History of Mass Pornography in 19th Century America | Gerard Jones

This section presents a recurring historical pattern: new communication technologies are first tested and accelerated by their application to pornography. Printing presses initially produced Bibles but eventually enabled pornographic literature. Photography was quickly applied to explicit content. In the 1950s, color offset lithography and 35mm photography enabled Playboy magazine's success. Videotape technology liberated the pornography industry by enabling home viewing and cheaper production. The speaker argues this pattern suggests that technologies that can deliver immediate gratification tend to drive adoption faster than those designed for 'serious' purposes, making adult entertainment a powerful force for technological innovation.

A recurring historical pattern exists where new communication technologies are initially used primarily for pornography before being adopted for more useful purposes. The printing press was first used for pornographic stories when invented. Similarly, the internet was initially used for sex and pornography. This pattern suggests that new communication technologies often have their earliest widespread adoption driven by adult content before evolving into more practical applications. The internet was envisioned as a borderless platform where color, age, and nationality did not matter, allowing people from different countries and backgrounds to communicate freely. The internet was seen as a window to the world that could connect people across geographical and social barriers, representing a transformative technology for global communication.

Throughout human history, pornography has consistently been among the first applications for emerging technologies. From ancient fertility figurines to modern smartphones, adult content has pioneered every major platform. When photography was invented in 1839, nude photographs appeared within the same year. When motion pictures were invented in 1896, erotic films followed almost immediately. In 1953, Playboy pinups were among the first digital images created on the SAGE computer system. The VHS format war was partly won by adult entertainment choosing VHS for longer recording time. When the web went mainstream, adult sites were among the first to stress-test internet infrastructure, accounting for $1.3 billion in 1999—8% of all e-commerce. They pioneered online payments, subscriptions, and video streaming before mainstream platforms existed. By the 2000s, tube sites like Pornhub road-tested the model YouTube would later normalize, developing endless thumbnail grids, autoplay features, and recommendation algorithms. When smartphones emerged, adult content sites optimized for vertical video and mobile privacy controls first. OnlyFans then solved creator monetization for anyone with social media profiles, proving subscription models work for parasocial relationships and paving the way for broader creator economies.

The accessibility of pornography evolved significantly with technology: early 1900s (New York Times Square peep shows), 1930s-1940s (35mm film cameras), 1950s-1960s (8mm and 16mm cameras), 1970s (Super 8mm cartridges), VHS vs Betamax era, and subsequent digital formats. Each technological advancement expanded pornography's reach and production capabilities. The pornography industry has historically driven adoption of new technologies because consumers demand easy access to content. Examples include early e-commerce platforms (Stock Room, a BDSM website was among the first online stores), VHS/Betamax format wars, and subsequent digital formats.

A recurring historical pattern shows that new communication technologies are initially primarily used for adult content and entertainment before being adopted for productive purposes. The printing press was first used for pornographic writing when invented, and the internet was similarly used for sex and pornography at its inception. This pattern suggests that adult content often drives early adoption of new communication technologies. Early internet users faced significant technical challenges including slow download speeds (20-30 minutes for one-minute videos), unreliable connectivity across international circuits, and primitive file management systems. Despite these limitations, the internet was envisioned as a transformative tool that would connect anyone to anywhere and democratize information access globally.

The determination of what constitutes obscenity has evolved through landmark judicial tests. The Hicklin Test, established in the 1868 UK case Queen versus Hicklin, holds that material is obscene if it has a tendency to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to such influences. India adopted this test in 1964 to label DH Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' as obscene. In contrast, the US Supreme Court formulated the Miller Test in 1973, requiring three conditions: (1) an average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work appeals to prurient interest; (2) the work depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way; and (3) the work lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. These tests represent fundamentally different approaches to balancing free expression against obscenity concerns.

Obscenity is unprotected speech under the First Amendment, determined by the Miller test: (1) whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work appeals to prurient interest, (2) whether the work depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way as defined by state law, and (3) whether the work lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value; this test evolved from the Hicklin test (1879-1930s) and Roth test (1957), with Stanley v. Georgia (1969) establishing that possession of obscene material in one's home is constitutional, and New York v. Ferber (1982) allowing prohibition of child pornography regardless of obscenity standards.

