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Mass media: sex and violence
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Mass media: sex and violence
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Segal (1993) gives an excellent overview of a number of the objections which could be made to the results of experimental research:
She concludes:
It is never possible, whatever the image, to isolate it, to fix its meaning and predict some inevitable pattern of response, independently from assessing its wider representational context and the particular recreational, educational or social context in which it is being received. .... Context really does matter. This may help to explain why inconsistency is the only consistency to emerge from empirical research which ignores both the semiotic and social context of images of sexual explicitness. As the most recent Home Office report on pornography commissioned in the UK concluded: 'Inconsistencies emerge between very similar studies and many interpretations of these have reached almost opposite conclusions.'
(Howitt and Cumberbatch (1990)
Indeed, the Home Office comment must surely echo doubts which many of must have about the usefulness of experimental social psychology. In a very different context, Kenneth Gergen recounts his early enthusiasm for the experimental psychology which he practised, recalling the optimism with which he approached experiments, which, he was convinced, would reveal to us scientifically validated truths about human nature, on the basis of which we could set about improving society. In the meantime he has lost that enthusiasm, since it relies on the assumption that knowledge accumulates, that we can continue to add more to our stable stock of knowledge through conducting such experiments. But what, he asks, if social life is not stable, but, rather, in a constant state of chaotic transformation? In that case, he says, referring to experiments he had conducted in the sixties,
then the science does not accumulate knowledge; its knowledge represents no more than a small, and perhaps not very important history of college student behavior in artificial laboratory settings.
Gergen (undated)
In fact, of course, as Gergen points out, in as far as the results of social psychology's experiments make it through into the mainstream culture, they themselves contribute to the chaotic transformation and to undermining the very stability which the studies presuppose.
If it appears to you that the laboratory evidence is insufficient to support censorship of pornography, what about personal testimony of the sort assembled by Dworkin in evidence to Minneapolis and the Meese Commission? It's worth considering what Lyn Segal has to say:
Segal (1993 p. 16) refers to the testimony of one woman whose husband became interested in group
sex after reading various pornographic magazines. As a result he took her to various places where pornographic acts took place and even invited a friend into their bed. The woman, who found the group sex distressing in the extreme, agreed to act out in private with her husband a variety of scenarios, despite the fact that she found them intensely degrading. It was only after learning karate and travelling on her own that she found the courage to leave her husband. (If you wish to read the woman's testimony, you should be aware that it makes for harrowing and distressing reading:
)
On this testimony Segal comments:
This is indeed moving testimony, but surely all along there was only one suitable solution to any such woman's distress: having the power and the confidence to leave a man who forced her into actions she wished to avoid, and who showed no concern at all for her wishes. Pornography is not the problem here, nor its elimination the solution.
Segal (1993 p. 16)
Whether it's really as easy to deal with as that is an open question. In April 1997 a man and his wife were sentenced to prison for the repeated rape of their daughters over a period of three years. The man claimed to have developed an interest in paedophilia through the internet and was jailed for life; his wife was said to be addicted to hardcore pornography and was sentenced to a minimum of fifteen years. The couple had made videos of the eldest daughter who was raped weekly from the age of 12. Such young children could hardly 'have the power and confidence to leave'. Whether 'pornography is the problem here' of course remains an open question.
What is clear is that campaigners like Dworkin have succeeded in establishing pornography and violence as necessarily linked. For example the slide-show presentations used by such campaigners to present their case often include
sado-masochistic scenes, which are presented as typical of hardcore pornography. Firstly, the point needs to be made that S/M materials are not typical and secondly it should be stressed that S/M practitioners rarely cause one another serious physical harm, but are engaged in acting out elaborate fantasies, in which the woman is just as likely to be dominant as the man. Some campaigners seem to assume that because they would find a certain act abhorrent the people portrayed engaging in it must have been coerced, which seems a peculiarly parochial and censorious view of human sexuality. MacKinnon seems, for example, in one piece of evidence to consider that a woman portrayed
deep-throating a man must necessarily have been coerced into it. The claim seems to rest on no more than her assumption that she would find the act impossible or distasteful. Indeed, there seems to be an assumption underlying some of her writing that some sexual acts are necessarily unpleasant - 'penises ramming vaginas', for example. 'Ramming' might not always be the most appropriate or arousing technique, but I should think most couples engage in a spot of ramming at one point or another. And as for:
You grow up with your father holding you down and covering your mouth so another man can make a horrible searing pain between your legs. When you are older, your husband ties you to the bed and drips hot wax on your nipples and brings in other men to watch and makes you smile through it. Your doctor will not give you drugs he has addicted you to unless you suck his penis.
