Pornography: ban it or read it?
Some activists see pornography as be a central aspect of the oppression of women and one of the most widespread and effective mechanisms through which sexism is enforced and reproduced in our cultures. Most - not all - defenders of this perspective have supported some form of censorship as a means of "protecting" women or women's rights from pornography. This has certainly been the case of writers Catherine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin, the most influential feminist critics of pornography. Other activists say the porn issue is a divisive and distracting question that, according to them, has only succeeded in diverting the energies of feminism into sterile infighting, and reduced time and energy spent on other significant questions that affect women. Whatever their views regarding pornography, these activists argue that feminists should not be concentrating their efforts in the porn-censorship issue. Most - not all - of those holding such views also reject censorship as an appropriate response to sexually explicit materials which women may find objecA third current of feminist activists say that the debate on pornography is important, because it poses important questions regarding pleasure, sexual preference and self-determination, sexual roles, sexuality and its place within our cultures. They say these should be among the central concerns of feminism. Some of these feminists not only oppose censorship, but defend much "pornography" from its feminist critics We reprint two viewpoints from a long-running debate in the Us magazine Against The Current. Puertorican activists Nancy Herzig and Rafael Bernabe detend porn, arguing that no-one, not even feminists, can determine an ideal sexual behaviour. Writer Dianna Russell argues that there is an urgent need to picket, protest and educate about the link between
Г pornography and violence against women. And Cathy Crosson criticises the "MacDworkin" school of anti-pornography activism. Lack of space prevents us from reprinting all positions in this long and complex debate. The right to decide Nancy Herzig &Rafael Bernabe
Before we add to the already long list of misunderstandings, let's at least make clear what the debate is not about.
The debate is not about the use of violence against women or the coercion of women into participating in the production of pornography. All feminists that have participated in the ATC debate' oppose such forms coercion. We all consider that such coercion or violence against women is unacceptable, and should be illegal. In spite of our deep differences, we share this - not insignificant - common goal.
So what is the real question? For some feminists, pornography is itself a form of coercion and violence against women and it must therefore be opposed as such, and. if necessary, made illegal or censored Others reject this equation. They argue that, while feminists must certainly oppose violence and coercion in this activity as in any other social sphere, they should not campaign for censorship. Or even against pornography as such. While they oppose any kind of forced participation of women in pornography, and seek to change the conditions which may push women into the porn industry against their will, these activists reject the notion that the participation of women in the production of pornography is always the result of co-
But a freer, richer, sexuality cannot evolve through legislation by experts, even feminist, socialist experts.' Nor does a new freer sexuality exist already, in the mind or programme of some feminist or socialist vanguard. It can only be created to the extent that men and women are guaranteed the right to consensually explore - to construct and reconstruct, define and redefine - their sexualities. Nobody can claim to know what the results of this process will be
Part of this process is defending the right of all, and certainly of women, to denounce and criticise anything they find offensive or degrading. But each specific criticism will surely encounter some divergent views or appreciation. It is completely unrealistic to think, for example, that new questions in feminism women do or will agree on what is degrading or sexist in sexual representations. What some women find degrading, others may find very exciting and liberating. In other words, one cannot censor degrading or sexist images without imposing someone's or some group's specific and particular notion of what type of sexual representation, activity, position or practice is degrading and which ones are not - what type of sex is right and which is wrong.
This is the problem with the recurrent attempt to separate "pornography" (sexist, degrading, etc.) from "erotica" (non-sexist, etc.). There has been and there will be little agreement on the criteria for differentiating them, and even less on how to classify specific works. Big sister knows best....?
Pro-censorship feminists insist that the fact that many women enjoy and defend pornography cannot be a valid argument against censorship. These women, they claim, have evidently internalised their subordination. This is, they argue, the very function and effect of pornography: it makes the degradation of women seem normal, even to many women. For the anti-porn feminists, women's use of pornography is an argument for censorship, not against it! There is a deep problem with this reasoning: it dismisses what women have to say about themselves. It denies them the agency and the ability to choose for themselves. It wishes to impose - through censorship - what somebody else (the anti-porn feminists) have decided is best for them.
