Should Pornography Be Prohibited?

 

In general usage, the term pornography refers to sexually explicit material that is considered morally objectionable. The controversy over the term arose when researchers began to gather evidence that exposure to pornography can have negative impacts on a person’s psychological health. These effects can include depression, anxiety and drug addiction. There is also strong evidence that it can lead to deviant behaviors, especially in children. These concerns led many lawmakers to seek legal bans on the production and distribution of pornography. However, debate over the issue of whether or not pornography should be banned arose because researchers could not agree on a definition.

There are two ways to conceive of the term pornography: One is to use it as a pejorative, expressing subjective disapproval of sexually explicit material. This approach has been criticized, particularly in legal contexts, as it tends to be value-laden and fails to take into account the extent to which a work may be objectively obscene. For example, the Supreme Court in Miller v. California, defined obscene material as “displaying to the prurient interest a picture, film or other representation of human activity that is grossly offensive and lacking in serious literary, artistic or scientific value.”

The second way to conceive of پورنوگرافی is to treat it as an object of law, based on its objective features. A number of scholars have proposed such a definition, including the US Johnson Commission (1970), which defined it as “a display that violates basic standards of public morality and social decency.” This approach has been criticized for failing to address the question of whether or not any specific material is obscene, but it is helpful in defining what kinds of materials might be subject to legal restrictions.

In fact, the Johnson Commission went so far as to avoid using the word pornography at all in its legal recommendations, arguing that it has no meaningful meaning in a legal context and that it merely conveys subjective disapproval of sexually explicit material. The Meese Commission in 1986 followed this line of argument, declining to use the term in its legal recommendations as well.

Despite the fact that most research supports the claim that pornography is harmful, there is no consensus among experts about the definition of pornography or about its effects. This lack of consensus is both unsurprising and frustrating, since researchers have been gathering data about pornography for several decades (Sullivan & McKee, 2015).

Some scholars have tried to come up with a more neutral definition of pornography, in order to provide a framework for discussions about its potential harms and benefits. However, this has proved difficult. The problem with a more neutral definition is that it is possible to create a definition that is so broad that it will include material that is neither morally objectionable nor appropriate for restriction. For example, some feminists have argued that pornography is any material that entails or implies the subordination of women, and that this would extend even to artwork or fashion spreads.