Let me start off by saying that I hate you for having me waste my last night at home on gfy, before I go to spend many weeks trekking in the mountains without things such as computers, desks, chairs, warm water and other things like that. I should be getting drunk right now, watching videos of cute young women with big tits having hard sex with eachother.
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Originally Posted by 2HousePlague
How I have been called upon to champion the Rationalist-Pragmatist position in this discussion is really beyond me, and soooo funny to me personally -- you have no idea -- many of the voices in my head are laughing at the irony -- 
But fine, you like the realm of theory and abstraction, I have an argument there, too. |
I am actually pretty much a pragmatist in most philosophical issues, using theory and abstraction as heuristic devices rather than ultimate goals. The same goes for this particular issue: theoretic deliberation leads to the conclusion that changing the meaning of the word "pornography" is most likely not a productive strategy in the real world.
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Originally Posted by 2HousePlague
Let's discuss symbolism, metaphor and euphemism as relates to this situation.
Symbolism: You're encouraging us to direct our energies at defining a territrory for ourselves among the sub-genres of pornography, to accept the legitimacy of the word's usage to describe atrocious crimes on the basis of semantical technicality, and accept also that we have no power to reclaim and redefine the word, that we should just "abandon" it as one would a piece of rotten wood. Sorry. No can do. "Pornography" is a good word, I like it, I like how fighting for it will give a focus to our larger fight. I can't help but be struck by the undesirable Smbolism of taking flight from something we invented, from a word with an etymology appropriate to us. I also like the challenge. I like that it's going to be difficult to make people re-think a word that pervades our culture, a word that is all but lost to a condemnatory quagmire created by the same people who are trying to win our illegality today. I am in love with the Symbolism of change and revolution. I think it's going to give us strength and focus in our cause. You say: "...the connection is real, and thus people will continue to use the same words..." You say: "...tough shit - it ain't gonna happen. Both are porn, and people know that..." Well, I say -- The struggle we face to assert our legality in 2005 has got to rise to a new level. We can no longer be content to merely "squeak by" on the "technicality defense" the First Amendment has been reduced to in our case. I say the reclamation of a word, and our unification as an industry under that SYMBOLIC effort is going to help clarify our message, elevate our argument to the level of Proud Ideal, where it belongs, and bring the question what is "pornography" into every living room in this country right where it belongs. Sorry, this word is taken!
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Pornography is a good word. Just like sex. One can have sex with hot big-titted blondes, but also with chickens, children or Jell-O. Both words are good words because they themselves are fairly clear and, without further specifications, morally neutral. Attaching specific moral and legal clauses to the words would take away their power, and make them unusable to most people.
But since language is something of the people, that is something that won't happen in the first place. It is not a challenging fight, it's an impossible fight. There is no reason for the people to create an artificial distinction other than the fact that we might want them to.
Aside from that, if we stick with porn, the same legal position can go as for sex:
"It's legal, unless..." (eg. there are underage people involved, it isn't consensual, etc.)
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Originally Posted by 2HousePlague
Metaphor: "...take your cue from language and theory, and you'll see that the much more obvious solution is to emphasize our subgenre, and separate that from the others..." I couldn't tell you when or where it happened, but at some point pornography lost its rhetorical vitality, it ceased to be a thing whose nature was understood clearly by most people, and it ceased to be thing that was obviously positive in the lives of the people who used the word. I'm sure it didn't happen all at once, but gradually over time -- erosively. I'm going to venture to guess, though, that the undermining of pornography's connotative legitimacy coincides with the increase in suppressive (shame-based) influence of organized religion and the governments who have tried to curry the favor of Religious Establishment by parroting that suppressive rhetoric. Once pornography -- the word, the idea, the material, had been dipped in the acidic bath of equivocal, conditional meanings, the erosion of its legitimacy could begin earnest -- thereafter (and to the present moment) we have been negotiating what we are and what we aren't in the shadowed back-office recesses of government, flling out forms, worrying that our t's are crossed and that we'll lose everything if we don't follow the increasingly byzantine and effectively censorial "legal hoops" those skinny-necked clerks who push pencils all day keep tellings us (SMUGLY) we have to jump through -- or else. I say to hell with that! We are a good thing! We have a right to exist -- UNEQUIVOCALLY -- better than that, we are ESSENTIAL. And, I'm sorry, punkworld, but our days of "emphasizing sub-genres" are OVER. That's just a metaphor for UNWORTHY TO STAND UP AND BE SEEN IN THE LIGHT OF DAY FOR WHAT WE ARE.
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Like I said in the previous part of this post, I consider "pornography" a morally neutral thing. Its value, therefore, is only determined by its subgenre: consenting adults = good
underage or non-consenting = bad
In my opinion, it's much better to say that we are depicting people fucking, and emphasize that those people are consenting adults, than it is to say that we are depicting people fucking, and argue that illegal porn isn't depicting people fucking.
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Originally Posted by 2HousePlague
Euphemism:
"Adult Indusrtry" & "Adult Entertainment" are euphemisms. Like all occasions of this linguistic phenomenon, their existence and use indicates a culture's discomfort with an idea, to the extent that the orginally used word for that idea has been REPLACED with something more -- palatable.
Here's a list of some euphemisms we should all recognize:
dead = departed, deceased, late, lost, gone, passed
garbage dump = landfill
killing of innocents = collateral damage
prison = correctional facility
spying = surveillance
tramp= homeless person
unemployed = between jobs, taking time off
victim = casualty
wrong = improper, questionable, impropriety
That's not a list I want to be on. You?
! -- I AM A PROUD PORNOGRAPHER -- !
2HP
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I don't consider the phrases "adult industry" and "adult entertainment" euphemisms, for they aren't synonymous to "porn industry" and "porn".
The adult industry contains legal porn, but also sex toys, informational books, lingerie, etc. Adult entertainment contains legal porn, but also strip clubs, dirty comedy, sexy stories, etc. Unlike "pornography", which neither has a positive nor a negative value, "adult" has a positive value: it's responsible entertainment by and for consenting adults.
On the other side, "adult entertainment" excludes exactly that part of "pornography" we can do without: the non-adult part.
Now, personally, I don't feel the need to change the words being used right now, but if you want to do that, the "adult entertainment" strategy seems like a much better and much more productive one than the "child exploitation" strategy.