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Mass media: sex and violence
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Mass media: sex and violence
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In Great Britain, on the moral right the campaign for censorship of pornography has been spearheaded by such religious groups as the Festival of Light which later became National VALA, led until recently by its founder Mary Whitehouse. In Britain, the success of National VALA as a pressure group is evident in successful private prosecutions brought against Gay News on the grounds of blasphemous libel and against the play Romans in Britain because it contained scenes of buggery. Although Whitehouse and the National VALA were popularly considered a bit silly, their views seemed nevertheless to be quite widely shared, as reflected in Customs and Excise actions against purveyors of pornography (especially gay and lesbian) throughout the 80s. The success of the moral right is also evident in the Video Recordings Act, the BSC and so on and perhaps also in the lack of any outcry against the Location of Pornographic Material Bill, proposed in the early 1990s by Bristol MP Dawn Primarolo. If the bill had been successful it would have 'virtually eliminate[d] what little sexual material is now sold legally in Britain' (Assiter and Carol (1993)). The law as it stands already has serious consequences for producers of, and dealers in, pornography. Linzi Drew recounts how she was sent to Holloway Prison for four months for helping her boyfriend to run a small mail-order porn company with fewer than one hundred customers. Her boyfriend received a nine-month sentence 'for supplying consenting adults with videos that depicted images of other consenting adults screwing [....] videos of a type freely available in every other country of the EC'. (in Matrix (1996 : 50))
In the United States the campaign is most clearly identified with Senator Jesse Helms, backed by a variety of fundamentalist religious groups and 'moral re-armament' groups, such as Citizens for Decency Through Law and the National Federation for Decency. The success of the moral re-armament crusaders is seen in the introduction of the V-chip, TV network ratings on sex and violence , and the Communications Decency Act. In addition Helms led a virulent campaign against state sponsorship of 'pornographic' art, notably the works of renowned photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, with the result that the funding work of the National Endowment for the Arts has virtually ground to a halt. (For information of the extraordinary fate of Mapplethorpe's work in the UK, see the section on the Obscene Publications Act.) In the US, too, existing laws can already have serious consequences for sex workers. One of the best known recent cases is that of the 'Erotic Eleven', arrested in 1993 on charges of felony lesbianism and pandering. The women took part in a live sex-act at a fund-raising party held by the adult video industry. Although most of the women wanted to fight the case, they were deterred by the possibility of a six to twelve year term of imprisonment. The Las Vegas prosecutor agreed to reduce the charges to a misdemeanour if the women pleaded guilty and made a donation of $20,000 to local charities. The $20,000 was stumped up by people in the industry, but the women still faced hefty legal bills, as well as other consequences arising from their convictions - for example, Nina Hartley, one of those convicted, may no longer enter Canada to work as a dancer. On entering Canada to meet with fans without dancing or receiving a fee, she was thrown into gaol for three days and ordered to leave the country. Anti-porn feminists Broadly speaking, feminist concern with pornography began as part of a broader concern with the representation of women, whether in soaps, in advertising, in movies or in porn. By the 80s, concern was more clearly focused on the alleged connexion between pornography and male violence against women, the position being summed up in the catch phrase: 'Pornography is the theory; rape is the practice'.
The two most prominent American feminists to have pursued this line of argument are Andrea Dworkin and Catharine McKinnon. Dworkin's book Pornography: Men possessing women is perhaps the most influential text in the argument that pornography supports all forms of female oppression and has supported, caused and legitimated violence against women throughout history. Dworkin writes:
pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women's bodies and souls; rape, battery, incest, and prostitution animate it; dehumanization and sadism characterize it; it is war on women, serial assaults on dignity, identity, and human worth; it is tyranny. Each woman who has survived knows from the experience of her own life that pornography is captivity--the woman trapped in the picture used on the woman trapped wherever he's got her.
Dworkin (1989)
Few who read the testimony of the women who have contacted her to tell her of the harm they believe pornography has caused them could fail to be moved, appalled, by the stories they tell. (an example can be found here 
, but be aware that it is harrowing and offensive). More of Dworkin's writings may be found at the 
Andrea Dworkin On-line Library
In 1984 Dworkin and Mackinnon authored an ordinance for Minneapolis which would have allowed women to take civil action against anyone involved in producing and selling pornography on the grounds that they had been harmed by it. The Minneapolis Ordinance was in fact vetoed by the mayor, but it continued to be proposed in other cities and briefly became law in Indianapolis. Mackinnon, professor of law at Michigan University, argues, not for a ban on pornography, but for the right to seek damages in the civil courts for harm caused by pornography:
This law [referring to the proposed Minneapolis Ordinance] aspires to guarantee women's rights consistent with the first amendment by making visible a conflict of rights between the equality guaranteed to all women and what, in some legal sense, is now the freedom of the pornographers to make and sell, and their consumers to have access to, the materials this ordinance defines. Judicial resolution of this conflict, if they do for women what they have done for others [Mackinnon refers here to laws designed to prevent racial harassment], is likely to entail the balancing of the rights of women arguing that our lives and opportunities, including our freedom of speech and action, are constrained by - and in many cases flatly precluded by, in and through - pornography, against those who argue that the pornography is harmless, or harmful only in part but not in the whole of the definition; or that it is more important to preserve the pornography than it is to prevent or remedy whatever harm it does.
