Margaret Mead Japan China Religie en seks Moral panics Seks en robots De seksuele ontwikkeling van jongeren Seksualisering Leeftijdverschillen Geweld en misbruik Consent Sexting Sex trafficking Prostitutie PornografieBrian M. Watson is een Amerikaans archivaris, onderzoeker, historicus en beschrijft in dit boek de ontwikkeling van de pornografie door de eeuwen heen.
Het is in die geschiedenis opnieuw opvallend hoe seksvijandig religieuze en andere conservatieve groeperingen in de samenleving zijn. Je ziet ook hoe de waarden en normen van die groepen van grote invloed zijn op overheidsbesluiten, wetten, rechterlijke uitspraken omdat het in feite gaat om dezelfde mensen.
Brian WATSONOver de etymologie van het woord 'pornografie'. Die is er niet. De auteur wil de achtergrond helder krijgen van de ontwikkelingen rondom pornografie.
"Because, like it, love it, use it, or hate it, modern society has a tortured relationship with pornography."(6)
"Books condemning the corrupting effects of pornography appear with regularity, with such titles as; Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, or Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain, which claims that "our culture has become pornified." Online communities like Reddit's NoFap have over 165,000 'Fapstronauts' who seek to "abstain from pornography and masturbation. . . as a test of self-control" or to 'quit' pornography all together if "excessive masturbation or pornography has become a problem" in their lives. The fapstronauts encourage and compete with each other by daily updating the community on their abstinence from PMO (Porn, Masturbation, Orgasm). Websites like yourbrainonporn.com claim that "Evolution has not prepared your brain for today's Internet porn," and that it causes PED, porn-induced erectile dysfunction.
On the other side of the debate, doctors such as David Ley have published books such as The Myth of Sex Addiction attacking the science and the pseudoscience offered up by these sources and arguing that: sex addiction is a “a shell game, a game that is using smoke and mirrors to hide moral judgments and to deny personal responsibility.”" [mijn nadruk] (7)
"The short answer to the question of 'why porn became bad’ is that the printing press made the reproduction of 'immoral' texts and images remarkably cheap and easy. When this was joined with increasing middle- and lower-class literacy, and book markets such as Holywell Street in London or the Grands-Boulevards area of Paris, it created a type of work that supposedly had an 'undesirable' effect upon the general population. The church and state attempted to control this effect through moral reform and legal regulation. The short answer, however, does not capture the entire story. That is the purpose of this history." [mijn nadruk] (10)
"This book will tell the story of pornography, and how things came to be the way they are today, by focusing on several colorful individuals such as Pietro Aretino, John Wilmot, Lord Rochester, Edmund Curll, the Marquis De Sade and more, as well as the organizations that fought against their type; The Society for the Reformation of Manners, the Proclamation Society, the French, and English governments and their Kings and most famously, the Society for the Suppression of Vice."(12)
"The main reason we are beginning with the Renaissance is because it is necessary to talk about the cultural and philosophical reasons, as well as the technological ones, that helped to contribute to 'pornography' as a genre."(15)
De auteur start met Boccaccio's Decamerone waarin 'gewaagde scènes' voorkomen. Maar het is in feite een soort van erotische kritiek op de corrupte R.K Kerk.
"So our next step is to look to the history of the printing press in Europe, and explore how the forces of increasing literacy and decreasing cost met with a type of work only intended for upper-class eyes. The fusion of erotic discourse with cheap access would create a completely new genre of human experience. Finally, we will turn to a text that was inspired by The Decameron and was also one of the first to be printed on the revolutionary printing press — The Canterbury Tales." [mijn nadruk] (29)
"The combination of old technologies, such as movable type (used to quickly copy any text), and old skills (the abilities of a blacksmith or a goldsmith to create letter molds and fonts), with new technologies (Gutenberg's invention of a new ink that lasted longer), in the perfect storm of cultural and economic conditions, made the Gutenberg printing press a revolutionary breakthrough. The printing press was embraced with great fervor by everyone in Europe — Protestants, Catholics, Humanists, Scholastics — everyone. Less than 25 years later, there were nearly 200 printing presses across Europe; London, Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome, all the places where scribes had once ruled supreme."(33)
"The Canterbury Tales is, like the Decameron, considered among the greatest works of world literature, and is often included on lists of books one should read before they die. As it was directly inspired by Boccaccio's work, it is unsurprising that it incorporates the same erotic/critical style, along with writing in the common tongue. It is also an example of a work which fused the erotic and social critique of the humanists with the wider publication and audience that the printing press and the language allowed. The different Tales operate as satires or critiques of various parts of religion or society."(35)
"The power and potential of the printing press had yet to be realized. It would take a more scandalous and pioneering individual to harness the power of print — an individual that could force kings and princes to cower and beg, one that was courted and flattered by the most powerful figures of his time. The Scourge of Princes, the divine and obscene Pietro Aretino.(...)
