Pornography

Pornography or porn is the portrayal of explicit sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual excitement.

Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video, or video game. However, when sexual acts are performed for a live audience, by definition it is not pornography, as the term applies to the depiction of the act, rather than the act itself. Thus, portrayals such as sex shows and striptease are not classified as pornography.

Pornography has often been subject to censorship and legal restraints on publication on grounds of obscenity. Such grounds and the very definition of what is or is not pornography have differed in different historical, cultural and national contexts.

Over the past few decades, an immense industry for the production and consumption of pornography has grown, with the increasing use of the VCR, the DVD, and the Internet, as well as the emergence of social attitudes more tolerant of sexual portrayals. Performers in pornography are referred to as pornographic actors (or actresses), or the more commonly known title “porn star” and are generally seen as qualitatively different from their mainstream counterparts. Amateur pornography has become widely popular and generally distributed via the Internet for free.

The word derives from the Greek πορνογραφία (pornographia), which derives from the Greek words πόρνη (pornē, “prostitute” and pornea, “prostitution”), and γράφω (graphō, “I write or record,” derived meaning “illustration,” cf. “graph”), and the suffix -ία (-ia, meaning “state of,” “property of,” or “place of”), thus meaning “a written description or illustration of prostitutes or prostitution.”