Maria Olivia Ana R. Atillo 1 Why Scorn Porn?

Why Scorn Porn?

A Reflection Paper on Chapter 3 of Jennifer Sauls Book entitled Feminism: Issues and Arguments In partial fulfillment of Gender and the Law Submitted by: Maria Olivia Ana R. Atillo

Submitted to: Atty. Amparita Sta. Maria And Atty. Sarahlou Arriola

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I.

INTRODUCTION Pornography benefits women; both personally and politically Wendy McElroy, 1995

There is a thin line between art and trash. However this thin line is not always adhered to. Most of the time this thin line is obscured by perspective. It is diminished by trends. Altered by mood and even disregarded by upbringing. How many times have we chosen to buy a shirt or a dress, something just because we thought it would be something our parents would approve of, though they might not exactly be in style? If you grow up in a conservative family, most likely youll grow up with those conservative values well ingrained into your character. Youll only notice this when you come across someone whos your exact opposite. One may grow up in a sheltered environment but this cant last for long. Life is like that. It has a way of presenting things to us, which we never thought either possible or something we never accepted as even worth our time and attention. A person who is conservative, cannot be more right or more valuable than one who is unconventional and worldly. This is just not how the world works. If we take a look at history, it is the unconventional and eccentric who have made the biggest impact on who we are now, and how we think. One example would be Sir Isaac Newton and his, then heretic, discovery of gravity. How Galileo defended the theory of Copernicus that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around, which of course was also contrary to church beliefs back then. And the most renowned radical of them all, the one who espoused the most basic of virtues: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you Jesus. Thinking outside the box and being unconventional does not

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always make you wrong or evil. It is in fact those people around you who in addition to not understanding or accepting your thoughts or beliefs, also act violently or maliciously against you. So how does this relate to the topic? Basically there are always two sides to a story, and its not for us to make a decision without knowing the facts or logic behind each. Pornography or porn as it is more commonly termed is the same. I will not go into the history and the politics behind the controversy, but I shall endeavor to voice out my take on it based on the session 9 reading Feminism Issues and Arguments by Jennifer Saul.

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II.

SUMMARY OF THE READING MATERIAL Jennifer Sauls book discusses many topics related to and entwined with feminism. The third chapter is entirely devoted to the topic of pornography. She starts the chapter by quoting two opposing beliefs espoused by two very vocal feminists: Catharine MacKinnon and Wendy McElroy. The first believes that pornography is a violation of Civil and Human rights1. According to MacKinnon pornography sexualizes rape, battery, sexual harassment, prostitution, and child abuse. She says that it celebrates, promotes, authorizes, and legitimizes these acts. On the other hand, the McElroy believes that pornography is the explicit artistic depiction of men and/or women as sexual beings." It provides women with sexual information. She believes that pornography is good because (a) it strips away the real world confusion about sex, (b) it breaks cultural and political stereotypes, allowing women to interpret sex for themselves, (c) it is the great leveler of shame, and (d) it is sex therapy.2 These two schools of thought have very valid and sound arguments.

Anti-Pornography Feminism Pornography has been defined as something that is obscene under community standards, though feminists do not follow this definition. Feminists against pornography do not have a strict definition of what pornography is, but they agree that it is degrading to and abusive of women. Pornography effectively reduces women to sexual objects who are servile or submissive, who enjoy or take abuse willingly for sexual gratification.

Catharine A, MacKinnon, Encyclopedia Brittanica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/354987/Catharine-A-MacKinnon, Last Accessed March 25, 2012. 2 Wendy McElroy: Pornography is good, The Ethical Spectacle, November 1995, http://www.spectacle.org/1195/mcelroy.html, Last accessed: March 23, 2012.

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MacKinnons definition of pornography is premised on the subordination or dehumanization of women. Feminists against pornography readily admit that their definition is different from the common or community definition of what pornography is. But they also claim that they still view pornography by societys standards, though this is not in their definition3. In a nutshell, if the pictures or work do not depict subordination or dehumanization of women not then it is not pornography. Saul presents the arguments for anti-pornography feminism as basically the following: a) Pornography is not just expression these are acts of rape and violence. b) Pornography harms women by causing violence, especially sexual violence. c) Pornography plays a key role in teaching that maleness is about sexual domination and that femaleness is about being submissive. d) Pornography itself is an act of subordination and silencing of women. e) Pornography is a form of hate speech. First off, pornography unlike other movies is real, in the sense that people are actually and truly having sex, and while a lot of the porn stars are actors and actresses who get paid and make porn for a living, there are some women who are unwilling victims and get forced into having sex while being filmed. An example of this by Saul was the movie Deep Throat, wherein Linda Marchiano had been tortured and forced into making it. Though not as violent, a more updated example could be the Hayden Kho scandals which were uploaded and went viral on the World Wide Web. Kho had videoed

