The British feminist Natasha Walter has an article in the Times today talking about the problem that is Pornography. I read it, thought, “hey, this would be good to post about on Harpyness!” and my very next thought was, “I hope it doesn’t incite an internet riot.” Not that I think any of our regular commenters would really disagree with it, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the feminist blogosphere generally, it’s that people are not that great at talking about Certain Issues with any degree of complexity whatsoever. Porn is one of them. If you like it, you are allegedly (1) selling out other women; (2) existing in a false consciousness; and/or (3) are allied with rapists. If you don’t think it’s all sunshine and rainbows, you are allegedly (1) erasing the vast amount of pro-woman pornography produced by avowed feminists; (2) condescendingly denying the experiences of others; and/or (3) are allied with right-wing conservatives. You just can’t seem to win in this fucking discussion because a vast majority of people fly off the handle immediately, and so most days I skirt it altogether.
But let’s tempt fate. Here’s the part of Walter’s piece I really liked:
Now that the classic feminist critique of pornography — that it necessarily involves or encourages abuse of women — has disappeared from view, there are few places that young people are likely to hear much criticism or even discussion about its effects.
Many women who would call themselves feminists have come to accept that they are growing up in a world where pornography is ubiquitous and will be part of almost everyone’s sexual experiences. I can see why some are arguing that the way forward really rests on creating more opportunities for women in pornography, yet I think it is worth looking at why some of us still feel such unease with the situation as it is now.
I do not believe that all pornography inevitably degrades women, and I do see that the classic feminist critique of pornography is too simplistic to embrace the great range of explicit sexual materials and people’s reactions to them. Yet let’s be honest. The overuse of pornography does threaten many erotic relationships, and this is a growing problem. What’s more, too much pornography does still rely on or promote the exploitation or abuse of women. Even if you can find porn for women and couples on the internet, nevertheless a vein of real contempt for women characterises so much pornography.
The massive colonisation of teenagers’ erotic life by commercial pornographic materials is something that it is hard to feel sanguine about. By expanding so much in a world that is still so unequal, pornography has often reinforced and reflected the inequalities around us.
This means that men are still encouraged, through most pornographic materials, to see women as objects, and women are still encouraged much of the time to concentrate on their sexual allure rather than their imagination or pleasure. No wonder we have seen the rise of the idea that erotic experience will necessarily involve, for women, a performance in which they will be judged visually.
Seems entirely reasonable, well-stated, and qualified, right? I don’t really agree with her characterization of the “classic feminist critique of pornography,” but then she doesn’t identify anyone in particular as holding these beliefs, and I guess I am willing to grant that there certainly were (and are!) feminists who thought this. (I used to think this was the critique of only the extremely simplistic but oh, how the internet has opened my eyes to the bluntness of certain people’s analysis!)
But of course the commenters are up in arms, and I’m sure this article will get coverage in the feminist blogosphere in the coming days along the lines of, “Well, this is condescending pearl-clutching!” “Teenagers watch lots of feminist porn like Burning Angel!” “Why can’t feminism keep its hands out of my pants???” Personally I see my own perspective as treading the thin line between pearl-clutching and concern, and I’m aware of that and trying to rein in personal impulses for hysterical and hyperbolic language, but perhaps you disagree.
As you know if you’ve been reading here, I am pretty sympathetic to the work of MacKinnon and Dworkin, which has won me no end of abuse in my life, frequently from people who have not read them, at all. This is not always true, of course. I note it only to say that in general I find it hard to place any credence in the critiques of people who have not bothered to read them, simply because there is so much misinformation about the two of them out there in the public sphere that I think people have to get the story for themselves first. To say their names with any tone other than shrieking dismay has become foolish, if you’ve any intention of getting out alive.
Before I continue, I do want to say that in both MacKinnon and Dworkin’s work there is a tremendous amount of hyperbole, much of which strikes me as counterproductive, for sure. (It’s at least equally as counterproductive as the confusing language and refusal to clarify that characterize the work of Butler et al.) I’m not here to defend every little thing either one has said, written, or done. I have no interest in defending the form or content of the ordinance that they tried to enact in Indianapolis. But I want to talk about some basic, boiled down ideas at the moment, and I particularly want to account for my understanding of these ideas and their implications.
I am sympathetic to MacKinnon and Dworkin largely because, from reading and thinking about their analysis of porn for several years now, I understand them to be starting from a place where they define pornography as material that exploits women. This is something akin to the line some people will draw between pornography and erotica – they are saying that if there is sexually explicit material out there that does not actively collude with the subjugation of women in either production or effect, great! Then it isn’t pornography. And I think there are situations in which the production and public exposure to pornography (again: defined as sexually explicit material that promotes the subjugation of women) has deleterious effects, including, as Walter says above, “that men are still encouraged, through most pornographic materials, to see women as objects, and women are still encouraged much of the time to concentrate on their sexual allure rather than their imagination or pleasure.”
