There is nothing new under the sun. Even in the vast (very vast) and complex (very complex) universal history of porn. Spain, with its Beta Digital Portfolio, is not the first country to propose to regulate access to adult content. While we wait to verify the scope and consequences of the measure just announced by José Luis Escrivá’s team, one thing is clear: their efforts are linked to a long legislative tradition that goes back at least a few centuries and goes beyond national borders.

After all, sexual imagery existed thousands of years ago, and laws deeming it “obscene” can be found in 19th-century Britain.

As old as humanityThe RAE defines pornography as “the explicit representation of sexual acts intended to excite”. Although this definition misses the two obvious ideas that the content must be “explicit” and that it must be created with the aim of “exciting” the recipient, it does provide a broad enough umbrella to encompass centuries-old works. After all, we have thousands of years of representations of sexual intercourse and representations of an explicitly sexual nature. The question of its purpose and use remains.

For example, in 1930, a calcite figure was found in a cave near Bethlehem showing two lovers in full intercourse. When was it carved? No more, no less than 11,000 years ago. Earlier, much earlier, we found representations of giant penises like the one in the Los Casares cave, where a large penis was included among the representations dating from 30,000 to 15,000 years ago.

Lovers of Ain Sakhri.

“Sex everywhere”The list goes on; there are more explicit scenes in Pompeii and Herculaneum, which are veritable mines of erotic art, or right here in the Spanish sites. “Simply put, sex is everywhere in Greek and Roman art. Overtly sexual depictions were common on Athenian black-figure and red-figure vases of the 6th and 5th centuries BC, and were often revealing and provocative,” explains Craig Barker, an expert at the University of Sydney Speech.

It goes without saying that the Greco-Roman tradition and graphic works are just a drop in a vast ocean of eroticism that encompasses other artistic disciplines and cultures. In Japan we find: Shungais equally clear and has an extensive historical tradition behind it. We also know that Europeans who came to India in the 19th century were shocked to see sexual images, including intercourse, in Hindu temples such as the one at Khajuraho.

Let’s talk about pornDespite these precedents and rich tradition, what we understand as “porn” today is more recent. Britannica He assures us that the modern history of Western pornography began in the 18th century, during the Enlightenment, with the encouragement of a printing press that was advanced enough to allow the reproduction of obscene texts and images. Already then, two great characteristics of porn, which are closely linked, were discovered and confirmed by time: high demand and huge turnover.

“A small clandestine traffic of such works became the basis of an independent business of publishing and selling books in England. They were a classic of the period, widely read books.” Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Lady of Pleasure (1748-1749)”, he recalls Britannica. Around the same time, erotic graphic art began to spread in Paris, eventually leading to the emergence of the popular “French Postcards.” Spain did not lag behind. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was already a major supporter of risky celluloid: the monarch Alfonso XIII.

Exciting… and disturbing. According to the RAE, pornography is “explicit” and “exciting”. History shows that – at least in the eyes of a certain religious and moral tradition – it is also defined by a third adjective: “disturbing”, even outright “reprehensible”. Pope Francis recently made this clear. During a public intervention at the Vatican in 2022, the head of the Catholic Church was accused of the “evil” of pornography and even pulled the ears of “priests and nuns” whom the Pope complained about consuming this content.

“This is a vice that is found in many people, many lay people, and also in priests and nuns. That’s where the devil comes in. And I’m not talking about criminal pornography, like the abuse of minors, where there are cases of abuse: I’m talking about a little bit of normal corruption, dear brothers, be careful about that.

Again, nothing new under the sun. While the relationship between religion and eroticism is complex, with nudes plentiful in sacred art and the same image having a spiritual or erotic reading depending on who is looking at it, history leaves plenty of examples of the Church’s distaste for pornography. For example, it happened with Clement VII (1478-1534) and I am ModiA work of explicit engravings that the Pope ordered destroyed, and its author went to prison.

Attempted regulationIf the history of modern Western pornography begins in the 18th century, we soon see efforts to regulate its consumption at a legal level. At the end of the 18th century, King George III issued the Proclamation for the Prevention of Immorality in Great Britain, which encouraged the avoidance of explicit sexual content, and in 1857 the Obscene Publications Act was passed, which banned explicit erotica. Furthermore, the rule even allowed the police to raid or intercept suspicious emails.

Equally well-known is the Comstock Act, passed by the United States Congress in 1873 and also proposed as an “anti-obscenity law.” Its purpose: to restrict the circulation of material “for abortion or for immoral or indecent use,” an umbrella under which pornography is placed.

So, did it work? There is a fourth adjective to describe pornography: profitable. Despite attempts at regulation and the efforts of Clement VII or Pope Francis, porn has managed to become a major industry that moves billions of euros every year. In 2006, in the United States alone, in the area known as “the other Hollywood”, it was estimated that adult cinema employed 12,000 people in a thousand companies that led to wild activities.

Country At the time, he was talking about venture film companies producing 13,000 movies a year, and the industry generating between $10,000 and $14,000 million in revenue in the U.S. alone. The Statista data offers an equally interesting perspective: in 2022, the online adult content market in the U.S. was worth almost $977 million, with upward projections projecting it to easily exceed 1,000 million by 2023.

Image | Wikipedia 1 and 2

On Xataka | This is how the age verification system for accessing porn in Spain will work: A huge technical challenge