The reason we didn't begin our story with Pietro Aretino, the 'father' of pornography, is because he is as much a person as he is a moment. All of the things we have discussed up to this point — Europe after the Black Death, humanism, the printing press, the corrupted church and the rise of the common vernacular — came to a head in the mind of Aretino."(39)
Een levensbeschrijving van Aretino volgt. Daarna een uitwerking van zijn pornografische werken: Capricciosi raigonamenti (The Secret Life of Nuns, The Secret Life of Wifes, en The School of Whoredom) en Piacevoli raigonamenti.
"The ruse works perfectly, and Nanna's new husband is wholly convinced of her virginity. The focus of the Secret Life of Wives is a satire of the male social and political obsession with purity and virginity — after all, most women during the Renaissance were married at an extremely young age (around 14) to ensure their purity, and many of the Italian kingdoms decreed that virginity was an absolute necessity in a bride and that adultery by a woman was punishable by death."(71)
De 95 thesen van Martin Luther.
"Inspired either by Aretino or his own genius, Luther realized that the printing press allowed him to broadcast his pamphlets and arguments far and wide across Europe. With a strategy remarkably similar to Aretino’s, the works that Luther and his supporters mass-produced tied together visuals and text in order to reach the largest possible audience.(...) But how does a German monk play into our little story of pornography and obscenity?"(82)
Achtergrond: de negatieve opvattingen over seks en het idee van de Kerk dat het huwelijk seks dan maar moest legaliseren.
"As a result, marriage and the rules and regulations surrounding marriage became one of the church's primary concerns. Between 1100 and 1300, the church tried to discourage concubinage (multiple sexual partners) and loose moral standards among both the upper and lower classes, with greater or lesser success."(84)
"In 1545, Pope Paul III called the Council of Trent together to organize both defense and offense against the Reformation. This council, more than anything else, would have a major impact on the people and countries of Europe, and is a major landmark in the history of sexuality and pornography. The Council of Trent was not only the first major attempt to suppress or ban literature, it was also the Council that created marriage and privacy as we know it today." [mijn nadruk] (94)
"When I mentioned that Luther and Aretino were the last to use the power of the printing press without restrictions, it was because the Council of Trent initiated the very first Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or Index of Prohibited Books, in response to the effects of Aretino and Luther on the people." [mijn nadruk] (100)
"The real censorship and control came from The Holy Office of the Universal Inquisition (where the French, Spanish, and Roman Inquisitions got their names). It fell on the office of the Inquisition to actively prohibit and censor the works of new authors, along with their usual crackdowns on infidels and heretics."(104)
Verder over Ferrante Pallavicino, de bloedige 30-jarige oorlog (1618-1648) tussen Reformatie en Contra-Reformatie.
