Page 394 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Pornography |

pornography defines sex in sexist ways, normalizing and naturalizing male
dominance and female submission and, by virtue of its ocularcentric and voy-
euristic base, promotes a fetishistic and objectifying view of the body and the
sexual subject.
Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon are well known for their radi-
cal feminist approach to pornography. In a model “Civil-Rights Antipornogra-
phy Ordinance,” they propose an ordinance that would have nothing to do with
police action or censorship, but would allow complaints and civil suits brought
by individual plaintiffs. The Ordinance defines pornography in a way that dis-
tinguishes it from sexually explicit materials in general. Rather, pornography
consists of materials that represent “the graphic, sexually explicit subordination
of women” or “men, transsexuals or children used in the place of women.” Their
extended discussion delineates specific elements, for example, women being put
into “postures or positions of sexual submission, servility or display,” “scenarios of
degradation, injury, abasement, torture,” individuals “shown as filthy or inferior,
bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual.” Al-
though several communities passed versions of this law, it was overturned in the
courts as a violation of the first amendment. At the same time, courts have recog-
nized the use of pornography as a tool of sexual harassment, one that generates
a hostile climate for women workers in offices, factories, and other job sites.
Numerous feminists link the practices and underlying themes of pornogra-
phy to other forms of oppression. For example, Patricia Hill Collins links the
style and themes of U.S. pornography to the beliefs and practices associated
with white enslavement of Africans and their descendents—including bond-
age, whipping, and the association of black women and men with animals and
hypersexuality.

usEs anD EFFECTs
Research has examined the role of mass-mediated pornography in causing
harmful or unwanted social effects, including the furtherance of sexism as well
as violence against women and/or willingness to tolerate such violence; profiles
of those who work in pornography as well as those who enjoy it; and the poten-
tially addictive aspects of pornography.
Research into the uses and effects of pornography has been conducted em-
ploying experimental studies, anecdotal evidence from interviews and personal
stories, polling, and statistical data asserting connections between existence or
use of pornography and undesirable social phenomena. Two presidential com-
missions studied the effects of pornography, one beginning in the 1960s and
the other in the 1980s. The first concluded that there were no harmful effects;
and the second concluded that sexually violent and degrading pornography
normalized sexist attitudes (e.g., believing that women want to be raped by
men) and therefore contributed to actual violence. These conclusions have been
subjected to wide-ranging debate, for example, around the validity of informa-
tion obtained from necessarily contrived laboratory experiments (usually with
male students), the difficulty of defining common terms like degradation, the