As socialists, we should reject this substitutionist perspective. The principle of self-determination and of consensuality is the key to a freer sexuality. Nobody should be forced to engage in any sexual activity against their will, but neither should any adult be penalised for consensually engaging in sexual practices others
- among graphy, for the reasons set out by the other things - introduced prayer in public authors above. [NH/RB] * new questions in feminism
Of course, anti-censorship liberals and libertarians will share this view. But as socialists we should go further. The right of women to choose what kind of sex they want to have does not just depend on the absence of censorship and other restrictions, like sodomy laws. It also requires the presence of certain material conditions, like guaranteed income, housing, health, daytime child care and employment. In the absence of such conditions, many women will be coerced or pushed into unwanted sexual relationships,
This is the weak spot of liberal feminist critics such as (Pally, McElroy, Tisdale, and, to a lesser extent, Strossen. They oppose censorship as part of a laissez-faire perspective, which - in the guise of rejecting "victimhood" - often revives the myth of the "self-made man," or woman. Instead, we must oppose censorship while struggling for all the social guarantees women need to flourish as free individuals. The not-so-liberal position
It is quite possible to oppose censorship without defending porn. Indeed, many liberals oppose censoring pornography not because they see porn as valuable or access to porn as an important right, but because legislation censoring porn would endanger other valuable works, or limit freedoms which are otherwise important. This view accepts the critics arguments that pornography is sexist and trash, lacking any redeeming value, but considers the circulation of such degraded stuff to be the price we pay for free speech. In short, the circulation of porn is a lesser evil, compared to the dangers implicit in censorship.
This view is quite tempting, since it accepts many of the allegations of the antiporn feminists, while still opposing censorship. But it is still a problematic perspective. After all, what is it that makes pornography different from other types of representation? Why is it singled out for such harsh treatment? Why does it occupy such a low rung in our cultural hierarchies? Is it because it is often sexist?
Hardly, since so are most of the culturally prestigious representations within our culture, from literary works to soap operas. Is it because women or men may be harassed, exploited in the process of producing it? But- while conditions vary from country to country - this is equally true of most activities under capitalism, from the office to the sweatshop floor. Or because porn commodifies aspects of human culture? But surely capitalism does that with all our needs and passions. Don't censor, criticise!
Pornography is sexual. It is a representation which seeks to sexually excite us. That, not the sexism it shares with the rest of our sexist culture, is what makes it different. That is why the right hates it. And it is precisely porn's sexual characteristic which makes it a legitimate aspect of our culture. If sex and sexual pleasure are valuable aspects of our humanity, then porn's intended effect - sexual arousal - is at least as legitimate and valuable as the effects - laughter, tears, tension, relaxation, indignation, aesthetic enjoyment -generated by non-sexual film, photography and writing.
We criticise what we find objectionable in all of those other forms of representation, but we do not wish to abolish them. Unless sexual excitement is evil, our attitude to porn should not be any different. Similarly, the fact that capital commodifies leisure does not lead us to support attempts to extend the working day, but rather to defend our free time from the encroachments of capital, while seeking to transform it. If capital, for its own reasons, in some cases has extended the public space for the circulation of (commodified) sexual representations, it should not be our objective to close that space, but to defend it against the censors, while struggling to free it from its subordination (in terms of the products, the conditions of their production, etc.) to the needs of capital and the imperatives of the market.
It is of course true that representations which seek to sexually excite have a bad name. But it should be our objective to defy that. The low regard in which they are held is not due to the sexism, which we must criticise, but to the precarious legitimacy of sexuality itself. It is with fear, shame and guilt that we (above all, women) are still taught to relate to things sexual. Sexuality is still the realm of dirty, sinful, immoral, shameful impulses. After all, according to our obscenity laws (in Puerto Rico and the US), "artistic, religious and literary value" can save a work (no matter how offensive to the public) from being banned as obscene. Not so with sexual value. The law does not recognise such a thing. Sexually exciting content is, by itself, considered worthless, a second-class citizen, a sort of undocumented alien that can only naturalise itself and become part of our culture by marrying some "higher" value.