"These were not the only books that Pallavicino wrote that offended the church. In fact, nearly all of his works were placed on later editions of the Index, including The Whore Church Mocked, the Heavenly Divorce caused by the sluttiness of the Roman Bride and The Whore's Rhetoric. It is these last two books we will touch on briefly. Although it is nowhere as 'pornographic' as Aretino, The Whore's Rhetoric is an example of pornography writing after Aretino and after Trent, and shows how much the political situation had shifted. The Rhetoric is largely an anti-Jesuit work, in the sense that Pallavicino took Jesuit ideas and turned them on their head by having prostitutes and whores speak them."(108)
"Not only does The Whore's Rhetoric criticize and satirize the Jesuits, the church, and the Catholic hierarchy, Pallavicino also manages to invert the entire system of Catholic belief by having a prostitute say that money washes away all sins — not the church, or Jesus. Furthermore, the Rhetoric argues that all sexual desire is completely natural and good, something very much at odds with church doctrine post-Trent."(111)
Overgang naar de Noordelijke Renaissance met Engeland en Frankrijk in het centrum.
"It took nearly 120 years after the death of Aretino, or about a decade after the death of Pallavicino, for a new and unique work to be published: L'escolle des filles (The School of Girls) in 1655."(115)
"This book, L’escolle des Filles [The School of Women] and its sequel La Philosophie Des Dames [The Philosophy of Women] became both incredibly popular and incredibly censored. It was quickly translated into Italian, Dutch, and English, and spread like wildfire across Europe. The text is also known by its English name, The School of Venus: Or, the Ladies Delight Reduced into Rules of Practice. It was put together by two men, Michel Millot and Jean L'Ange, likely in the winter of 1664-65."(118)
Beschrijving van de inhoud.
"shifting attitudes towards male and female sexuality. In earlier works, like Aretino, or the poems of Thomas Nashe women were stereotyped as being more sexually voracious and aggressive. It seems that by the mid-to-late seventeenth-century that society began to represent men as the sexual aggressors. European culture had not, at this point, reached the highs (or lows) of male libertinism, but it was beginning to incline that way." [mijn nadruk] (125)
Vervolgens naar Nicolas Chorier en zijn sotadische satires.
"Why is this obscure French lawyer and historian important for the history of pornography? Well, it turns out that Monsieur Chorier had a secret life."(140)
Hij schreef The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea. Uitwerking van dat boek.
"These 'lectures' point to a very important difference between modern-day pornography and erotica, which is that pornography from the early modern period until about the 1750s contained much information that we would see as medical or anatomic. Modern pornography, visual or not, does not tend to focus on the operation of the body or how intercourse works—instead it is focused on just the pleasurable aspects of intercourse."(148)
[Wat is beter? Ik vind die seksuele voorlichting via die aloude pornografische werken erg verdedigbaar en een goede zaak voor lezers.]
"It’s very hard to peek behind the bedroom doors of our ancestors, but the glimpses and the little details we get reveal a vast gulf from their time to ours. We have already discussed some of these differences and shifts in sexuality and sexual attitudes, such as the fact that women were seen as much more sexually voracious and aggressive than men, or that acts that we would see as public sex weren't really remarkable (or remarked upon) in earlier centuries — even the complete lack of privacy. In fact, these sexual attitudes are very old compared to our contrary modern ones; showing just how the past is a foreign country. But we can trace our way back into the past, to show where things began to shift towards being more recognizably modern: the 18th century." [mijn nadruk] (152)
Daartoe worden nu de Britse libertijnen besproken, in het bijzonder: The Right Honourable John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester. Die later in zijn leven ook al weer beïnvloed werd door Aretino. Zijn bijdrage aan de pornografie: A Ramble in St. James Park. Dat werk wordt besproken. Een ander gedicht is: Signor Dildo en op het eind van zijn leven schrijf hij een toneelstuk met de naam The Farce of Sodom, or The Quintessence of Debauchery.
Over naar de Hervormers.
