There is a common perception nowadays that all feminists are opposed to pornography (which is defined as anything that stimulates erotic desire). The truth is that feminist positions on pornography are diverse. Those that favor a complete ban on pornography, the antiporn Feminists, are a small minority, but they receive more attention in the media. Antiporn feminists include Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, and Gloria Steinem. On the other hand, there are feminists who argue that the rights to produce and access pornography are positive for both women and men. These are the Sex Positive feminists, including Ellen Willis, Susie Bright, Camille Paglia, Avedon Carol, Betty Dodson, and Gayle Rubin. And there are still other feminists who may not like some or all pornography, but defend it anyway as part of freedom of speech and expression. These civil libertarian feminists include Wendy Kaminer and Nadine Strossen. If freedom of speech only applies to speech that offends nobody, what kind of freedom is that?
Sex Positive Feminism is associated with feminists such as Ellen Willis. (Actually, Willis originally used the term Pro Sex Feminism, but as time as time went on, this has been associated with the general Sex Positive movement.) This Feminism aims to liberate both women and men, with the explicit aim to maximize sexual pleasure for all, men and women. Everyone has a right to pleasure from consensual sex, and when no one else is consenting, at least one can masturbate. Erotica of various kinds may be helpful to some in maximizing any form of sexual pleasure, and it ought to be freely allowed except when it's production crosses certain obvious ethical boundaries (no minors, full consent, no harm done to creators or third parties, etc.)
On the other hand Antiporn Feminism preaches that erotic images always cause objectification of women and their relationships, and that this objectification means that pornography is rape fundamentally and unavoidably.
The censorious school of Antiporn Feminism got started in a big way when Ms Magazine was created and Gloria Steinem became its editor in 1971. That was a big nationwide megaphone compared to the small counterculture and student rags that most Feminist writers spoke through.
Back then many leftist and radical feminists were hoping to deal with issues such as abortion rights and equality. But then, all of a sudden, many feminists were drawn instead to the traditionally conservative issue of pornography censorship then being repackaged as a radical Feminist concern. Ellen Willis and the Redstockings pro sex advocates discovered many interesting things about the background of Gloria Steinem. Before becoming a Feminist icon, Steinem had been working undercover for the CIA during the 1960's as the director of the CIA funded Independent Research Service, in which capacity she reported information to the CIA about participants in leftist student organizations. Steinem presented her previous work as having been a freelance writer and a radical activist. While reactionaries might view Steinem's anti-leftist background favorably, the political orientation of Feminists is generally left of center, and even true conservatives reject government surveilance and manipulation of political groups.
Here is a good accounting of the story of Gloria Steinem in the proper context of how the CIA operates to preserve the corporate capitalist empire and secretive ruling elite of the USA by breaking up any opposition groups that threaten to create more real democracy.
Here is another accounting (written by a right wing crank) which fills in a few more details regarding how Steinem quickly got her Feminist credentials from corporate media outlets having deep connections with the CIA and how Ms magazine was founded... Unfortunately, this author insists on telling this story in the alleged context of how the CIA was intending to "destabilize" US society and bring on a new world order with world government through the United Nations. This is typical reactionary hogwash that points people to look in the wrong direction. The UN is at least partly open and democratic, which makes it unattractive to economic elites and secretive agencies. The CIA and other economic elites have been much more interested in promoting antidemocratic world government through such undemocratic institutions as the World Bank and the IMF, along with multinational corporations and Free Trade agreements.
We don't know the intent of the CIA's involvement in promoting antiporn feminism. But certain possibilities immediately suggest themselves to anyone with a good reading of the general CIA role in government and its history (from the first site linked above, and many other sources).
1. It may have been to make the Feminist movement less effective in accomplishing key aims, such as legislatively legalizing abortion rights, as well as other rights through the Equal Rights Ammendment (which ultimately failed to pass). Lack of effectiveness is often achieved by creating division and dissent. This is sometimes called "atomization" or "balkanization" depending on the level of operation.
2. It may have been to co-opt the existing Feminist movement, removing radical elements which were aiming to create a more equitable, democratic, and pleasureable society for all women and men, and instead installing conservative elements to steer the Feminist movement instead toward maintenance of existing ruling class elites, culture, privileges, and inequalities, along with a few symbolic victories for women. Ms magazine embodied both sexual and economic conservatism and associated them with feminism which had previously been primarily a leftist movement.