Eh? Who's this 'you'?
Segal also considers the argument that pornography, whether or not it leads to the humiliation and degradation of women by men who have used it, involves the humiliation, degradation and exploitation of women who work in the industry.
Segal considers and dismisses claims that there are 'snuff' movies in which women are actually murdered on camera as they reach a climax, movies which have always turned out in fact to feature special effects. Conventionally, claims of the existence of snuff movies have always been dismissed as there has never been any evidence of their existence. However, in recent weeks (April 1997) there have been claims in the British press and on British TV that snuff movies in which young boys were actually killed on camera were in fact made in Holland in recent years. The claims are currently being investigated by police.
Segal also considers the case of Linda Marchiano, aka Linda Lovelace, who became famous through the movie Deep Throat about a woman whose site of sexual arousal was at the back of her throat and therefore performs fellatio throughout the movie in her quest for sexual satisfaction. In her later book Ordeal Marchiano described how she was coerced by her violent husband into performing on camera. Segal comments on this that it is interesting that it was Marchiano's success as a porn actress which enabled her to leave her husband and start campaigning against pornography. Segal links this with the claim by many sex workers that they enjoy their work and like the control it gives them over their lives. She considers the accusation that anti-porn feminists 'primarily reflect the privileges of largely white, middle class women who, not being as exploited as many other women, can self-servingly present the issue of women's sexual objectification by men as the principal source of oppression of all women.' (p.17)
It may seem that Segal dismisses these anti-pornography claims rather too easily. If you read through the sickening testimony of Dworkin's witnesses, it is hard to agree with Segal that 'pornography is not the problem here'. The right answer instinctively feels like Dworkin's plea:
One cannot turn one's back on the women or on the burden of memory they carry. If one values women as human beings, one will not turn one's back on the women who are being hurt today and the women who will be hurt tomorrow.
Dworkin (1989)
Mackinnon, on the other hand, takes Marchiano's testimony as evidence of the harm done to women by pornography. For her, the making of the pornographic movies involves the systematic degradation of women. As Mackinnon sees it, Deep Throat involved the humiliation and degradation of Marchiano; it then caused men to force women to try acts which Marchiano had only been able to perform under hypnosis. According to Mackinnon, numerous women were hospitalized directly as a result of the film; some were raped by strangers, others were coerced or raped by boyfriends.
As far as the claimed ill-treatment of women in the sex industry is concerned, it is surely not enough to say, as Segal appears to, that many enjoy the control it gives them over their lives. No doubt having money does give one control over one's life, but to approve of the sex-industry on those grounds is rather like justifying boxing on the grounds that it is a way for poor (mostly black) males to escape the ghetto. It is not enough, as Nadine
Strossen, for example, does, that
some sex industry workers affirm their occupational choice in explicitly feminist terms, stressing that they find it empowering as well as enjoyable
Strossen (19??) p. 186
No doubt some do. Indeed, one could well imagine, say, a sixteen year old prostitute in Britain, where prostitutes are becoming ever younger, claiming that, as a prostitute she has a measure of independence, a sense of community and even a sense of being cared for, which she has never experienced before. But one could hardly justify her degradation in drug addiction, beatings from her pimp and maltreatment from her customers simply because she finds it preferable to the poverty, sexual abuse and mental torture she experienced in the parental home. The high number of deaths amongst porn stars, from drug overdoses, AIDS and suicide, hardly suggests that they all feel empowered by their work.
Segal, of course, is not presenting as simplistic a case as that. She recognizes that the problem lies, as always in my view, in power relationships and the exercise of power:
The harm, it is important to be clear about, is contained not in the explicitly sexual material, but in the social context which deprives a woman (or sometimes a man) of her (or his) ability to reject any unwanted sexual activity - whether with husband, lover, parent, relative, friend, acquaintance or stranger.
Segal (1993 p. 18)
And in fact, it does indeed seem to have been Marchiano's powerlessness before her husband's mistreatment of her which was the root of her problem; the coercion was from her husband, not from the sex industry. Far from seeing her experience in the film studio as degrading and exploitative, she experienced it as emancipation, freedom from the beatings she received at her husband's hands and the opportunity to grow, as part of a group, away from her husband:
Something was happening to me, something was strange. It had to do with the fact that no one was treating me like garbage. And maybe it was just the chemistry of being part of a group. For the first part in many months I was thrown in with other people, other people who weren't perverted and threatening. I became part of a group. I began to ease up ... I was laughing along with the rest of them. And no one was asking me to do anything I did not want to do.
