There is a wide range of (contested) defmitions of pornography, ranging from the etymological through the sociological to the psychological. Moreover, there is also the issue of what particular (political/epistemological) standpoint underpins particular definitions. Defmitions or understandings of pornography inevitably carry with them not only an outline of what pornography ‘is’ but also what pornography ‘does’ (to whom). We will consider, in turn, issues that emerge out of attempts to define pornography—in particular, notions of obscenity and censorship. We will then consider pornography and sexual coercion.
At the basic etymological level pornography means the depiction of the activities of female slaves (Cox 2000). More widely, pornography can be defined as sexually explicit media that are primarily intended to sexually arouse the audience (Malamuth 2001). Pornography includes any media that can be viewed, read or heard. Apart from the well-established areas of magazines, books and films, there is now also the (vast) area of Internet pornography. There are three areas of discourse that have variously influenced attempts to define or classify pornography: law, psychology and (with a small ‘p’) politics.
Although legal discourse has centrally concerned itself with issues pertaining to pornography, it has not, in any country, provided a definition of what constitutes pornography. Legal attention has, rather, concentrated on issues of obscenity and censorship (Grace 1996). In her comparative study of international laws relating to the control of obscene material, Grace identifies two distinct approaches to this issue: the proactive and the reactive. Both are concerned with the possible affects of obscene material on target audiences. However, in the countries where a proactive approach is taken (Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland), obscenity is more clearly defined and obscene material is classified. In countries where a reactive approach is dominant (England and Wales, Scotland, the Netherlands and the USA), whether an item is obscene or not has to be proved in the courts and often one of the key features in making the decision is the current community standards where the material circulates. However, countries adopting either a reactive or a proactive approach share a strict standpoint in relation to the manufacture and consumption of child pornography.
Pornography and censorship
A consequence of an item being deemed to be obscene may be that it is censored; that it is either given a limited circulation or taken out of circulation altogether. The various classifications, in most countries, of films and videos are a clear example of this (Grace 1996). However, the issue of censorship is immediately juxtaposed to whether people have freedom of expression. Particularly in the countries where a reactive approach to obscenity is taken, the issue of freedom of speech is considered simultaneously with deciding on whether an item is obscene or not. This most often occurs in countries that have a written constitution guaranteeing certain civic rights, including freedom of speech. In the USA, for example, the First Amendment states that ‘Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.’ (Grace 1996:11). Feminists have highlighted the issue of relative freedoms—freedom of speech versus freedom from discrimination. Perhaps the most illustrious attempt to pursue this argument through the courts was that of Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin (Everywoman 1988) who in 1983 drafted an amendment to the Minneapolis Civil Rights Ordinance stating that pornography was ‘a form of discrimination on the basis of sex’ and therefore an infringement of the civil rights of women (cited in Grace 1996:12). Although the amendment to the Ordinance was initially accepted in local courts, it was eventually overruled in the US Supreme Court in favour of the US Constitution’s First Amendment. (See Chester and Dickey (1988) for contributions on both sides of this debate.)
Pornography and sexual coercion
Robin Morgan, in an essay written in 1974, made explicit links between pornography and rape. For anti-pornography feminist writers, pornography ‘sexualises and normalises inequalities’ and ‘makes violence sexy’ (Russo 1998). What is objectionable is not pornography’s sexual explicitness, but its abusive, hierarchical, objectifying and degrading portrayal of females and female sexuality (Jensen and Dines 1998:65–6). Feminists’ initial linking of pornography and rape stimulated much empirical exploration, not to ascertain whether pornography depraved and corrupted but to fmd out whether it was causally linked to acts of sexual coercion.
Empirical research regarding the relationship between pornography and sexual violence typically is either experimental or quasi-experimental. In the case of research into the effects of pornography in stimulating sexual violence, the experimenter is, inevitably, ethically constrained from including rape or other violation in the experiment and thus has explored either attitudinal or physiological change. Experimental studies have exposed sample populations (generally men) to various types of pornography, and have then endeavoured to measure either changes in expressed propensities to commit acts of aggression or expressed attitudes related to gender, sexuality and violence. However, empirical literature does not consider pornographic material to be homogenous and has attempted to distinguish different types of pornography. Clinical research (see, for example, Linz et al. 1987) differentiates between types of pornography and identifies differential impacts on consumers.
