Critically assess the situation that the products of the contemporary pornography industry are both a cause of assault and discrimination directed against women and also 'intrinsically hazardous'.
It is not the goal of this essay to guard the contemporary pornography industry which even today remains a 'soiled' and -to a sizable level- a male-dominated, exploitative business, but rather to understand the reasons behind this unfortunate simple fact. Pornography made its first dominant appearance in feminist discourse in the past due 70s, when feminist groupings such as 'Women Against Assault in Pornography and the Mass media' (WAVPM) embarked upon their anti-pornography advertising campaign in the San Francisco Bay area. The so-called 'love-making wars' of the 1980s brought about an unprecedented department within the feminist motion. Anti-pornography writers, such as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon -authors of the famous 'Minneapolis and Indianapolis ordinances' - advocated the censorship of pornographic materials, due to its role as 'a practice that is central to the subordination of women'. Other feminists put forth a liberal legal discussion, invoking the First Amendment to the American Constitution, which guarantees freedom of conversation. 2 decades later, the pornography argument has retained its relevance in feminist discourse. There is still heated disagreement over three interrelated issues: what is the definition of pornography? Does pornography cause violence and discrimination against women? What is the best way to deal with pornography in the policy and legislation arenas? While critically examining the anti-pornography thesis, I will argue in turn that most sexually explicit visual materials is not the cause but can mirror the misogyny and exploitation that characterizes modern societies; which far from being 'intrinsically unsafe' pornography can in fact be used in the service of feminist ideas.
A necessary starting place if we are to comprehend pornography would be an analytically helpful definition. But this is itself one of the primary tips of disagreement between feminists. The pro-censorship area has emulated traditional explanations of pornography and equated intimate explicitness with violence and female subordination. Dworkin recognizes pornography as the platform where sexist ideology thrives by exhibiting male supremacy, discernible in seven interwoven strains: the power of the self applied, physical power, the energy of terror, the energy of naming, the power of owning, the power of money and the energy of making love'. Modern-day porn depicts women as the helpless victims of men: sure, tortured, humiliated, battered, urinated after or 'only taken and used'. Evoking the Greek etymology of the term, Dworkin (1990:24) defines pornography as the 'graphic depiction of whores', ('porne' being the Greek for a cheap prostitute or gender slave). Thus pornography is conceived as something sexist, violent and exploitative by definition; quite simply, as an intrinsically damaging phenomenon.
Even as of this early stage, pro-censorship analysis seems to rest on shaky methodological grounds. First it includes a clearly round discussion which condemns pornography without attempting to comprehend it, almost like arguing that 'pornography is bad, since it is bad'. Second, the cross-cultural evaluation of Ancient Greece is dubious, if not completely a-historical, since 'pornography' is no ancient but a Victorian neologism, invented in the 19th century, thus reflecting Victorian sensitivities alternatively than historical realities. Third, the definition of porn as a field of violence and sexism logically requires a differentiation from other, sexually explicit material that's not violent, demeaning and exploitative, but is based on sentiments of mutuality and reciprocity. Defining this rising category, usually referred to as 'Erotica', is an extremely subjective undertaking and certainly unhelpful for an educational or a judge. Equating sexual explicitness to violence, misogyny and other value-judgments isn't just counter profitable to the visit a descriptive description of pornography; it is also untrue, since it is the situation that 'very soft porn' or even altogether non-sexual material can contain more disturbing moments of violence and sexism than pornography itself. Fourth, almost all of the anti-porn books has applied its definitions of pornography in a hazy and inconsistent manner, jumping from the 'graphic depiction of whores' to the greater mainstream idea of porn as cheaply produced 'smut' for instant consumption; and sometimes to a far more inclusive definition including phenomena as diverse as fashion, TV commercials, adult toys and sex education.
Methodological concerns aside, anti-porn definitions of pornography entail positions that appear to contradict the very substance of feminism. Anti-porn pronouncements on 'good, sensitive Erotica' vis- -vis 'bad, abusive porn' are essentially pronouncements about 'good' and 'bad' sexuality. At the risk of caricature, this entails limitations on sexuality of Orwellian dimensions, and is contrary to the fights of the feminist, lgbt movements for intimate liberation and variety. One anti-porn publisher opines that 'erotica is rooted in eros, or excited love, and therefore in the thought of positive choice, free will, the yearning for a particular person, whereas in pornography the subject is not love by any means, but domination and violence against women'. Claims such as this one appear to imply an approval of old patriarchical stereotypes of the proper execution 'men are intense and polygamous by nature, while women are unaggressive and monogamous' and this women do not, cannot or should not enjoy sex alone. Paradoxically, Dworkin's (1990) synoptic treatment of the annals of pornography exaggerates the passivity and helplessness of female victims and the assault of male domination to this extent, which it unwittingly reinforces the very binary stereotypes that feminism has historically fought to uproot. Her display of ladies in pornography as 'whores', is at best patronizing, if not condescending and insulting towards feminine porn-workers, who often choose to check out that mode of subsistence. The options of porn-workers are worthy of as much respect as those of women working in less stigmatized establishments and, perhaps, sustained feminist solidarity.
