Pornography in America

Pornography in America
A Question of Harm

Porn, trash, or smut. No matter what name is given to pornography, it often displays the sexually explicit material in a negative light. Pornography has been depicted as a symbol of everything that is immoral and wrong with America. It has been condemned as the murderer of family values and the corruptor of our nation's youth. Through movies, magazines, and websites, nudity and explicit sexual acts are always available and easily accessed by clicking a computer mouse or television remote. Some feel that through this business centered on lust, pleasure, and fantasy, the principles of commitment, loyalty, and love have been exterminated from American society. However, pornography is not the immoral destructive force it is presented to be. While it may cater to the public's most primitive and crude desires, it is simply a form of entertainment and causes no clear harm to society.

Often the debate over pornography is centered on the First Amendment in the Constitutional Bill of Rights. The right guaranteeing freedom of speech and expression is pitted against the desire to censor unsavory and unwanted images from our lives. Although pornographic speech may be unpopular, the First Amendment should tolerate and protect it, like any other type of free expression. The potential censorship of pornography is of the greatest importance, both as a personal rights issue and as a contemporary moral issue in society. In dealing with the legality of pornographic speech, society must decide if the harms of pornography, real or imagined, outweigh the good of free expression (White: p.342). The decision on pornography has the ability to greatly affect the individual by legislating what material he or she can legally view. It is interesting to note that in order to protect freedom of speech in America, we as a society must also protect offensive types of expression that seem to undermine decent moral values.

However, for the remainder of this essay, the entertainment value and, more importantly, the morality of pornography will be analyzed, leaving the examination of the legal and constitutional questions to be dealt with elsewhere. Pornography should be classified as "entertainment" for the exact reasons that a popular music recording, television show, or Hollywood movie is. A good movie stimulates a viewer's sense of sight and sound and can excite feelings of joy, sadness, or fear. A pornographic film triggers the brain in much the same way. The only difference is that pornography arouses feelings of sexual desire, passion, and pleasure. Both the multi-million dollar movie production and the low-budget porn film can serve as a source of enjoyment for an individual, they just happen to be very different kinds of entertainment.

In society, a practice is often deemed immoral if it causes harm to others. Crimes such as murder and rape are immoral based on this principle, and are therefore punished with extreme severity. When someone is adversely affected by another person's actions, the morality and "rightness" of those actions is questioned. Although some actions can be detrimental to oneself, such as over-eating, this does not imply that the act of over-eating is immoral. Over-eating is a conscious choice made by an individual about his or her own future health. A person has the right to eat whatever they wish. Ronald Dworkin's gambling example shows another unpopular or unhealthy practice that causes no harm to society, aside from the harm caused to the individual who is gambling.

When we say that someone has 'right' to do something, we imply that it would be wrong to interfere with his doing it…I use this strong sense of right when I say that you have the right to spend your money gambling, if you wish, though you ought to spend it in a more worthwhile way. I mean that it would be wrong for anyone to interfere with you even though you propose to spend your money in a way that I think is wrong (Dworkin: p.66).

Similar to gambling, a person should have the "right" to view pornography. It is not immoral, in that, it does not harm other individuals in any way, and only affects those observing it. It is true that there are many more productive ways a person "ought" to spend their time and money, but as with gambling, it is wrong to insist that he or she cannot spend them on pornography.
Although consenting adults should never be denied the right to access pornography, this right is not extended to children and others who cannot yet care for themselves. Children must be protected against their own actions, as they do not yet fully understand the consequences of many of their decisions. They should be protected from the aforementioned examples of overeating, gambling, and pornography until they are old enough to make rational, informed decisions of their own. Therefore, the rights of children will also not be debated in this essay (Mill: p.343).

John Stuart Mill, one of the most influential British philosophers, states that "The only justification for interfering with liberty is to prevent harm to others. Harming yourself never justifies restricting your liberty" (White: p.342). Similar to Dworkin's argument, Mill insists that an individual should never be forced into doing what society believes to be right and proper.
[One] cannot be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right (Mill: p.342)

Just as a person should never be forced to do the will of society, they also should be guaranteed the right to do as they wish, apart from harming others.

Framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow: without impediment from our fellow creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong (Mill: p.343).

Again, the "harm principle" can be easily applied to pornography. If an action harms others, it should be restricted (White: p.339). If the action causes self-harm only, it should not be prohibited in any way. This premise is certainly plausible, but Catherine MacKinnon, a prominent feminist writer, insists that pornography causes unforeseen and significant injuries to women. Pornography, which she defines as, "the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words," harms women by promoting the domination and submission of women (Mill: p.339). MacKinnon continues to state that the content of pornography is the first offense in supporting the inferior status of women.

[In pornography,] women substantively desire dispossession and cruelty. We desperately want to be bound, battered, tortured, humiliated, and killed. Or, to be fair to the soft core, merely taken and used. This is erotic to the male point of view (MacKinnon: p.347).

