Sweet Seductions

In case you needed some enticement to start the reading sooner than later, the first dozen pages or so involve some discussion of pornography amidst censorship. Whether you think it's great, awful, or not all that useful, I think in general what could be considered the lowest of the low-brow is likely to present a more interesting political/social "problem" than some of the things we've encountered in the text, something along the lines of the Freeman's Oath. (That right there is my rationalization for this post, my way of feeling less like a skeevy dude for porn being my blog topic of choice.)

My initial reaction is that I'd like a little more about the social implications of pornography for end of the 19th century America and Europe. The extent to which pornography equals sexual freedom equals radical politics provides one perspective for why pornography would be dangerous, but I think there is more to it that might fit into Starr's story. And if it doesn't fit into Starr's story, perhaps it fits into the combined story of the three texts we have thus far been reading.

Starr lays out the explicit (har har) connection between pornography and birth control in Victorian law, but there is no explicit connection between social perspective and object/activity. Is the problem the sex? Probably not in and of itself. Is it the masturbation that comes with the product? I believe Starr dedicates a sentence to that effect, but not much more. Is it the lack of reproduction? There is no direct connection made to reproduction. The connection that I found in the text is the connection to Christianity, and that connection is made through the role of censorship granted the Christian vice societies, whose name sounds a lot more wild than the groups seem to have been, and women's groups.

The connection is understandable, but it doesn't fit the rest of the text. How is Christian morality working toward the American spirit? I think it's too easy (and yet problematic) to say that Christians took a moral high ground and imposed something on the country that did not really align with th national ideal that Starr posits as the root of all media development. Surely censoring pornography fits in with the rest of the American doctrine, otherwise it could not really have been justified. What follow are some of my ideas/questions/concerns related to how this might fit into the American story:

• Pornography's then-connection to abortions and contraceptives makes me think that masturbation was scary because it would lead to fewer children and either that's a.) against God, which I don't think was that persuasive an argument then (as it is now for much of the country), or b.) bad for our growing country. Is it a population issue?
• But then the initial reaction against pornography (and vices) solely for the lower classes, while it was enjoyed by the upper classes, makes me wonder if the vice societies worried about the opposite effect of pornography - perhaps the upper classes worried that porn would (through increased and uncontrollable working class libido) lead to an increase in the population of poor people. Is it a class issue? (There's a hint of an immigrant/native issue toward the end of this section, where native-born women are targeted in anti-contraceptive measures and immigrants are targeted for obscenity measures, which informs, but does not address, the next point.)
  
• Taking a different tack, pornography and masturbation require/promote isolation. Is it a community issue?
  

This last point is something on which I find it most interesting to focus. I have read about (or heard about from a teacher in high school or a professor in college) the promotion of pornography in Nazi-controlled populations as a method for controlling that population. I have no citation for this and a poor recollection of it, so it could all be a lie, but the way that I understood it was that pornography, presumably being used for masturbation, leads to isolation, both in the practical sense of what's being done with the material and in the ideological sense of creating impossible fantasies that keep one from fully enjoying one's partner or delaying the "need" for finding another partner. Isolation eventually leads to less care for neighbors, concern with governmental initiatives, and (potentially) unnecessary breeding (e.g. miscegenation in Aryan terms). (I'm sure when it was explained to me/I read it, there was a much more thorough progression and I'm sorry for the enormous leaps. If you know it, please comment, because I've clearly forgotten it.)

Whether you agree with pornography's correlation to isolation(s), I wonder what role isolation plays in this history we're exploring. Did Victorian Americans fear the isolation pornography might encourage? I would say that they might have had reason to fear isolation relatively shortly after a rather divisive civil war. If we think back to the problem of nationalism and how America had long worked to create a sense of nation, pornography (if it leads to isolation) could be seen as really detrimental. I think along similar lines it makes sense that we see other "vice societies" pop up throughout US history (e.g. Prohibition). Let's be honest, morals aside, vices are not particularly productive. Certainly the appearance of vice societies throughout history is complex, but I don't think that prudish morality is the root, I think it's only the superficial message.