Originally published at: People in Ireland are asked "what is pornography?" in 1972 | Boing Boing
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“We’ll have to know all those things if we’re getting into Europe”
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This wry insight into the elusive meaning of “pornography” recalls the words of Justice Potter Stewart, who famously said that he couldn’t define pornography, but he knew what he liked.
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a female street performer friend of mine once did a show after which a lady from the audience sought out a commissionaire to inform him that the act had to be shut down as it was outright pornographic. The elderly commissionaire asked "did she get naked? " the lady said “no” the commissionaire then asked if she had exposed herself in any way? the lady again said “no” the commissionaire then stated, “well it doesn’t sound like very good porn to me !”
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etymology geek arises from the murk:
pornography (n.)
1842, “ancient obscene painting, especially in temples of Bacchus,” from French pornographie, from Greek pornographos “(one) depicting prostitutes,” from graphein “to write” (see -graphy) + pornē “prostitute,” originally “bought, purchased” (with an original notion, probably of “female slave sold for prostitution”), related to pernanai “to sell” (from PIE *perə-, variant of root *per- (5) “to traffic in, to sell”)…
So no prostitution depicted: not porno(graphy) [insert not-serious but vaguely bemused emoji]
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I probably missed the ‘/s’ on this. Just in case, what he actually said was:
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it , and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
The “shorthand description” an attempt to categorize “hardcore pornography.”
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Made me wonder what “all those things” means. What pornography is, what the acts depicted in the pornography are, how to perform the acts depicted in the pornography.
She made it sound like it was something she didn’t approve of, but now seems inevitable as part of joining the EU. “I’m a private monogamous woman who only has sex with her own husband in her own bed, but once we join Europe…”
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She seemed to be referring to the (bad?) language she had heard in a film at the cinema.
This puts me in mind of an Irish (?) film about a young man who learns he can make a buck by selling pornographic pictures in the town where he is staying.
Anyone remember this one? Post-2000, I think.
I don’t know much about attributing statements to historical figures, but I know what I like.
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Q. What’s this?
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A. An Irish sex manual.
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The internet: “What isn’t?”
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1972: it’s when people show their hairy private parts and what god gave them.
2021 internet: these words and ancient concepts confuse me.
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1972 Ireland, I thought i’d have to turn on the closed captioning but didn’t need it until the last gent
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At my library we don’t censor the patron computers, but we do have a policy about not viewing nudity, gore, and hate material on them. We don’t object to the existence of such things, and have physical books available that contain (at least to some degree) each of these things, sometime even at the same time. For us, it’s not keeping those seeking such things from accessing them, it’s keeping others from being exposed to them without their consent.
I’m pretty sure the words “pornographic content” are actually used in our acceptable use policy, but like everywhere else, I think it’s loosely defined, if at all.
I hear the phrase “bad language” and I think things like failing to use the correct verb tense to match the action being described.
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No, no. That’s not bad langage, that’s offensive language. 
/s
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Worn with pride.
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