This is another problem with the porn/erotica distinction, beyond the futility of the exercise. Why should we even try to segregate sexually explicit materials that we consider sexist as a special category (porn), if we don't do the same with sexist non-sexual dramas, comedies, etc. even when we criticise their sexism? To do so is to again single out certain representations not because they are sexist, but because they are sexual. In other words, in debating right-wing censors we have found it impossible to introduce the porn/erotica distinction without dragging anti-sex prejudices into our struggle against sexism. Defending pornography helps us fight those prejudices, while struggling against sexism. * Notes The authors present their views in more detail in "Puerto Rico: ¿zona libre de sexo?" Nómada, 2 Oct. 1995. Other useful reading includes: Lynne Segal, "False Promises: Anti-Pornography Feminism," Socialist Register, 1993; Raquel Osborne, La construcción sexual de la realidad (Catedra, 1993); F.M. Christensen, "Invitación a la violencia: la evidencia," Debate feminista, March 1994; Marcia Pally, Sex and Sensibility (Ecco, 1994); articles by Snitow, Califia, Hunter, Willis, Duggan, Vance in Caught Looking (Long River, 1995); Sallie Tisdale, Talk Dirty to Me (Doubleday, 1994); Pat Califia, Public Sex (Cleiss, 1994): Lynn Hunt, ed., The Invention of Pornography (Zone, 1993); John D'emilio, Making Trouble (Routledge, 1992); Wendy McElroy, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography (St. Martin's, 1995). There is still much to learn from Herbert Marcuse, Eras and Civilization (Beacon, orig, 1955) particulary Part I!. "Beyond the Reality Principle.
Caribbean conservatives
Pornography is not only attacked by schools, turned campaigns against AIDS some feminists. It is also opposed by into campaigns against sex, tried to conservative and religious forces: the close down abortion clinics, and question of censorship and pornography university courses on gay literature. And worst enemies of women's rights.
In the US colony of Puerto Rico, the was brought centre-stage not by antiporn feminists, but through a crusade of influential Church and right-wing groups against the "three horsemen of immorality" - abortion, gays and pornography.
Under the flag of moral regeneration, the colonial government has harassed gay/lesbian clubs.
Conservative groups have opposed the Police "Vice Squad " has tried to close down the only store on the island which sells sexually explicit materials
The Fourth Internationalist group Taller de Formación Politica has emphasised the need to oppose censorship on the island. They have also defended porno-
new questions in feminism
Violence, pornography and women-hating
Interview with Diana Russell Civil rights attorney AnnE. Menasche, a member of The US group Solidarity, spoke to Dianna Russell, author of numerous books on the subject of violence against women: rape (including wife rape), incest, femicide (the misogynist murder of women), and pornography. In Against Pornography, you attempt to establish a link between pornography and violence against women. How do you define pornography?
As material that combines sex and/or the exposure of genitals with abuse or degradation in a manner that appears to endorse, condone or encourage such behaviour. I conceptualise pornography as both a form of hate speech and as discrimination against women. Can you give some examples of what you consider pornographic?
The magazine,Hustler [widely available in N.America and Europe] has published the following:
• A cartoon showing a jackhammer inserted into a woman's vagina with a caption referring to this as a cure for frigidity."
• A cartoon of a woman being ground up in a meat grinder.
• Photos and descriptions of a woman being gang raped on a pool table, described as an erotic turn-on for the woman. • A cartoon of a husband dumping his wife in a garbage can with her naked buttocks sticking out from the can. • A cartoon of a father with a tongue in his daughter's ear and his hands in her pants, again as an erotic turn-on. • A cartoon of a boss having sex with his secretary while beckoning his colleagues to come into the room to have sex with her also, with the caption referring to this as her "Christmas bonus."
• And even pictures of dead, decapitated women with amputated bodies, as well as severed nipples and clitorises.
In each of these examples, Hustler editor Larry Flynt jokes about rape, battery, sexual harassment, incest, torture, mutilation and death, and presents this violence as sexy. How do you feel about erotica?
I define erotica as sexually suggestive or arousing material that is free of sexism, racism, and homophobia, and respectful of all human beings and animals portrayed
I find nothing degrading about explicit portrayals of sex per se, though erotica can of course be much broader than that. Even the peeling of an orange can be filmed to make it erotic. How do you respond to people who say it is impossible to obtain a consensus: that "one person's erotica is another person's pornography?"
