Page 396 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Pornography |

music videos, and video games, and to publicize celebrities or events. Pornog-
raphy also has become a legitimate topic for academic study and the subject of
college classes.
Research shows that more women now use pornography. As part of the femi-
nist project of redefining sexuality, there has been a surge in erotic stories and
images aimed at female audiences. Some feminists and/or those identified with
queer communities have begun to produce what they consider to be subversive
pornographies that challenge both traditional morality and the conventions of
mainstream, sexist pornography, for example, by featuring models who are not
conventionally beautiful and by valorizing nontraditional gender roles and non-
heterosexist practices; by celebrating the body, sexuality, and pleasure; by ac-
knowledging lesbian, gay, and transgender realities and desires; and by stressing
female sexual desire and agency.
Some applaud this expansion of pornography as reflecting greater sexual au-
tonomy for women as well as a liberalization of social attitudes toward sexuality.
Others argue that the mainstreaming of pornography does not produce or reflect
freedom, but instead represents a backlash against the women’s liberation move-
ment and furthers the commoditization of sexuality, for example, in the ways that
young girls are now routinely represented, often fashionably dressed, as sexually
available. The system of patriarchal domination has always, one way or another,
colonized the erotic. Modern pornography furthers the interests not only of sex-
ism, but also capitalism and other forms of domination. Sexuality, conflated with
both domination and objectification, can more readily be channeled into, for ex-
ample, the desire for consumer goods or the thrill of military conquest.
Visionary feminist thinkers aver that to be truly “pro-sex” we need to be criti-
cally “antipornography.” Eroticism is humanity’s birthright, a force of creativity,
necessary to wholeness, and the energy source of art, connection, resistance,
and transformation. Patricia Hill Collins urges both women and men to reject
pornographic definitions of self and sexuality that are fragmenting, objectifying,
or exploitative, and instead articulate a goal of “honest bodies,” those based in
“sexual autonomy and soul, expressiveness, spirituality, sensuality, sexuality, and
an expanded notion of the erotic as a life force.”
see also Advertising and Persuasion; Body Image; Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual,
Transgendered, and Queer Representations on TV; Media and the Crisis of
Values; Obscenity and Indecency; Presidential Stagecraft and Militainment;
Representations of Masculinity; Sensationalism, Fear Mongering, and Tabloid
Media; Shock Jocks; Violence and Media; Women’s Magazines.
Further reading: Brison, Susan J. “Torture, or ‘Good Old American Pornography.’ ” The
Chronicle Review/The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 4, 2004): B10–11; Caputi,
Jane. The Pornography of Everyday Life (documentary film). Berkeley Media, 2006 at
www.berkeleymedia.com; Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Ameri-
cans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2004; Cornell, Drucilla, ed.
Feminism and Pornography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000; Dines, Gail, Rob-
ert Jensen, and Ann Russo. Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequal-
ity. New York: Routledge, 1998; Gutfield, G. “The Sex Drive: Men Who Are Hooked
on Cyberpornography.” Men’s Health (October 1999): 116–21; Hilden, Julie. “A Federal