The word ‘porn’ is being overused, cheapening the moral value of it as a label. We should push back.
The word ‘porn’ is being overused, cheapening the moral value of it as a label. We should push back.
L et’s talk about “porn” — not the temptation of sexually explicit material, which is bad enough, but the promiscuous abuse of the word itself.
“Food porn” involves the glamorous photography of cuisine, especially on Facebook and Instagram. “Inspiration porn” refers to ads or videos of people with disabilities who perform unexpected deeds to feel-good effect. “Panic porn” is the media’s peddling of worrisome news, from the blizzard or hurricane in the forecast to the latest mutation of coronavirus.
“Porn” comes from an ancient Greek word for prostitute, and eventually it became shorthand for lewd content in books and pictures. It is notoriously difficult to define, as one person’s bawdy joke is another’s revolting obscenity. In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart offered his familiar standard: “I know it when I see it.”
Today, the word “porn” has become overly familiar. We see it almost everywhere. The newfangled formulation is simple: Take an activity or hobby, turn it into an adjective, and put it before the noun “porn.” Presto! We have our latest term for a fad or phenomenon.
The problem is that when everything is “porn,” then nothing is porn.
The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once warned of “defining deviancy down.” Writing three decades ago, he said that by changing the rules for what is normal and abnormal, society had become more permissive of criminal behavior, broken homes, and other maladies. “We are getting used to a lot of behavior that is not good for us,” he concluded.
Porn is not good for us. It threatens healthy relationships. It exploits viewers and participants, especially women. It has such addictive power that some seek therapy to escape its grip.
People don’t yet brag in public about the dirty movies they watch in private, but the new terminology of “porn” threatens to define down the lechery. By letting “porn” become a metaphor for what in many cases are harmless pastimes, we neuter a word with stigmatic power. Writing about clichés, George Orwell warned of the danger: “A writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.”
The ultimate solution to a porn addiction is to stop looking at smut. The rest of us can help by quitting our own “porn” habit.