Cystems

Pornography as sex of the future

Sergey Medvedev: I want to talk about the stream of subconscious, a stream of libido, a stream of human desires, temptations, dreams that, according to many estimates, up to a third of the whole Internet, is pornography. It is not customary to talk about this stream aloud, it is taboo, however, is significant for each of us and for the entire global network. I propose to talk about how this stream is connected with technological progress, how it transforms the future of human society, human relations, sex and marriage. Our guest is Kirill Martynov , associate professor of the Higher School of Economics.

Up to a third of the whole Internet is an adequate assessment?

Kirill Martynov: I think yes. By indirect signs, we can understand whether we are really talking about streaming videos, photographs or about what users exchange on torrent trackers. Indeed, the data show that a significant part of the Internet is indecent images. There are comic and sad sides. For example, there were studies of what content is consumed on world trackers those public IP that exist in North Korea and which are available to the military elite, the North Korean nomenclature. It turns out that they pump TV shows, video games and mainly Japanese pornography. Having plunged its population into a gloomy political context, the top of North Korea indulged in the entertainment, an accessible civilized world, and since national traffic is small compared to other countries, it is just easy to track why people come to torrent trackers.

Sergey Medvedev: Why is this topic so hard, and in completely all cultures - from Islamic to authoritarian, communist, socialist cultures, to today's Russia? What are the origins of this taboo?

A significant part of the Internet is indecent images

Kirill Martynov: The topic of sex is generally taboo, and pornography is considered as a kind of unworthy sexuality. If the high and approved in culture sexuality is formulated through the family, through the relationship of men and women designed to continue the genus and create a strong relationship, then it is clear that pornography has, to put it mildly, a rather indirect attitude. Until now, in Russia there is definitely such a classic problem: the wife caught her husband for pornography - a scandal, a nightmare, almost betrayal.

On the other hand, the century that gave rise to the most striking optimistic expectations in relation to technological progress, is, of course, the XIX, the century of Puritan, Victorian morality. It was at this moment, when a number of new media appeared: photography, cinema, newspapers, and so on - in the modern sense of the word, with a seal, with photographs, just on pornography they preferred not to pay attention to completely obvious reasons, as this corresponded to the then social mood. Then pornography was carried out by brackets, and she still has not returned to the mass consciousness.

But at the same time, very serious changes have been outlined in recent decades, because an academic interest in studying pornography has appeared, there is a referred Academic Journal of Porn Stadis, most likely there are some other magazines that also affect this topic, even the Logos number, our Russian magazine dedicated to the same topic. From the point of view, relatively speaking, high culture, the interest is clearly formulated here, there is a request.

Sergey Medvedev: At what point does pornography occupy an important niche in public transactions? This is the phenomenon of the New Age, again, is associated with technology, with a seal?

Kirill Martynov: I think one of the problems related to pornography is the question of what we mean by pornography. Sometimes there are appropriate trials, experts are involved: whether it was an artistic statement, whether it was erotic or pornography. Here we are in a different, extra -court context we are faced with the same problem, because it is not clear what to consider pornography. For example, a naturalistic image of a sexual act involves, as a rule, some kind of visual component, but if we determine this, it is unclear what to do with literature. Obviously, there is pornographic literature.

Sergey Medvedev: You mean the effect of exposure - usually the courts look, causes this excitement or does not cause.

The wife caught her husband for pornography - scandal, nightmare, practically betrayal

Kirill Martynov: Does there be any exciting component of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “Lolita”, at least for some category of people? Perhaps he has, but in pornography we will probably not be enrolled, although there will be those who enroll. In general, it is difficult to say here, especially the fact that someone was excited, watching the work of art, does not automatically make this work of art pornographic.

Sergey Medvedev: You can probably see the author’s intention? If initially the purpose of the work was not an aesthetic effect, but the effect of excitement ...

Kirill Martynov: Here you need a complex legal measurement of the subjective component, intent to create pornography. I think pornography has always been part of human culture. Probably, we can find some elements of the Stone Age culture-cave painting, we can also consider some figures to consider pornographic with a great desire, although it will, of course, be the transfer of our modern ideas to that culture. Classic figurines of female fertility have pornshops - wide hips, large breasts and so on. Sometimes in these figures, one way or another, a sexual act is presented. We could consider this pornography, but it seems to me that our idea of what pornography is.