One thing people often say in response to this argument is that they want to know who or what is going to get to define what is exploitative to women. My answer, of course, is that like most people, I don’t want it to be the state, because I don’t think feminists can trust the state, particularly as the state currently exists: which is to say, it is patriarchal/racist/hetero-and-cis-sexist etc. (Neither, for the record, does MacKinnon – in fact, she wrote a whole book about that, though she largely missed race, which is an admittedly enormous thing to miss, to use her own phrase.) I don’t think some dude on a bench somewhere, generally steeped in hetero cis privilege (of course not always!) is the person I want defining my or anyone else’s sexuality. What I do think is that discussion of this sort of thing is key, and that all terms in a conversation about what kind of world we’d like to live in ought to be up for debate. Including the term “exploitation.” This, I think, personally, is a conversation worth having. I imagine most people who blog in the feminist/womanist/lady-friendly blogosphere would agree, because by and large, we are people who believe that rape is bad, and that we’d like to live in a world that agreed unqualifiedly with that statement.
This is why I am open to having a discussion about what kinds of pornography are and aren’t “okay,” at least insofar as the matter of it being a tool for progressiveness is concerned. Most people I know seem to be; most people I know are okay, for example, with the notion that child pornography ought to be illegal to produce. Most people are comfortable saying that, say, the tapes Paul Bernardo made of his murders of young women oughtn’t to be disseminated publicly. And funnily enough, most people are okay with criticizing, say, the director of Observe and Report for filming a rape (in which the actress consented to filming) which, had said criticisms been directed at something that announced itself as “pornography” instead of “dudebro comedy,” would have launched a thousand arguments about false consciousness and censorship in the same community that embraced the critique. I recognize fully that we can all get too wrapped up in the force of our own rhetoric in these discussions; I recognize that some people are going to feel shamed in the context of them for liking certain things that others find objectionable. I guess I just don’t understand – and this is maybe what gets me in trouble – how one justifies excluding pornography as a target for cultural critique.
Hear, hear!
Thank you, Pilgrim Soul, for a well-reasoned call for discussion. I spent a lot of my earliest life as a feminist in the camp with those who criticize Dworkin et al. most heavily… based strictly on the fact that, as a teen, I had grown up in a fairly repressed and pearl-clutching area of the country. The uber-conservatives in my neck of the woods tended towards all-out fear of sexuality, and as a teen I felt that anything I could do to combat that ethos was productive for women.
As I’ve gotten older, however, I am faced more often with the direct effects of the mainstream brand of woman-objectifying porn in my everyday relationships. In particular, I have now spent time in long-term relationships with two men who were conditioned to prefer porn to sex. Both admitted this to me (eventually), but neither did so with any recognition that this was a problem for our own sexual relationship. This preference for porn interfered in our relationships in a number of ways, from their strict requirements for grooming and underwear choices to their tendency to view sex as a performance for their pleasure.
But the most problematic aspect of these relationships, to me, was the fact that both men felt ENTITLED to extensive consumption of porn, despite the deleterious effects on the relationship. Any questions I raised about the amount or type of porn they consumed was met with an immediate and unflinching accusation of prudishness and fear of sex.
The problem is, I’m not a prude. And I’m not afraid of sex. THESE GUYS were afraid of sex. They had developed a distinct fear of the uncontrollable aspects of sex with a real partner. But my own concerns about how that effected our relationship (i.e. how can you date someone you are hesitant to touch?) were immediately dismissed in the very same language that is used to dismiss arguments like Dworkin’s.
I realize my experiences are extreme, but my concern now is that the polarizing platforms available for discussion of pornography in contemporary feminist circles leak out into mainstream culture, and soon our own arguments are used as weapons against us. When I needed someone to hear my concerns about these relationships, sympathetic ears were hard to come by. Feminism – and the feminist blogosphere in particular – is making strides towards providing safe spaces for people to air their concerns. But the debate over porn as it currently stands rarely provides such a space, and I’m glad that you’ve made a call for this to change.
It seems to me that much of what the Times says is similar to the argument that Becky Sharper made when she wrote about porn for Bitch Magazine, isn’t it? That much of mainstream porn is objectification and glorification of the male p.o.v of sex, and that it affects how our society views sexual interactions?
