Page 391 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

0 | Pornography

1972—First mainstream hardcore pornography film Deep Throat is produced and shown
in both adult as well as “public” theatres.
1973—Supreme Court decision, Miller v. California, setting up a community-standards
approach to obscenity.
1974—Hustler first published by Larry Flynt.
1976—Women against Violence in Pornography is formed in San Francisco.
1980s—Pornography begins to be distributed over the Internet.
1981—Andrea Dworkin’s influential book Pornography is published.
1984—Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon convince the Minneapolis City Council
to adopt a civil rights ordinance allowing women to receive damages from the alleged
harms resulting from pornography.
July 1986—Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography (Meese Report) published,
finding some harms from pornography.
1990s—Pornographic magazines for women (Playgirl, Bite, For Women) become estab-
lished.
1991—With the beginning of World Wide Web/Internet, porn becomes more popular;
Nancy Friday’s Women on Top is published.
1992—Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling in R. v. Butler incorporates some elements
of Dworkin and MacKinnon’s legal work on pornography into the existing Canadian
obscenity law.
1994/1995—Michael Ninn produces two of the best-selling and most rented porn
videos—Sex and Latex, using computer graphics and high-tech imagery.
1998—Penthouse reveals explicit photos of oral, vaginal, and anal penetration as well as
males urinating on females.
2005—U.S. District Court drops federal case against Extreme Associates.
2005—Under new ownership, Penthouse returns to “softer” photos and no longer shows
explicit penetration.

hisTory

Sexually explicit and arousing stories and depictions have from earliest his-
tories been part of human cultures—in erotic contexts as well as, often simulta-
neously, sacred, artistic, folkloric, and political. Modern pornography began to
emerge in the sixteenth century, merging explicit sexual representation with a
challenge to some, though not all, traditional moral conventions, for pornog-
raphy was largely the terrain of male elites and represented their desires and
points of view.
In the United States, post–World War II and spurred on by new sexologi-
cal research, reproductive technologies, emerging movements for social jus-
tice, and the formation of the modern consumer economy, the state began to
retreat from some of its efforts toward the regulation of sexuality. This allowed
the emergence of the modern pornography industry. Playboy was launched in
1953, followed by a number of “men’s” magazines, the large-scale production