There is no consensus on the definitions of many phenomena. Rape is one example. Legal definitions of rape vary considerably in different states. Similarly, millions of court cases have revolved around arguments as to whether a killing constitutes murder or manslaughter. Lack of consensus should not automatically mean that pornography cannot be subject to opprobrium or legal restraint, or that we cannot examine its effects. You state in Against Pornography that pornography is one of multiple causes of men raping women, other causes being male sex role socialisation, sexual abuse in childhood and peer pressure. Could you give a few of examples of the research that supports the view that pornography plays a role in causing sexual violence?
First, there is the experiment by Malamuth in which he shows that being exposed to some typical violent pornography will change those men who weren't force-oriented to begin with into having rape fantasies that they didn't previously have.!
Second, there is the research that shows that pornography undermines the inhibitions of those who already have some desire to rape. For example, the work of Zillmann and Bryant shows that repeated exposure to pornography for a four-week period increased men's trivialisation of rape, increased their callousness towards women, made them more likely to say that rape was the responsibility of the victim and that it was not a serious offence, and increased their estimate of the likelihood that they would rape a woman if they could get away with it.?
Perhaps most important of all is James Check's work making comparisons between the effect on men viewing violent pornography, degrading pornography and erotica in an experimental situation.
Check found that the violent material had the most negative effect, the degrading material had the next most negative effects, and the other sexual material had no negative effects at all. The negative effects he documented included an increase in the self-reported likelihood that the men would actually act out a rape.? Katha Pollitt, writing in The Nation disputed that pornography caused real life harm to women. Pollitt wrote, "any serious discussion of texts that cause real life harm to women would have to begin with the Bible and the Koran: It isn't porn that drives zealots to firebomb abortion clinics or slit the throats of Algerian schoolgirls." How would you respond to that?
Nonsense. None of us are claiming that pornography is the single cause of violence in the world. Also, Pollitt's not even using sexual violence as examples. If Pollit had looked at my book, Against Pornography, and studied the examples of pornography and the research reviewed there, I don't think she could continue to take such a position. How do you respond to the charge that the approach to fighting pornography afvocated by feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon amounts to censorship that would dangerously restrict free speech?
Dworkin and MacKinnon do not advocate banning or censorship of pornography. What they advocate is that anyone who has been victimised by pornography and can prove it in a court of law should be able to do so. That's not censorship, that's accountability.
It seems that if you make any proposal against pornography, people equate it with censorship. One of MacKinnon and Dworkin's major contributions in this area is to try to recast the debate about porno-
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new questions in fem graphy - they maintain that this is not primarily a debate about freedom of speech. It's an issue of discrimination
Discrimination based on sex, race, or sexual orientation is not acceptable and, in some instances, it's illegal. Take sexual harassment, for example. There's a law against sexual harassment, that it constitutes discrimination against women and
Catherine MacKinnon is largely responsible for developing this analysis. She conceptualised sexual harassment in this way. Most people don't protest that the laws against sexual harassment constitute an attack on free speech, that men in the workplace should be able to say whatever they like to women, to proposition them and talk about their breasts, and ask them about their genitals and whatever, as an exercise of their freedom of speech.
It is recognised that such behaviour, even though it involves speech, is not acceptable, that it's discrimination and it's abuse of power and it makes a hostile environment against women. Even the display of pornography in the workplace is considered to contribute to a hostile environment and is therefore against the
We are making a similar argument, that pornography outside the workplace also makes for a hostile environment, a dangerous environment because promotes rape and other forms of sexual Given that this controversy exists, do you think it is helpful to discuss what one thinks about pornography separately from one's position on what should be done about it?
Yes, I think it's imperative! I try to insist that people not start discussing what to do about it before they've discussed if it is damaging or not. If it's not damaging, you don't have to do anything about it.
There are people who take the position that pornography is extremely damaging, 22 International Viewpoint #298 but the law isn't the way to handle it. Nikki Craft is one feminist and dedicated activist who takes this stance. How can someone opposed to censorship but disagreeing with the Dworkin-MacKinnon approach still organise against pornography?
In my book Making Violence Sexy, I have a whole section at the end about feminist actions against pornography, none of which constitute censorship or requires the passage of any laws. You can do educational campaigns like the recent campaign against Milos Forman's movie, The People vs. Larry Flynt.