Meta-analyses of the experimental evidence fmd a clear association between the consumption of violent pornography and prorape attitudes and behaviours (Malamuth et al. 2000). In laboratory studies, adults show significant strengthening of attitudes supportive of sexual aggression following exposure to pornography, especially sexually violent material. They have less empathy for victims and diminished emotional response to the violence. Participants also show an increase in behavioural aggression following exposure.
Much of this literature lacks consistency in how it classifies the nature and type of the material. Laboratory-based studies have been criticised for being too artificial (in excluding masturbation, for example), neglecting the long-term impacts of exposure, and imposing patterns of pornography usage upon the subjects. In the real world, a user of the material can choose what, when, where and how he will use the material (Check 1992).
Other studies in the general population find correlations between the use of pornography and sexual violence. Males who use pornography frequently, and males who use more violent pornography, are also more likely to report an attraction to or involvement in sexual violence (Malamuth et al. 2000). Finally, other research has attempted to correlate the amount of recorded sexual crime with the prevalence of pornographic materials within a specific geographic area. Such studies involve immensely complex social situations and attempt to describe relationships between diverse variables within these settings, and generally they find no positive correlation between pornography and violence.
There are three caveats to this argument for a causal relationship between pornography and sexual violence. First, pornography is not the sole determinant of men’s violence against women, and many other social factors are relevant. Second, pornography is not the only important source of sexist and violence-supportive representations. Third, the relationship between representations and behaviour is complex, and the impact of pornography exposure is mediated by the viewer, their interpretations and the contexts of consumption.
However, other feminist and non-feminist authors argue that the vast range of sexual images in pornography should not be characterised solely in terms of sexism or violence. They also argue that male and female viewers interpret representations in complex, selective and ambiguous ways (Strossen 1995), diverse meanings may be attributed to the same scenes and sexual acts, and the usual criticisms of pornography cannot be applied simply to gay male pornography (Thomas 2000).
Recent feminist and profeminist scholarship has asserted the importance of not seeing pornography as isolated pieces of media devoid of social context. This has insisted on considering how the material is made, how such production relates to the larger sex industry, and how this industry is linked to economic, ethnic, racial and gender inequalities across the world which disadvantage vulnerable populations of poor migrant women and children in particular (Forna 1992; Hughes 2000; Kelly and Regan 2000). Pornography is thus construed as violent, coercive and harmful to the children, women and men who participate in making it
Pornography as education, therapy, pleasure or politics
There are those who believe that, in three ways at least, pornography consumption can have positive effects and meanings. First, some feminist commentators argue that while pornography does exaggerate sexism, it has also challenged sexual repression and restrictive sexual norms and thus benefited women. Pornography has served to flout conventional sexual mores, ridicule sexual hypocrisy and promote sexual pleasure (Duggan et al. 1988). Pornography has been identified as sexually and thus socially transgressive in its exploration of taboo sexual desires and fantasies. Women can and do use pornography to explore their sexualities and desires (McNair 1996).
Second, gay male and lesbian pornographies are defended as important positive expressions of non-heterosexual sexualities, as an element in gay and lesbian struggles for social recognition and legitimation and as educational tools in eroticising safe sex (McNair 1996). Third, some men argue that pornography has played a therapeutic role in helping them develop healthier sexualities (Kimmel 1990). Pornography has allowed men to learn about female and male bodies and sexual techniques, to feel less shame about ejaculation and semen, and to accept themselves as sexual beings. Others argue instead that while pornography harms women, it harms men as well: pornography has helped to homogenise men’s sexual tastes, narrow the range of male sexual satisfaction, channel all men’s intimate needs into genital sexual activity, and promote myths of perpetual male sexual readiness and penis size (Brod 1990).
While there certainly is pornographic diversity, there is also a dominant form of pornography, a cluster of repetitive themes characteristic of mass-marketed heterosexual pornography. This hegemonic pornography is in part the product of men’s control of economic, political and cultural power, so that much pornography caters more to heterosexual men’s desires and fantasies than it does to women’s (Chancer 1998). In other words, social inequalities are the context for the particular passions of much heterosexual pornography. Of course, heterosexual pornography does not cater for all men’s desires, nor are its appeals exclusive to men, but it works in a symbiotic relationship with common constructions of masculine heterosexual sexuality.