I’m not sure that entirely contradicts the “classic feminist” critique as this author claims, but it’s pretty hard to argue with. It wasn’t a new viewpoint when Becky expressed it, even though she took a lot of criticism for it, as do other feminist critics of porn like Amanda Marcotte and Amanda Hess.
delanor, it’s analogous, although I think Walter is talking at a somewhat higher level of abstraction, in the sense that there’s not a lot in there about particular sexual acts or what have you inspired by porn. It’s more a critique of the overall attitude and pose of pornography in this particular place and time.
@delanor: What PSoul said. The editors of the Times–unlike feminist bloggers–presumably prefer abstractions in order to avoid discussing the particulars, esp. specific acts like facial cumshots or anal sex.
And as usual, this Times trend piece is well behind the times themselves. Other papers and magazines, to say nothing of the blogosphere, have been running serious op-ed pieces about the mainstreaming of porn and its effects for years .
It’s not a trend piece, Becky, just to correct; it happens to be an excerpt from her book. I do agree that people have been thinking about this for awhile, but I don’t feel that it’s hit the mainstream; we just happen to see this argument alot because we hang out with feminists.
@PSoul: It’s an excerpt but the editors are definitely running it as a trend piece–it’s clearly been edited from the source material in order to create a stand-alone feature about a specific issue. A lazy-man’s trend piece–since all they did was pay a first serial fee to the publisher–but a trend piece nonetheless.
The Times of London ran an excellent and very persuasive op-ed by Janice Turner back in August 2009 that made essentially the same points, so it feels like catch-up that they’re running a feature on it now.
What Queen_George said. I’ve had very similar experiences with partners who watched large amounts of porn. One in particular was really into very violent porn involving particularly well-endowed men. While I don’t “police” my partners, and don’t protest against many forms (even enjoy some of the rare “feminist” porn out there on occasion), this stuff really bothered me – both by its very nature and by how it affected our relationship. I could tell when he had been watching it as it made him more aggressive and self-involved. It also made him extremely insecure about his size (which, while average, I was perfectly fine with), which in turn led to further problems (jealousy and etc.). In an ironic twist, the porn-fueled self-absorption and resulting “laziness” led to me losing interest, which he then attributed to his size (also fueled by the porn), which led to him getting overly jealous, which led to the end of our relationship.
With another partner, he did not have much access to porn early in our relationship. When he started getting more access a few months in, there was a noticeable shift in our sex lives – he suddenly became far more passive, selfish, and lazy, which, as before, resulted in my losing interest.
That said, two other recent partners also watch a fair amount of porn (though I don’t know of what sort), and yet they’re both generous lovers who view my enjoyment as equally important to theirs. So somehow, some men are able to watch porn without transferring that objectification to their daily lives.
Wow. That point about the outrage at Observe and Report versus lack of outrage over what is portrayed in a hell of a lot of porn is a damn good one, PS.
It’s funny, because the more vocal I have been about my feminism, the more my husband has really started to notice the misogyny we all swim in on a daily basis and he suddenly finds himself in a position where most porn “leaves him cold.” His face lit up when I told him there was supposedly non-exploitive “feminist” porn. I think men do enjoy the visual and don’t really think about what they are watching until it is pointed out to them. Also, my husband is in his early 50s, and mainstream porn has changed quite a bit since the ’70s, from something mostly silly to what we have today – most of which turns my stomach, personally.
I once commented on Jezebel about women being choked and hit and crying, and I was pretty immediately told that “some women like that!” – I realize that, but I would venture that MOST women don’t and the problem is that a shit-ton of porn portrays those acts as if they are something ALL women get off on.
Re: “some women like that!”
I feel like this defense misses the point. The appeal, to many men who enjoy that kind of visual, is that the woman doesn’t like it, which is what bothers me (and other critics of that sort of thing, I believe).
SarahMC – I totally agree that that defense misses the point – but how do you argue with it when the woman taking that stance states that SHE likes it??
Meaning that she herself enjoys being degraded…
SarahMC-
Not only that, but for me it misses the point because even if they like it, it’s assault. You can’t consent to an illegal act. Some people like having sex with animals. Some people like having sex with children. Some people like having sex over their partner’s objections. And yet…
“I like it” isn’t much of a justification for sexualizing harm, but if you push back at all you’re dismissed as “vanilla” which as far as I can tell is just a synonym for Too Stupid And Prudish To Be Reasoned With.
@SarahMC: For some men, yes, they get off on the idea that women don’t like it ( it being facials, anal, finger-banging, etc).