3. The US cultural revolution of the 1960's was obviously upsetting to many in the US ruling elite. No doubt many government operations including the CIA were interested in winding down this radicalism as quickly as possible. One way to do this would be by introducing wedge issues around personal identity politics to drive men and women apart. Perhaps Gloria Steinem gained experience with these techniques during her days as an undercover "student radical." From the perch of a major magazine, she could then apply this technique on a much larger scale to splinter radical leftism.
4. The left-of-center Playboy magazine was famous for giving to voice to leftist ideas and writers such as Gore Vidal. One can imagine this also caused great concern among ruling elites. Ms Magazine could serve as a buttress to oppose this tendency, making conservatism appealing to women. In fact, Gloria Steinem even famously infiltrated the Playboy enterprise as an undercover "bunny" to later make a big deal about alleged abuses to female employees.
Nowadays Gloria Steinem is more famous for publically promoting abortion rights for such organization as NARAL. But she continues to press on with the antiporn agenda as well, despite major court rejections of antiporn laws she backed during the 1980's and 1990's such as the rejection of Catherine MacKinnon's law that enabled rape victims to sue pornographers for damages caused by male porn viewers. I have supported NARAL and could praise her for that, though I wonder what she does behind the scenes. Many liberals and leftists were critical of the way NARAL endorsed pro choice Republican candidates because if the Republicans had retained control of Congress in 2006, the Republican leadership would continue to steamroll an abortion prohibitionist agenda into law, regardless of a couple of dissenting Republicans.
After a long serious of hard fought court victories, the business of pornography is now so well established legally and economically in the USA that it is easier to imagine the collapse of nearly every other industry first, for example, the oil industry. But seriously repressive antiporn laws have been adopted in other countries such as Canada and Sweden (often with "assistance" from US antiporn feminists). So what can antiporn activists be seeking now other than to sow divisions in society, including division among females and division between the sexes? Of course, just as with abortion rights, those who wish to guard the rights to erotica must remain ever vigilent, because there is negative fallout from every stupid new antiporn law, such as the new outrageous fines for broadcasters (any random sex word or uncovered breast caught on broadcast video might cost a million bucks), that mainly serve to maintain corporate monopolies.
The notion of objectification is pure claptrap. There is no evidence that erotica diminishes one's ability to see real people as real people. And as far as the erotica itself, it already is an object, but the effect on the imagination is that of a real willing partner. The whole argument is highly demeaning to males, as if they can't tell the difference between what is real and what is not and behave or interact appropriately.
Likewise the claim that "pornography is rape" is a meaningless statement disguised as a metaphor; it has no basis. Some Antiporn Feminists had also argued (before better was known) that erotica leads to greater prevalence of rape. In fact, the opposite is now known to be true; the prevalence of sex crimes including rape has fallen since the 1950's as erotica has become more and more available. The society with the lowest sexual violence, Japan, is also by far the most pornographic. Japanese children are reared with a healthy dose of the fantastic and softly pornographic cartoons (known as Anime) which have become very popular among single adult Americans. But now that Antiporn feminists can no longer make an argument about real harm that might be promoted by erotica, they resort to cheap rhetorical tricks.
The truth is, pornography does not "subjugate" women. Pornography exalts women. It says to men "you desire women because they ARE desireable." Imitation is the highest form of flattery. This should be patently obvious.
In contrast, the obscurantist literature of Antiporn Feminism, full of big words, dark sounding but uninformative metaphors, and so on, all boils down to one simple message to women: "You hate men because they are hateful." Antiporn Feminism is hate speech disguised as sociology.
Erotic pictures (aka pornography) are especially important to single males who, during masturbation, must remain continously erect to achieve orgasm. Pictures stabilize a fantasy of available women of high desireability to make this possible. While a male can in principle have a mental image, this makes the whole process more difficult. Also, whereas arousal in a consensual relationship arousal may come from certain aspects of the relationship itself (love, compassion, etc.), if no such relationship is at hand, the attempt to build one through fantasy only underlines its nonexistance in reality, and therefore inhibits arousal. After one thought of his actual loneliness, a male needs to start all over.
Masturbation is also especially important to males because the male sexual system requires periodic release of semen to remain functioning. Often when males are unable to masturbate for an extended length of time (typically a small number of days) the increasing pressure leads to increasing drive to copulate, anxiety, and sleepness. In short, it is lack of masturbation, abetted by lack of pornography, which might lead to sex crime, exactly as statistics now demonstrate.
