i didn’t really think that i was making a distinction between ‘porn’ and ‘pornography’, but i suppose you are right — porn seems like a more familiar use of the term — maybe the term preferred by partakers. ‘pornography’, on the other hand, sounds more formal. it is probably the term preferred by detractors — the distance of the formal language can then function as a claim to distance from pornography. this can be especially important to male detractors of porn — they want to show that porn effects them little, even though the attempt to distance is, in effect, a confession of closeness…
your distinction between drawn porn, and performed porn is something i have also wondered about. i am not sure that we ought to make a distinction between these two, in the same way that we don’t treat an actor who murders (Othello) as if such a person is actually a murderer. He is only playing a part. In the same way, a porn actress/actor is acting sex — she, or he isn’t actually having sex. the difficulty with seeing such a performance for what it is, is i think, a testimony to a profound crisis of meaning in terms of what sexuality is. could it be true that even the performance of sex can equal the actual sexing of sex? if so, what comes of actual sex between two people? what does it then mean, when it can so easily be equated with its mere performance? there may be a clue here into the crisis of sexuality, especially for christians, in the coming to an understanding of what counts, or qualifies as sex — its limits and its contours.
CanadianIre
Jun 25 2007
12:27 am
i didn’t really think that i was making a distinction between ‘porn’ and ‘pornography’, but i suppose you are right — porn seems like a more familiar use of the term — maybe the term preferred by partakers. ‘pornography’, on the other hand, sounds more formal. it is probably the term preferred by detractors — the distance of the formal language can then function as a claim to distance from pornography. this can be especially important to male detractors of porn — they want to show that porn effects them little, even though the attempt to distance is, in effect, a confession of closeness…
your distinction between drawn porn, and performed porn is something i have also wondered about. i am not sure that we ought to make a distinction between these two, in the same way that we don’t treat an actor who murders (Othello) as if such a person is actually a murderer. He is only playing a part. In the same way, a porn actress/actor is acting sex — she, or he isn’t actually having sex. the difficulty with seeing such a performance for what it is, is i think, a testimony to a profound crisis of meaning in terms of what sexuality is. could it be true that even the performance of sex can equal the actual sexing of sex? if so, what comes of actual sex between two people? what does it then mean, when it can so easily be equated with its mere performance? there may be a clue here into the crisis of sexuality, especially for christians, in the coming to an understanding of what counts, or qualifies as sex — its limits and its contours.