Pornography: A reevaluation of the radically feminist position

In this paper, I will argue that pornography is wrong because it promulgates the subordination of women. First, I will present a liberal perspective defending pornography and contrast this perspective with two feminist views that condemn pornography. The liberal view will help in drawing a distinction between diverging frameworks for understanding pornography within the feminist perspective. I will use these views to refute the notion that pornography[1] is a form of protected speech and instead draw on Mason-Grant’s contention that pornography is an embodied, material practice that has deleterious effects on women in contemporary American society.

Joan Mason-Grant in her paper Pornography as Embodied Practice challenges the notion that pornography is a form of speech. As a result of this presumption, pornography has found protection from both the law and criticism, shielded by both the First Amendment and our society’s privileging of freedom of thought and expression. Mason-Grant contends, as a result of these reigning ideologies, that critical discussion of pornography and its influence on our sexual lives is repressed. To reverse this trend, Mason-Grant revisits the arguments of Ronald Dworkin, Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, proponents of the speech framework in their evaluations of pornography. Mason-Grant disputes their framework by proffering the overarching claim that, “pornography is a series of irreducibly embodied practices that work quite differently from political speech,” and, as a result, contributes to the perpetuation of female oppression (Mason-Grant 523).

A “symptom of the speech paradigm” is the contention that viewing pornography leads to the subordination of women, which may be a reasonable effect of pornography but is a far too simplistic characterization, according to Mason-Grant (523). Because pornography is sheltered within the realms of “free speech” – a highly valued right in the United States – pornographic practices may propagate oppression, a direct function of its constitutional protection. However, as Mason-Grant argues, this is not a simple case of cause and effect; the issues of pornography, when operating within the speech paradigm, are far more complicated.

First, I will present the liberal argument protecting pornography under the realm of the First Amendment. Ronald Dworkin’s[2] argument is derived from the principle of equality rather than the liberal notion of individual liberty; nonetheless, Dworkin’s view falls squarely within the liberal camp. According to this view, if the government limits speech, it limits “freedom on the basis that his way of life is inherently less worthy than others” (525). The law must treat peoples’ differing conceptions of the good life equally; the view argues that people have a “right to moral independence.” It becomes clear how this thinking applies to the creation and consumption of pornographic materials, for if the government censored or restricted pornography it would be “enforcing a certain conception of the good life and, thereby, would violate the right of equality” (525). Dworkin’s liberal defense of pornography takes for granted that pornography itself falls within a category of political speech protected by the First Amendment, and he utilizes the principle of equality to draw his conclusion that pornographic materials should be legally protected whether he invokes the right to equality or the right to individual liberty. Dworkin’s view protects producers’ rights to create pornography and consenting adults’ rights to consume it.

Dworkin does concede, however, that if a substantive causal link between speech and “a clear and present danger or cause [of] harm” can be shown, then said speech can be limited by the government. Nonetheless, Dworkin concludes that this is not an issue in the case of pornography because there is no evidence that pornography increases the chance that a woman would be raped or physically assaulted. As Mason-Grant contends, however, an argument can be made against pornography as a function of Dworkin’s invocation of the principle of equality: “It might seem that to the extent to which contempt for women saturates society would count as unacceptable “suffering and frustration” under the “right to equal concern” feature of the principle of equality” (526).

Mason-Grant notes that Ronald Dworkin takes a theoretical step forward, recognizing that pornography may disempower women by creating an image of women as subordinate; this denies them liberty, for they “are perceived and understood inauthentically” (525). Nonetheless, Dworkin is not willing to concede that pornography is, in large part, liable for “this subordinating reconstruction of identity” for two reasons (526): first of all, sadistic pornography is not circulated to the masses and second, other facets of popular culture that reinforce women’s subordination overshadow the harmful effects of any sadomasochistic pornography that exists. According to Mason-Grant, this line of reasoning provides Dworkin with the proper justification to conclude that, “this systemic sexism violates the principle of equality on all fronts,” even though Dworkin continues to defend the creation and consumption of pornographic materials on liberal grounds (526).