Pornography and the hegemony of men
To conclude this essay, we offer some reflections and questions on both the individual and global presence of pornography and how this relates to the dominance of men across the world. Hearn (2004) has suggested that to understand how men maintain their dominance in most global societies attention should be focused on the personal and political practices that sustain the hegemony of men. Thinking about pornography provides a perfect case study for contemplating these issues. At the personal level, do men use pornography to develop and sustain oppressive and humiliating (hetero)sexual practices with non-consenting partners? How does the individual use of pornography affect a man’s sense of (sexual) self and his subsequent sexual practices? How do these practices impinge on other areas of coexistence with women and children and other men?
At a political level detailed exploration into the means of production of pornography is essential. Is coercion used in the manufacture and dissemination of pornography? Does the pornography embody racist, sexist and heterosexist stereotypes?
Thus, to understand and respond to pornography requires more than experimental reassurance (or not) that men consuming it may go on to develop (or not) harsh(er) attitudes to women and children or commit sexual offences. It requires more than assertions that if it does not cause sex crime it is ethically acceptable. It requires a detailed analysis on a personal and political level as to what pornography is representing—in terms of gendered and racial sexual dynamics—and it requires consideration of the conditions of the manufacture and dissemination of the product.
References and further reading
Brod, H. (1990) ‘Eros thanatized’, in Michael Kimmel (ed.) Men Confront Pornography, New York: Crown, pp. 190–206.
Chancer, L. (1998) Recondlable Differences, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Check, J.V.P. (1992) ‘The effects of violent pornography, nonviolent dehumanizing pornography, and erotica’, in C.Itzin (ed.) Pornography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 350–8.
Chester, G. and Dickey, J. (eds) (1988) Feminism and Censorship, Bridport: Prism Press.
Cox, P. (2000) ‘Pornography’, Journal of Sexual Aggression, 6 (1–2):128–49.
Duggan, L., Hunter, N. and Vance, C.S. (1988) ‘False promises’, in K.Ellis, B.Jaker, N.Hunter, B.O’Dair and A.Talmer (eds) Caught Looking, Seattle, WA: Real Comet Press, pp. 72–85.
Dworkin, A. (1981) Pornography, London: The Women’s Press.
Everywoman (1988) Pornography and Sexual Violence, London: Everywoman.
Forna, A. (1992) ‘Pornography and racism’, in C. Itzin (ed.) Pornography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 102–12.
Grace, S. (1996) Testing Obscenity, London, Home Office.
Harding, S. (1991) Whose Sdence? Whose Knowledge? Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Hearn, J. (2004) ‘From hegemonic masculinity to the hegemony of men’, Feminist Theory, 5 (1): 49–72.
Hughes, D.M. (2000) ‘Welcome to the Rape Camp’, Journal of Sexual Aggression, 6 (1–2):29–51.
Jensen, R. and Dines, G. (1998) ‘The content of mass-marketed pornography’, in G.Dines, R. Jensen and A.Russo (eds) Pornography, New York: Routledge, pp. 65–100.
Kelly, L. and Regan, L. (2000) ‘Sexual exploitation of children in Europe’, Journal of Sexual Aggression, 6 (1–2):6–28.
Kimmel, M. (ed.) Men Confront Pornography, New York: Crown.
Linz, D., Donnerstein, E. and Penrose, S. (1987) ‘Sexual violence in the mass media’, in P.Shaver and C.Hendrick, Sex and Gender, London: Sage.
McNair, B. (1996) Mediated Sex, London and New York. Arnold.
Malamuth, N. (2001) ‘Pornography’, in N.J. Smelser and P.B.Baltes (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sdences, 17, Elsevier: Amsterdam, New York, pp. 11816–21.
Malamuth, N., Addison, T. and Koss, M. (2000) ‘Pornography and sexual aggression’, Annual Review of Sex Research, 11, Allentown, PA: Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.
Morgan, R. (1980) ‘Theory and practice’, in L. Lederer (ed.) Take Back the Night, New York: Morrow, pp. 134–40.
Russo, A. (1998) ‘Feminists confront pornography’s subordinatingpractices’, in G.Dines, R.Jensen and A.Russo (eds) Pornography, New York: Routledge, pp. 9–35.
Strossen, N. (1995) Defending Pornography, London: Simon and Schuster.
Thomas, J.A. (2000) ‘Gay male video pornography’, in R.Weitzer (ed.) Sex for Sale, New York: Routledge, pp. 49–66.
