Quote - as for the debate about 'what constitutes pornography'....
everyone here damned well knows what constitutes pornography. the fact that it is even being debated is absurd.

I honestly don't! With pornography I do "know it when I see" it but that doesn't satisfy my intelectual curiosity. I don't care for the unreflected life. My curiosity forces me to search for a way to characterize pornography... not to simply use the term to classify but instead to understand and classify the term. This started for me with the issue of whether art and pornography were catagorically compatable... my impression is that pornography and art are catagorically different rather than reflecting qualities on a spectrum, this is why things can be one both or neither of the two. I want to know not what belongs to the class "Pornography" but instead what constitutes the concept "Pornography"... if all I wanted was a guide to catagorize representations and subject matter I could "kow it when I see it" or more simply just read the TOS. Instead, how can I learn the characteristics of pornography? Not the characteristics of those things that are catagorized as pornography but of the catagory. My difficulties are plain as was shown by Phantast pointing out that I could not define "Art" in such a manner that wasn't neccessarilty inclusive of the class "flags" :(

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After posting earlier this morning I went to the big ethnic food market in the neighborhood and experenced something I am embarsed to admit I often experience. When i see women in western atire I don't  "scope" to much, I am notorious for not noticing even extremes in bust size of women who I might even know well... I do check out other things to be utterly honest but overal my relation to women is pretty matter of fact... I was a dancer and then work many years in a woman dominated field. BUT when I was in the market I was so acutely aware of the sexualized body of the women in chador. Women covered all but thier eyes I felt lavasious in looking at when I spoke to them, the eyes seemed utterly intimate and I was concerned about how my gaze might seem (the girls I am thinking of here were in their mid-twenties), women in chador that showed the face seemed almost lewd, and I was very uncomfortanble going past these ladies in the naerrow isles. Freeky! Now some girls are pretty hot, and I'll look at pretty much any lady in a swim suit but with that kind of Western nudity I don't feel the erotic charge to the body that I feel when I am around traditionalist. It isn't a forbiden fruit thing at all I don''t think.... it is the identity self representation... the chador clad women is participating in the representation of the female body as lewd while the girl in the beach thong is participating in the representation of the body a normalized and common place... inocent!