With a lot of men, though, they simply think that because they like seeing those things, that automatically means we must like doing them. Porn caters to and reflects this privilege back at them, which creates a vicious circle. Very often it’s just genuine ignorance on the man’s part, especially young men, and porn encourages and compounds that ignorance.
“Porn caters to and reflects this privilege back at them, which creates a vicious circle.”
Fucking brilliant! Thank you.
yvanehtnioj:
[Did I finally get your name right?
]
Yes! Vanilla pudding, flung into your face if you dare question what people “like”!
God I love this site. I know I don’t comment much, but that’s only because you Harpies are so freaking spot-on, I’ve often nothing to add.
Lucy -
There it is! And see, what people don’t question is that I don’t particularly *care* what gets individual people off. I really don’t. But if what gets you off is harmful, you don’t have a right to see gigabyte after gigabyte of hi-res mainstream porn promoting and perpetuating it, which is the entitlement that never seems to get examined. You like hurting people? Um, okay. Do what the rest of us do with our particular predilections and either work it out with your partner or use your imagination and masturbate. People haven’t got an inalienable right to see rape porn. Full stop.
Heh, I was just piggybacking on your comment, La Chica Lucy. I guess that’s my attempt at a rebuttal?
@Lucy and yvanethnioj:
I so agree with y’all. The whole “some women like it!” argument should die immediately when a woman says “Well, I don’t like it.” Yet I have had dudes try to talk me around by saying “But I saw it in a movie and the girl really looked like she liked it!”
Unfortunately, there are a lot of women who will give in when pressured with that argument, and wind up doing things they really don’t like because they’re being told the problem is with them and their “vanilla” sensibilities. I just hate that. It makes me so sad and angry for them.
This. I won’t judge someone for liking “non-vanilla” sex as long as everyone involved is full-on, 100% consenting. The fact that a shit-ton of mainstream porn portrays women as either NOT enjoying the experience, or being labeled as “sluts” or “whores” if they DO seem to enjoy whatever they are participating in, really makes my blood boil. And, as BeckyS pointed out in her Bitch posts, some guys expect this shit in real life – the old “oops, wrong hole” move comes to mind.
SarahMC – I didn’t expect you to have the all-time comeback, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if you did! I was all set to pull out the “Oh Snap!’ flowchart!
BeckyS- YES! Just because a handful (really) of women perform in porn does NOT mean that most women enjoy what is being portrayed, for MEN! At least porn stars get PAID for doing something they may not particularly enjoy.
@yvanehtnioj: Your point earlier about someone’s ability to “consent” to harm raises what is, for me, another major issue surrounding the mainstreaming of porn culture: the issue of communication.
If we lived in a society in which sex were linked intimately and inextricably with communication, many of the problems we face would be eroded. Technically, partners who communicate openly and respect one another CAN consent to whatever they want. They can consent by understanding and agreeing to activities ahead of time, by utilizing and RESPECTING and RESPONDING TO safe words and shared signals.
However, much of the mainstreaming of porn culture involves the separation of sex and communication. Objectification involves the separation of body from person, and therefore from ability to communicate. (A great example of this would be the Burger King ad campaign featuring the shower-cam. http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/12/15/burger-king-pornified/)
I realize that if I tried to make this argument most places, I would be met with the response that including scenes of clear consent and communication in a porn flick would take away from the immediacy and eroticism and make the union of two bodies somehow more “cold”. But I, for one, would like to live in a society wherein communication and consent are viewed as part of the sexiness of an encounter. Perhaps if we saw them more often in representations of sex, we would naturally come to understand them as a part of “normal” sexual behavior rather than as a total cold shower.
It is my understanding that a lot of the BDSM/fetish community views mainstream porn as problematic because it includes power play elements without the “safe, sane, consensual”, etc. trappings. The line between “vanilla” and “kinky” sex is sort of a problematic one to begin with (what exactly counts as vanilla, and why?, e.g.) but that doesn’t change the fact that not everyone is interested in power exchange, or bukkake, or whatever, and that’s okay. There is something to be said for at least entertaining the possibility of something your partner wants to try, but that doesn’t imply agreeing to it every time, or even most of the time, and it has to go both ways.
@Lucy – I feel like that should be a relatively easy argument to counter, given the staggering variety of sex acts shown in porn. If the woman says she enjoys degrading sex, tell her to instead consider pie fetish porn, or centaur porn, or big-black-dude cuckolding porn. Some people are reeeally into that stuff and enjoy it in real life. Doesn’t mean that porn showing a white dude cowering as 5 large black men do his wife isn’t a direct reflection of racism.