"European culture in the late 17th century (1650-1700) was undergoing a dramatic shift in attitudes towards sex and sexual morality. Part of the reason for this is that moral laws began to be questioned and reinterpreted during the European Age of Enlightenment. The Protestant Reformation in England and on the Continent, along with the Catholic Counter-Reformation, had major impacts on education and philosophy, causing a shift from traditional lines of authority such as the church and Christian morality to an emphasis on reason, science, and individualism."(182)
"Scientists and philosophers (in many cases one and the same, as science was still developing as a distinct field) began to question the reasons and purposes behind moral laws handed down by Scripture, especially as early anthropologists and explorers began to uncover (or claim they had) all sorts of different societal configurations from polyandry (one woman and multiple husbands) to brothel-houses containing men."(183)
"It was this middle-class morality that began to emerge and grow in power in the late 17th and early 18th century (1680s-1750s). They were determined to have an impact. The middle classes, more than anyone or anything else, are responsible for the invention of obscenity, the division between 'art' and 'filth,' and the idea of pornography. And by the late 17th century, the middle-class began to reach a critical mass, first in London (which is why it is our focus) and then in other European capitals." [mijn nadruk] (186)
"The upper-classes and political figures were not the only ones meeting in groups and clubs — in fact, with the turning of the century, the English (and French) public enthusiastically founded and joined groups and clubs of varying purposes, ideas and secrecy. One such club was the Society for the Reformation of Manners, the first major and important anti-vice society. The Society was formed by a group of religious reformers and churchmen ... " [mijn nadruk] (187)
"The Manners Society proceeded to set up what can only be described as an elaborate network of informers. In their case, life imitated philosophy, and their dreams of hierarchy became reality. The group consisted of four levels with different values and purposes. The 'First Society' was made up of "persons of eminency in the law, members of Parliament, justices of the peace," and preeminent Londoners — in other words, the first society recruited members in positions of power or wealth to support their mission, much as a modern lobbyist group might do. The ‘Second Society’ focused on "suppressing lewdness and sexual license, swearing, drunkenness and profanations of the Lord's Day. . .[and] the publication of the names of convicted offenders, called the Black Roll." The Black Roll was an innovative technique: the wrongdoers that were captured and fined by the Manners Society would find their names listed on the Black Lists (which were posted in public places) until they paid their fines and had their names removed — it was a campaign of public shaming. The ‘Third Society’ was the strong-arm of the movement. It consisted of constables and guards, who split London up into patrol zones and precincts and coordinated amongst themselves — it was perhaps the earliest attempt at a citywide police force. Finally, the ‘Fourth Society’ was a group of about 150-200 'trained' informers, whom the other three levels depended on. These informers were provided with blank warrants to fill out and provide to the constables in the Third Society as they came across 'issues.' These informers, unpaid at first, became increasingly professional, and would cause a lot of tension among the upper and middle-class supporters, especially those in the legal profession. Indeed, the use of informers would eventually lead to the group's downfall, but more on that in a moment. From its founding in 1688, the Manners Society operated for almost 30 years, until 1715." [mijn nadruk] (190-191)
[En dat met koninklijke ondersteuning ... Totalitair tot en met die groepen. Maar er is een troost: het lukte niet om het 'immorele gedrag' uit de wereld te helpen.]
"Despite their early and numerous successes, the Society began to receive heavy criticism over their use of informers, especially when a 1706 scandal revealed that some magistrates were simply extorting nightwalkers for money, and not reporting the fines. They were mocked and scorned for going after poor street-walkers, not upper class corrupters of morality."(194)
Over boekverkoper en uitgever Edmund Curll.
"Although it was the defense of the masquerade that got Curll in the targets of the English legal system, a very different sort of offense would land Curll in jail, court, and then the pillory."(199)
"Surprisingly, for a book that would help create ‘obscene libel,’ Venus in the Cloister does not get particularly raunchy when compared to both earlier and later works of obscenity and pornography. Nor is it as descriptive about actual sex acts as The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea or The School of Venus. In fact, this would cause some problems for the judges sitting in trial against Curll."(220)
"In previous centuries and years, what would have normally happened is that Curll would have been referred to church courts. Church courts are not very familiar to modern people, as they no longer have the power or the authority that they used to have, but they carried far more power and authority in the seventeenth century. Beginning around the year 1100, church courts were established by the Catholic Church to punish civil crimes such as adultery, fornication, prostitution and bawdiness. And in fact, sexual and marital cases accounted for 60-90% of all cases. They operated side-by-side with secular courts (which focused on things such as assault, fraud, murder, etc.), but church court punishments included things such as atonement for sins, pilgrimages, or payment of fines. More commonly, however, they were publicly beaten and humiliated by the entire community of a town or village." [mijn nadruk] (222)
[Dat was me niet bekend. Een duidelijk voorbeeld van hoe de Kerk zich met de moraal bemoeide.]
