There are numerous R-rated movies where there are lengthy romance and sex scenes, many of which do not hesitate to actually show reproductive body-parts that are normally kept under wraps in most situations. (It’s kind of amazing what the MPAA will allow for an R rating.) Movie ratings and age restrictions aside, I have another question: All of this sexual intercourse that is depicted in movies… is it pornography?

Not necessarily.

All too often do people dismiss a sex scene in a movie as sleazy material that is merely intended to give you a hard-on. Rather, many of these acts can still really hold true to the beauty that sex actually is. This is a major point I wanted to touch on before I get too tired of this post.

I’ll probably just conclude right here before I get so tired, at which time I will probably go as far as deleting this. My basic objective here was to just give you some food for thought. And, finally…

…get your mind out of the gutter, morons. Yeesh.