@yvanehtnioj – “People haven’t got an inalienable right to see rape porn. Full stop.” I have heard guys say that porn is an integral part of not only their sexual expression, but all male sexuality, because men are just such visual creatures. Which is astonishing to me because somehow guys managed to masturbate before video was invented, before pictures could be easily reproduced, etc. Somehow words or thoughts got the job done! I wonder how that could ever have happened!
@baraqiel:
Excellent points, all around!
(Although I am not sure I want to know the definition of pie fetish porn… I’m hoping it means nomming a piece of lemon meringue, ‘cuz THAT is some non-vanilla fun that seriously gets this lady off!)
On a more serious note – the whole visual thing. Husband INSISTS men are more visual, and I keep asking him, how do you know that? Men like to look. Yeah, so do women, but we are told from a very young age that is not polite to stare (or do anything else men are allowed to get away with). It’s all ‘boys will be boys’ BS.
I don’t have anything good to add except that I love this thread so much. Where was this discussion when I was on feminist boards/sites 7 years ago and getting accused of clutching my pearls and being a second-wave dinosaur?
My dad sexually abused me and for years I didn’t face it and suffered as a result. For most of my life, had you asked me my opinion on porn, I would have said that to each her own and it’s fine. But once I started dealing with the abuse, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
When I started remembering my abuse, I turned in despair to the internet since I wasn’t ready to talk. I googled incest. The first 2-3 results were porn. I remember feeling physically sick.
I don’t know how to draw the line between what’s OK, but I know that that is not okay. I can’t control someone else’s fantasies, but I don’t want to be exposed to them, especially when I’m trying to look for help on handling sexual abuse.
Think about it – if the first few results a search for “Holocaust” included an ad to a holocaust-themed amusement park, wouldn’t you be sickened? Wouldn’t there be an outcry?
Some additional thoughts:
That’s not to say that I think that incest porn or holocaust theme parks should be illegal. Just… I don’t know. That there should be a taboo against them?
There’s a difference between discussing porn and discussing ANY kind of consensual activities between adults. Porn, by its nature, is in the public sphere, and therefore I feel like I have a right to discuss and critique it as anything in the public sphere affects (directly and indirectly) my life.
I’m a longtime lurker and love your blog!
I am always amazed by how defensive people get when I critique porn. Any other genre of film is fair game, but porn is apparently sacred.
For fuck’s sake (pun intended), I’m not critiquing sex as a whole, just how it gets depicted in the mainstream porn industry.
As far as I’m concerned, most porn is like the Carl’s Jr. menu. Unhealthy, unsatisfying, and not in the least interested in catering to my appetites. Unlike the actual restaurant scene, though, when it comes to mainstream porn, it often feels like Carl’s Jr. is the only game in town, and if you don’t like it, you’re SOL.
Why is saying that prudish and pearl clutching?
Here’s the thing – I get a regular newsletter from an organization that critiques popular media for parents. The kind of thing that tells you what to expect from various media so you can decide what’s appropriate for your kids to consume. They linked to a survey from one of those parental internet control sites listing the top internet search terms used by kids (in families that use their service) in 2009. “Porn” was in the top five for both tween/teen boys and girls. Not surprising. However, the number four search term for kids under 7? “Porn”. This sex-positive, non-slut-shaming, pro-feminist-porn, not-prone-to-moral-panics mother’s hair stood on end. Oh, my pearls were clutched, yes they were.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, because I’m still a bit flabbergasted (even though I’m perfectly aware this isn’t anything close to a scientific survey, I think it still illustrates the trend). I think it’s entirely appropriate to critique the implications of the “mainstreaming” of porn in part because that phenomenon is not just about broader acceptance, but also access, for full-grown adults as well as kids. I’m not particularly interested in whether individuals are into vanilla or kink, but as many examples in this thread have described, there can be no question that the pornification of the mainstream is having an effect on people’s perceptions and experiences. It’s like we’re conducting a huge psycho-social experiment in this culture exposing everyone, developed and developing, to large amounts of patriarchy-compliant sexual imagery without the least idea if this is a good/bad/neutral thing.
In all honesty, if I knew that all the porn my kids will, inevitably, be exposed to was feminist porn, I wouldn’t have a problem. I mean, I’d hope older than 7, and we’d definitely be having lots of discussions about it, but the idea wouldn’t give me a heart attack. But, the thought of having to run feminist interference on what they’re actually going to be exposed to, well, I find just the thought exhausting.
[...] another view on this, please read The Thin Line Between Pearl-Clutching And Concern at The Pursuit of Harpyness. A good dissection of the issue AND I just love the term “pearl [...]