While women are freed from the expectation of becoming housewives through Women's Liberation, Pornography facilitates men's liberation from their traditional sexual and economic role. Antiporn Feminists who seek to deny men independent sexual gratification through pornography and masturbation might well be considered Female Chauvinist Pigs.
Civil libertarian feminsts such as ACLU president Nadine Strosser and others also argue against the censorship of pornography at the Feminists for Free Expression website, which is signed by a list of the most important female activists, authors, and "porn" stars.)
Unfortunately, while the number of leading Antiporn Feminists is quite small, their effect has been quite large on those outside the academy because of the unfortunate tendency among women towards sexual modesty and squeamishness and because politicians and government officials also like to keep the "porn" issue on top. I attended a "localism" conference sponsored by the FCC in which the vast majority of public participants were entirely concerned with the corporate monopolization of the media. But the FCC board didn't want to hear about that; behind the scenes they had and were increasing monopolization to satisfy their corporate masters. They preferred hearing and responding with glowing platitudes to the small number of antiporn activists present. "Porn" is mainly a pseudo issue politicians and government officials use to distract the public from the real underhanded business they prefer to conduct outside the public view.
As a leftist myself, I find it appalling that so many leftist women I have known have become heavily mentally invested in the whole antiporn dogma, and often devote more mental attention to this than abortion rights and rights for equality. It seems like some leftist antiporn feminists might sooner marry an abortion prohibitionist than a free expression advocate; in fact I know erstwhile feminists who have done so. Since Feminism is generally less popular among conservatives, I actually do wonder if part of the CIA sponsored antiporn agenda wasn't devised to make sex positive liberal males relatively and practically infertile. One way or another, it has certainly created balkanization both in Feminism and on the left.
Why do traditional patriarchal cultures probibit pornography, masturbation, and in fact any form of sex that doesn't lead to reproduction? Of course, it maximizes reproduction which is useful for maintaing cheap labor and young soldiers. But that's not all. It also helps the ruling elite maintain power over all. Once a ruling elite has control over sex, it has control over everything, and this is usually established through a combination of religious indoctrination and state control. The control over sex by the ruling elite forces most people into the bottom of a social hierarchy. Ultimately, the prohibition of sexual freedom benefits only the male ruling elite...the very antithesis of Feminism among other things.
Equality and freedom for all of both sexes are not achieved by a step backwards to the old regime of prohibitionism and censorship, regardless of how that is cleverly framed to appeal to common sexual prudity, but rather a step forwards to the creation of a new society which promotes freedom and pleasure for all.
Ironically, the very antiporn feminists who most decry the objectification of women through pornography and how this inexorably leads to rape and other sex crimes are in fact performing an even worse form of objectification. With a wave of the hand, they are denying the very existance of mental processes or self-control in men. After men see enough of the images, they are compelled to rape. Consider what The Anti-Pornography League says:
Men who view pornography do not limit the objectification to the woman on the screen/magazine, as though that wasn't bad enough. They take the image and apply it to all women...
Pornography's influence is not limited to where it is presented. Those who use it are changed by it. It becomes acceptible in their minds for them to treat all women in the way they see the women in the pornography.
The last quotation is blurring the issue by implying that all women in "pornography" are being mistreated. But even pictures of fully clothed women are condemned. (By the way, the research and claims made at the Anti-Pornography League website are debunked at the Feminists for Free Expression website and others.)
Professor Robert Jensen of the University of Texas is another famous antiporn advocate who calls himself a Feminist. For a professor of journalism, who must know exactly what he is doing, it is interesting how he uses the deceptive techniques of a corporate public relations flak rather than the methods of balanced and open journalism in promoting his antiporn agenda.
1. His first technique is to focus attention on the most extreme pornography and characterize the entire field as being like that and even becoming ever more extreme by nature. He does not present any sort of broad survey of the field, since that would weaken his argument. This is reminiscent of how abortion prohibitionists focus attention on the more rare abortion techniques (especially a procedure called dilation and extraction which is only used where the mother's life is in danger and there is no alternative) in order to justify sweeping bans on all forms of abortion.
