What is Porn?

Well that's a brave question isn't it? And my argument is going to be that we don't know.

It's not dissimilar to the 'What is art?' question. And if anyone thinks they know the answer to that I refer them to Nigel Warburton's little book The Art Question in which he surveys all the writing on the subject and concludes that there is no conclusion. We cannot say what art is. Nor should we be able to, I would add.

A letter to the iPaper last week suggested that all forms of pornography are corrosive to society and should be banned. Trouble is, I suspect that the writer of the letter has a very clear idea of what he finds pornographic.

We all like to draw lines. And if we're honest and open (which we usually aren't) we would like the erotic things we don't enjoy to be banned.

'In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking now heaven knows...'

Well heaven only knows what Cole Porter would have made of the episode of Friends where Joey and Chandler found their TV was accessing 'Adult' channels for free. Their reaction, to watch all day, was presented as a representation of what any young adult male would have done in the circumstances.

Or the line of dialogue in the TV comedy Rev where the vicar tells his wife, in answer to a question about what he had done while she was out, that amongst other things, 'I had a wank ... it was nice.' The plot moved on and eyebrows were not batted. Sub-text. Clergy do normal things. Get over it. (No, I'm not telling you.)

Does Jeff Smith of Beeston, Bedfordshire (the letter writer) want to ban images of people showing glimpses of stocking? Suppose Jeff, and this is just suppose right, I like glimpses of stocking and retain some images on my computer of my partner revealing such? For my own personal use you understand.

Or suppose I am erotically helped by pictures of men on cars, women holding vegetables, feet... I could access all these images in two clicks without upsetting a porn-filter. Frankly I could access all these images in last month's Good Housekeeping which is pretty much bottom shelf material in most supermarkets.

You can't ban naked images without Michelangelo's David having to be smashed. You can't ban erotic poetry without Song of Songs heading for landfill. You can't ban images of two people having sex without Alex Comfort's Joy of Sex guide book being pulped.

I know that at the extreme end of this spectrum, culture takes the view that images of child abuse or sex with animals is wrong and I am glad to live in such a society. I read at the weekend of the harrowing work of a small group of people who police the internet and to do so have to view horrible images day in and day out. I'm grateful to them.

But the in-between stuff? Images of consensual sex between adults. Nakedness. I am not sure any ban is enforceable or even definable. I read the other day that adult film makers can now make pretty convincing digital graphic images without actors being involved. I don't think a legislature that can produce hundreds of pages on the regulations for supermarket fruit appearance would be able to get anywhere near writing complete and convincing laws which define the lines between porn and art, porn and literature, porn and sport.

And if you question my use of sport here then a vicar friend of mine posted some pictures of female athletes on Facebook at the weekend which would have seen him arrested in previous centuries. He was glorying in a performer's brilliantly honed physique but in my teenage years some of the girls in top shelf mags had more clothes on.

What is porn? I don't know. I think it was Stephen Tyler, not exactly everyone's role-model, who said that porn was the difference between using a feather and the whole chicken. But which side of the line is that branch of burlesque which is deliberately designed to be erotic not pornographic? We really can't tell our eros from our agape.

Which may be all Greek to you but it was the Greeks who started it. Pornography comes from two Greek words. Which two? Well Merriam-Webster says 'pornographos, adjective, writing about prostitutes, from pornē prostitute + graphein to write;' But pornē is closely related to porneia which was once rendered 'fornication' but is often now translated as 'sexual immorality'.  Some think it referred specifically to cultic immorality (fertility sex and the like) but others disagree.

The trouble with a phrase such as sexual immorality is that, going back to the beginning of this piece, we all mean different things by it. We know when the line has been crossed by a long way but not when we are just over it. Therein lies the problem with line-drawing anywhere. You can't legally buy a drink in a pub the day before your eighteenth birthday or drive at 31mph in a built-up area.

I'm not, as you might have gathered, quite sure where I'm going with this. 'Vicar supports porn' is not the headline I seek or the point I am making.

On any reading of the Bible God is for freedom and against sin. So am I. But if we ban too much we give people less freedom than God gives us. Surely it's better for society to police itself and to draw the legislative line very, very liberally?