We organised press conferences and picket-lines. We were not advocating censorship. We were not even advocating boycotting the movie, although boycotts do not constitute censorship either. Somehow, whenever we express our own First Amendment rights to protest pornography, we're called censors - which is absurd.
I think education is important because half the people who say pornography is fine don't have a clue what they're really talking about. Again and again, we find if you show people what's in pornography, they are shocked, particularly women. What was the objective of your campaign against the Larry Flynt
Our objective was to educate people about the lies that are told in the movie, to point out the violent and women-hating content of Hustler magazine that was completely omitted from the film, and to point out what Larry Flynt is really like, so Milos Foreman and Oliver Stone's efforts to turn him into a hero will be under-
Flynt himself has said that the film is a massive free advertising campaign for Hustler magazine. Since the movie, the circulation of Hustler has gone up, in spite of the fact that the movie has not done so well at the box office. I believe it only made about $20 million, whereas it cost about $60m. to make. It was expected to be a great success, but this was before feminists began protesting. Who else has spoken against the
Gloria Steine, and Flynt's own daughter, Tonya, were major actors in the protests. Feminists in New York and in other U.S. cities as well as in other countries also protested the movie.
In Sweden, feminists took a more militant boycott approach and actually did try and stop men from going to the movie. They were very effective and got a lot of news coverage. Women in England also protested the movie when it opened there. How can we create a world where women are not kept in our places by violence and the threat of violence?
We need to increase the level of consciousness about male violence against women. We've made some progress in the United States in many areas. For example, sexual harassment is now recognised, it wasn't recognised before. I hope femicide will also become recognised.
The old way of men blaming women for the violence has been challenged by feminists. However, we haven't yet seen a decline in the violence itself.
I often think we would be more effective if women as a gender were more militant in our response. I'm not talking about on an individual level-although I favour that too. But we must join together in organisations to act more militantly, even if those organisations are small four-
As with pornography, those who are the victims of it, the targets-as Black people are with racist material-really have to be the mobilisers. I think direct action and civil disobedience would be extremely effective for women to use.
We are just a handful of people trying to educate a nation, meanwhile, pornography is a multibillion dollar industry mis-educating people. Though many women have been arrested for peace and civil rights work, very tew women appear to be willing to get arrested for feminist
People talk about a war between the sexes, but it's more like a massacre, because women often don't fight back. And we can't all fight our separate battles in our own homes.
Organising together is really the secret; organisation is the answer to making change. As Andrea Dworkin has said, women have been very good at "endurance" but not at "resistance". We must change this. * Dianna Russell received the C, Wright Mills Award for outstanding social science research for her book, The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women (NY: Basic Books, 1986). She edited an anthology on pornography: Making Violence Sexy: Feminist Views on Pornography (NY: Teachers College Press, 1993.) Russell's most recent book is Against Pornography: the Evidence of Harm (Berkeley: Russell Publications, 1993). This book can be ordered directly from Russell Publications, 2018 Shattuck Avenue, #118, Berkeley, CA 94704; Cost: $12.95 plus $3 postage & handling inside the US, S8 abroad; Californians add $1.00 sales tax). Notes 1. Malamuth, Neil (1981). "Rape fantasies as a function of exposure to violent sexual stimuli," Archives of Sexual Behavior, 10, 33-47. 2. Zillman, Dolf & Bryant, Jennings (1984). "Effects of massive exposure to pornography." In Neil Malamuth & Edward Donnerstein (eds.), Pornography and Sexual Aggression (New York: Academic Press) 115-138. 3. Check, James & Guloien, Ted (1989). "Reported proclivity for coercive sex following repeated exposure to sexually violent pornography, non-violent dehumanizing pornography & erotic." In Dolf, Zillman and Jennings, Bryant (eds.), Pornography: Recent Research Interpretations and Policy Consideration (Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) 159-184. 4. Russell is correct that First Amendment issues are complex, often involving the balancing of other rights, and that freedom of speech cannot and should not be held to be absolute. In my view, however, the Dworkin-s Kinnon ordinance, at least its cause of action a ficking in pornography (which is essentially a action for group defamation that any woman ce) gives too much power to the courts to det suppress (through injunctions or large dam depictions of sexuality that the courts dece It is easy to imagine a scenario of a right-w going to court claiming that non-violent lesbi or health education books like Our Bodies are "degrading" and "hurt" women. (AM]
new questions in feminism
The sex censors
Cathy Crosson reviews Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, by Nadine Strossen (Scribner, 1995), US$22. For the past decade and a half, US feminism has been mired in its divisive "sex wars" over the pornography issue. In reporting that essentially sterile but politically important debate, the mainstream media have often advanced the censorship agenda of Catharine MacKinnon and
"the" feminist position. For reasons that are hardly enigmatic, the anti-porn crusaders have become darling ideologues: they espouse a deeply conservative analysis of gender politics, and they pose authoritarian "solutions" to the problems women face. The genderhatred and anti-sexuality pervading their work have repelled many who therefore misguidedly reject feminism entirely; the censorial climate they have fostered has caused untold harm. "MacDworkinism" has proved eminently useful to the crediting to feminism.