Lovelace and McGrady (1980 p. 114, quoted in McClintock (1992))
And porno-star 
Nina Hartley makes it perfectly plain that she finds nothing in the least degrading in her performances:
I find performing in sexually explicit films satisfying on a number of levels ... In choosing my rôles and characterizations carefully, I strive to show, always, women who thoroughly enjoy sex and are forceful, self-satisfying and guilt-free without also being neurotic, unhappy or somehow unfulfilled ... I can look back on my performances and see that I have not contributed to any negative depictions of women; and the feedback I get from men and women of all ages supports my contention.
Hartley (1988) quoted in Segal & McIntosh (1992)
Incidentally, the managing editor of the UK magazines Penthouse and Forum is a woman, Isabel Koprowski, who claims to enjoy pornography. The first female editor of Penthouse (UK) is Linzi Drew, who also edits her own Linzi Drew's EROS, which contains many explicit letters. She comments that, when selecting letters for inclusion, reading them is sometimes so arousing that she stops for a maturbation break, or, if her boyfriend is around, to have sex on the office floor, which, she comments 'always makes for a pleasant interlude during my working day'. (in Matrix (1996 : 47))
Empirically, all pornography is made under conditions of inequality based on sex, overwhelmingly by poor, desperate, homeless, pimped women who were sexually abused as children.
according to Catharine MacKinnon in Only Words
It would be interesting to know what proportion of sex workers (men as well as women) are satisfied or dissatisfied with their jobs, how many are forced into it by economic necessity and so on, but I have been unable to discover any formal survey. Consequently such evidence as I have been able to find is, like that above, entirely anecdotal. Drew describes herself making a scene for the softcore movie I Love Linzi: 'I begin the video by lying on a sun lounger in the glorious Spanish sunshine playing with myself. Not a bad way to make a living, you might think, and I have to agree!' (ibid. p.48), but Drew is in a more
powerful position than many workers in the porn industry. It is quite probable that sex workers whose experience is negative are unlikely to complain as that may, as in any industry, damage their chances of future employment, so it could be that positive reports are disproportionately high. Certainly, McElroy (1995) highlights the fact that the participants in porn movies do not normally have formal contracts, and she campaigns for them to be provided with proper contracts, which would protect not only them, but their employers too. She suggests that the lack of contracts is in part due to the fact that the porn industry has only recently emerged from illegal status and that it continues to be poorly regulated. In common with many pro-porn feminists, she argues that the anti-porn lobby, in stigmatizing and marginalizing porn, is likely to contribute to the continuation of unregulated working practices. She does, incidentally, also suggest that the anti-porn lobby is probably contributing to the exclusion of women's perspectives from the production of sex videos ('In talking to producers and distributors, I have found them to be not only open to feminist ideas, but eager to hear them'). (See also Wendy McElroy's Site for Individualist Feminism, and Individualist Anarchism)
It is almost certainly the case that in some areas of the sex industry, workers are exploited and degraded, but that is the same in any other industry. McElroy was able to find little evidence of physical coercion in the industry, but the question of economic coercion remains. It is clear from McElroy's work that 'most actresses earned appallingly little for appearing in videos', only a few hundred dollars for a day's work, with no royalties and residuals. However, the movies serve to establish their reputation which then supports their work on the dance circuit. McElroy quotes the case of Amy Lynn Baxter, a Playboy centrefold who had had the good fortune to be promoted on national TV by Howard Stern. She earned around a quarter of a million dollars per year for two months' work on the dance circuit. Ms Baxter, no doubt, is atypical. McElroy's survey, which forms the appendix of the book, produced no responses from workers in pornography, but a number from prostitutes. McElroy argues, convincingly, I think, that the inclusion of these results is justified, since, if women sex workers are indeed victims, then one would expect that to be all the more clearly shown in the experience of prostitutes, as their work is illegal and they thus enjoy less protection than workers in sex videos. The women respondents had held jobs ranging from waitress to nurse, from archeologist to news editor. 90% of them had finished high school, 51% had a college degree, 17% had 'some college' and 17% were currently pursuing further education. Relatively few of the respondents provided statistically useful data, but the data that were provided showed a mean weekly income of $490 for a 41 hour week of non-sex work prior to prostitution and a mean weekly income from a 19 hour week of sex work of $2,630. (McElroy (1995 : 222 - 223)
McElroy's survey also enquired about the childhood of the respondents. 17% reported happy childhoods, 49% avergae, 22% said unhappy. 24 said they had been sexually molested as children and 20% said they had been physically molested, reporting spankings or other forms of battery.