It is also difficult with antiquity. You can find, for example, obviously pornographic moments in the verses of Katull , and sometimes it sounds very strange, especially attempts to translate it into Russian.

You can find obviously pornographic moments in the verses of Katullah

For simplicity, we can say that pornography in the modern sense of the word appears when modern media appears. The first modern media was to print. This is the moment (the end of the 15th century), when, probably, replicated mass pornography appears in everyday life, begins to spread widely, illustrations, texts of the corresponding content appear. I think this topic is waiting for its researcher.

My hypothesis lies in the fact that the so -called Gutenberg revolution played a certain role in the development of pornography. When we talk about Gutenberg and the printing, we usually begin to talk about the fact that these were religious texts. Indeed, in the 16th century, Luther was one of the first authors of the bestseller. But even then, in the 16th century, writers, authors of erotic literature were known, or, we could say, pornographs. I think the right story is the history of pornography and media.

Sergey Medvedev: Can I say the same about the photograph? The second half of the 19th century - the achievements of technological progress are in parallel.

Kirill Martynov

Kirill Martynov: When we take a textbook on the history of photography, of course, we do not find the chapter about pornography there - this is very significant. Pornography is a secret friend of technology. For example, I saw studies that prove that modern Internet arose under the pressure of a request for receiving, first of all, pornographic video. After all, when the Internet was slow, the first streaming systems of the video were developed for this: people needed to quickly get a not very high -quality, but immediately shown at the request of the video.

Sergey Medvedev: In fact, everything that we have from advanced Internet formats experienced the influence of pornography - this is broadband access, video chats, and streaming videos, and even, as they assure, 3G mobile communications arose under the influence of a porn industry - to increase the capacity of the channels to increase speed. Here, the request is actually primary not so much on quality as for the speed of delivery, because a person cannot wait until the image is loading, INTERECTION, real time is needed.

The so -called Gutenberg revolution played a certain role in the development of pornography

Kirill Martynov: Here we must remember what a significant transition has been made over the past decades in access to pornography. Until the end of the 90s, access to pornography was always associated with some social or economic difficulties. She could be either rare or expensive, or it had to be mined in not very comfortable ways-this was due to some awkwardness and so on. And when people received their gadgets, computers, mobile phones and constant Internet access, then this issue was dramatically resolved. This is a completely different attitude of society to the indecent neat of media human needs. Perhaps it was no coincidence that scientists began to talk more about this.

Sergey Medvedev: Of course, we are now on the threshold of some new breakthrough, which you recently wrote in a column in an elephant . This is a virtual reality that will immerse us with all the senses and other organs in a pornographic context.

Pornography - secret friend of technology

Kirill Martynov: It turns out that pornography is such a genre of media, which during its history sought to be more and more indistinguishable from the real sexual act, perhaps in the limit - even surpass the sexual act in diversity, and in reliability, and in intensity of sensations. This course has been taken for a long time, but now we are really facing a situation where computer equipment manufacturers need good reasons that would make people buy quite expensive equipment of new generations.

In particular, we are talking about a helmet of virtual reality - this is one of the most promising developments. This is the Oculus Rift brand, which initially began collecting money for this helmet through crowdfunding , and then all this startup bought Tsuckerberg for two billion dollars. They make a serious bet on this, but this iron remains expensive. Most of the advertising campaign of the new generation virtual reality helmets, on the one hand, are built through video games, and on the other, through some possibilities for design, for the new system of designers, for the new system of design decisions.

The third main component is the use of virtual reality for pornography. The first commercial offers are already appearing here. Now it all looks quite simple: a person puts on a helmet of virtual reality, he is shown a video with a field of view of 360 degrees - this means that it is stereoscopic, 3D, besides the fact that you can watch in different directions. The largest western site with Pornovideo PornoHub offers its subscribers such a service. This happened in recent months-such another step towards the beginning of some new story of the novel of pornography and media.

Pornography is on a certain technological front line where their laws act

Sergey Medvedev: In fact, pornography is on a certain technological front line, where its own laws act, where the power of the sheriff sometimes does not work, but the power of the "Kolt" acts. So here is a very interesting anthropological and technological and sociological topic.

