Eroticism and Pornography are not only very strange terms in our general society, but even our educated class is somehow unfamiliar with their concepts. Some would be against pornography without knowing why. Due to lack of proper freely expressed discussions on sexuality and human fantasies, our language has sadly failed to gain a proper evolution either.

Any effort to educate the society to found a healthy and modern sex culture is one of the pillars of moving towards a "true” democracy and we must not look down at it because a true democracy needs people who are confident enough to express their true feelings about anything, including sex.

Why do some people say they are OK with Eroticism but against Pornography? What’s their similarities and differences? What do their supporters and deniers say? From where our cultural believes in sexuality arise and how are they formed? Is pornography oppressing women and promoting patriarchy? If yes, then why people in more open societies are less patriarchal than Muslim and Latin societies? Does not comparing the position of women’s movements in these societies give a better answer to this question? How is it possible that ones sees a photo as porn and another person finds the very same picture as Erotic? Where are the clear boundaries between these two?

Eroticism and Pornography as usually defined as:

“Eroticism shows some adjacent sensations and feelings, both physical and spiritual while Pornography shows only the former.”

We know that Pornography in Europe was mainly opposed by Feminist groups, but in the US, it was the conservative Christians who mainly opposed it. They believe that pornography sticks to the past and the old traditional roles our former generations used to give to men and women, so it’s against all the efforts to bring gender equality. Supporters say Pornography is not a reflection of one’s lifestyle, nor of their way of thinking, but it’s made to awaken human’s sense of joy and lust. It is only in Porn that one can practice thier fantasies, which practicing them freely in a real life is nothing less than a taboo.

Pornography deniers often say the do not oppose Eroticism as it reflects the true feelings; joy and happiness as well as stress and depression, while in Pornography what we see in sole disrespect, humiliation, and beatings and besides that, unlike in Eroticism, it only shows the feelings of one side. It also illustrates women as a tool. Porno means “Prostitution”, meaning woman is a tool which is meant to be used. Supporters deny all these and say less than 1 percent of pornographic contents show sadomasochistic pictures. Besides, a considerable portion of these actually show the opposite; a woman is the one who brings a man under her control, not forgetting homosexual porn, which obviously do not show any bias in favor of an opposite sex. What makes some interested in sadomasochism is actually the crackdowns and frustrations they face in their close minded societies, so to bring sadomasochism to extinction, we must work on opposing the roots of cruelty in our society, not Pornography.

Pro Pornography people strongly reject the accusations regarding porno promoting traditional patriarchal behaviors, saying it exactly does the opposite; they say porn gives women the self confidence to dare to create and practice fantasies of their own. The dominance of women in pornographic magazines, is mainly because the majority of their audience is men and the reason to this social weakness is that practicing sexualities or using pornographic contents by women are still taboos in our today’s very conservative societies. Porn actually reflects the image of today’s unfair social relationships and connections. What I mean is if women start to gain a greater audience share in pornographic content, then only we will see a balance in the industry and this will bring along more gender equalities in a broader concept, so I suppose this is one of the main reasons our religious and conservative class stands  against Pornography, while ,indeed, a great number of them are actually consumers of Porn.

ENDS.