McElroy's survey is limited to a small number of respondents; it is not a formal survey and has not been conducted on non-sex-workers as a control. Nevertheless, it does demonstrate that MacKinnon's blanket claims are not substantiated.
If there is economic coercion, then the harm done is not done by pornography, but by capitalism aided and abetted by the governments of Thatcher, Reagan and Bush, which sought to roll back the state and in doing so loosened the regulation of industry. We do not campaign for the furniture industry to be banned because some sofas emit toxic fumes when burning, nor do we campaign for agriculture to be made illegal because of the incidence of BSE. Rather, we campaign for effective legislation to prevent abuse. There are no doubt problems unique to the sex industry, for example that a woman raped on the set of a movie may be less willing to report it than if it happened under other circustances and the police may well be less wiling to investigate. However, it may be that, by seeking to ban and certainly succeeding in stigmatizing and marginalizing sex work, anti-pornography campaigners are contributing to the exploitation and hazardous working conditions which sex workers have to contend with.
Does that mean then that there is no case to be answered? My own inclination is to think that it does. It does not seem to me that the laboratory evidence shows much at all which allows any firm conclusions - in fact Donnerstein himself urged caution in the interpretation of his results; nor do I accept that the wealth of testimony provided by Andrea Dworkin is entirely convincing. The testimony she provides is distressing and sickening, but it is not clear to me that pornography is the root cause of the suffering of those unfortunate women. However, I am aware that my response may in part be due to my abhorrence of censorship and my view that censorship is a greater ill than all the racist ramblings of the National Front and the 'filth' of pornography that we have to allow if we do not censor:
... there are no legal or logical grounds for treating sexist material any differently from (for example) racist or anti-Semitic propaganda; an equitable law would have to prohibit any kind of public defamation. And the very thought of such sweeping law has to make anyone with imagination nervous. Could Catholics claim they were being harassed by nasty depictions of the Pope? Could Russian refugees claim that the display of Communist literature was a form of psychological torture? Would pro-abortion material be taken off the shelves on the grounds that it defamed the unborn? I'd rather not find out.
Willis (1983) p.46, quoted in Goodman (1992)
The argument here is in defence of freedom of speech, the defence of First Amendment rights, a defence which I personally feel the force of. Nadine Strossen argues strongly that there is no past invasion of our liberties which cannot happen again. If we sacrifice pornographers to the censorship lobby, then, sooner or later, we'll sacrifice other authors too.
However, it's worth bearing in mind the massive inequalities of access to channels of speech which pertain in our society. 'Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one,' as A J Liebling put it (in Tuchman (1978)). This is a point which Mackinnon repeatedly emphasizes: what sense does it make to defend absolute freedom of speech when that freedom merely allows the stronger, more dominant 'speaker' to silence the weaker one, the speech of men to silence that of women? The First Amendment is founded upon the proposition of John Stuart Mill that good speech ultimately drives out bad. In his ideally rational and egalitarian world, truth defeats untruth. But, if the victory is simply the victory of him who shouts loudest (men as opposed to women, pornographers as opposed to their alleged victims), then the system collapses.
This is a point of view I can understand and which is powerfully argued by MacKinnon. On the whole, though, I tend to the view that, precisely because of the inequalities of power, the guarantee of freedom of speech, limited though it may be, is an important liberty to preserve and, if possible, to extend rather than curtail. Mackinnon presents compelling arguments for legislative remedies, but the evidence from Canada, where legislation similar to the Minneapolis Ordinance was enacted, and where it was largely used against feminist and lesbian pornography, is that the powerful will use whatever means they have at their disposal to preserve their power. A significant corrective to that power is the right to speak openly against its abuse.
I am keenly aware, though, that, as a man, not forced into a subordinate position by an accident of birth, not necessarily afraid to walk through the streets at night and not belonging to a sex pictured naked along the top shelf of every newsagent's, I am probably ill-equipped to pronounce on the effects of pornography on women.
In the next section, we will take a look at some of the views of feminists who oppose censorship.
Feminists for Freedom of Expression website
An Historical Conspectus and Evaluation of Patriarchal Ideologies and Attitudes and the Policing of Domestic Violence - dissertation by Pamela Chanberlain
Media violence
EU legislation
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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