This whole Patrick Naughton computer geeks and child pornography epidemic has got me thinking. What makes something pornography?  Pornography is one of those things which is recognizable for most of us when you see it, or so we all think, however very difficult to define. Defining pornography becomes especially difficult when you are trying to put something to law to protect society from child-pornographers, rapists and other like violent social predators. The reason it is so difficult is because human beings sexualize everything. Anything and everything can be and is sexualized by someone. For that reason alone, what I or anyone else personally chooses to do with a particular image cannot define what that image is.  I cannot be accused of making pornography if I am taking pictures of my nephews toy box because you have a fetish for Legos. However, it could be defined as porn to a group of individuals that were into that sort of stuff.

If you define pornography strictly by the strict definition of pornography, taken from the Webster’s dictionary, that an “object” must be created with the intention of creating sexual arousal in the person who experiences the object in order to be considered pornography then we are still not out of trouble because now we are going to trip over accepted social norms. I show you an image of a woman in a tight leather jump suit that my advertising firm created with the deliberate intention of arousing you sexually.

Now lets say this image is to be used in a clothing catalog. Although I designed it with that intent, knowing that “sex sells” to get you aroused sexually, I did so you could attach your self worth to my product in order to coerce you into buying it. Most people, in this country at least, would not define this as pornography although I have fulfilled the criteria given to us by the Webster’s dictionary. If we did, half of the automobile commercials and beer commercials we see on Sunday afternoon would be pornography. By that definition, some women are so sexually appealing that the use of their image on damn near anything from a magazine cover to a television promotional advertisement would be pornography because of the intention behind using their image. Likewise, in some sexually conservative cultures simply showing a woman’s ankles would be considered pornography. 

My point is not to make an argument for moral relativism but to illustrate how Webster’s definition still leaves us stranded. We want to catch the sexual predators right? Preferably before they corner their first victim. I say we bring them in a dark room, turn the music on real soft and low, and maybe give them a nice drink. Then we show them a picture of a child, in a bathing suit holding a beach ball at the beach. If they get an erection, then off to prison they go.  Let’s not get caught up in a huge debate over defining pornography. I challenge you to find a more accurate test than the erection test. I say if they get hard, looking at a picture of a goat, lock them up. If we show you a picture of a beat up women screaming and shouting for her life and he gets hard…lock them up.  I say let’s make circumstantial erections illegal. I say we lock up anybody who would get a hard on looking at a picture of a child, farm animal, mutilated corpse, assaulted woman, whatever it may be and let God sort em’ out.