The issue in question is not one concerning pornography’s legal status but instead the nature of pornography and how interpretations of it within the speech paradigm precludes its ability “to seriously engage on its own terms the idea that pornography is a material practice that may be subordinating” (526). Having shown how the liberal perspective protects pornography as political speech, I will now discuss feminist arguments against pornography, drawing distinctions between those that operate within the speech paradigm and those that see pornography as embodied material practice.

Unlike Ronald Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin are more concerned with “actual disparities in social power” rather than with creating an “ideal system, that is, a system of principle that constitutes a liberal political theory within with specific political decisions can be justified,” as Ronald Dworkin sets out to achieve (526). Mason-Grant, MacKinnon, and Andrea Dworkin have a similar radically feminist perspective on pornography; it both represents and furthers male dominance by portraying women as, primarily, objects of pleasure. Where they differ is through which lens pornography is viewed: as speech or as material practice. These diverging frameworks change the respective impacts of these feminist arguments against pornography; by adopting Mason-Grant’s perspective and rejecting the speech paradigm, I argue that a stronger claim is made for the causal link between pornography and female subjection and oppression.

In her paper, Mason-Grant discusses the nature of speech and what characteristics of pornography make it intuitively appealing for Ronald Dworkin, Andrea Dworkin, and Catherine MacKinnon to place it squarely within this framework. That pornography constitutes speech seems to be an unexplained presupposition in their arguments that Mason-Grant challenges. Ronald Dworkin compares pornography to political speech, for they both “represent ideas, or express a point of view” (527). Mason-Grant interjects that although this may be true, as speech, its portrayals depend on “mental intermediation” by the consumer to have a real effect – the viewer must decide whether or not the speech is true or false, right or wrong.[3] Thus, the rational consumer would consciously think about the “immaterial” ideas portrayed by the speech, and through “mental intermediation” the viewer would draw a conclusion about the political speech:

Within this conceptual framework, words and images are passive conveyors of ideas. They can represent, refer, or connote, but they do not themselves “do” anything. People do things. The ideas represented or expressed in words and images cannot be said to be “ours” unless or until we consciously accept them…they do not shape our consciousness, or seep into our own way of thinking or acting, unless or until we (consciously) adopt them as our own (528).

If we adopt this thinking, then how can Andrea Dworkin and MacKinnon view pornography as prima facie oppressive and harmful to women? Here the distinction between understanding pornography as speech – saying that, “Women are inferior to men” – and pornographic practices becomes clearer, for pornography “is inadequately understood if reduced to the materials, the words and images, typically presumed to be denoted by the term.” Mason-Grant underscores the importance of this distinction by illustrating how pornography has far more proximate ramifications than mere political speech.

If we want to have confidence in Andrea Dworkin and MacKinnon’s claim that pornography is a “core constitutive practice” of gender inequality and “a major social force for institutionalizing…second class status for women,” then it doesn’t make sense to understand pornography as ideas, words and images. Because “the production of pornographic materials involves material activities among human beings, especially in modern pornography, which requires bodies of real men and women,” understanding pornography as “a series of embodied, material practices” is far more intuitive and compelling than understanding it within the speech paradigm (529).

Mason-Grant contends that in its production, consumption, and subsequent ramifications on both those involved in the making of pornography and those who watch it, pornography is both a reflection of already working social relations, which are “legitimated and further entrenched when they are enacted through sexual activity involving the use of pornographic materials” (530). These social relations refer to the depiction of men and women in mainstream heterosexual pornography created for, primarily, heterosexual male consumption; they depict “the power of female sexuality over male desire [which] explains the central eroticized dynamic of mainstream pornography” (530). The male conquers while the female lusts to be conquered. The feminized character is not a person but an “object of desire” reduced to body parts that are “the catalyst for masculine arousal” (530). In essence, “the sexual dynamic of mainstream pornography is one of overt or implied struggle” the resolution of which is, of course, male ejaculation.

Because this routine is a sort of script performed over and over again with the same framing of the bodies, conduct of those involved, and connotations that come along with this arrangement, it makes sense that pornography informs peoples’ understanding of sexuality and desire: “they can be seen as regulative norms that establish what counts as normal and perverse, sexy and asexual, identifying the paths of access to social viability as a sexual actor” (530).

