Pornography: Prevalence and Impact Of This Phenomenon On The Society
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What is pornography?

Pornography is any sexually explicit writing or picture that depicts naked images of human beings, shows two or more people indulging in sexual activity and may even be a video recording that captures sexual intercourse scenes between individuals. The naked presentation of the human body in pornography is mainly aimed at triggering off sexual desire of the viewer as well as to provide sexual relief. Further, Pornography is also available in a host of other mediums such as sculpture, animation, drawing, painting and sound recording

However, pornography is different from erotica in the sense that unlike erotica, there is no historical or artistic value attached to pornography.

The Prevalence Of Pornography In The Society

Since the beginning of civilization pornography has existed in the society and with the passage of time, pornographic material has become much more widely available. Around 1950s and starting from that time a definite pornographic boom has occurred in the US and decisively, the arrival of "Playboy" in 1950s heralded an era of pornography in America . A couple of other magazines with pornographic content were launched in the market after "Playboy" pushed up the pornography business.

With the advent of the internet, pornographic material has gained wide-scale availability, particularly from 1990 onwards; internet has opened floodgates for viewers to gain access to pornography online across the world. According to a 1997 pornographic study, almost 34,000 pornographic websites were found to provide pornographic material to people across the world.

Harm From Pornography

The large scale availability of pornographic material containing aggression and violence against women has corrupted the minds of the people in the society and as a consequence rape and other sexually violent crimes have undergone a tremendous increase. Pornography is blamed throughout for sexual addiction among people and to add on, a survey carried out on 21,300 people has led to this astonishing conclusion that college students are twice sexually addicted in comparison to other people. Access to free porn in the cyberspace has definitely made the youngsters unredeemable sex addicts.

Is There Any Benefit That Society Can Derive From Pornography?

In complete contrast to the studies that depict the enormous harm pornography has unleashed on the society, there are a couple of other study results which state that pornography has considerably reduced sex crimes against women and the other vulnerable sections of the society. A study conducted in European countries and Japan where pornography has been available for years point out that sexual atrocities against women as well as children have considerably lessened with the increase in the availability of pornographic material.

The Final Debate: Is It Essential To Ban Pornography?

In a certain section of the society pornographic material might have an adverse impact and can encourage people to become sex offenders. And altogether it is also true that pornography is capable of providing sexual relief to a particular section and can help them to express their sexual feelings uninhibitedly without harming anyone. Moreover, ban on pornography would not yield any fruitful result for the reason that it might somehow lead to more violent sexual expressions from people. It is actually up to the people to use their reasoning conscience of mind and control their violent sexual feelings notwithstanding the preponderance of pornography.

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