Critically Assess The Argument That Pornography Is Harmful To Women.

The first 200 words of this essay...

Critically Assess The Argument That Pornography Is Harmful To Women.

Pornography, unlike any other media representation of sex and sexuality, has become within postmodern society a cultural category of significance (McNair1996: 1) The traditional imagery of seediness has been lost somewhat and replaced by a society that uses highly sexual imagery within the advertising industry, the music industry and also as a theme for many late night mainstream TV shows.

This shift in attitudes towards the use of sexual and erotic images in today's society raises certain questions that need to be answered. What is pornography and how is pornography defined? If pornography is harmful then who does it harm and in what way?

In order to fully explore the question is pornography harmful to women it is important to first define what pornography is and look closely at the different arguments around defining it.

Pornography is in the main understood as being photographs or video images of explicit sexual acts. So despite the fact that there are some differences of opinion on the definition of pornography most people would appear to agree that its content is sex. Although it has been claimed that 'what