Reasonableness - Reasonable Person Standard For Victims - L'homme Moyen Sensuel

L'homme Moyen Sensuel

The subject of l'homme moyen sensuel doesn't speak of a reasonable person's ability, actions, nor understandings. Rather it refers to an effect that occurs to a reasonable person when presented with some form of information either by image or sound, or upon reading a book or magazine. In 1917, this aspect of the reasonable person was the subject of a poem by Ezra Pound. The best-known use of l'homme moyen sensuel was when Judge Woosley lifted the ban on the book Ulysses by James Joyce. That ruling contemplated the effect the book would have upon a reasonable person of reasonable sensibility. Similarly, the publisher of Howl and Other Poems ended up in court in California charged with publishing an obscene book, and l'homme moyen sensuel played a role in declaring the publisher innocent. It was nearly two decades after Woosley that the US Supreme Court set down the standard by which materials, when viewed by l'homme moyen sensuel, were judged either obscene or not. Generally, it has been l'homme moyen sensuel that has dictated what is and is not obscene or pornographic in books, movies, pictures, and now the Internet for at least the past 100 years.