Porn and common space | Valentina Nappi | TEDxBari

Pornography exists in our society as a heterotopia, namely a space with specific boundaries, within which common rules, practices, expectations, and interdictions are suspended, transformed or even subverted. From TEDxBari stage, world-known adult film actress Valentina Nappi asks herself: is it yet possible to imagine a “trespassing” of porn beyond the space that it has been assigned? If so, in what terms?

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

The topic of this TEDx event
is "heterotopia",

although I don’t know how many speakers

will explicitly talk
about heterotopias today.

Thus, for the sake of clarity,

I’ll start with a definition
of heterotopia,

a personal definition, one that sounds
clear and sensible to me.

A heterotopia is a subspace

of the generic space we live in,

a subspace even in a broader sense:

for example, a subspace of the Web.

A subspace where the rules
of the generic space --

prohibitions, expectations, and so on --

are overturned, modified,
simplified or mirrored,

depending on the
type of heterotopia.

Now, let’s make an example
of heterotopia: carnival.

Someone may call it a heterochronia --

although I think that, after Einstein
time and space are one.

The carnival is clearly a heterotopia,

and has a feature
heterotopias typically share:

it’s a "discharge" moment,

a space where contradictions,

instead of exploding
in a full-blown revolution,

find their place in a contained,
socially accepted revolution,

with well-defined temporal boundaries.

This way, society prevents
revolutions and outbursts --

and this is bad.

Porn is also a heterotopia:

when you visit a porn website,
you are warned.

It’s a place where some rules

are suspended, or reversed --

on a porn website, for example,
you can see a girl

in postures, attitudes, and behaviors

you can hardly find on common websites;

they're actually forbidden
everywhere else.

Carnival also looks
like an upside-down world.

A child, for example,

is forbidden to dress up as Batman
and go to school.

Porn is an upside-down world
as well, isn’t it?

It embodies the same subversion
of usual relations

that we can find in heterotopias.

Alas, much like carnival,

porn is also an outlet, and that’s bad.

That’s bad because
it keeps contradictions,

arising from how sex is treated
in the common space,

from exploding.

Therefore, when porn --

like carnival -- stays
confined, delimited,

it becomes a negative phenomenon.

I believe that we should have the freedom
to dress like superheroes --

I mean, social freedom --

in any context, even when going to work,

even if we hold a position of power.

And yet, porn tends to trespass,
to invade the common space.

Prominent examples are nudes
on ordinary gossip magazines,

or sex scenes in art movies.

Such trespassing of porn into common space

is strongly opposed,

for instance in social network’s rules.

I’ve been told so often:

“Ok, you work in porn.
Just don’t talk about it, shut up!”.

I can’t even talk about porn per se.

Among the opposers of porn's
trespassing into common space,

there are feminists, catholics, muslims,

but also intellectuals, atheists too,
progressives and conservatives,

all united against porn invasion
of common space.

In my opinion,

porn's trespassing into public domain

is a sign of progress,
for a very simple reason:

it rubs the nose
into people's irrationality.

An example: why shouldn’t a child
watch an intercourse scene

projected on a giant screen

in Piccadilly Circus in London,
or in Piazza del Popolo in Rome?

What's wrong with that?

The problem lays not only in the influence

religions still have on people

but mostly in current schizophrenias
between practice and reason --

for example, when a couple
of atheist parents

decides to baptize their child

for the sake of tradition,
or just not to disappoint granny.

Or still, in the USA,

a parent that decides
to circumcise his own son --

so we are talking about
a genital mutilation here --

just because it’s always been like that.

Someone will bring out
usual objections like,

“Everybody is free to do
as they want or as they believe."

But we are not.

Because it’s actually legal

to instill religious irrationalities
into children's minds,

it’s legal to refuse to transfuse a child,

maybe in the name of Geova,
and cause him the loss of a limb --

it already happened.

But it’s illegal to show a 13-year-old

a PG-14 rated film,

just because it shows
plenty of all-nude scenes.

So, where is freedom here?

The truth is we take freedom
away from rational people,

to give it to irrational ones.

Another example:
abortion is legal in Italy,

yet most of the women
who want to have an abortion

struggle to do it
in a public health facility

because most gynecologists
are conscientious objectors,

in such facilities.

The truth is, freedom

is never neutral to rationality --

there is always a core of shared truths.

So we must ask ourselves:
which freedom do we want?

Do we want the freedom
invoked by religious leaders, popes,

or do we want rational freedom?

According to that relativist freedom,

they can have their medieval parades,

with people self-fustigating
in the streets,

while I cannot freely walk naked.

There is no symmetry in this freedom,

in this acephalous relativism;

there is only the desire
to protect irrationality,

not to face our own contradictions.

Today, two ways of thinking
seem to face each other:

a strong, religious one;

and a weak, secular one.

I believe instead, that a strong,
rationalist approach should prevail,

one that allows to show
a movie with nude scenes

to a 13-year-old,

but forbids to instill him with
religious irrationalities.

(Applause)