Thanks for such an articulate and balanced post. I read that article this morning and spent the day pondering it but your post prompted me to write my own thoughts on it:
http://www.msnaughty.com/blog/2010/01/18/a-negative-yet-nuanced-article-about-porn/
My point there is that Natasha has plenty of concerns about the harm that porn may be doing but, as yet, we don’t have any evidence to back that up beyond personal anecdotes. I don’t have a problem with questioning the problematic portrayals of sexuality in mainstream porn but we need to think about how the audience is processing that information.
And also… porn is now ubiquitous thanks to the internet. It has been for ten years. If it were seriously harmful we’d see the effects on society. But not much seems to have changed.
Great post, and great comments.
I have to make a confession here – I’ve never watched porn… and I don’t particularly want to.
I don’t like the pictures on Nuts magazine or Men’s Health or whatever, for the same reasons I don’t like reading Cosmo or Vogue. They are all trying to sell me something. All of them are projecting an image of what people ‘should’ be like in order to be desirable and socially acceptable. Not just how *I* should look in order to be desired, but *who* I should desire (six-pack, big pecs..). And I’d rather limit my exposure to that. (Although I do occasionally read Cosmo and Vogue out of anthropological interest, and have flipped through the others for the same reason). And I figure porn movies would be more of the same.
That might all sound terribly prudish, so I should qualify that whatever floats other people’s boats is fine by me, but I’ve got along fine without it so far and see no reason not to continue that way.
I’ve got to say that there absolutely is truth to the idea that too much porn will seriously damage your sex life. It messes up your imagination, which is your most important sexual attribute, by taping over the things you think are arousing with “THIS IT WHAT TEH SEXAY IS”. I think here the medium matters an awful lot; for example, reading pornographic literature requires you to use your mind to turn it into a Sexy Time. One needs to engage with one’s own desires and wants, and to project those onto the story to make a mental picture that’s satisfying.
With visual porn, that’s less the case- you are presented with what you are supposed to desire. It’s worth noting here that I think softcore pornography- just pictures of naked people- is hugely different to hardcore porn. It still has issues with presenting “this is what a desirable body is”, but it does not tell you how you should enjoy sex, or script you a “normal” sexual encounter, and I think that creating and policing a “normal” sexual desire is one of the biggest problems with the porn industry.
Gah, got far too close to mansplaining there. The above is all opinion based on personal experience, not IRREFUTABLE SCIENCE FACTS
If the birth rate isn’t dropping like a rock, can normal ‘sex’ be on the verge of extinction? Don’t teenagers become bored with things they are saturated with, and look for new ‘forbiddens’?
Ronnie, are you defining “normal” sex as sex which results in pregnancy? I think the procreative nature of sex is pretty beside the point of the critique going on here, which is largely about pornography that promotes violence against and degradation of women.
The only thing I wanted to say is that I found this post and the article that it discusses very helpful and sane, except that I am not sure about defining pornography as depictions of sex that are violent or degrading toward women (I am assuming first of all that “women” means also “men” and “children” or “sex partner.”) Doesn’t this ellide the very question of how to regulate and define pornography? I agree that the only depictions of sex that concern me are those that are harmful, but I feel it kind of shuts down the conversation of what kinds are and are not harmful by saying that only those are pornography. It is very different than the everyday use of the term pornography which I also think ends up making these conversations confused about semantics from the get go and those who consume ANY form of erotic cultural production defensive from the outset.
@J.D: The words ‘erotic cultural production’ are interesting, and made me want to qualify what I said. Erotica is a part of pretty much all art, and absolutely has a place there (what art would we have without sex?) I am all for erotica.
Maybe the difference I see with porn and erotica is the ‘art’ factor. Which of course gets us into the sticky territory of what art is, I know, but maybe Magpie_Seven was approaching it when she said erotica required you to use your imagination… Art asks the viewer/reader to think, marketing asks it not to. Does that make sense?
@JD – I find it interesting that you bring up regulation since in my experience things like porn can’t be regulated and attempts only add to the mystique. For me the widespread access isn’t nearly as big a problem as the apparent inability of some (mostly younger) viewers of porn to tell the difference between what they’re seeing and reality. For whatever reason, this was not the case when I was reading a ton of slash fiction in high school — no one thought that was an accurate depiction either of sexual activity or of how gay men act towards one another in sexual situations. And that might have been because the characters were explicitly fictional, but I think a large part of it is that the authors were also consumers, interacted with their readers, etc. They had no greater authority than anyone else. I feel like many people who watch mainstream porn think that porn producers know more about sex than everyone else or are authorities on how to have (the best) sex. Whereas what they are is authorities on how to have…porn sex. The first time I saw porn I broke out laughing because they were cheating towards the camera. Instead of trying to regulate something that can’t be regulated, I wonder if it would work to de-mystify it and teach people that porn isn’t an authority on sexuality (of course, if we had any sort of healthy sex ed, that would help, but that’s a whole other can of worms).
