Pornography in the American Social Strata.
The debate over pornography and its place in society has grown immensely in the last few years, becoming one of the hottest issues in America. The reasons as to why people use porn is a complicated question that can be assessed in many ways and before one can answer this question, one needs to ask what porn is and who its users are. When analyzing pornography from a sociological standpoint, immediately issues of deviance, class factors and gender stratification arise. Our group project intends to examine specifically who looks at porn by using several sociological factors: race, class, gender, religion and emotion.
Although lawyers, feminists, priests and scientists all have given their professional opinionated description, an adequate definition of pornography does not seem to exist. Some distinguish between erotica and porn, with porn being more violent, portraying unequal power in sexual relations or showing activities that are judged to be immoral. The Webster dictionary defines pornography asthe depiction of erotic behavior intended to cause sexual excitement.? Porn or not, representations of sexual behavior have existed through centuries and across cultures. Within western society, sex itself has been consideredevil? and revolting. This is exactly why the concealment of the sex organs and teaching feelings of shame towards human sexuality is so common. History has proven that with shame comes curiosity and rebellion, this is why we have such an interest and as such, prevalence of pornography. People in America have been taught that human sexuality is shameful and in turn, we are automatically intrigued. This intrigue is then examined and where is the easiest and fastest place in the world to get information? That's right, the Internet. It is estimated that 60 percent of the Internet is pornographic material. As with any business, pornography is about supply and demand and despite societies? negative connotations, people are obviously still interested.