Pornography

Popular, isn’t it? Pornography.

We know this to be true because it is a several billion dollars industry worldwide.

Sex sells. Everything. It sells everything from washing machines to cars to toothpaste.

When did you last see a young lady who is not slim and shapely with astonishingly good looks selling something? Anything.

Persons who are genetically indisposed towards that which is considered attractive in the current milieu are not to be used for advertising purposes.

The first idea is to sell the girl; if you like the girl then you will buy the product. That is the psychology of it.

All salesmen sell themselves first. This is followed by the product.

So, of course, sex sells sex.

In Victorian times, a period of great prudishness, they put covers over the legs of tables and chairs to prevent impropriety and rude thoughts when looking at the furniture. They also had sex clubs where people could watch, or indulge in, acts of sex that were not easily obtainable elsewhere.

It was also a time when young maidservants might be offered a choice—either discard the baby or leave the job. This was so that the people around the area would not see the personal likeness of the baby to the master of the house, no doubt.

So the World progressed.

We had photography and films—movies, if you will. Both forms of celluloid that would preserve whatever they captured for posterity.

Not unnaturally, the photographer would turn his lens on to a pretty young girl. He might very well ask her to disrobe a little, at first, and then the sky would be the limit.

Laws were introduced to protect those of a more delicate nature and children.

Initially it was forbidden to show two people on a bed even if both were dressed. Then relaxation of the rules set in; people could be a couple on the bed providing one foot was on the floor.

This was the thin end of the wedge.

It led to a total, almost, dropping of the rules and the clothes.

We have reached a point where the beautiful Selma Hayek and Antonio Banderas bounced around naked together on a bed in ‘Desperado’ and the equally lovely Halle Berry was set upon by Billy Bob Thornton in ‘The Monster’s Ball’. There are many more examples of this degree of acting in total nudity extant but you get the picture—to coin a phrase!

Similarly, the televisual programmes have not been slow to keep up.

The rules regarding what can be beamed directly into people’s homes have been similarly revised to allow total nudity.

In ‘Spartacus’ there is not only simulated sex of the most graphic nature but also full frontal male scenes. ‘Game of Thrones’ is, similarly explicit.

Both of these series are excellent stories but there is a compulsion to include scenes that are lewd. Do they add to the story or do they exist in order to draw viewers as a boost to the ratings?

Even on a personal level, on social media sites, there is a tendency towards allowing ever more distracting material.

A friend of mine is a stunningly beautiful young lady who does bodybuilding. She is not muscle bound, she is lithe, slim and athletic. In the competitions that she enters most of her body is displayed so that it can be judged in comparison with her peers.

On the other side of the coin it should be said that she is not only a lovely person who is possessed of great intelligence and humour but also has a determination, a will to succeed, that leaves me exhausted with her efforts in training for these events.

Her name is Chandra—I am sure she will not mind me telling everyone her name.

She also does a little modelling.

Some of her photos appear on ‘Facebook’.

They are chaste. Modest by today’s standards and yet there is much nakedness. The ‘important parts’ are covered but that which is not covered increases desirability because her body is toned to perfection, it is a male dream. It arouses desire.

So what is ‘pornography’?

I have been told that I am ignorant for asking such a question. I have been, almost, derided for stating that a photograph of two people kissing is pornography. Can you say that it is not?

Where does sex start? Tell me that, if you can. If I touch the naked hand of a young lady I am making contact flesh to flesh. Is that acceptable? People will say that it is. Perhaps if I now touch her wrist, is that fine? At what point is the line drawn? Where do we say that it is not an acceptable thing for me to touch her?

Even in films there are some things that are hidden. There is not, for example, very much fondling of breasts going on or views of the insertion of the male into the female.

Perhaps what I have just written is arousing a flame of desire; a flickering of sexual arousal and becomes pornography.

Corporations who want to make money out of a perfectly natural desire for people to reproduce have pushed us into a numb acceptance of sex and sexual images.

Sex is wonderful. There is nothing better in the World. Deliberately so because it drives us to make babies.

I am not prim, prudish or prissy. My stories are full of sex and references to sex. It is the prime mover behind ‘The Adepts’.

I have seen life. Twenty-seven years of it in the military. Military gentlemen, indeed, military ladies, too, are rarely reticent about sex. We know what it is; we know what it is about. We can discuss it without blushing or giggling.

But where does it start?

Photographs of people kissing are, at some level, pornography.

Soft, moist lips brushing against the lips of another person. Hot breath pulsing into another person’s mouth and wet tongues touching each other in intimacy; it is a private thing, a personal moment into which other people should not intrude; where other people are not welcome.

So what is pornography?

My rule is—would you show it to your Mum or daughter?