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Mass media: sex and violence
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Mass media: sex and violence
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If you have ever seen, heard or read pornography of the sort that appeals to you, you'll know from your own body that it has an effect, the effect of sexual arousal, or, as pro-porn activist 
Susie Bright puts it:
I could criticize pornography until the cows come home, but I will not criticize the power of pictures and words to arouse me: to arouse passion or ideas, erections or damp panties, fears, curiosities, unarticulated yearnings, and odd realizations.
If it failed to have that effect on at least some of its users at least some of the time, it would be pretty useless pornography. Some of us may find the fact of sexual arousal in the presence of pornography offensive or even unnatural and may disapprove of such arousal in ourselves. Few, however, are likely to consider that the effect is in itself harmful, though conceivably the moral and religious right would condemn it because it is, quite simply, immoral.
Legal restrictions on pornography are more likely to be due to fears about what that sexual arousal might lead to, especially the interpersonal effects it might have, and it is on those supposed effects that MacKinnon and Dworkin lay the emphasis, claiming not only that pornography leads to violence against women, but also that the making of pornography involves violence against women. It is at first sight odd that anyone who is concerned about the effects of the media on violence against women should not set out first and foremost to ban violent media content, rather than sexually explicit media content, so let's see what kind of evidence is presented in support of the claimed pornography-violence link.
To an extent those interpersonal effects are no great surprise - a male heterosexual aroused by erotica will find females more attractive and responsive; both male and female heterosexuals when aroused will find a good-looking opposite-sex stranger attractive and will perceive an unattractive stranger as less attractive than when unaroused. There seems to be, as you might expect, an intensification of relevant normal perceptions.
This tends to be reflected in actual behaviour too. Thus a heterosexual who finds the arousal positive will look more at an opposite-sex stranger and sit closer to him/her. One who feels negatively about the arousal will avoid looking at, or sitting near, an opposite-sex stranger.
An experiment by Wishnoff (1978), quoted in Baron & Byrne (1984))appears to show that exposure to pornography reduces sexual anxiety (see the graph on the right). In this experiment, undergraduate females who had never had sex and reported high levels of anxiety were shown one of three videotapes. One of the tapes had no sexual content ('nonsex' on the graph), one included kissing and light petting ('nonexplicit sex' on the graph) and one showed nudity and various positions of intercourse. As the graph shows, after viewing, sexual anxiety was lowest amongst those who had witnessed the explicit sex.
The undergraduates were also asked about their plans for the near future. As you can see from the graph of these results, they were given twelve sexual activities to choose from ranging from breast fondling while clothed to oral sex and intercourse. Those who had seen the explicit film expected to engage in about eleven of them - and all who had seen the explicit film expected to have intercourse, as against around 15% in each of the other groups.
The research did not follow up whether they actually had intercourse or not and, of course, there would be a number of intervening variables which might skew the results, most obviously the availability of a suitable partner. However, Heiby and Becker (1980 quoted in Baron and Byrne (1984)) did control for this availability factor by studying the effects of filmed masturbation on the actual masturbation of those who watched it. The research showed that the female subjects did in fact engage in masturbation more frequently after watching a filmed model doing so.
These results would appear to lend some support to Dworkin's argument. People, it would seem, who witness explicit sex are inclined to imitate what they have seen, though that's no big surprise since we all know that pornography serves a masturbatory function and we know that some couples use pornography as a prelude to sex. Personally, I find it hard to see how anyone could object to either of those uses of pornography, unless they consider masturbation and sex morally wrong or harmful in themselves. However, in view of MacKinnon's and Dworkin's claims, the question has to be asked whether these experiments could suggest that an aroused male, disposed to imitate what he has seen would commit rape? We will consider that question in the next section.
Taken together with the evidence from Wishnoff and Heiby & Becker, Dworkin's reports from abused women are strongly suggestive of a link between pornography and sex crime. There is evidence, though, that the linkage is not quite so straightforward.
If we consider societies where there is little or no censorship of pornography we find that, far from an increase in sex crime after the abolition of censorship, there is in fact a decrease. The graph on the right shows the decline in Copenhagen police statistics after the ending of censorship. (Baron and Byrne (1984))
Sexual repression in sex offenders
Interestingly, also, the research by Goldstein et al. shows that sex offenders generally had less contact with erotica in their formative years than did non-offenders and typically had a sexually repressed childhood and sexually repressive parents (Goldstein et al (1974)).