"The church courts were not only “corrupt and ineffective, it now seemed, they also unjustly persecuted godly men and women for following their consciences.” This pushed Protestants to move policing of morality to the civil government, and the result was that, “Bills for the stricter punishment of sexual offences were introduced in almost every parliament of the early seventeenth century.”"(223)
[Wat altijd nog beter is. Toch lijkt me de invloed van geloof ook in die seculiere wetgeving nog steeds overduidelijk aanwezig.]
"... secular courts were beginning to take over punishment for moral and sexual offenses, in a way that they had not before. This is a theme that is repeated throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries — religious groups lobbying and pressuring the civil government to police morality. It's a theme that we see even today, in the 21st century, when the governments of the United Kingdom, India, or Australia are pressured into blocking pornography to protect children, or where the government of Germany orders that adult eBooks can only be sold after ten pm." [mijn nadruk] (224)
[Dat bedoel ik. ]
"The reason I touch on this final bit is because during the mid-1700s, when Stretzer was writing and Curll was publishing, there were a great deal of dramatic cultural shifts around the institution and regulations of marriage; shifts that have great impact on our story here. These shifts, that would cause obscenity and sex to become 'dangerous' and 'bad,' carry us into the" [mijn nadruk] (240)
"Family, sex, and marriage prior to the Renaissance (1450) and the Reformation (1517) were dramatically different from the types of society that developed afterwards, and incredibly alien and removed from our current situation. Up until the 16th century, the home lacked the boundaries we know."
"Although we will deal with this in later chapters, the Onania tract was the very first one to identify and specifically target 'evil books' as a cause for masturbation: (...) This is one point where the cultural tide began to turn against 'ill books,' but it would not be fully established until 1857."(248)
"These 18th century shifts in culture, and the development of separate behavior for public and private life, combined with fears over masturbation and arguments for protecting the children, would eventually manifest in the regulation of obscenity and pornography. First in the book market, and then later in photography and film regulation. The first salvo in the reformation of the book market came from truly unexpected source — Samuel Richardson and his novel Pamela or, Virtue Rewarded, in 1740."(251)
Over Samuel Richardson.
"Two other works can also be characterized as reactions to Pamela, and as it happens, they are the two most notorious works of pornography to originate out of the 18th century: Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748), and Justine or, The Misfortunes of Virtue (1791)."(258)
Over John Cleland en zijn boek Fanny Hill.
"The fact that he thought a pornographic novel could pay off his debt goes to show just how successful Edmund Curll had been in making sexy material commercial.(...) Fanny Hill could not have existed in the form and format it exists today if it were not for the publication of Pamela in 1740 — Cleland's novel was both a satire against and an imitation of Richardson's work."(260)
"This is the importance of Cleland and Fanny Hill: it marked, for the first time, a type of erotic work that removed the social, moral and religious criticism that had been overtly present in earlier works and texts. It made sex and sexual escapades the forefront and sole purpose. In Cleland's work, pornography and sex become an aim in themselves, rather than a way to focus a social critique—porn for porn’s sake. Fanny Hill is the first example of how pornography would develop and take off as a genre in the nineteenth century." [mijn nadruk] (279)
"Religious figures, however, saw Fanny as an 'open insult,' and their failure to get Cleland thrown in jail would eventually lead to the politically-oriented Society for the Suppression of Vice. This is a group which will be discussed in the next section, but it is enough right now to say that it was a religiously-organized and motivated group that used political methods to force the government to pass the Obscene Publications act in 1857." [mijn nadruk]
Over Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, kort: Markies de Sade.
