Nudity and Pornography

The puritanical idea that we must convince our children that sex does not exist, and that a naked body is sinful, is unsustainable. Asymmetry in indecent exposure precedent is perhaps not measurably bad for the country (as abstinence-only sex education is) but it is certainly awkward and pointless. For most adults in this country, sex - even recreational sex - is a regular part of life. Premarital sex is nearly universal and nearly all sexually active women have used contraception.

I'll accept that genitals ought to be covered. It's probably justifiable from a hygiene angle. But mandating that a woman's nipples must be covered is, as far as I can tell, nonsense. It's certainly incorrect to have gender asymmetry in the rule; the idea that a female nipple is more sexual than a male nipple is hard to justify. If you're unconvinced, try to tell which sex each of these nipples belongs to.



(Just a heads up - be careful about putting "nipple" into a Google image search; apparently nipple enlargement, nipple torture, and giant nipple piercings are pretty popular on the internet.)

Furthermore, if our goal is to protect children from explicit material, banning the female nipple is a really bad way to do it (of course it is generally easy to tell if a picture contains a female nipple; you'll notice that discussing complex issues as if they're black and white is a recurring pet peeve of mine). For example, you'll notice that of the four images below, three have exposed nipples. The first is art. The second is educational, helping teach how to do a self breast exam. The third, breastfeeding, I had to modify because a Google bot flagged it as pornographic. However, only the last image, "Sexy Bikini Girl," who has her nipples covered, is undeniably sexual.




And though this should go without saying, acknowledging that a nude body is not inherently dirty is not the same as insisting that everyone be naked all the time. Men are free to bare their entire torsos in public but few do. When not constrained by laws we are still constrained by practicality.

This is of course not to say that a naked body cannot be sexual; it obviously can be. But nudity is not inherently pornographic and it should not be censored as if to see it is shameful. Like comprehensive sex education, the stigma associated with pornography comes from the religious notion that we must be sexually pure. This is completely irreconcilable with reality.

According to surveys, only a quarter think pornography is protected under the First Amendment, just over a third think it's "morally acceptable to look at pictures of nudity or sexually explicit behavior," while 82% of adults think that laws against online obscenity should be "vigorously enforced." Meanwhile, back in fact land, one in four web searches is for pornography, one in ten emails is pornographic, half of all online spending is pornographic, and thirty million Americans - about one sixth of online users at the time - access online porn per day. Two thirds of men between 20 and 40 admit to looking at online porn regularly, as do a third of churchgoing women. These figures are from 2005, but you get the idea.

Shame over the sexual act is obsolete. Kinsey showed us sixty years ago that just about everyone is sexual; there comes a point where you can no longer act surprised and indignant.

That said, pornography is overwhelmingly aimed at men. It portrays sex as a male-dominated, even misogynistic, act. This is a norm I don't think we should accept as a culture. However, that's hard to change, as I imagine that porn production is market driven. And with annual porn revenues conservatively at ten billion dollars (in 2005), producers have a pretty big sample as far as gauging what sells.

(The nipples were all male.)