Jennifer Saul, Feminism Issues and Arguments, p.78

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his sexual exploits with at least three different women. All of these women were clueless of his actions, they were unwilling, and have claimed that they have been violated by him. True, they consented to the sexual act, but they did not consent to being filmed, even more so did they not consent to the video being uploaded to the internet. Pornography encourages violence especially sexual violence, when it depicts how women seem to get sexual gratification by being tied up or hit and the like. It depicts women as being sexually insatiable, and how they dont really mean no when they say it. Women know that pornography is violent when they see it. The concept [of pornography promoting violence against women] is vague, but if accompanied with an actual footage or a slideshow it becomes all too apparent how violent it can get. This, accompanied with the thought that someone gets sexually excited by viewing it, makes it all the more disturbing and clarifies why feminists opposed to pornography fight this battle. It is MacKinnons view that in viewing pornography, men are taught to view women as inferior and are naturally submissive. It is also her belief that this teaching naturally affects other areas of life, not just sex. It, in effect, induces women to assume a more submissive role. It is not difficult to imagine this kind of logic, especially in a patriarchal society such as ours. Growing up, it was always taught in school that ang Ina ay ang ilaw ng tahanan while ang ama ang haligi ng tahanan. These have taught students to differentiate the roles that men and women play. The mother stays at home, cares for the children and the father provides for the needs of the family and stands as the one who disciplines. This does not mean that our teachers were avid porn watchers, but this in some way supports MacKinnons argument, that pornographys effects go beyond

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the sexual realm. It only takes one person to influence the mentality and belief system of another. In addition to this, pornography in itself silences or subordinates women not only because of the impression it has on others but also because it is a speech act. Pornography as an exercise of free speech is more than just the words or the script or the plot behind the porn, it is accompanied by the act of the woman being submissive, allowing the things to be done to her. It silences them in certain ways wherein the uttered words of a woman are no longer believed by men, which oftentimes bring about cases of sexual harassment or rape. As when a woman says no but the man does not either believe that she is refusing, or he does not understand her because he has been brainwashed by pornography into believing that women always want sex, such that even if she says no she really means yes. Though it is not clearly established, and though the psychological researches conducted on the effects and relation of pornography and violence or rape show conflicting results, there are still some disturbing and acknowledged results. MacKinnon claims that rapists and murderers use pornography and in fact have talked about pornography while perpetrating their crimes. Findings that connect porn to rape and violence are the following: 1. A woman doesnt mean 'no' until she slaps you - Donnerstein, et. Al, 1987 2. Porn creates a lenient attitude towards perpetrators, and makes victims less worthy of sympathy. - Einsedel, 1992 3. Because of porn, men say they would more likely commit rape if they could get away with it.

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4. Viewers of porn involving rape scenes show a decreased ability to recognize rape as rape. Lastly, pornography is a form of hate speech. This is an argument proposed with UK origins, according to Saul. Aminatta Forma argues that pornographic images showing women being beaten, gagged, sodomized and the like should be treated as a form of hate speech. According to her, if the images portrayed, instead of women, Jews or Blacks or Asians it could be grounds for a case of incitement to racial hatred. Such explicitly violent images, though they be sexual in nature, are truly forms of hatred, one must wonder what enters a persons mind to find such a violent image as gratifying or arousing. Saul next discusses the proposed legislation that is being supported by the feminists opposing pornography. Apparently it is not censorship or the banning of pornography that they want, but a form of damages or remuneration to be made to the victims of such pornography. In order for a victim to avail of this remedy, he or she must show how he or she has been harmed by such pornography. The victim is not exclusively a woman, because the feminists opposing pornography recognize that men, children, or transsexuals can be the victims in place of women.