Mason-Grant conjectures that Andrea Dworkin and MacKinnon’s claims surrounding pornography’s consumption meet resistance because of “the dominance of the speech paradigm” because any discussion of its damaging effects faces First Amendment counterarguments and protection (530). Mason-Grant seeks to rework their view such that pornography is understood less as political speech and more as “a sexual activity – a performed, embodied practice” that can be shown to perpetuate the notion that women are inferior sexual objects under the unyielding control of male desire (531). When MacKinnon writes, “Pornography is masturbation material. It is used as sex. It therefore is sex,” it becomes axiomatic what pornography is not:

The consumption of pornographic materials is not adequately conceptualized as a disembodied, cognitive, contemplative, information-processing activity. Rather it is a material activity, distinctly sexual and irreducibly embodied. While it involves representations, it is not “reading about” sex, as though the sex were elsewhere. It is sex. In using mainstream, mass-market pornographic materials for sex, consumers bodily experience inequality, the objectification of the female body, violence, and brutality as pleasureful, erotic, and orgasmic (531).

Thus, Mason-Grant’s assertion that the speech paradigm does not adequately address the complex, embodied practice of pornography sheds light on a misunderstanding that can drastically change how we view pornographic materials and its effects on society.

This conclusion leads Mason-Grant to “work out a phenomenological account of the relationship between routinized bodily practices and the formation of our practical know-how” (531). Drew Leder in The Absent Body presents an account that “links the production of agency – our ability to act intelligibly in the world – with the bodily practices in which we engage…This account links our capacity for functional competence to the tacitness of our practiced bodies” (531). This phenomenological account is directly applicable to understanding pornography’s social effects by providing an explanation as to how it proximately informs our sexual understanding in a way that speech actively cannot:

The knowledge acquired through the process of incorporation is not propositional knowledge or abstract ideas, but a robustly practical, functional know-how. The process of incorporation operates over time and below the level of conscious awareness (531).

This explanation, in turn, provides the space for a critical understanding of pornography as a practice that subordinates women through the promulgation of mainstream heterosexual characterizations of sex and sexual desire. The process of incorporation by means of viewing mainstream heterosexual pornography structures the social expectations and norms surrounding sexuality. The reasoning is that these norms and expectations are not passive ideas but instead active embodiments. This distinction is crucial to fully understanding the effect pornography has on the propagation of female subjection:

The notion of incorporation suggests that, over time, that which is repetitively acted out – practiced – seeps into one’s organismic ground, coming to shape not only our habits but our desires and yearnings, our personal know-how” (532).

Thus, understood as acts instead of speech, pornography directs how people understand male and female sexuality, constructing their desires in a way that has affected how people interact with each other. As Andrea Dworkin notes, pornography’s “sexual pedagogy” has particularly effects for the explicit reason that it is not solely mental but a physiological manifestation of the human body and its sexuality (532). This leads us to a discussion of what exactly pornography teaches us about human sexuality, desires and expectations.

Pornography informs a collective understanding of sexuality teeming with sexism, racism, classism, objectification, and the power struggle that comes along with all of this. “If the use of mainstream heterosexual pornography is a practice routinely engaged in as one comes to sexual maturity, its users will experience sexual desire, arousal, and satiation in its terms” (533). In this way, pornography informs people’s views as well as their actions, making this “vehicle of sexual arousal seem not just normal but natural” (533). Thus, mainstream pornography plays a major role in determining individuals’ sexual “know how,” structuring both their actions and their gendered expectations of people.

Mason-Grant extends this argument, contending that, it is not just the substance of pornography but also “the very situation of using pornographic materials as a way of practicing sex” that is troubling for the feminist. Watching pornography places the viewer in a special place to interact only with sexual objects, specifically the female breasts and genitals. Detached from a real human being, this interaction is far less complicated, with great ease of access for the viewer who is “completely unburdened by character or relationship development” (533). In addition, the fact that the viewer is only “looking” adds an extra element of worry, for if voyeurism is predominant then it undermines “the mutuality of perception and concern demanded in respectful relationships with flesh-and-blood others, especially relationships involving intimate bodily interaction” (534).