"Cleland made pornography stripped of cultural criticism. The Marquis de Sade, however, made pornography drenched in societal criticism. While Cleland layered sexual act upon sexual act in the baroque explosion of Fanny Hill, de Sade wrote endless reams of books, plays and essays of critique upon every possible topic, but all originating from a single impulse; negation. In negating everything, the works of de Sade tear down sexual morality, religious decrees, the laws of the state and church, and even God himself. In doing this, de Sade marks both the pinnacle and the ultimate culmination of the combined cultural criticism/eroticism that we have traced from Boccaccio through Aretino and the rest. Future authors in the field of pornography would follow the style and strategy of Cleland, not de Sade. De Sade is the logical extension of and the destructor of the form. There has never really been anyone else like de Sade." [mijn nadruk] (282)
"By the time of de Sade's birth, 'libertine,' had come to mean that a person had an excessive and unfettered sex life, was frequently atheist, and attacked social and religious morals."(283)
"As some critics have pointed out, it is interesting that we know the Marquis as a pornographic writer first and foremost when in fact most of his works were not obscene or pornographic — out of the nearly 60 works he wrote, only four of them fall under the obscene: 120 Days of Sodom, Philosophy in the Bedroom, Justine, and Juliette. Granted, if we're talking about sales numbers instead of total books, The Marquis is indeed a pornographic writer, as his ‘dirty’ books were insanely popular during his lifetime."(289)
Bespreking van Justine.
"Cleland and de Sade thus prove that the greatest sex writing comes out of financial desperation."(291)
"With the death of John Cleland in 1789 and the Marquis de Sade in 1814, we now enter the next chapter in our history. The half-century between 1800 and 1850 created modern understandings of pornography as sexual obscenity first and foremost, in contrast to political, social, or religious criticism dressed up in sexy clothes. This conception began in England, America and France, and then spread out through other Western countries before being filtered out through the rest of the world through their colonies." [mijn nadruk] (311)
Het liberale verlichtingsdenken gaf het individu de ruimte. Religieuze groepen gingen daartegenin:
"Religious figures, however, saw Fanny as an 'open insult,' and their failure to achieve prosecution led ultimately to their organization of two political action campaigns — The Proclamation Society, and the Society for the Suppression of Vice. These groups, which were based somewhat on the Society for the Reformation of Manners, and who were also religiously organized, used political methods and lobbying to achieve their goal; legal recognition of the 'menace' posed by pornographic works. Without their vociferous campaigning, there would not have been sexual obscenity laws." [mijn nadruk] (314)
"As one of George III's first acts as King, the Proclamation [van 1887] "enjoin[ed] and prohibit[ed] all Our loving Subjects, of what Degree or Quality so ever" from playing at dice, cards, and games on Sunday; commanded them to attend church; called on police and judges to enforce laws against drunkenness, blasphemy, swearing and cursing, and to break up gambling houses, dirty shows, and brothels. So far, this is nearly identical to Queen Anne's Proclamation, but the unique and new part was: “Also [you should] suppress all loose and licentious Prints, Books, and Publications, dispersing Poison to the Minds of the Young and Unwary, and to punish the Publishers and Vendors thereof.”
This was the very first time 'prints, books, and publications' were singled out because of their sexual nature instead of their critique of religion, society, or politics. Earlier Proclamations by King George I and Queen Anne did not target books, prints, or publications in the way George III's did." [mijn nadruk] (316)
De Proclamation Society en later de Society for the Suppression of Vice stelden alles in het werk om overtredingen daarvan te vervolgen (politie inschakelen, rechtszaken beginnen).
"Their description of obscene literature is interesting for several reasons. First is that the argumentum ad liberos, or the "think of the children" argument is utilized in relation to erotic works for just about the first time ..." [mijn nadruk] (326)
"These 'protect the children' arguments by the Vice Society and others lends support to an idea presented at the very beginning of this book, that the concept of pornography as a category was tied to the increasing rates of literacy among the working class, women, and children. The English comedian and Anglican cleric Sydney Smith, noted that since the Society for the Suppression of Vice did not prosecute the wealthy it should be called "a society for suppressing the vices of persons whose income does not exceed £500 per annum."" [mijn nadruk] (327)
"This is a common trend that runs through all of the prosecutions for obscene libel and pornography; the prosecuted individual is always a member of (or associated with) the middle or working class, and his dangerously sexy wares run the risk of corrupting the women, the children, and all who walk down Holywell street, peering in the shop windows. This is the most interesting thing about the Vice Society's comments — that while the religious aspect of obscene libel is still present in 'blasphemous,' there is a much greater focus on the lewdness and sexiness of the books and prints. It was no longer religious or philosophical aspects that endangered the readers or incited them to revolt. Now, it was the mere hint or suggestion of sex or sexuality. This fear of sexuality was apparent in the earliest publications of the Vice Society ..." [mijn nadruk] (329)
Bespreking van The Lustful Turk van John Benjamin Brookes.