MacKinnon (1992: 467)
[You can find further details of the ordinance, as well as a discussion of Dworkin's and McKinnon's arguments in the on-line version of Dworkin's and MacKinnon's Pornography and Civil Rights]
MacKinnon also raises the question of whether pornography can in any sense be considered to be speech. She considers it action, an act of violence against women:
In our law [i.e. the Minneapoliis Ordinance], a legislature recognizes that pornography, as defined and made actionable, undermines sex equality. One can say - and I have - that pornography is a causal factor in violation of women; one can also say that women will be violated so long as pornography exists; but one can also say simply that pornography violates women. Perhaps this is what the woman had in mind who testified at our hearings that whether or not pornography causes violent acts to be perpetrated against some women is not her only issue: 'Porn is already a violent act against women. It is our mothers, our daughters, our sisters, and our wives that are for sale for pocket change at the news-stands in this country.'
MacKinnon (1992: 482-3)
There are still certainly feminists who do not oppose pornography and object strongly to the focus on pornography to the exclusion of other issues of women's subordination, but it is Dworkin's and MacKinnon's line which has been the most successful in gathering wide support. FACT (Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force) was formed in 1984 to argue the anti-Dworkin view and to stress that supporting greater restriction of freedom of speech was likely to end up supporting anti-feminist elements. Indeed, feminism and the moral and religious right seem to make strange bed-fellows. Nevertheless, it is Dworkin's and McKinnon's radical feminist view which has received most media attention, to the extent that many now think it is the only feminist position on pornography. Thus, the question of whether or not pornography does indeed cause harm is central to the most prominent feminist case.
FACT was instrumental in having the Indianapolis Ordinance declared unconstitutional. Indianapolis took the case to the US Supreme Court. As a result a Commission was set up by the Attorney-General Edwin Meese. The Meese Commission's terms of reference were couched in anti-pornography terms, apparently taking it as read that pornography was a threat which needed to be contained. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that the Indianapolis Ordinance was unconstitutional because in violation of the First Amendment.
That appeared to be the end of the matter as far as the US was concerned. However, as soon as the World Wide Web turned the Internet from the exclusive preserve of the military, the university and computer anoraks into something approaching a mass medium of communication, the debate over pornography arose again, leading to the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
In Great Britain the radical feminist view that pornography was responsible for violence against women was taken up by the Campaign Against Pornography and the Campaign Against Pornography and Censorship in the late 80s. The National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty) took up the CAPC's suggestion to look into methods of fighting pornography, in fact therefore looking at possibilities of censorship. At first sight, this may seem an extraordinary move on behalf of the National Council for Civil Liberties, which traditionally campaigns against censorship. However, if pornography does indeed cause violence against women, it follows that women's civil liberties are limited by the production and distribution of pornography. Surprisingly also - at least it surprised me - the move to censor pornography was strongly supported by left-wing feminists in the Labour Party.
As in the United States, the move to ban pornography alarmed many feminists in Britain, surely already one of the least liberal countries of the 'Western world'. They saw in it the danger of an alliance with the moral right and the danger of contributing to the oppressive legislation of Thatcherite 'Victorian values', especially since throughout the 80s much police action and legislation had targeted gays and lesbians. In seeking to ban pornography, in seeking any limitation on the freedom of speech, the moral right are pursuing their own interests and it is hard to see where theirs would overlap with feminists'. It's worth bearing in mind that the Oz trial of the seventies was ostensibly about indecency, but was actually politically motivated and that Gay News was prosecuted under obscenity laws, though there were never any obscene photographs in it. It is censorship of one kind or another, the control of information about sexuality, which had allowed men to define women and their sexuality in the first place. To call for censorship is not a step to be taken lightly, especially not by feminists, who, in a patriarchal society, are necessarily oppositional and a thorn in the side of authority. To hand authority a weapon to be used against others which they could just as easily use against you seems risky indeed. Those who begin by burning books end by burning people. Indeed, and quite predictably, censorship was supported by the flog 'em/hang 'em right. As a result Feminists Against Censorship was formed.
An Historical Conspectus and Evaluation of Patriarchal Ideologies and Attitudes and the Policing of Domestic Violence - dissertation by Pamela
Chamberlain
Media violence
Internet regulation
Regulation of the media in the UK
ACLU - Always Causing Legal Unrest links to discussion of many of the issues under discussion here. Then see
ACLU - American Civil Liberties Union
Bulletin Board on Film
Censorship - bulletin boards on a variety of film censorship topics; mailing
lists; numerous articles on film and other censorship in the UK
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