Here’s a snippet from a fascinating piece by Tom Morris for the Huffington Post. It’s an interview with Jacob M Held, Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at The University of Central Arkansas who is teaching a course about pornography:

“Jake: …I’d just been working on issues related to obscenity law for a book on Pornography and Philosophy when I was offered a chance to teach in my university’s honors college. To turn issues about obscenity into a full semester course I needed to broaden the scope, so I moved into pornography itself as a philosophical issue. There’s a lot there beyond mere freedom of speech – issues over civil rights, sexual violence, exploitation, women in media, gender, etc.

Tom: So you actually taught a college course on porn? Could you find a classroom big enough?

Jake: Yes. And yes. Honestly, going through the process of offering the course reinforced why this topic needs to be explored more openly. For example, I had to interview all potential students and get them to sign a waiver before they could be admitted to the course. I had several meetings about content, books, and so forth. And the interesting thing is, it was all because of the sexual nature of the content. I’ve taught on torture and war, but no question was ever raised about student exposure to violence. So the care with which I had to approach this course illustrates the oddity of our discordant treatments of violence and sex, where the former is allowed in the curriculum to an almost unlimited degree, but the latter is nearly taboo, even though both are arguably obscene in the strict sense of the word.

Tom: My Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘obscene’ using terms like ‘indecent,’ ‘highly offensive,’ ‘morally repugnant,’ and even ‘loathsome.’

Jake: Exactly. It’s interesting that our culture tends to associate those terms with graphic depictions of sexuality but not with equally graphic presentations of violence…”

For full transcript, click here.