Boot me off before I post again!
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Barbie
(and i'd still like to get on this thing about how men always and forever need visual representation -- apparently more so than women-- to get turned on. oooooh ken, vrooom vrooom. wanna go for a ride in the 'vette? oh gosh, where ARE my keys!?)
** Tis a myth, I'm sure. It's just that most pornographic images appeal to a targeted audience, as the lovely article you posted observes... How many times have you heard "Cookbooks are my porn." Pictures of meat covered with béarnaise, pasta edged with asparagus and mushrooms... whew... it's getting hot up here in the "what are you talking about, -40 is nice day!" And, damnit, the keys got left on the outside chair, now frozen in a block of ice. Looks like it will be Paris in the the Spring.
Below: edited to stimulate those who agree with me.
Pornography and Social Change in England, 1815-1914
Author Lisa Sigel Pornography has been reclaimed as one of the characteristic creations of modernity. The word pornography, used to define forms of purely sexual representation, was coined in the 1860s, and represented a significant shift in the nature of sexual imagery and in the place of sexuality within modern culture... Sex, in this form, increasingly promised to be about itself, rather than anything else... the obscene was invented as the category that contained... restricted forms.... Obscenity and pornography, then, have come to be seen not as ephemeral, but vital to the formation of liberalism, freedom of speech, mass culture and modernity in general... Such imagery is important, Sigel says, because it provides a glimpse of the social imaginary...
ken