In a new series about pornography in today’s society, the YWCA gives members of the Iowa State and Ames communities an opportunity to discuss their feelings about the issue.

The YWCA meeting on Wednesday, which was led by Sine Anahita, graduate assistant in liberal arts and sciences, dealt with lesbian and gay pornography.

Explicit photos taken from the Internet depicting lesbians, gays and transgenders were shown to the 14 people in attendance at the presentation.

The discussion focused on the intended audience of porn, why porn exists, who makes the images and the effects of pornographic pictures on society.

“This is an especially exciting topic to talk about today because just yesterday or the day before the Supreme Court overturned a censorship bill that was designed to limit access to the Internet,” she said.

Anahita said the rise of technology has made a huge impact on the availability of pornography, both in its viewing and production.

“It used to be in the 1980s and before that, if you wanted to view pornography, you had to go to a sleazy bookstore in order to find it,” she said. “Now all you need is a computer and the Internet, and all the world’s pornography is at your fingertips.”

Jehan Falisal, program coordinator for the YWCA, said gay and lesbian pornography does not necessarily have a negative effect on the community.

“I feel like almost any reflection of queer people is going to be positive in some way,” Falisal said. “There are good queer people, and there are bad queer people, tasteful or tasteless, whatever. This is just a piece that proves our existence.”

Anahita said LGBT people “have suffered a lot from enforced invisibility and censorship.”

“Lesbian sex was one of the very first things to be censored,” she said. “Male pornography was not there, and nobody was really criticizing it to the extent that they were criticizing lesbian and women’s sexuality.”

For every 250 sites of gay male porn, there is only one of lesbian porn, Anahita said.

Anahita said most lesbian pornography is created for the heterosexual male.

“One of the ways you can tell that these sites are directed at men is that women are not involved with each other at all; they are looking at the camera,” she said.

Mark Williams, senior in sociology, agreed that lesbian porn is usually geared toward heterosexual men.

“In any of the lesbian movies out there, you can tell that they’re not true lesbians because there is no emotion involved, no feeling, no caring,” he said. “That’s the stereotype. You can say that about pornography in general; all the people in it don’t look like the people next door.”

The meetings of the YWCA are held each Wednesday at noon in Room 244 of the Memorial Union and are open to the public.