What Pornography Knows offers a new history of pornography based on forgotten bawdy fiction of the eighteenth century, its nineteenth-century republication, and its appearance in 1960s paperbacks. Through close textual study, Lubey shows how these texts were edited across time to become what we think pornography is—a genre focused primarily on sex. Originally, they were far more variable, joining speculative philosophy and feminist theory to sexual description. Lubey's readings show that pornography always had a social consciousness—that it knew, long before anti-pornography feminists said it, that women and nonbinary people are disadvantaged by a society that grants sexual privilege to men. Rather than glorify this inequity, Lubey argues, the genre's central task has historically been to expose its artifice and envision social reform. Centering women's bodies, pornography refuses to divert its focus from genital action, forcing readers to connect sex with its social outcomes. Lubey offers a surprising take on a deeply misunderstood cultural form: pornography transforms sexual description into feminist commentary, revealing the genre's deep knowledge of how social inequities are perpetuated as well as its plans for how to rectify them.

The business of pornography is a surprisingly elusive subject, and debates on the subject can cause emotions to run high. Tarrant answers the most-asked questions about the performers, the viewers, the dangers and the economic impact of the porn industry. She sorts myths from reality, and the result allows readers to explore these provocative issues and make their own decisions.

Pornography is menacing people, relationships, and society, and this book has the research and stories to prove it. John D. Foubert, Ph.D., an interdisciplinary scholar who has studied sexual violence since 1993, shares the life stories of more than twenty people directly affected by pornography. He also interviews scholars and explains how pornography affects our brains. In examining the many ways pornography is devouring the God-given sexual health of the Internet generation, he highlights its connection to sexual violence and how it ruins lives. He also focuses on who makes pornography and their motives, recent trends in pornography, and how pornography is changing the way people have sex. Perhaps most importantly, he explains what we can do to confront pornography in our own lives, the lives of our loved ones, and in society. Whether you are a teen, young adult, a parent, pastor, scholar, or you are just curious about what pornography does to people, your conscience will be shocked and your points of view deeply challenged by what Foubert has uncovered about the reality of todays pornography.

The internet has made access to sexually explicit content radically more easy than ever before. This book is essential reading for those who are troubled by their own relationship with pornography, and for those who want to understand the world we now live in. Republished with extensive revisions in December 2017.

This book presents an innovative cross-disciplinary report on research across the humanities and social sciences about the relationship between pornography and its consumers. For policy makers and the wider public it can be difficult to obtain a clear understanding of the current state of knowledge on pornography and its relationships with audiences, due to the often-contradictory nature of research spanning the various and politically diverse academic disciplines. The cross-disciplinary expertise of the author team has engaged in an extensive examination of the findings of academic research in the area in order to explain, in a clear and accessible style, the most important conclusions about the relationship of pornography to Healthy Sexual Development. This short and accessible overview is suitable for students and scholars in Psychology, Sexual Health, Film Studies, Sex Education, Queer Theory, Gender Studies, Sexuality Studies, Sociology, Media Studies and Cultural Studies.

Pornography is powerful. Our contemporary culture as been pornified, and it shapes our assumptions about identity, sexuality, the value of women and the nature of relationships. Countless Christian men struggle with the addictive power of porn. But common spiritual approaches of more prayer and accountability groups are often of limited help. In this book neuroscientist and researcher William Struthers explains how pornography affects the male brain and what we can do about it. Because we are embodied beings, viewing pornography changes how the brain works, how we form memories and make attachments. By better understanding the biological realities of our sexual development, we can cultivate healthier sexual perspectives and interpersonal relationships. Struthers exposes false assumptions and casts a vision for a redeemed masculinity, showing how our sexual longings can actually propel us toward sanctification and holiness in our bodies. With insights for both married and single men alike, this book offers hope for freedom from pornography.

We no longer live in a world where pornography exists in a sleazy party of town, restricted to adult magazines and videos sold in restricted shops. It is no longer soft pornography that previous generations found in magazines like Penthouse and Playboy. Every child now has access to hard-core pornography of every imaginable variety. Children aren't stumbling onto occasional soft pornography - they are living in a world where extreme hard-core, violent and degrading pornography is easily found. With the internet, pornography has gone from being a sleazy, risky, shameful, and highly private activity, to an open aired, widely available, widely viewed, multi-billion dollar industry. In 1980, children's access to pornography was typically limited to soft-core magazines, used in secrecy. In 2014, children have easy, free 24/7 access on any internet connected smart phone, tablet or computer to extreme hard-core pornography. Every parent needs to understand the reality and dangers of internet pornography.

"Strips porn of its culture-war claptrap . . . Pornified may stand as a Kinsey Report for our time."—San Francisco Chronicle Porn in America is everywhere—not just in cybersex and Playboy but in popular video games, advice columns, and reality television shows, and on the bestseller lists. Even more striking, as porn has become affordable, accessible, and anonymous, it has become increasingly acceptable—and a big part of the personal lives of many men and women. In this controversial and critically acclaimed book, Pamela Paul argues that as porn becomes more pervasive, it is destroying our marriages and families as well as distorting our children's ideas of sex and sexuality. Based on more than one hundred interviews and a nationally representative poll, Pornified exposes how porn has infiltrated our lives, from the wife agonizing over the late-night hours her husband spends on porn Web sites to the parents stunned to learn their twelve-year-old son has seen a hardcore porn film. Pornified is an insightful, shocking, and important investigation into the costs and consequences of pornography for our families and our culture.

Feminist philosophers have made important strides in altering the overwhelmingly male-centric discipline of philosophy. Yet, in Nancy Bauer’s view, most are still content to work within theoretical frameworks that are fundamentally false to human beings’ everyday experiences. This is particularly intolerable for a species of philosophy whose central aspiration is to make the world a less sexist place. How to Do Things with Pornography models a new way to write philosophically about pornography, women’s self-objectification, hook-up culture, and other contemporary phenomena. Unafraid to ask what philosophy contributes to our lives, Bauer argues that the profession’s lack of interest in this question threatens to make its enterprise irrelevant. Bauer criticizes two paradigmatic models of Western philosophizing: the Great Man model, according to which philosophy is the product of rare genius; and the scientistic model, according to which a community of researchers works together to discover once-and-for-all truths. The philosopher’s job is neither to perpetuate the inevitably sexist trope of the philosopher-genius nor to “get things right.” Rather, it is to compete with the Zeitgeist and attract people to the endeavor of reflecting on their settled ways of perceiving and understanding the world. How to Do Things with Pornography boldly enlists J. L. Austin’s How to Do Things with Words, showing that it should be read not as a theory of speech acts but as a revolutionary conception of what philosophers can do in the world with their words.

This collection of new and classic writings about the sex industry asks us to think about the differences between our society's treatment of prostitution and pornography, while investigating how liberalism deals with the sex industry in general.