Recently I was asked to contribute to a debate on pornography in a local newspaper, the Weekend Post, by responding to a number of questions on the matter. Probably because of limited space, my contribution was fairly drastically cut, which made me decide to post it here in its entirety as originally written. The questions, which were formulated by Shaun Gillham of the Weekend Post, followed by my answers, are reproduced below.
This is a difficult question, especially if one has reason to believe that pornography perpetuates some of the worst crimes against women, in addition to reinforcing patriarchy and misogyny. Nevertheless, I don’t believe in censorship of the media, although I do believe that everyone, including people who work in media, should have a sufficiently well-developed sense of social responsibility to “censor” (or refrain from) the publication of certain kinds of material themselves, such as child-pornography, for instance. Why do I oppose censorship? Because if it were to be practised, a lot of what is not pornography, would also be expurgated. Most people erroneously equate pornography and eroticism or erotic art. Eroticism in art, ranging from television, film, and painting to photography, may include nudity and sex, but lacks a crucial feature of pornography, namely the (violent) subjugation of women by various means. One could have a film with lots of nudity and sex, for instance, where the lovemaking between a man and a woman is reciprocal and mutually empowering, for example in the beautiful film based on Marguerite Durass’s novel, The Lover. This is not pornography. The etymology of the word gives one a good idea of what pornography amounts to: it comes from the Greek words for “whore” (porné) and “write” or “draw” (graphein), and therefore means more or less “the depiction of women as whores”, who deserve nothing better than to be treated as means to an end (vicarious or direct sexual satisfaction). It follows that pornography displays different degrees of seriousness as far as such subordinating depiction goes, ranging from “soft porn” to “hard-core porn”. The worst kind of pornography is therefore, understandably, so-called “snuff films”, where those who watch them get a kick out of seeing a woman die onscreen in the course of a sex act. There are several instances of cinema which addresses the existence of “snuff films” with varying degrees of critical persuasiveness, of which Joel Schumacher’s 1999 film, 8 Millimetres, is a good example of a film noir that exposes snuff films for what they are — a crime against women — and criticises it accordingly, albeit with an undertone of pessimism. Therefore, to get back to the question, I believe that it is wrong to restrict media freedom (under the general rubric of “freedom of expression”), BUT I do believe that far more should be done in schools and universities to educate pupils and students about the nature of pornography, so that they can recognise it and criticise it, as it should be criticised. When this happens, people learn to reject pornography — not eroticism — for what it is: the (potentially violent) depiction, and therefore ostensible justification, of the subjugation of women. Pornography that subjugates men is imaginable, but I have never seen any of it, although there is pornography which depicts the subjugation of gay men — but this is a complex psychological phenomenon (with a counterpart in heterosexual pornography), because it involves voluntary sado-masochistic practices.
Another difficult question, without a straightforward answer. I once listened to someone from one of the Nordic countries being interviewed about the effect of removing legislation banning pornography in their country. They found, to their surprise, that there was a noticeable drop in cases of rape after pornography was made freely available on television and elsewhere. The probable explanation is that some men would find the kind of (perversely power-related) sexual satisfaction they need, vicariously by means of viewing images and living out their sexual fantasies indirectly, in this way precluding them from finding a woman and raping her to achieve the same result. From this perspective it seems morally justifiable, in consequentialist or utilitarian terms, to make pornography available on certain channels. However, one might argue that, to make it available at all, is to justify it implicitly, and such justification should be rejected. What does argue further in favour of its availability, is the well-known phenomenon — witnessed in the US during the time of prohibition of alcohol consumption — that when something is legally prohibited, it becomes all the more attractive, and goes underground. In other words, I don’t think legally censoring pornography, abominable as it is, would eradicate it — it would still flourish. The radical feminist, Andrea Dworkin, argued that the global pornography industry is worth more in dollars, annually, than the film and music industries combined (partly because it overlaps with the latter two). This tells us something. Again — I believe that openness about it, and educating, teaching children from early on, what it is, is the best option. That’s what I did with my children, and it has worked — they all know how to recognise it, and reject it.
It follows from what I have said, above, that I do not believe in such “controls” (of a technical kind, anyway), but in teaching and educating children. When my daughter was nine years old, I was working on a conference paper on surveillance in postmodern society, and analyzing the film, Sliver, which deals with it. The audience lure in the film is open, explicit sex in many scenes, and while she was watching it with me, she suddenly asked: “Dad, is this movie about anything else than changing position?” I then knew that my way of approaching her and her brothers’ education was on the right track, because of the intelligence of her question, and it gave me the opening to explain to her that the film’s theme was really the effect or consequences of electronic surveillance of people’s behaviour, and that the sex was simply a way of getting people to view it. This involved some complex Foucaultian philosophy, but she understood, and was satisfied. Many parents avoid their educational responsibility towards their children by letting them watch this kind of thing on their own, instead of using it as an opportunity to teach them to think critically.
Again, it follows from what I have already said, that I believe they do, if they are stupid or (patriarchally) perverse enough to need that kind of thing. People who are able to discern critically what pornography is, in contrast to erotic art, for example, soon lose their taste for porn. Besides, porn is dead boring — once you have seen one sexual orgy on film, where people just copulate in front of the camera, you don’t need to see it again. It is far more erotic to see two people kiss each other in a truly passionate way — the way Greta Schacchi and Peter Coyote’s characters kiss in a hotel corridor when they realize they are in love in the beautifully erotic film, A Man in Love. Pornography is not only an insult against women (and a debasement of them as well as of the men who want it); it is also boring. As beings capable of creating culture, all people deserve better than that.
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