[Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates

[William Pietri]

On 05/09/2010 05:36 AM, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>> At least by local community standards, the event depicted was indeed not
>> pornographic. San Francisco's long history as a home to both artists and
>> people with different takes on sex and gender means that a lot of local
>> art works with sex and gender as key themes. As they mention in their
>>      
> Just because someone says that their pornography is art doesn't make it so.
>    

I never said otherwise. However, what I am saying in this case as 
somebody who lives in the neighborhood and walks past their gallery on 
the way to the store, their claims are entirely credible. By community 
standards, what they do is not obscene, and it is not pornographic.

As Wikipedia has it, porn is "portrayal of explicit sexual subject 
matter for the purposes of sexual excitement and erotic satisfaction."  
That means it is by definition impossible to judge whether an image is 
pornography without understanding the context in which it is made and 
consumed, because what distinguishes pornography is intent, not content.

As comparison, consider that it may be impossible to tell a frame from a 
horror movie from a crime scene photo or an illustration from a 
coroner's textbook or a medical reference. It is reasonable to argue 
that Wikipedia shouldn't host any horrific images, whatever the context. 
That's an argument about content. It's also reasonable to argue that we 
should only host horrific images where there's a clear educational 
purpose. That's an argument about intent.  But they are very different 
arguments.

People who are condemning particular images based on content alone with 
no information as to context of production or use are arguing for a 
standard based on obscenity, not pornography.

William