Pornography and Obscenity
In ancient Greek, the term “pornography” means “writes about prostitutes,” emphasizing the link between pornography and prostitution. Although both involve the selling of sex for money, the two are often treated as (legally) distinct practices. The thread of the Greek root that is preserved in most modern considerations of pornography is the part about “writing” or words, and hence, particularly in the United States legal and social context, speech and expression (see Speech, Freedom of). 
 
 
Keywords: 
 
feminist philosophy; 
law; 
legal and political
Speech acts and unspeakable acts
L'auteur etudie la pornographie sous l'angle de la theorie de l'acte de parole. Deux denonciations feministes sont examinees : la pornographie subordonne les femmes et elle les reduit au silence. L'auteur demontre qu'en effet la pornographie est un acte illocutoire de subordination par sa force autoritaire (verdictif, exercitif) et que, en imposant la frustration perlocutoire, l'invalidite illocutoire, elle empeche les femmes d'acceder au statut de locuteur et de ce fait, de lutter par le recours a la parole.
Arousal, Affect, and the Aggression-Moderating Effect of Erotica
Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the consequences of human aggression related to the exposure to both nonaggressive and aggressive sexual stimuli. It has been proposed that a two-component model implicating both the arousal capacity and affect-eliciting qualities of an erotic stimulus offers a comprehensive means of assessing the effect of nonaggressive sexual stimuli on inter-male aggression. Thus, it becomes an essential matter to determine the experiential factors and thematic elements that precipitate an individual's affective response to various erotic materials. Individuals differ along various sex-related dimensions including sexual socialization histories, sexual attitudes and behaviors, and sexual media exposure habits. These factors, in interaction with specific erotic themes, apparently account for the direction of affective response. When individuals have been classified along various erotica-related evaluative and behavioral dimensions, differences in the positive or negative character of affective response to sexual stimuli have been observed. These dimensions have included the level of previous experience with erotica, restrictiveness, the enjoyment and arousal derived from witnessing sexual activity, and erotophobia versus erotophilia. It has yet to be determined if the inclusion of these and other rape-related dimensions of individual variation can provide further insights into the aggression-modifying effects of pornography.