While talking with a webmaster friend of mine I was telling him about my site and how it had a lot of strong adult content but wasn’t a porn site in the same sense as the teensexpussy sites that litter the Web are. My site has nonsexual content, movie reviews and such that differentiate it from others. It’s closer to Nerve.com than teensexpussy, though it’s not really like either.
He responded that it didn’t matter what was on or not on my site so long as there were nekkid pix on it. As far as most people are concerned, pron is binary – it either is or isn’t porn and if it’s got titty pics it’s porn.
I don’t agree. I think on the Internet there’s enough “room” as it were for sites to be sexually oriented without being porn.
In fact, some of the threads on this site get into discussion that are about as hard core as you’d like them to be, frex, the thread on sex toys that recently appeared.
I think adult content runs in a continuum on the Web that doesn’t lend itself well to binary definitions. There are sites like these which run the occasional thread with very adult topics openly discussed, there are sites like Salon that are mainstream but have the occasional article or the occasional photo gallery that deals very directly with sex and nakedness, there are sites like many movie sites that have caps of R-rated movies that include nakedness but are not really about sex except insofar as it occurs in the movies they cover, there are sites like Nerve that are all about sex but which deal with it in what is arguably a non-commercial manner in many respects, there are sites like mine which have strong adult content but which also contain reviews and articles that deal with cultural and social issues relating to sex, and then there are the teensexpussy sites that are about nothing but sexual content for money.
But I could be at variance with most folks, so I’m asking – what do you think? Is porn binary? Is it easy to categorize all sites as either porn or mainstream with no gray line between them?
Not binary. Huge sea of gray between what is mainstream and what is porn. The sensitive dependence on initial mores prevent everyone from having the same definition.
I think that you can look at websites in a similar manner to movies. There are many movies that have just a scene or 2 with nudity, but that’s not what the movie is about.
Heck, Lethal Weapon starts out with a scene with a naked woman, but it is definitely not porn. Instead it is an R rated movie.
There’s definitely a difference between sites that are all about sex and porn, which I would think should be viewed as the XXX porn movies. Then there are sites that have the occasional sexual topic or a few pics, which would fit the R rated category.
The internet is very open and I think that makes it very difficult to group everything into one category or another. One thing you could consider is asking the question of content: is this appropriate for a 10-12 year old? for an 18 year old? etc. TV has started taking on this movie-type rating system, which may be a good way to describe websites also.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking. The images on your site seem to be prurient (intended to arouse sexual feelings.) On the other hand, I saw no exposed genitals or penetration. If you mean, “Could I be prosecuted?”, in my amateur opinion, no. If you mean, “Would a parent be pissed if little daughter Suzy saw this site?,” well, I believe he would. Bondage is not my cup of tea, so I’m not your target audience. I was more uncomfortable than entertained. As far as nudity, your site probably is no more raw than, say, Maxim magazine. The bondage, though, is going to be too pervy for a lot of folks.
I’m not really asking about my site in particular, more of a survey to see what people’s opinions are in general. It’s not really necessary to look at my site to answer the question which is about YOUR opinion.
My site is porbably about as prosecutable as any other. Censors rarely go for the most extreme examples when they censor, because they figure that going after someone in the middle would cast a chill over folks who are fartehr out on the edge. It’s a very old tactic. that’s why stuff like “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” gets censored while works like “The Gardner Who Made Things Big For His Mistress” get a pass. The censors, generally quite correctly, figure going after Lady Chatterley will get the message out to the others.
In any event, I’m not worried about censorhship at this juncture, more just trying to get a feel for the opinions of people who aren’t all that involved with the topic.
Anyone who thinks things are binary – whether it’s porn, or morality, or the nature of good and evil – is someone you should give a wide berth to, IMO.
Or, in less flowery terms, porn is binary only if you’re an idiot.
It depends on your perspective. There are many nude paintings hanging in galleries which some deem pornographic, while others merely see as art. Many figure that a naked person shown in any position is pornographic, while others disagree.
I’ve seen wholly clothed pictures that are so erotic that they should be banned in Denmark. Then consider National Geographic or medical pictures, which may be naked and totally without sexual or purient interest.
My vote is that porn comes in degrees and that people will differ.
For example, I think Sports Illustrated is primarily a pornographic magazine, because they do a “swimsuit issue” that outsells all the other issues combined. Therefore, most of their sales are generated by sexually stimulating photos of scantily clad women. That’s pretty soft porn, but it’s still porn, in my opinion. However, I bet many people would disagree.