The legal framework for determining obscenity evolved significantly through landmark court decisions. The Hicklin Test (1868) examined whether material tended to corrupt minds of vulnerable individuals like children. In Butler v. Michigan (1957), the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the 'most susceptible person' criterion as too vague. The Miller Test (1973) replaced it with three objective criteria: whether material appeals to prurient interest according to contemporary community standards, depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. India initially followed Hicklin until 2014, when the Supreme Court formally adopted the community standards approach, recognizing that moral standards vary across societies and time periods.

The courts adopted the Hicklin test, defining obscenity as material that would affect the views of the most vulnerable member of society. Under this definition, anything referring to sex in any way was deemed obscene. Judges in the early 20th century began recognizing that obscenity could not be defined by Victorian-era values, moving toward looking at the work as a whole and taking literary merit into account. The desire to regulate obscenity was intertwined with concerns about greater sexual candor weakening central commitments. When the court began finding difficulty with the bad tendency test in political speech, it became highly speculative. This parallelism led the court in Roth to define obscenity out of the First Amendment entirely. Miller v. California attempted to rein in the expanding concept of protected speech and give the government greater power to regulate obscenity. As technology moved from movies and books to DVDs, VCRs, cable, and the Internet, obscenity prosecutions became impossible for all practical purposes.

In Miller v. California (1973), the Supreme Court established a three-pronged test to determine whether material is obscene and therefore not protected by the First Amendment: (1) the work, taken as a whole, must appeal to the prurient interest according to contemporary community standards; (2) the work must depict or describe sexual conduct in a patently offensive way; and (3) the work taken as a whole must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. This test replaced the previous Roth v. United States (1957) framework by giving states and localities more authority to define obscenity based on their specific communities' standards.

In the 1980s, pornography became a major feminist debate known as the 'sex wars.' Andrea Dworkin argued pornography is a system of male domination expressing men's violence toward women, reflecting how society sees women as subordinate. Catharine MacKinnon extended this with a civil rights framework, comparing sexual harassment to racial segregation—both systems that put women in second-class positions. She identified three harms: harm to performers, harm to those forced to view it, and harm to how it shapes men's behavior toward women. Both criticized courts for interpreting pornography as mere art or performance, arguing this rationalizes exploitation. Their work established pornography as a mechanism for maintaining gender inequality.

An outgrowth of the split between liberal and radical feminism was the sex wars of the 1980s. Some feminists believe pornography and sex work can be affirmative or even liberating for those participating or consuming it. Other feminists argue that the sex industry is purely harmful to women due to abuse many women face and the objectification of women socially. This became one of the most bitter feminist disputes and remains unresolved, though it doesn't divide neatly along radical and liberal lines.

The Sex Wars refer to intense debates within 1980s feminism about pornography's impact on women. Anti-pornography feminists argued organizations like the ACLU were cynically supporting corporations that exploited women's bodies. The Playboy Foundation's funding of abortion rights organizations during the Reagan administration, when such services were being restricted, became a focal point in these debates. This illustrates how financial relationships between organizations shape political discourse and create tensions within social movements, demonstrating the complexity of defining feminist values and aligning organizational practices with stated ideological commitments.

The feminist sex wars of the early 1980s were an internal feminist debate about pornography and lesbian subcultures. Radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon campaigned against pornography, arguing it harmed women's civil rights by alienating women's desire and forcing them into sexual acts against their interests. Pro-sex feminists countered that stripping women of consent capacity eliminated distinctions between sex and rape, and argued sexuality should be seen as a domain of both pleasure and danger rather than uniquely oppressive. They suggested women could claim pleasure-seeking as feminist practice. This debate challenged whether sexuality was the central site of women's oppression or merely one domain among many affected by patriarchy.

The feminist sex wars were a series of bitter and acrimonious conflicts within feminism during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Key areas of contention included debates over pornography, lesbian exclusion from mainstream women's organizations, the validity of feminist heterosexuality, appropriate lesbian relationship roles, sexual penetration practices, sexual fantasy, masturbation, trans women's presence in feminist spaces, and sadomasochism. Despite stereotypes portraying the women's movement as grim and puritanical, lesbian feminism was actually characterized by intense sexual enthusiasm and pursuit of pleasure, with workshops on orgasm, masturbation, and critiques of monogamy being common.