In Russia, one of the "prophets in his country" is Victor Pelevin . He also describes a lot of phenomena in advance, and in his last novels such forms of sex of the future are described. In the novel "Snuff" there is, in my opinion, a girl, such an Android-you program her properties, her appearance, and you are delivered to a busy, spiritualized doll. In another novel-"Love for Three Tsukerbrins"-it depicts sex partners who put in front of some media virtual shields. They make love, but everyone orders a certain selection of scripts and sees other people, another partner. Are these realistic things?

Cyber Sex does not exclude pious or what is usually considered pious

Kirill Martynov: Pelevin is not the only author who speaks of this. There are many fantastic literature in the world that offers such scenarios. There is a novel "Clothing" Paolo Bachigalupi, an American author, laureate of the Hugo Award. There, too, we are talking about genetically modified android, which has certain social requests and social problems. The idea of cybersex in this creature, created as a result of genetic modification, in fact a clone, is combined with cybernetic elements, and it has some need for liberation. This is a new generation of sex workers, sex robots who still have the rudiments of self-awareness, strive for a change in society, that is, there is some next move.

A variety of scenarios can be tested here if you just go to technology from science fiction. The fact that this is not a fiction of science fiction writers, in my opinion, has been proven now, because people are very willing to take such experiments. For example, with the current development of mass technologies, there is a huge market-as a rule, these are women (although there are men) who work in the webcam-business. Obviously, there are some consumers of these services, video chatting who are paid during the viewing, during the work of the sex worker.

This is one component, it is negatively colored, because it is some kind of business located in the "gray" zone, something intermediate between pornography and prostitution. And at the same time, the question always arises why the industry workers go to this, as this is due to their standard of living, education, some kind of ethical component. On the other hand, a situation develops in parallel when people get acquainted on the Internet, they can live far from each other, but they have a need for some kind of such demonstration of their sexuality.

In Russia, one of the "prophets in his country" is Victor Pelevin. In his last novels, such forms of sex of the future are described

Sergey Medvedev: Sex on the Internet - in fact, this happens between couples.

Kirill Martynov: If a person has left on a long business trip, he has the Internet, and his wife is waiting for him at home, he can ask her for some sexual service, which otherwise would unfold in their marital bedroom.

Sergey Medvedev: Cyril offers a pious script. Or maybe he didn’t leave anywhere, just people met on the Internet on a specialized chat ...

Kirill Martynov: An important point: Cyber Sex does not exclude pious or what is usually considered pious. If we generally believe that any form of voluntary sexual partnership between spouses is a very pious thing, then such scenarios are also included here, and such options exist.

If all this is generalized, it turns out that people have a request for these things. I think that any reasonably working technology that will now appear will be immediately commercialized and perceived by those people who already have these requests today, there is the experience of this cybersex. We probably have no sociology talking about which part of society is involved in this, but this is clearly not a share of a percentage, but much more.

Sergey Medvedev: These are high interest. On specialized sites there are very large sections in Russian: Russian porn, and Russian chats, and so on. It seems to me that in this regard, Russia, lagging back on some other social technologies and formats, as often happened with all sorts of virtual inventions, here in the foreground. However, we do not have sociology, there is only our own subjective sensation.

An interesting question: how does ethics change? Cyril mentioned the old Soviet script - the wife caught her husband for pornography. Say, a person watches pornography or communicates with another woman in a video chat, but there is no physical contact between them - is this treason?

Some gender theorists, feminists say that there is release pornography

Kirill Martynov: This is a key question. After all, it turns out that the story of pornography, ultimately, transforms into the story of how we build social relations, romantic or family. Indeed, there is no answer to this question.

By the way, as I understand it, if a man caught his wife for pornography, his reaction would be even more negative than the reaction of an average woman, at least in our society. A man has traditional patriarchal privileges, and a woman simply would have acted completely immoral if something like that had happened.

Sergey Medvedev: Interestingly, in pornography there is a gender imbalance? I think here feminists can say a lot - that this is mainly a means of objectification, exploitation of the female body ...

Kirill Martynov: The feminists really began to discuss the topic of pornography. Действительно, мейнстрим этой дискуссии касался того, что это объективация женщины. Как всегда, в этих спорах есть и вторая сторона. Некоторые гендерные теоретики, феминистки говорят, что бывает, наоборот, высвобождающая порнография.

Сергей Медведев: А по-моему, здесь много равноправия. Порнография уравнивает, потому что есть очень много сценариев, в которых именно мужчина является объектом эксплуатации.