Pro-censorship argumentation will revolve around two rhetorical devices. The foremost is the exaggeration of the total amount and degree of violence contained in pornographic materials, through the build up of undeniably troubling images. The glide shows projected in WAVPM conferences and the material articulately detailed in Dworkin's e book have been handpicked for their shock-value and power to disturb. Drawn mostly from the underground civilizations of Bizarre, Bestiality and SM, most of these images are mainly unrepresentative of the mainstream market, which is both highly varied and specialized. Expertise is a key-point because of the basic fact that differing people have different 'turn-ons'. Considering that some people may find publicly disturbing, what others view as privately stimulating is not any good reason to label porn in its entirety as intrinsically offensive. The next rhetorical device lies in the argument that pornography is not simply a representation of imaginary violence but also a noted certainty or as put by MacKinnon, a 'documentary of misuse'. Again this argument misleadingly conflates certainty with representational fantasy. To claim that every girl -or man- that are abused in a porn-movie is actually abused, is nearly as naЇve as saying that every man shot-dead in, say, 'the Terminator', is actually lifeless. The anti-porn discussion fails to consider factors such as artifice, acting and role-playing. While genuine case of abuse aren't absent from the porn industry, almost all depictions of 'violence' occur in a role-playing context which carefully ensures the basic safety of the stars.
My view is the fact that understanding pornography requires a descriptive classification which, instead of passing judgments on the moral credentials and political awareness of its members, focuses on the realities of the porn industry. Within this light, modern pornography, as we know it, is the graphic representation of sexually explicit material, mass-produced and mass-consumed with the goal of sexual arousal. Though it is not 'intrinsically evil', this industry is morally no much better than the contemporary society that produces it.
The aftereffect of sexually explicit materials on its viewers and society at large is the next main component of the pornography issue. Anti-porn analysis has insisted on the theory of causality, whereby real rape, physical misuse and humiliation of women by men happen as the result of their contact with the 'hateful ideals' of pornography. In Dworkin's own words 'at the heart and soul of the female condition is pornography: it is the ideology this is the way to obtain all the others;'. By equating the representation of assault with injurious action, Dworkin evokes what neo-Aristotelian theorists of representation have termed as the 'Mimesis-model'. Derived from the Greek term 'mimesis', meaning 'imitation' or 'reproduction', the model positions the real both before and after its representation.
At a theoretical level the Mimesis-model can be sufficiently challenged by another Aristotelian notion, that of Catharsis. This might entail that far from lowering men to perpetrators of assault, exposure to the mock-violence of pornography -with all its imaginative conventions and restrictions- would relieve them of the violent dispositions that lay down 'hidden' in their psyche, in the same way that, say, a horror movie may give us pleasure without inciting violence and blood-thirst. The Catharsis-model matches particularly well to the dynamics of pornography. Founded on a much-attested human being desire for an intermittent breach of taboo, porn will symbolize situations and thoughts that may be antisocial and very often remote from what the actual communal practice is. Japan -a country with one of the lowest rape rates world-wide- sustains an enormous pornographic industry that 'has specialized' in assault and sexual domination. The anti-pornography perceptive fails to grasp this vital distinction between communal reality and harmless fantasy. In conditions of empirical facts, psychological experiments on the alleged correlation between exposure to porn and violent activity are, at best, inconclusive. Historical and cross-societal analysis is similarly unpromising for the Mimesis-argument. Porn, in its modern sense, is an extremely recent creation. Yet, the exploitation of women by men acquired predated it by thousands of years. At the same time, political systems that adhered to the systematic suppression of pornographic representations, such as the Soviet Union or modern Islamic claims, had not been less exploitative or violent.
And yet, many anti-porn thinkers have insisted on censorship, even though this insistence has produced an awkward alliance with moral traditionalists from the proper. If handed, the 1984 Minneapolis ordinance could have reinvented 'pornography' as a criminal offence, different from 'obscenity'. This might have allowed women to consider civil action against anyone mixed up in production, or circulation of pornography, on the lands that they had been 'harmed' by its portrayal of women. Within the passionate words of Andrea Dworkin (1990:224) 'we will know that we are free when the pornography no more exists. As long as it does exist, we must recognize that we will be the ladies in it: employed by the same power, subject to the same valuation, as the vile whores who beg for much more. ' If only, pornography was, indeed, the mom of all bad. Then sexism could be uprooted at one, simple, legislative stroke. But sadly, sexism, violence and exploitation are endemic to the economical structure of the present day modern culture and pervasive of all our mass media. Pornography seems to have been singled out as a scapegoat for many forms of sexual prejudices in today's world. The long-standing communal stigma and aesthetic credibility of the industry managed to get an easy focus on to right-wingers and left-wingers likewise.
Censorship hasn't worked before and there is absolutely no reason to assume that it will work in the foreseeable future. I think that the only practical treatment for the pornography problem is the exact reverse of censorship, specifically support for 'the Politics of Representation. Women should make an effort to 'get' pornography, as manufacturers, script-writers and directors, in a way consistent with earlier feminist endeavors into other male-dominated fields, such as literature, politics, media, religion, education and knowledge. 'Heading legit', wouldn't normally only imply that society as a whole will take a less hypocritical stance to the realities of pornography but also that regulation would assure better working conditions for female porn-workers (e. g. unionization, safe-sex, better security, health and cleanliness). Most importantly establishing a female perspective within the industry would counterbalance the male bias that it now suffers. Following the example of projects such as 'Femme Productions' -launched by ex - porn-worker Candida Royalle and concentrating on one or two market- sexually explicit materials written and made by women can observe women's to pleasure without complying to sexism and exploitation.
Pro-censorship feminists have been mistaken in determining pornography as problem. The explicit representation of intimate moments is neither 'intrinsically damaging' nor a direct cause of assault. While men retain the reigns of an industry plagued with sociable stigma, porn will still be biased and exploitative. Yet, in the right hands, pornography may become an instrument for feminist action.
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