Hi Endora, thanks for your reply. I was mainly reacting to Pilgrim Soul’s original post responding to MacKinnon and Dworkin’s definition of porn rather than to the comments. I like anything that promotes thinking and imagination, but don’t know how helpful that is in defining which products are “pornographic” or harmful and which aren’t, and what the fact of their harmfulness means about how we should respond to them as a society. After all, feminist critiques of pornography don’t object to their explicitness or failure of imagination, but to the harm that they do. Images that don’t leave anything to the imagination but fail to do harm may be bad art or art failures of some kind, but may not be pornography as defined by degradation to women. I think they may be separate questions.
Baraquiel, you’re right that I shouldn’t have lept to regulation, that’s my lawyer head talking. I think the difference between photo/video porn and slash fiction is that it requires people to actually engage in the behaviors it projects. So the line between reality and fiction really is blurred. I think there are at least two kinds of harms that pornography (defined as that which is degrading/violent) might produce, one of which is a kind of imaginative harm to viewers who lose touch with some pre-porn sense of what sex might or should be, and the other which is actual harm to its participants. Are there other kinds of harm I am missing?
“It has been for ten years. If it were seriously harmful we’d see the effects on society. But not much seems to have changed.”
I think plenty has changed. Women are held to physical and behavioral standards set by porn. Women are expected to have bare vulvas. They are expected to accept whatever porn-inspired moves their partners want to do in bed. And, as other commenters have pointed out, some men are uninterested in sex with their partners because they prefer porn (for a number of reasons). Or they find their partners unappealing because they don’t resemble or act like porn actresses.
@SarahMC: Absolutely. The change is obvious to anyone who’s paying attention, IMO.
I wonder if it would help for more empirical research to be done on the effects of pornography so opinions on it can move from the realm of ideology into the realm of harm reduction. like if there were to be an education campaign on porn similar to those on drugs or domestic violence or what have you, what would the messages even be? “Think about what the images you are looking at say about women?” “Porn isn’t real?” The conversation is in such a nascent state and hasn’t caught up to the ubiquitousness of porn (perversely relying on the still existent taboos on porn to combat discussing that which has now become so hard to avoid), which I think supports PS’s point that it is overly excluded as a subject of cultural critique.
@J.D.: I suppose they probably are two separate questions – it was just the words ‘erotic cultural production’ that made me think that my rejection of porn could easily be taken to mean a rejection of naked statues, erotic frescoes, sexually explicit passages in literature – which it isn’t. But all of those have counterparts that I dislike, which are ones I would consider *not art*, but I’m struggling to figure out how I can define them. I think inspiring imagination and thought is part of it, but I’m sure there’s more…
@Becky and SarahMC: Agreed.
I don’t know, JD, I personally think that when I’m having discussions with other feminists I end up using words in all sorts of ways that diverge from the way those terms are used colloquially. Like, “rape” (which in the feminist understanding is not limited to the dark-alley stereotype) or “women” (which as you point out is often shorthand, if a lazy one, for the person in the subjugated position regardless of genitalia etc). I’m not sure why it’s not okay, in the context of pornography, to argue that we need to understand it differently. In some sense I feel the converse of your argument is also true: by narrowing our understanding of what is pornography we focus our ideas on what we’d like to regulate. And definition is an essential part of regulating, I don’t have to tell you that, and it seems fine to me to say my definition for purposes of regulation is going to be more precise than my definition for purposes of everyday drunken conversation (for example).
In any event I offered those comments re MacKinnon and Dworkin to try and correct a bad interpretation I see floating out there: that they wanted to regulate (and usually people will say ban but that’s incorrect) ALL erotic cultural production, which is untrue, and it seems to me that the people who are using the semantic argument are the ones contending that despite the ample textual evidence that pornography has a fixed definition and are rigidly against any qualification.
