Let's Look at Pornography (sort of)....

Perhaps it not "pornography" per se that is rejected and stigmatised by the shadow of western culture, but the shadow aspects of how we look (or don't look) at pornography, kept chained up in the cellar like a secret hooker. Maybe it's time to restore Venus to her historical and natural place in culture and get over our guilt and shame and ourselves.

One thing is for sure, pornography is not going away. It's been embedded in our psyche "since thumbs were first opposable."

"If we could redefine erotica, restore it to the venerated place in art that it was once accustomed to, this might defuse a number of our personal and social tensions with regard to sex in much the way it seems to have done at the dawn of western civilization. Realised properly, pornography could offer us a safe arena in which to discuss or air ideas that otherwise would go unspoken and could only stale and fester in our individual dark. Our sexual imagination is and always has been central to our lives, as individuals or as a species, and our culture might be much enriched, or at least more relaxed, if it acknowledged this. There’d be no more divine pornography by any future William Blake incinerated after his demise, no future Aubrey Beardsley on his deathbed, frightened, coughing for his finest work to be destroyed. No frilly decadent or bearded Beat compelled either to cower behind a pseudonym or add to the prolific oeuvre of ‘Anonymous’."

Alan Moore on Pornography

Update: 12/16/2011

"25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom is an unedited and expanded hard cover binding of an essay that Alan Moore wrote for "Arthur" Magazine during the publication of his erotic graphic novel masterpiece the Lost Girls. The book is a light survey of humanities' obsession with sex since the dawn of time to present day, illustrated with many full page panels of titillating art and the masterful prose of Moore. Like the Lost Girls, 25,000 years of Erotic Freedom does not seek to overtly glorify "pornography" or taboo subjects, but merely brings them to light and exposes the fact that we are more drawn to that which we publicly object to than we willingly admit. Moore explores our double-sided viewpoint on all things erotic, at once trying to sweep it under the carpet while secretly pilfering guilty glances while no one else is looking; and analysis the effect that such a suppressive attitude has had on sexuality and culture in general. A wonderful read for anyone who is tired of feeling guilty for wanting to explore all that sexuality has to offer in a culture that practically buries us under mountains of sexual suggestion while slapping our wrists for getting excited. " -- Amazon review of Moore's book 25,000 Years of Erotic freedom