Порнография становится все более реалистической, все более похожей на сексуальный акт

Кирилл Мартынов: Насколько я понимаю логику феминисток, все-таки мужчина в современном обществе учится сценарию сексуальных отношений с женщиной за счет просмотренной порнографии. Именно массовая порнография предлагает в основном мужчине роль человека, который берет ситуацию под свой контроль во время сексуального акта и тем самым предлагает женщине подчиненную роль. Об этом написаны тома, сотни тысяч научных статей, это все очень активно обсуждается.

Если вернуться к технологиям, то здесь есть огромная сфера, до которой феминистки толком не добрались: что будет с этикой семейных и романтических отношений в ближайшем будущем. Один из тезисов – порнография становится все более реалистической, все более похожей на сексуальный акт.

Сергей Медведев: Не наступит ли тот момент, когда виртуальный секс станет превалировать над реальным сексом, когда люди уйдут в виртуал?

Кирилл Мартынов: Я не знаю. Может быть, я слишком техно-оптимист, слишком люблю различные технологии, но я не понимаю, какие могут быть аргументы в пользу того, чтобы биологический секс сохранился. В западном мире сексуальность довольно давно отделена от репродуктивных функций. Если вы хотите завести ребенка, то вы должны это спланировать, и у вас есть совершенно конкретная задача, которая может быть никак не связана с сексуальным актом.

Я не понимаю, какие могут быть аргументы в пользу того, чтобы биологический секс сохранился

С другой стороны, есть такая составляющая психологической и социальной жизни человека, как сексуальность. В принципе, на мой взгляд, нет никаких серьезных аргументов в пользу того, почему весь секс в развитых странах не может стать в какой-то момент времени кибернетическим. Здесь много причин – это позволяет экономить время, а времени у нас всех мало, многие жалуются, что у них нет времени на романтические отношения. Пожалуйста – компьютеры, медиа приходят на помощь. Это безопасно с точки зрения нежелательной беременности, венерических заболеваний. И это, конечно, гораздо более свободный формат, который обязывает обе стороны лишь к тому, к чему они хотят быть обязанными.

Сергей Медведев: В какой-то степени это отвечает мужской физиологии, потому что, как показывают многие штудии, у мужчины заложена необходимость гораздо большего количества желаний и партнерш.

Кирилл Мартынов: И в женской психологии можно найти какие-то соответствия. Если для женщины важнее эмоциональный комфорт, то здесь нет причин для того, чтобы состояние эмоционального комфорта было по умолчанию исключено из этих практик.

Виртуальный секс обогащает практики реального секса, и это может укреплять семью

Сергей Медведев: С другой стороны, может быть, мы зря противопоставляем виртуальный и реальный секс. Виртуальный секс обогащает практики реального секса, и это может укреплять семью. Как говорят: "здоровый левак укрепляет брак", так же и здоровая порнография укрепляет традиционный брак.

Кирилл Мартынов: Это компромиссная и не радикальная позиция. Мы обсуждаем радикальный сценарий в силу того, что он просто формально возможен. Неясно, зачем нужно поддерживать биологический сексуальный контакт, как это было всегда, почему люди должны продолжать заниматься биологическим сексом, если они делают это для удовольствия, а технологии позволяют получать большее удовольствие с меньшими издержками.

Сергей Медведев: В своей статье в "Слоне" вы пишете, что идет новая секс-революция, освобождение от диктата сексуальности, от гендерных ролей.

Новые технологии сделают сексуальную революцию еще более полной и более доступной для тех людей, которым приходится много работать

Кирилл Мартынов: Я стараюсь найти в этих изменениях какие-то позитивные вещи, так как уверен, что критических вещей тоже будет сказано немало. Мне кажется, так же, как экономическая независимость женщин во второй половине ХХ века, изобретение доступных контрацептивов привело к тому, что сексуальные отношения в западном мире стали более свободными и более индивидуализированными. Каждый выбирает себе сексуального партнера по своему вкусу, у него нет в этом каких-то моральных ограничений, если он не нарушает чужие права.

Сейчас мы выходим на следующий шаг, потому что новые технологии сделают сексуальную революцию еще более полной и более доступной для тех людей, которым приходится много работать, например.

Сергей Медведев: В любом случае, очевидно, что у человека появляется гораздо больший выбор в реализации своих сексуальных сценариев и гендерных ролей, которые ему предоставляет порнография.