It is of course doubtful that this position has ever really predominated among feminists. Underplayed in the press, groups like the Feminist AntiCensorship Taskforce and Feminists for Free Expression have always posed a strong counterpoint. And there has recently emerged a highly visible renaissance of careful feminist thinking about pornography and censorship.
Defending Pornography, a lucid and entertaining polemic which by all rights should leave no one floundering in the swamp of censorship politics, argues compellingly that the Mac-Dworkinite road to censorship is a disastrous one, particularly for
Pornography performs two essential tasks - it brilliantly exposes MacDworkinism as the reactionary doctrine it is, and articulates the reasons why feminists and socialists should pay close attention to these issues. Herstory repeats itself
The one shortcoming of this otherwise comprehensive treatment of the pornography debate is its failure to explain the historical and political context, to which Strossen alludes only in passing. In the late 1970s and early '80s, feminism along with other progressive movements hit a wall. Having previously held out great promises of reform, capitalism was no longer willing or able to accommodate women's demands for progress toward equality. Defeat followed defeat: federal funds for abortion were axed; the ERA died on the vine; women who had made it into good jobs fast discovered the glass ceilings and the "mommy track;" those who didn't became statistics in studies decrying the "feminisation of poverty."
The hopeful women activists of the '60s and early 70s began to retreat, perhaps finding professional niches in women's studies programs or abused women's shelters, but constantly facing conservatising pressures to limit their demands. In the resulting vacuum of despair, MacDworkinism surfaced, with its retrograde analysis of women's oppression and its purportedly "radical" prescriptions for change. Indeed, one of the worst effects of the anti-sex brigade is that it has successfully sold itself as "radical." In fact, as Strossen concludes, "the procensorship feminist philosophy is a carbon copy of the right-wing view of sexuality and gender roles."
Strossen observes cogently that the very familiarity of MacDworkinism's underlying assumptions, with their roots in religious and other conservative ideologies, subliminally enhances what film critic Marcia Pally in her book Sex and Sensibilit" calls "the great soothing appeal of censorship." MacDworkinism evokes not only the Anti-Sex League of Orwell's prescient 1984, but also Puritanism and, of greatest historical relevance, the conservative wing of Victorian feminism. Victorian values
The current tempest over pornography mirrors a similar schism in the "first wave" of feminism. The "Redstockings" included such trailblazing pro-sex feminists as Victoria Woodhull, the early Margaret Sanger, and Emma Goldman, who defied, resisted, and on a good day aspired to overthrow the state. The "Bluestockings," in contrast, variously sought succour from a state they presumed to be beneficent, and in a bolder mood, aspired to become its agents. Their politics were elitist and centred on the right to vote, for which they often appealed on antiimmigrant grounds.
The reforms they sought through the existing state predominantly took the form of protective morals legislation. "Bluestockings" campaigned for essentially repressive anti-vice measures regarding prostitution, alcohol, and the like, helping to create a climate of opinion that facilitated passage of the Comstock laws, criminalising both "obscenity" and the distribution of contraceptives and information about abortion-laws which were then used to haul Redstocking sisters Sanger and Goldman off to jail. (Today the pro-censorship climate MacDworkinism has nurtured has helped to reincarnate the Comstock laws in the Communications Decency Act, criminalising Internet discussions of abortion and other such "indecency.")
