The word pornography is derived from the ancient Greek porne and graphos meaning ‘writing about whores’. From its origin in ancient Greece, where the porne were the lowest class of prostitute, to its present-day status in western capitalist society as a multi-billion pound international industry facilitated by developments in printing, video, computer and satellite broadcasting technologies, women’s participation and exploitation in prostitution and pornography has been economically motivated and predicated on institutionalized systems of gendered power relations. The pornography industry is part of a wider sex industry based on the buying and selling of women and children internationally as sexual commodities, and the international traffic in women and children for prostitution.
Traditionally, pornography has been considered as a form of erotic and sexually explicit representation. A number of sharply diverging positions have evolved with respect both to pornography and representation: the liberal/libertarian left; the conservative/moral right; competing feminist theories; and theories that primarily interrogate power and domination. There have been critiques of representation as power or objectification (especially over, or of, women) in terms of sexuality, gender, race, class, politics and ideology in fields as diverse as psychoanalysis, discourse analysis, language, post-modernism, feminism and Marxism. Literary, cultural, lesbian/queer and women’s studies have developed theories of creation/ production, effect and reception of representation taking into account the role of the producer, the nature of the content, and the identity/position/consciousness of the consumer.
There have been three major theories about the effects of pornography. First, from the authoritarian, conservative, moral perspective, sexual representations have been defined as obscene and harmful to the moral fabric of society and this definition has been institutionalized in the regulation of pornography by obscenity laws. Second, from within the liberal/ libertarian perspective, pornography has been defined not only as sexual representation but also as a form of freedom of expression which operates in the realm of fantasy and is regarded as a reflection of individual freedom in society.
Third, some strands of feminism have defined pornography as act or product as well as representation and considered the function of representation in the construction of ideas, fantasy, imagination and desire, and the influence of representation (through these processes) on action and behaviour. Some feminist perspectives on pornography see pornography as a positive expression of women’s sexuality. More generally, feminist and gay and lesbian campaigns have re-opened debates on pornography, transforming consciousness by making the connections between male power, male violence and pornography. One strand of feminism has defined pornography as ‘a practice of subordination and sexual inequality’ in terms of the harm experienced by women and children in the making and use of pornography. Harm is defined as including rape and sexual assault, child sexual abuse, sexual harassment and women’s subordinate status in society to which pornography is both a causal and a contributing factor, the effects of which are evidenced from a number of sources, including the testimony of women and children who have experienced pornography-related abuse, clinical work and research with sex offenders, and social science and experimental psychological research.
Since the early 1980s, research has distinguished between three different kinds of sexually explicit representation—sexually explicit material which is violent; sexually explicit material which is non-violent but subordinating and dehumanizing; and sexually explicit material which is non-violent and non-subordinating called erotica—and consistently shown negative effects on attitudes and behaviour from the use of the first two categories, but not the third. Government inquiries in the USA (1986), Canada (1985), Australia (1988) and New Zealand (1989) have drawn conclusions about the harmful effects of these categories of pornography.
The current tensions between the competing perspectives on pornography are illustrated by two judicial decisions. A Federal court in the USA in 1985 found that pornography produced attitudes of bigotry and contempt, fostered acts of aggression and harmed women’s opportunities for equality and rights of all kinds, but the court decided that this simply demonstrates the power of pornography as speech and ruled that the free speech rights of the pornography industry took precedence over women’s rights to be free of sexual violence and inequality (Hudnut 1985). In 1992 the Canadian Supreme Court ruled unanimously that sexually violent pornography and non-violent but subordinating and dehumanizing pornography contributed to sexual violence and sex discrimination (HM v Butler 1992).
Catherine Itzin
University of Bradford
Further reading
Barry, K. (1979) Female Sexual Slavery, New York.
Donnerstein, E., Linz, D. and Penrod, S. (1987) The Question of Pornography: Research Findings and Policy Implications, New York.
Dworkin, A. (1981) Pornography: Men Possessing Women, London.
Gibson, P.C. and Gibson, R. (eds) (1993) Dirty Looks, Women, Pornography, Power, London.
Heathcote, O., Itzin, C., Jouve, N.W. and Saunders, S. (1994) ‘Representation and Pornography’, Violence, Abuse and Gender Relations Strategy Seminar Report to the ESRC.
Itzin, C. (ed.) (1992) Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties, Oxford.
Kappeler, S. (1986) The Pornography of Representation, Cambridge, UK.
Linz, D. and Malamuth, N. (1993) Pornography, New York.
Malamuth, N.M. and Donnerstein, E. (eds) (1984) Pornography and Sexual Aggression, New York.
Segal, L. and McIntosh, M. (eds) (1992) Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate, London.
Zillmann, D. and Bryant, J. (eds) (1989) Pornography: Research Advances and Policy Considerations, Hillsdale, N J.
