Hi all, this is Jodie and Michelle. We are going to present you the second reading of week 7, which is about the ethics of pornographies on the Internet by Albury Kath.
The writer first defines what pornography is. She thinks it is understand in term of morality. And people always link it with sexual activity because it depicts non-reproductive sex acts. Generally, people agree that porn is immoral as we agree that sex is a matter of procreation, - an expression of private ‘married love’ and it should not be public or profit. And porn we can find in the society is totally different opposite with these norms.
There are 4 criteria makes Albury thinks that pornography is widely considered to be immoral. In Albury’s view, porn makes something ‘public’ that should be private. People think sexual activity should be the intimacy of a married couple. Thus, sexual intercourse cannot be shown to the others. Also, it encourages people to exchange sex for money. As the sexual activity is ultimate for reproduction, it should not be a trading activity. Moreover, it exploits women by representing them as being sexually active and available. In traditional value, women should protect their bodies by not showing their nudity. In addition, women should play a passive role. At last, porn represents a limited range of body types as sexually appealing because only perfect and ideal women’s bodies are shown in the porn.
Apart from the traditional porn, Internet porn provide a room for women to explore desires which are taboo, embarrassing or dangerous for offline life and feel safer and more confident in their experimentation with alternative sex practices. The major reason is that they do not need to show up in the public when they purchasing pornography. Also, Internet porn blurs the categories ‘publisher’, ‘distributor’ ‘performer’ & ‘consumer’. And we will discuss more about it tomorrow.
We found that it is hard to define what is moral or immoral. According to Foucalt, moral value is something that bases on our various beliefs and value systems and it is set by dominant people in the society.
Here’re some discussion questions that we will cover tomorrow.
1.What is porn? Is porn only defined by showing female nudity or some sexual intercourses scenes?
2.If female show their body with some seductive postures, can we define this as porn?
3.If you discover two of your friends are sitting in front of computers, one is watching porn with sexual scene, one is watching seductive video (just like the example), and will you think they are immoral?
- Why & why not
- if yes, which one is “more immoral”?
I think porn is about things that will excessively raising humans sexual desire. And it can be mediated as form or video and even audio.
ReplyDeleteJapan, one of the leading Asian city tired to make use of the porn to stimulate the rise of the low birth rate. In this way porn are known as the solution to a social problem.
But the interesting fact is the local porn production is seems gain more popularity from the international audiences around the world rather than the locals.
Oops, I missed my name on it.
ReplyDeleteHoyin = Eric 10380140
Eric, that goes back to the orientalism. That about how Western, I supposed consumer are mostly Westerners, consider Asian women and men.
ReplyDeleteI am Alice.
ReplyDeleteI think the line of porn is becoming lower and lower because of the social's view. In the past, female could not show their body out. But now, people think that female should their body especially those who have perfect body shape, big breast. So even if female wears bikini with sexy posture, it will not be defined as porn.
People nowadays can easily access to porn, intentionally or unintentionally. Few years ago I downloaded a newly released album from an artist, but I finally found it was a category 3 sexual clip… I also think that the bottom line has become lower and people tend to accept more. Wearing bikini and showing seductively on screen are seldom regarded as porn, as long as they wear something covered their bodies. But to me, I still can’t accept those with sexual intercourse posture which I see it as something private and not suitable to be shown in public including cyberspace.
ReplyDeleteHi, I am Jess.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the definition of pron is actually set by people's mind. There cannot be a explicit concept of pron. Therefore, we cannot tell whether it is pron or not when we see a picture or picture. I think the mainstream of traditional productions are satisfying male gaze. However, when information become highly accessible, it cannot deny that there are female-orientated products. However, when we looking at a muscular men poster, is it regarded as a pron products? This is the question that cannot be answered.