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In the most striking aspect of this historical parallel, the Bluestockings cut their political teeth in the Temperance movement, locating in "demon rum" a male vice they deemed a central factor in women's oppression. Drink was the ruin of the lower classes, the bane of women whose husbands beat them and drank up the family's wages. Precisely as MacDworkinism sees pornography as a central institution of women's oppression, the Bluestockings seized upon this "male vice" of alcoholism. Just why was it that working class men drank, after twelvehour days in the mines and factories? Such questions were too threatening, so instead the elite reformers blamed the oppressed.
The "second wave" of feminism, from the late 1960s to the present, has replicated this ideological division almost exactly. It came in like a lioness of radical opposition to gender and other hierarchies, took on a vital popular character in the living rooms where we brainstormed liberation in "consciousness raising" sessions, demonstrated endlessly and militantly for abortion rights, and spawned a radical autonomous women's health movement.
The pro-sex faction was prominent if not predominant, with feminist writers meditating on the importance of sexual liberation under titles such as The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm that today sound oddly anachronistic. (And even if one were not afraid of seeming hopelessly dated, MacKinnon's sexual harassment hydra has made it dangerous to discuss such matters in university classrooms.)
Under the sway of contemporary Bluestockings, mainstream feminism has become a non-threatening lamb. Rather than asking the hard questions, and challenging the structural causes of sexism in the gender division of labour and profoundly hierarchical social relations, the MacDworkinites again locate women's oppression in a noxious male vice, and offer us the panacea of repression. Once pornography is defined as "the problem," the solution is easy: repression through the authority of the state. Of course, that solution is most convivial to those who would preserve the existing social order. MacDworkinism and its discontents
Catharine MacKinnon began her career as a legal theorist of sexual harassment in the workplace. That theory started off helpfully enough, identifying sexual demands at work as a form of gender discrimination. Unfortunately, MacKinnon was quick to capitalise on the responsive chord she had struck as a crusader against male sexual aggression and as champion of women-as-victims. She was soon running amok with sidekick Dworkin, who writes prolific non-fiction and tendentious novels which are themselves grotesquely pornographic in their rabid anti-sexuality.
One valuable contribution of Defending Pornography is Strossen's compendium of MacDworkin's repellent views in their own words, which reveal not only a deep-seated anti-sexuality but also the
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new questions in feminism?
gender-hatred that closely follows. In her recent book Only Words, for example, MacKinnon compares men to attack dogs, arguing that exposing men to pornography is "like saying "kill' to a trained guard dog." Dworkin exudes hatred of men at every turn: "every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman." Sex is death
Heterosexual intercourse, Dworkin maintains, is "a bitter personal death. It means remaining the victim, forever annihilating all self-respect." Her book "Pornography", maintains that "fucking is
" and decries the "pornography of pregnancy": "Pregnancy is the confirmation that the woman has been fucked... punishment for her participation in sex."
MacKinnon postures as the "good cop" of the two, the more respectable, well-dressed law professor, but she too consistently equates consensual intercourse with rape. "Compare victim's reports of rape with women's reports of sex," she admonishes. "They look a lot alike... [T]he major distinction between intercourse (normal) and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so often that one cannot get anyone to see anything wrong with it.
Poor Andrea and Catharine, frustrated to madness by women's opacity on this count, heap scorn on the benighted women who actually believe they enjoy sex with men. According to Dworkin, such women are "collaborators, more base in their collaboration than other collaborators have ever been, experiencing pleasure in their own inferiority." MacKinnon likewise censorship with "house niggers who sided with the masters." She insists that women who believe they exercise sexual agency are manifesting "false consciousness"-they are merely denying the "unspeakable humiliation" of having been "cajoled, pressured, tricked, blackmailed, or outright forced into sex."
Apparently deeming it imprudent to agitate for the criminalisation of sex itself, Dworkin and MacKinnon have concentrated their efforts on censoring pornography, which they expressly define as the central institution of women's oppression. Their activism has consisted largely of sponsoring their infamous anti-porn ordinances, which have been roundly defeated, primarily because of feminist opposition. Guess who gets censored most?