We define pornography as the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words that also includes women dehumanized as sexual objects, things, or commodities; enjoying pain or humiliation or rape; being tied up, cut up, mutilated, bruised, or physically hurt; in postures of sexual submission or servility or display; reduced to body parts, penetrated by objects or animals, or presented in scenarios of degradation, injury, torture; shown as filthy or inferior; bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual (MacKinnon: p.350)

MacKinnon's interpretation of the "content" of the pornography sounds more like the list of themes for second-rate horror films, rather than the standard subject matter of most pornographic films and magazines. Although some violent and degrading pornography still exists today, the majority of mainstream pornography available to consumers does not correspond with MacKinnon's definition. It is therefore unfair to classify erotic, consensual acts of sexual behavior, meant for entertainment purposes, in the same category as cult-like "snuff" films. As Barry Lynn, a counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union, points out, "The depictions [of pornography] 'lie' by suggesting universality for the worst attributes of a few members of the group or, even worse, misrepresent the group by fabricating erroneous attributes" (Lynn: p.354). Again, the reality of most pornography shows that it is not of a brutal or sadistic nature, and contains none of the conditions of "pornography" set forth by MacKinnon.

MacKinnon continues to insist that pornography greatly influences the social construction of sexuality, placing males in the dominant role in all facets of society and females in the passive role of servitude and dependence.
What pornography does goes beyond its content: it eroticizes hierarchy, it sexualizes inequality. It makes dominance and submission into sex. Inequality is its central dynamic (MacKinnon: p.347).

[Pornography] institutionalizes the sexuality of male supremacy, fusing the erotization of dominance and submission with the social construction of male and female (MacKinnon: p348).

By creating a dominant male social sexuality, MacKinnon claims that pornography is also capable of subjecting women to inferior roles in all aspects of modern society. In this sense, pornography would affect the civil liberties of women as well. It would specifically target women as objects based on their gender. This occurs, as MacKinnon states, because men are susceptible to the imagery portrayed in pornographic material.

The experience of the male audiences who consume pornography is therefore not fantasy or simulation or catharsis but sexual reality, the level of reality on which sex itself largely operates (MacKinnon: p.348-349).

Men treat women as who they see women as being. Pornography constructs who that is. Men's power over women means that the way men see women defines who women can be. Pornography is that way. Pornography is not imagery in some relation to a reality elsewhere constructed. It is not a distortion, reflection, or symbol either. It is a sexual reality (MacKinnon: p.348).

Immediately, any reasonable individual must question this claim. MacKinnon seems to be insisting that all men who view pornography are as impressionable and naive as young children. She believes that they will form a new sexual reality and be coerced into sexual violence against women by merely viewing pornographic material. Logical thought and scientific inquiry both show that this presumption is inaccurate. As John Lynn notes, "There is no general scientific evidence to support the view that pornography 'causes' men to commit sexual assault" (Lynn: p.357).

In fact, the most that scientific data can show is some short-term attitude change in some experimental subjects after significant exposure to certain types of pornography. That is, some viewers temporarily see women in a more negative light. This however, is hardly a surprising finding, since laboratory studies show short-term attitudinal alteration after exposing subjects to almost any "message." The longevity of these altered impressions is likely to be short, and even laboratory data on the effects of violent "anti-women" films demonstrate only brief alterations in opinions of subjects (Lynn: p.357 - Elliot and Byrd, Ceniti and Malamuth).

Another rebuttal from Lynn shows that the availability of pornography does not necessarily correlate with a high level of sexual violence, or a subordinate status of women in that country. In fact, several examples support the contrary argument. In Japan, for example, studies have produced data supporting relationships between wide availability of "hardcore" pornographic material and low rape rates. In other countries, such as Germany and Denmark, rates of sexual assault have declined or remained stable even with an increase in availability of pornographic materials (Lynn: p.358 - Abramson and Hayashi, Kutchinsky). Further examination of several Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia, show that although there is virtually no pornography, women still suffer tremendous amounts of gender inequality. The condition of women in the United States is far better, even with an $8 billion pornography industry (Lynn: p.359).

Pornography is certainly not the most liked or well respected form of entertainment, but it is certainly not immoral. The content of most pornography is not centered on sadist mutilation of women, as MacKinnon has attempted to show, but rather on stimulating emotions of sexual excitement and pleasure. Likewise, pornography is not capable of controlling the social construction of sexuality for individuals who chose to consume it. Therefore, it does not promote the domination and submission of women that would force them into inferior roles in society.

Viewing pornography is not immoral because it causes no harm to other members of society. The only one affected is the individual viewing the pornography. And while most people would agree that a person "ought" to spend his or her money on more "respectable" entertainment, the wishes of the majority should never trump an individual's right to choose.