"It was no wonder then, that when the Society for the Suppression of Vice caught wind of this publication they brought a legal case against a certain William Dugdale for publishing and selling it; a legal case that would rock the world of English literature to its very foundations, and be used by the American and British governments to control and punish for over a century."(346)
Over de Obscene Publications Act.
"Campbell was only finally able to sell the Act to the Lords by promising that it would apply "exclusively to the works written for the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth and of a nature calculated to shock the common feelings of decency in any well-regulated mind," and that any book that made any pretensions of being literature or art, classic or modern, had nothing to fear from the law. The real enemy, to Campbell and the press, were the Holywell Street pornographers."(353)
[Vaagheid troef uiteraard. Schokkend dat de politiek zich zo laat leiden door religieuze groepen en hun opvattingen. Scheiding van Kerk en Staat? Hoe dan?]
"The irony in this argument is that less than three decades later "the law would be used against the classical works the Lords had wanted to guard, and especially against current literature." Indeed, this same act would be used to target and threaten the works now-famous authors such as James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence until the 1960s, over a century later. The impact of this law on England and its colonies in North America, Asia, and Australia — and on other Western cultures generally — can hardly be understated." [mijn nadruk] (353)
Maar ondanks die wetten en vervolgingen bloeide de pornografie na een tijdje weer op als nooit tevoren. Meer over The romance of lust en over Henry Spencer Ashbee.
"If the period between 1750 and 1857 was the period where the cultural battles reached their greatest frenzy and created the genre of pornography, then the following century, from 1857-1960 marks the high water point of the use of the Obscene Publications Act as a bludgeon against ant work that was found morally questionable. It is also the period of time that lead to the eventual turning of the tides and the defeat of the law. Let us go, ever onwards, to the end of our story."(372)
"The Hicklin Test, as it came to be called, widened the definition of obscenity from works written 'for the sole purpose of corrupting the morals of youth' to works that 'deprave and corrupt,' and those that 'may fall' into the hands of anyone with an ability to read them. In other words, it was no longer just the youth that needed to be protected, but the minds of the entire British public. The intention of the author was irrelevant, all that mattered was protecting the innocence of the public.
Following the Hicklin decision, groups such as the National Vigilance Association (another reformation group, established in 1885) seized on it as a new weapon in their battle "for the enforcement and improvement of the laws for the repression of criminal vice and public immorality." Utilizing a strategy developed by Anthony Comstock and the American Society for the Suppression of Vice, these groups would purchase copies of books they found obscene and then prosecute the publishers for allowing the book to fall into their hands. Additionally, government authorities, particularly the Home Office (which controlled products which could be imported into England), used the same strategy to target books that were printed on the Continent and then brought into England. The Hicklin Test enabled the prosecution of any book found suspect, whether it was a work of literature such as Emile Zola's La Terre (prosecuted in 1888), or a medical text that explained sex and contraception such as The Fruits of Philosophy (prosecuted in 1877)." [mijn nadruk] (375)
"The problem with The Fruits of Philosophy was not its obscenity, but the fact that it explained birth control — its advocacy for onanism [masturbation] was the reason it was found to deprave public morals."(377)
[Met andere woorden: de obsceniteitswetten werden aangegrepen om alles wat bepaalde conservatieve groepen niet zagen zitten - en dat was met name alles dat met seksualiteit te maken had - uit de wereld te helpen, maakte niet uit in welke context. Het is te triest voor woorden.]