In a smoke-screen of verbiage, they have tried to suggest that they advocate censoring only materials that "subordinate" or "degrade" women. But because they view sex itself as inherently degrading to women, they essentially mean all sexual materials, even feminist erotica. MacKinnon has explicitly stated that she would suppress all materials suggesting that women "desire to be fucked," a criterion that as Strossen points out unques24 International Viewpoint #298 tionably mandates the censorship of many feminist novels and other frequent targets of right-wing censorship campaigns, such as The Joy of Sex and Our Bodies,
Unhappily, MacDworkinism has not entirely failed to implement its program. In 1991, MacKinnon and her Canadian followers entered a censorship case to urge the Canadian Supreme Court to adopt their expansive, amorphous definition of obsas sexual material "degrading to
The results of the ensuing decision in "Butler v. The Queen" were swift: obscenity raids immediately and exclusively targeted gay and lesbian bookstores across Canada, seizing materials like the radical lesbian journals On Our Backs and Bad Attitude. Customs officials launched a censorship spree, and eventually seized Dworkin's own books Pornography and Woman Hating, along with works by Marguerite Langston Hughes, Oscar Wilde, and numerous other acclaimed authors.
This outcome was entirely predictable, if not intended. Confronted with the practical effects of her doctrine in Canada. MacKinnon responded, "Big surprise. Dworkin actually applauded the criminal conviction of the Glad Day Bookstore, because "Lesbian porn is an expression of self-hatred." As Strossen reports in chilling detail, it is hardly surprising that MacDworkin would endorse such censorship; they themselves have often acted directly to suppress pro-sex feminist
When pressed to define her "political
MacKinnon responds that it consists simply of "stopping rape." Other than censoring pornography, she has little to offer by way of analysis of the preconditions for doing so, or for women's freedom and equality more generally. She pays lip service to abortion rights, but in the same breath criticises the availability
"facilitating women's heterosexual availability" and "freeing male aggression" by removing one of the few "legitimised reasons women had for The other issues
The preoccupation with pornography has also diverted feminist activism and public discourse from the real causes of violence and inequality. Strossen emphasises that blaming pornographic images diverts attention from the actual perpetrators of violence. That may be true, but more importantly, the censorship strategy has diverted the women's movement from constructive struggles for reproductive freedom, welfare rights, etc.
The pornography debacle has driven deep wedges among feminists, and has weakened the women's movement by alienating many women who cannot relate to a perceived ethos of anti-sexuality, gender antagonism, and victimhood. To the extent that it has convinced women to conceive of themselves as victims, to live in constant dread of male violence and aggression, rather than thinking of ourselves as the agents of our own liberation, it has been profoundly disempowering.
Finally, the politics of censorship works all this harm without achieving any positive good, because it is empirically false that sexual materials cause violence and sexism in any important sense. No reputable scientific evidence supports such a causal link. The cross-cultural evidence against the notion that pornography causes violence and discrimination is particularly Reality is complicated
Strossen cites numerous studies indicating that if anything, censorship of sexual expression correlates negatively with gender equality. Saudi Arabia strictly bans pornography, and China, where death sentences are imposed for trafficking in pornography and women are subjected to forced abortions, is hardly a model of women's liberation. On the other hand, the cultures most tolerant of erotic materialssuch as Denmark and Sweden-have achieved greater gender equality than any of the more sexually repressive societies
Naturally, pornography reflects the larger culture, and some of it projects images that are troubling in their often very sexist and racist overtones. Other pornographic materials, especially gay and lesbian erotica, are consciously iconoclastic and subversive (and of course these are the materials the state will target for
As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, whatever "harm" some pornography may be charged with, its effects (on women in particular) are surely insignificant compared with the effects of the continual barrage of sexist, racist, imperialist propaganda that spews forth from the mainstream, non- sexual media.
In large part, our response to the problems MacDworkinism poses for feminism should be to participate in and build the currents of feminism that work in more constructive directions. But many women are influenced by these ideas put to them as "the" feminist position, and we need to be able to articulate to them why MacDworkinism is reactionary. (In my experience, MacDworkinism tends to have a loose grip among young feminists, who often abandon those views quickly when confronted with the historical record and the other logical and normative arguments especially these feminist arguments, against censorship.)
Meanwhile, Strossen's clear-sighted analysis provides a welcome arsenal of arguments in favour of a more democratic. * Cathy Crosson is a member of the Bloomington ch of Solidarity and teaches law at Indiana University
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