Pornography has been stereotyped as intruding one's privacy and causing the harmed to feel sexually degraded for the rest of their lives. According to Wikipedia, it is the explicit depiction of sexual subject matter with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer. However, through all these years, the nature of pornography is restricted to such definitions.

Believe it or not, if we trace back to Genesis in the Bible, Adam and Eve were forbidden by God to eat from the tree of knowledge, but they were coaxed by Satan in the end to consume the apple from that tree. Instantly, they realised that they were naked and hid in the bushes away from God. At this point, for me, I can infer that the nature of pornography lies in the acceptance of the degree of nudity of the majority of humans. This indeed gives rise to the larger capacity for nudity in the West than in the East, since the more 'open' Western society views nudity as an art as depicted in some paintings, while the more conservative Eastern society views nudity as degrading the privacy of the human. By logical extension, since pornography is mostly concerned with one's 'private parts', the term 'private parts' is also highly arbitrary. In ancient China, a woman will feel embarrassed for the rest of her life if her bare feet were revealed to a man other than her husband. For those women, her feet are also part of her private parts. Moreover, in the Muslim societies, women have to wear a tudong, which is a headscarf, to ensure modesty and not arouse sexual fantasies in men when seen. In other words, the head is a private part in Muslim societies since men get sexually interested when they see the Muslim female's head. Thus, 'private parts' are centred on the society's definition and vary in different societies. In conclusion, the nature of pornography depends on the definition of 'private parts' in different societies and the degree of how society accepts such 'private parts'.

Recently, different societies have debated on how much pornography should be censored. In Hong Kong, after the Edison Chen photo scandal. In this photo scandal, actress Gillian Chung was the spotlight of the media. She had also resorted to withdrawing from the entertainment field after pictures of her nudity floated massively on the Internet. This gave rise to a proposal that netizens below the age of 18 was to be barred access to pornographic websites, which had widespread approval from parents in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, not all societies can employ this proposal wholesale. Therefore, it depends on the society's definition of the nature of pornography that controls how much pornography should be censored and whether pornography should even be censored. For me, I feel that there are a few factors that determine if pornography should be censored and how much if it is to be censored.

Firstly, society is made up of citizens in a country and hence any policy that society passes embodies the mutual agreement of the members in that society and also benefits them. As a result, the degree of pornography censorship is highly based on society's acceptance of it. As we investigate further into why the Hong Kong public decided to propose that children under the age of 18 be barred access to pornographic materials, we understand that the majority of them define pornography as material that is only suitable for individuals aged 18 and above. Minors are not mentally mature enough to control themselves over porn addiction, hence should not be given the opportunity to arouse their sexual tendencies. Moreover, Muslims are highly conservative due to their religious beliefs and hence all forms of pornography should be censored almost fully as an answer to the stand that the Muslim society takes.

Secondly, we must also consider the impact of such censorship in this area radiantly. Such impacts include economic, social and international relations, since these directly impact the members in the society. Negative economic and social impact on the public is self-evident and if international relations decline, economic and social impact would be exponential. Therefore, it is important to study how these three items affect the society. For China where the porn industry takes the lead, if porn were to be banned completely, the economic impact would be devastating. Hence, China has to consider such impact if it advocates that porn is to be banned. On the other hand, if banning porn means a reduction in free speech for some societies, continuing with such action means that society has compromised free speech for a porn-free society. This is not acceptable as human rights include social rights. Such societies can either persuade its members to compromise free speech or to abolish their plan to ban porn completely. To put it in a nutshell, the congress should achieve a mutual agreement with the public. Finally, if a country's partners are largely very 'open', it should not ban porn completely since it would affect relations with such partners, thus affecting trade, which gives rise to economic and social impacts. Such societies then have to make sure that they do not compromise international and regional relations with a porn-free country. Therefore, whether porn should be censored or not depends on whether the society accepts it and whether the economic, social and international relations are compromised for this cause.

In conclusion, the nature of porn depends how society defines and approves of 'private parts', while whether pornography should be censored depends on how much society benefits from such censorship. If it outweighs the compromises, then it should be banned; if it does not, then society has to consider strategies to achieve a unanimous agreement with the public.