Ultimately, Mason-Grant concludes by noting the irony in the “contemporary sex scene.” The prevalence of pornography implies liberation for some, while, after the preceding analysis, it becomes clear that pornography is “a repetitive rehearsal of an exceedingly impoverished sexual script” (534). Unfortunately, this “script” not only tells us how to have sex but also, more importantly, it has furthered the subordination of women, as individuals and as a group.

Those that argue that pornography is “harmless, recreational, entertaining, or even useful material” within the SCM (Sexual Communication Model) are right that pornography teaches people about sex, but it is important to critically and comprehensively evaluate what exactly pornography is teaching us (Hald 6). Those that advocate the creation and consumption of pornographic materials within this framework are towing the patriarchal line, reinforcing the political interests vested in heteronormativity’s reign. Those “proponents of the SCM [that] have also argued that pornography provides an opportunity for women to learn about their sexuality in a new, different, and more liberating way” fall prey to the same criticism: society teaches us that this type of sex – mainstream heterosexual sex – is both normal and natural. To contend that this is “liberating” after analyzing the sex in and of itself seems to ignore the reality that pornography displays.

Although the argument’s assumption that “the average consumer of pornography is cognitively and perceptually capable of recognizing pornographic material as fictive and exaggerated representations” helps this defense of pornography avoid the counterargument that pornography has potential for harmful effects on society, this assumption is neither axiomatic nor proven. Furthermore, Mason-Grant, Dworkin, and MacKinnon’s analysis of how pornography entrenches women’s subordination has far more intuitive appeal. As a result, it seems that the SCAM (Sexual Callousness Model) better addresses Mason-Grant’s thesis that pornography is an embodied act with serious effects on consumers and, thus, perception of women on the whole.

This model argues that, “continuous exposure to pornography may cause acceptance and internalization of attitudes, opinions, values, morals, and behaviors portrayed in such materials” (Hald 7). A potential objection to this line of reasoning is analogous to the objection made against the SCM: it is neither clear nor illustrated that people do not have the capacity to recognize the fictitious and orchestrated nature of pornography. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to argue that even if people can distinguish reality from the fake world of pornography, that continuous exposure to mainstream heterosexual pornography can still inform peoples’ conceptions of sex as a practice and the roles of men and women within the practice, ultimately framing their expectations. This reinforces the notion that portrayals of sex in pornography directly influence peoples’ conceptions of the normal and natural.

Pornography undoubtedly harms women who are forced into and exploited by the industry; these individuals suffer maltreatment that I contend is morally impermissible. If we juxtapose the situation of these women with those who enter into the industry willingly and who feel sexually liberated by their profession, perhaps even empowered, determining pornography’s moral standing becomes far more difficult. Mason-Grant would argue, and I would agree, that although these women feel liberated and empowered, they fail to recognize their role in their own subjugation, for their performances cause a far more widespread, ubiquitous harm: the continuation of the systemic oppression of women as a group.

By participating in the creation of pornographic materials that portray women as objects used to satisfy male desires, the idea that pornographic materials represent an “erotic rehearsal of the social logic they contain” seems to be a powerful contention (533). In this paper, I have argued that pornography is better understood as material embodied practice “rooted in social relations that are subordinating” than as political speech on the grounds that the speech paradigm misunderstands the nature of mainstream heterosexual pornography and, further, it ignores its harmful effects on society (535). The radically feminist perspective provides a compelling argument against the production and consumption of pornography, and this view is only strengthened by Mason-Grant’s invocation of the notion of pornography as corporeal materialized practice.

[1] The discussion in this paper is limited to mainstream, heterosexual pornography.

[2] If confused with Andrea Dworkin, this whole exposition becomes very confusing.

[3] This is the predominant understanding of speech or the free expression of ideas in modern, liberal societies.

Works Cited:

Mason-Grant, Joan. “Pornography as Embodied Practice.” The Philosophy of Sex. Ed. Nicholas Power, Raja Halwani, and Alan Soble. 6th ed. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, Inc., 2013. 521-38. Print.