| The depiction of sexual acts is as old as
civilization (and can be found painted on various ancient buildings),
but the concept of pornography as understood today did not exist until
the
Victorian era.
Previous to that time, though some sex acts were regulated or stipulated
in laws, looking at objects or images depicting them was not. In some
cases, specific books, engravings or image collections were censored or
outlawed, but the trend to compose laws that restricted viewing of
sexually explicit things in general was a Victorian construct. When
large scale excavations of
Pompeii were
undertaken in the 1860s, much of the erotic art of the
Romans came to
light, shocking the Victorians who saw themselves as the intellectual
heirs of the
Roman Empire.
They did not know what to do with the frank depictions of
sexuality, and
endeavored to hide them away from everyone but upper class scholars. The
moveable objects were locked away in the
Secret Museum in
Naples, Italy and
what could not be removed was covered and cordoned off as to not corrupt
the sensibilities of women, children and the working class. Soon after,
the world's first law criminalizing pornography was enacted by the
Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1857 in the
Obscene Publications Act.
The Victorian attitude that pornography was for a select few can be seen
in the wording of the
Hicklin test
stemming from a court case in 1868 where it asks, "whether the tendency
of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose
minds are open to such immoral influences." Despite the fact of their
suppression, depictions of erotic imagery were common throughout
history.[1]
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