@JD – Heh, the scientist in me certainly agrees about more empirical research being needed. But I despair of it ever being done in a way that makes sense. Remember that study where the guy tried to get sample groups of men who had and hadn’t seen porn and couldn’t find any men who hadn’t? And then concluded that because none of the (20-ish) men in his sample set were psychopaths, porn wasn’t having bad effects on them? There was sooooo much wrong with that study but everyone seemed to see it and go, “Oh, okay, I guess porn’s harmless then”. As many have noted here, people are reluctant to problematize porn (in the way that they are also reluctant to problematize comedy and sports, and certain other categories of entertainments, I think) so getting people to even ask the right questions, let alone pay attention to the answers, is hard.
you make a good point PS, and maybe the word pornography should be used only to talk about images that are degrading. but then it does seem to beg the question (as you point out) about what is degrading (a fine conversation to have if you ask me). So then the conversation would become (as it has started to in these comments) what is pornographic, and what isn’t, and how do we know, and which ways of knowing are ones that should be respected by others? Do I have that right? Is that the conversation you think we should be having about porn?
The whole “some women like it!” argument should die immediately when a woman says “Well, I don’t like it.”
This is the thing that drives me round the bend. If you have a nominally healthy relationship with your partner and she says to you, “Not interested, not my thing, no,” why is the follow on ever “but some people are into it!”? Is an appeal to peer pressure really how you want to approach your sex life?
I think several other commenters have raised this, but I feel compelled to go back to it: does the ubiquity of porn mean that teenagers just don’t get realistic portrayals of sex because realistic portrayals are outnumbered? Or is it part and parcel of American culture’s deep ambivalence towards sex in general, i.e., saturated in sex but at the same time intensely prudish, and thus there’s an overall lack of realistic portrayals?
Another clear and ubiquitous sign of the harm the currently popular forms of porn have caused is the whole girl-on-girl thing. Did it ever used to be this big, or this expected? To the casual observer, it may seem like a step forward for GLBT rights (or, at least “LB” rights), but I honestly can’t see how much progress is really made by suddenly deciding to “validate” lesbian and bisexual women’s legitimate expressions of their sexuality ONLY by defining it from the POV of the man who’s watching. There’s this prevalent attitude that woman-on-woman is still somewhat deviant in the privacy of someone’s own home/sex life, but if a straight man gets to watch, or gets to hear about it and create his own visual, then that makes it totally ok and HOTT. (Then again, I’m steeped in straight privilege here, so correct me if I was wrong on that.)
And the expectation for straight women to make out and do sexual things with each other strictly for the pleasure of men? It has become an absolute requirement for many men that, in order to be “girlfriend material,” a woman must indulge his girl-on-girl fantasies. And if you try to tell these men that you don’t want to and it makes you uncomfortable (I hope that’s not any sort of internalized homophobia that makes me uncomfortable at the thought, there are plenty of men in the world to whom I also feel zero sexual attraction, so I don’t think so), then they bring out those exact same “you’re a prude,” “you’re too vanilla,” “c’mon, maybe you’ll like it this time” stuff. (Yeah, HELLO rape culture)
I don’t doubt that the woman-on-woman thing was a turn-on even before the modern incarnation of porn became so ubiquitous, but I’m fairly certain the expectation that straight women live up to that standard is relatively new. I know I shouldn’t complain, since the pressure on gay people to be sexual with the gender they’re not attracted to has been totally widespread since approximately the beginning of time. But even so. This is just a girl who’s tired of being pressured into doing things she hates ranting about it.
AND, to add to it all, the whole obsession with girl-on-girl seems to be predicated on the notion that there’s something inherently erotic about the female body that is inherently lacking from the male body…which is, of course, not true at all…it’s just based on the assumptions of the group of straight, cis, males who can’t even begin to imagine a worldview outside of their own. Like…two women together is hot, while two men together remains aberrant. So much for the “advancing gay rights” argument. And the thing that kills me about all this is that these men excuse themselves using the same reasoning…like it’s NO BIG DEAL at all.
I could not, for the life of me, understand the erotic appeal to a straight man of watching two women make out…until I saw Brokeback Mountain. And…well…let’s just say I get it now. But that doesn’t mean I go around demanding that straight men make out with one another. Because it seems so incredibly obvious to me that that would be a violation of their right to choose what they want to do with their own bodies. Why do men not extend the same right to women? Why is our discomfort made secondary to their fantasy? And why are WE painted as the villains in the whole scenario?
Oh, and let me just add that…if I were a gay man, I think I would be terribly offended by the hypocrisy of it all.
Gay men showing each other any kind of affection in public could quite literally get them killed.
Yet here are the same types of straight men who make the world a very dangerous place for gay men to even hold hands, declaring that lesbian sex is now officially “legitimized” BY THE PLEASURE IT GIVES STRAIGHT MEN rather than by the pleasure it gives the women involved. I mean, how messed up is that?
@Melissa: Totally agree about the hypocrisy of that. And, of course, the “lesbian sex” that’s produced for the male porn consumer is just as ridiculously unrealistic as the hetero sex.