In
modern English pornography is a collective noun for
suppressed material with
sexual content i.e.
pornographic material. Pornography can be
novels,
poetry,
short stories,
film,
painting,
sculpture,
audio-visual or even
performance art. There is, however, a
deep ambiguity in meaning in the word
pornography. As
Webster 1913 points out the second part of the word is derived from the
Greek word meaning to
draw and the first half indicates
woman when in a
sensual or
sexual aspect. It is not, however, clear that whether
pornography originally meant
drawing on women (
lipstick,
eye-liner etc) or
drawing of women (the modern sense of
pornography).
Material is labeled pornographic for several reasons:
The permissiveness and definitions of
pornography varies from culture to culture. Some cultures such as the
Japanese have tried to construct
applicative rules to define
pornography, thus banning
pubic hair and
images of penises, leading to the
tentacle porn industry. Determining whether
tentacle porn is any better or worse than any other kind of
porn is left as
an exercise for the reader. Many countries consider nudity to be perfectly normal in warm weather.