"The overall result was that publishers began to require authors to revise their work for purity before publication. Additionally, many authors engaged in self-censorship or complete silencing, to avoid calling attention to themselves."(379)
Over de strijd van D.H. Lawrence tegen de wetten.
"Pornography and Obscenity serves as a useful insight into Lawrence's understandings of sex and sexuality, and his use of them in his novels. He begins the essay by stating, "what they [pornography and obscenity] are depends, as usual, entirely on the individual." Noting that pornography means "the graph [drawing] of the harlot [porno]," and obscene meant "that which might not be represented on stage," he points out the same issue that Lord Lyndhurst did a half-century earlier; "what is obscene to Tom is not obscene to Lucy or Joe." In Lawrence's view, it is mob-rule and mob-understanding that decide the obscene "Vox Populi, Vox Dei, don't you know. If you don't we'll let you know it." But Lawrence suggests a shift for the popular understanding of pornography, because:
[E]ven I would censor genuine pornography, rigorously. . .what is pornography, after all this? It isn't sex appeal or sex stimulus in art. It isn't even a deliberate intention on the part of the artist to arouse or excite sexual feelings. There's nothing wrong with sexual feelings in themselves, so long as they are straightforward and not sneaking or sly. . . . Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it. This is unpardonable." [mijn nadruk] (388)
"Sexuality and its artistic representation, the last barrier in polite conversation and public discourse, was the battleground on which Lawrence fought for the right to express himself. However, he was repeatedly stymied by a prosecutorial strategy that targeted publishers or gallery owners who were not willing to risk a full trial. As a result, Lawrence was left with an unwarranted reputation as a pornographer and nearly chased out of Britain by the end of WWI. A long period of self-imposed exile compounded by ill health, leading to his death in 1930, left him unable to challenge the reputation in court, and he did not live to see the turning point in his struggle." [mijn nadruk] (389)
[Ik kan me wel vinden in D.H. Lawrence opvattingen.]
Verder over de rechtszaak over Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness in 1928.
"Hall's brazenness and forthrightness was something that the Home Office could not tolerate, especially as her publisher began importing books that had been secretly printed in Paris. Relying on their usual strategy of targeting a publisher and thereby bypassing the danger of a trial about literary merit, the authorities organized an elaborate sting operation to seize all copies of the book in England. But Hall and her publisher had prepared for this."(393)
"The purpose of the trial became immediately clear — the defeat of the Hicklin definition of obscene literature. Unfortunately, the prosecution had chosen its judge wisely, and the judge had pre-determined that The Well of Loneliness was obscenity."(395)
"The 1928 trial of The Well of Loneliness was an important one for England's literati. Over 40 of them had been present at the trial, and the other 115 that had been invited no doubt followed the trial closely. In many ways, this would mark the low point for writers and the high point for the application of the 1857 Obscene Publications Act and its Hicklin Test. The first sign that the tide was shifting came in January of the following year, 1929, where Hall's key experts met and called for the reform of the 1857 Obscene Publications Act."(397)
"The 1857 Obscene Publications Act would be revised in 1959 to include the author's right to argue for literary merit along with the requirement that the entire work be considered, not just individual sections. Even the long-dead 'pornographer,' D.H. Lawrence, finally got his day in court: Lady Chatterley's Lover was deemed 'not obscene' in 1961 in a showdown between the Queen’s Bench and Penguin Books. The age of the obscene moderns was over." [mijn nadruk] (400)
"So the purpose of this final section is to address the history of visual (photographic and film) pornography and how it fits into the history of pornography as a whole."(40)
"As the French were the first to pioneer and master daguerreotypes and photography, Paris became the center of the trade in erotic and obscene images, just as it had once served as the center for erotic and obscene books. In 1848, only 13 studios existed in all of Paris, but by 1860, there were over 400! All of them claimed to be reputable joints that only took pictures of individuals and families, but in fact, most of them traded and profited from the sale of nude images to any customer that had the money."(408)
"The intervening story of the movement from erotic discourse to pornography is thus a mirror-history to the rise of privacy, sexuality, capitalism, morality, and the middle class."(417)