2. His second is to ignore or misrepresent the broader social and political context of pornography. He doesn't point out that not all feminists seek to eliminate pornography. Some feminists have fought hard battles to protect pornography from censorship, and indeed some feminists are porn stars themselves. He calls attention to the high rate of violent sex crime in the US, implicitly implicating pornography as a cause, but he fails to point out that the rates of violent sex crime have been falling in the US as pornography has become more widely available on the internet, and that the most pornographic society of all, Japan, also has the lowest rate of violent sex crime. The connection between pornography and violent sex crime is controversial at best, and very few viewers of pornography are also sex criminals. But you won't hear that from Professor Jensen.
3. His third is to focus on factors which are entirely subjective, such as whether pornography is "degrading" to women or not. This focus on what is "degrading" is mainly a new spin on the old prohibitionist goal of eliminating that which is "offensive." This "degrading" of women would allegedly be going on inside the minds of men. As to what objective harm might later come from this degradation, he does not say--in fact he is quite clear that he does not expect porn viewers to demand the kinds of sex acts they see in pornography from real women. So where is real problem?
I contend that we ought to focus on problems that cause observable harm in the world, and there are plenty of those.
4. His fourth is that he doesn't actually seek out representative views from those involved in the production of such pornography in informing his judgements, but rather fabricates a plausable way anyone doing that must feel, plausible only from the standpoint of people who know nothing about it except what they have heard from Professor Jensen. More often than not, workers and producers involved in the creation of the pornography he illuminates vehemently dispute his claims, though one can always find someone who after having a short lived career is willing to denounce the field, also likely from a standpoint of someone with a limited understanding of it, or perhaps an axe to grind.
In particular, porn actresses and other women who have actually done it say they do not feel degraded by the rare double penetration videos Professor Jensen gets worked up about. Production of these videos require two men having sex with one woman. Why not argue that they are degrading to men? Just like other forms of pornography, even the extreme kind Robert Jensen examines does not subjugate women, it exalts them. It says "here are the cool things women can do."
5. By equating the harmless act of watching a video with the terrible siege of Falluja which destroyed a city that was home to hundreds of thousands of people (and killing tens of thousands of civilians in the process), Professor Jensen is employing an extreme rhetorical trick often used in political advertisements, often as a last ditch measure which backfires.
Sex positive and free speech advocates are concerned about the real health and safety issues in the production of all goods and services including pornography. They would like to see the application of appropriate governmental regulation and collective bargaining to insure this. However, appropriate regulation should be based on the experiences and needs of those in the field itself, not prudish outsiders who have an agenda of their own. Anyway, the aim of the rants of Professor Jensen is not to advance suitable regulation but to completely demonize the entire field of erotica, most particularly the consumption thereof (such as what he calls "the death of empathy" which is reminiscent of the conservative cry about "the death of outrage" after the general public seemed not much interested in punishing Democrats for the Monica Lewinsky pseudo scandal). Focusing on the consumers rather than the producers betrays an aim of balkanizing both Feminism and the left and atomizing sex positive male porn fans by demonizing them.
The truth is, there is a wide spectrum of erotic material. Some of it, probably the kind used by the largest number of men, is simply pictures of clothed and unclothed adult women in sexy poses. Many of these women, such as Nadine Jansen of Germany, have become very successful models, actors, and businesspeople. Obviously they are not going to do anything to hurt themselves. Porn is used by so many people, it is hard to believe that the most extreme kind is the most popular kind. As in all things, here is always a small fringe that keeps on getting fringier, but is not the fringyness that concerns those legitimately concerned about health and safety issues, but the actual health and safety issues themselves, which can be assesed using the same methods as in other industries, such as interviews and medical examination.
Although Professor Jensen is a man promoting a reactionary antiporn agenda, and saying that women should not be allowed to do certain things such as being porn models, actresses or producers, he claims to be doing this as a Feminist himself, and for the cause of Feminism. I see his crusade as destructive not only to the legitimate concerns of feminists and leftists, but to all those who value freedom of expression and sexual pleasure.
Censorship of erotica is a typical feature of conservative societies. By forcing all sexual expression though only authorized heterosexual relationships he old regime of conservative culture serves the male dominated ruling class by helping them retain power and providing a high birthrate for cheap "labor" and soldiers. That is exactly the opposite of what you would call freedom.
Now certain so-called radicals have taken up the same crusade, though they most often get most of their backing from conservatives. This allegedly "radical" antiporn Feminism actually subverts the leftist goals of greater equality for all by balkanizing those on the left, separating men and women using identity politics as a wedge issue.
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Updated January 1, 2007