Page 393 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Pornography

“Family values” functions as a byword for antipornography patriarchal posi-
tions that condemn not only all sexual representations but also female sexual and
reproductive autonomy, as well as any nonheterosexual and nonmonogamous
sexuality. Some pornography advocates critique this heterosexist morality, iden-
tifying themselves as “pro-sex.” Others defend pornography by foregrounding it
as a First Amendment issue. Both groups tend to defend sexual representations,
as well as diverse adult consensual sexual practices, as a form of free speech and
expression, as essential to the imagination, as an element of all of the arts, and as
a potentially revolutionary force for social change.
Virtually all feminists argue that sexuality must be destigmatized, recon-
ceptualized, and defined in ways that refuse sexist moralities. The association
of sexuality with sin is a feature of specifically patriarchal (male-defined and
dominating) societies. Such societies control and regulate female sexuality and
reproduction, for example, by designating women as the sexual other while men
stand in for the generic human, by mandating heterosexuality and by basing that
heterosexuality in supposedly innate gender roles of male dominance and female
submission. These societies foster conditions that impose a sexual double stan-
dard, selecting some women (associated with men who have some social power)
for socially acceptable if inferior status in the male-dominant family, and chan-
nel other women, girls, and boys and young men (those without social power or
connections) into prostitution and pornography. Patriarchal societies give men,
officially or not, far more latitude in sexual behavior, and pornography and pros-
titution, institutions historically geared to men’s desires and needs, are the nec-
essary “dark side” of patriarchal marriage and moralistic impositions of sexual
“modesty.” In this way, pornography and conventional morality, though sup-
posedly opposites, actually work hand in glove to assure male access to women,
as well as male domination and female stigmatization and subordination.
Some feminists argue that as sexuality is destigmatized, “sex work,” includ-
ing prostitution and pornography, can be modes whereby women can express
agency and achieve sexual and fiscal autonomy. Those associated with what is
defined affirmatively as queer culture, including gay, lesbian, transgendered, and
heterosexual perspectives and practices that challenge conventional roles, often
argue that open and free sexual representation is essential to communicate their
history and culture and that social opposition to pornography is fundamentally
based in opposition to sexual freedom and diversity.
Mainstream cultural critics of pornography point to the ways that contempo-
rary pornography has become increasingly ubiquitous. They argue that pornog-
raphy damages relationships between persons, producing unrealistic and often
oppressive ideas of sex and beauty; that it limits, rather than expands, the sexual
imagination; that it can foster addictive or obsessive responses; and that it in-
creasingly serves as erroneous sex education for children and teenagers.
Antipornography feminists, while opposing censorship, point out that por-
nography is a historically misogynist institution, one whose very existence sig-
nifies that women are dominated. Pornography not only often openly humiliates
and degrades women, but it brands women as sex objects in a world where sex
itself is considered antithetical to mind or spirit. They contend that mainstream