Susie Bright again sums this up succinctly:
I too recoil in pain and incomprehension whenever I hear about the latest psychopath who has shot his mother, machine-gunned his co-workers, raped his daughter, slashed a prostitute. I notice that such men are more likely to have read the Bible than pornography, but I do not hold either script responsible for their actions.
It's probably worth bearing in mind, though, that rape is heavily under-reported and it is quite possible that convicted rapists are atypical. Violent pornography
Less reassuring, however, are the results of research into aggressive pornography. Donnerstein and Berkowitz (1981) conducted research in which male subjects were exposed to one of three films:
After these films had been seen some subjects were angered by a female stooge, some were not. As you can see,
However, the same material also led to more positive behaviour towards the stooge if the previous interaction had been friendly and research by the only female researcher, Professor Kelley of NYSU, appeared to show that male subjects who had been exposed to pornography in which a woman was shown to be suffering reacted faster to aiding a real female victim than did men who had not been exposed to sexual material (King (1993 : 59)). King concludes her survey of experimental findings by stating that
experiments which demonstrate that pornography leads to violence do so because they are constructed in such a way that there can be no other outcome; if we change the options in the experiment we find that pornography can and does produce pro-social effects. These findings suggest that pornography as stimulus does not determine aggression or pro-social effects per se; the effects depend, as they do with all other stimuli, upon the subjects' predispositions, not on the source of the arousal.
This research is fairly typical of that carried out through the 60s and 70s, much of it carried out under the auspices of the US Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. Most of the research results contributed to the view that pornography had no harmful effects.
Generally, though, the results were rejected by the moral right, who had no need of 'proof' one way or the other. To them, it was self-evident that pornography was immoral and harmful. Their view came together with the later feminist view, developed in the late 70s and 80s that pornography is of itself violence against women.
Emphasizing the alleged link between pornography and violence against women, Dworkin and MacKinnon have frequently drawn parallels between it and the holocaust - 'Dachau brought into the bedroom and celebrated' (Dworkin (1981) p. 69 quoted in Segal (1993) p.12). The claim is made that pornography is growing ever more violent, a claim repeated constantly before the Minneapolis and Meese Commissions in the US.
This view is argued forcefully by Diana E H Russell (1992) in her presentation of a causal link between pornography and rape. She quotes content analysis by Don Smith who examined 428 'adults only' paperbacks published between 1968 and 1974. Although, 'adults only', these were such as were readily available and not restricted to 'adult' bookstores. Russell reports Smith's findings as follows:
Russell argues from what we know of social learning that it seems likely that viewers of pornography can develop arousal responses to scenes of rape, murder, paedophilia etc. (For comment on social learning, see the section on learning; for comment on social learning theory and media violence, see the comments on the work of Bandura and Berkowitz). She further argues that the masturbatory activity frequently associated with and planned for in pornography usage is a further potent reinforcer.
Russell's conclusions are based on the psychological research of Donnerstein and others, researchers who were very tentative in their conclusions, which she most certainly is not. Russell's explanation of the difference between their conclusions and hers is that they are psychologists and she is a sociologist. As such, she is concerned with group responses and not with explanations of the varying arousal levels in individual men. She passionately criticizes Donnerstein for 'not taking sides in this issue':
If he were doing research on racism rather than on aggression against women, and if he had found that media portrayals of African Americans seriously desensitize people to violence against them, would he be so proud about not taking sides? If one is doing research on the holocaust, is one supposed not to take sides? Is one supposed not to take sides about the effects of poverty? Or nuclear war? Or rape?
Russell (1992) pp.348-49
Segal, who adopts a different standpoint, reports that studies show a decline in violent imagery in Playboy and Penthouse after 1977 and no increase in violence in pornographic videos between 1979 and 1983 (a period after that studied by Smith). Violence is rare in pornography and in sado-masochistic imagery men are more often shown as submissive than women. (Segal (1993))
Studies into the effects of violent pornography seem to suggest that there are negative effects. Some men are more likely to accept rape. However, Donnerstein et al (1987) conclude that the men whose attitudes to rape appear to be more calloused after exposure to violent pornography are probably already predisposed to consider sexual violence against women. Consequently, Donnerstein and others are inclined to conclude that it is the violence against women, not the pornography, which is the cause - which suggests that we should worry about any depiction of violence against women, whether pornographic or not.
In the next section we shall look at some of the criticisms of these results.
An Historical Conspectus and Evaluation of Patriarchal Ideologies and Attitudes and the Policing of Domestic Violence - dissertation by Pamela Chanberlain
Media violence
Internet regulation
Regulation of the media in the UK
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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