Pro-Pornography Feminism As mentioned above, Wendy McElroy is one of those very vocal feminists who view pornography as good for women. Saul discusses the various female responses to the anti-pornography stance mentioned above, and these are varied, from agreeing to it or to

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opposing it. Those who disagree with MacKinnons view of pornography, though, readily admit the harms that were cited, especially the violence and rape committed against Linda Marchiano. They agree that those who have made pornographic films or other media that committed abuse or rape of women in the process should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. However they do not agree with the definition and scope given by MacKinnon. MacKinnon classifies all pornography as being abusive and degrading of women, but those who are pro-pornography believe that it to be a valid means of expression. Not all pornography depicts women as being abused or raped. Saul warns against feminists who were against pornography making conclusions based on subjective certainties. She explains how these subjective certainties are not always accurate and that can be proved wrong over time. It may have been widely accepted practice before to have slaves and to deal in persons. But as can be seen nowadays, slavery is an abhorrent practice that should never have been practiced in the first place. This too may happen in the future. What people consider now as pornographic may someday be considered a lost art, just maybe and in a very distant someday. Lisa Palac is a feminist who used to be anti-pornography, this however changed when she watched her very first porn film. According to her it was empowering rather than demeaning, it allowed her to explore her own sexuality. Another argument for the pro-pornography stance is the fact that some women are in the industry by choice. According to them, the views presented by MacKinnon are greatly limited and denies the sincerity or self-knowledge of those women who are in that industry. These women who are in the pornography industry claim that they are not being

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abused or raped. This is clearly contrary to the assertions made by MacKinnon that pornography abuses women; that it makes them submissive and silences their voices. Furthermore, these women believe that because of the anti-pornography stance, the working conditions in the pornography industry will not improve. It cannot be denied that pornography in many jurisdictions is a legal and thriving industry. Just like any industry it has workers which need to be protected. According to Gayle Rubin, because of the social stigma associated to pornography and prostitution those within that industry are more prone to abuse and exploitation and have lesser access to opportunities. The porn models, prostitutes and other commercial sex workers have less recourse to the police, courts and medical treatments. According to Saul, if this were true then this should motivate feminists to help and support those in the pornography industry to get better working conditions instead of opposing it. In answer to the argument of anti-pornography feminists that rapists and murderers are users of pornography, Saul argues that this in itself is a weak argument. She posits that those who are predisposed to violence will tend to be attracted to sexual violence depicted in violent pornography. But she acknowledges that some rapists and/or murderers have acted out scenarios which they had seen in porn films. This just shows the strong influence that pornography has. Pro-pornography feminists argue that these rapists and murderers did not in fact need to watch pornography for them to have committed their crimes. They would have committed the violent acts with or without the pornography. According to Lynne Segal, studies have shown that more sex offenders have lesser exposure to pornography. The claim that many rapists and murderers admit to committing their crimes because of pornography is suspect for many reasons. First, Saul

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discusses how most people do not know the true reason behind their actions, and that though these people may try to explain their actions as best and as honest as they could, they might be wrong. Furthermore, people have this peculiarity of trying to avoid blame for wrongdoing. Henry Louis Gates noted that criminals, like the rest of us, are happy to attribute their bad behavior to an external agency, thus diminishing, in some small measure, their own culpability. Feminists opposing pornography claim that there are psychological and experimental evidence linking violence against women and pornography, however it has been counter-argued that such do not sufficiently establish that pornography causes the violent acts or behaviors. It has been said that such are merely the attitudes of the viewers and that being such, these can change over time.

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III.

REFLECTIONS I believe that pornography is not immoral or bad per se. I acknowledge that it is a form of free speech, which needs a lot of regulation. It is a form of free speech which is and should be subject to the standards of obscenity. What is obscene, from what I have learned in my Constitutional Law II subject is a question of propriety in relation to time, place, and audience. Before I go on, I will first reflect on each stance before I consolidate and share my own views. Reflections On Anti-Pornography Feminism From what has been discussed above, it can be clearly seen that pornography does have its adverse effects. Before, I could not comprehend how it could be considered as a form of gender bias. I thought that pornography was just like other forms of entertainment, the difference lied only with the audience to which it catered to. But after the reading, and after the entire semester of taking up Gender and the Law, its not so hard to see why, and I am a little bit guilty or ashamed to admit that I had never thought of those women as capable of being victims. I agreed with the comment that pornography has the ability of desensitizing its viewers, such that people have a difficulty recognizing when something is already rape or a violation of civil or human rights. Take for example the Deep Throat movie. Even after Linda Marchiano came out with her biography saying how she was an unwilling participant in the making of that movie, that she was in fact raped, the movie became more popular or at least people did not stop watching it. Even worse was the fact her

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book was sold also as pornography. Another case would be how after Hayden Kho uploaded his video scandal he became more popular. I dont even understand how someone like him can still get endorsement deals and have his face posted on a billboard in EDSA. It just seems like a great injustice to women everywhere that someone who had actually committed an unconscionable, despicable, and insulting act as secretly video recording his sexual exploits and posting them online can be made into an image model for anything except as a warning against would-be-perpetrators. At this rate, he just might actually be the role model for other perverts and abusers of women. In some sad depressing way pornography has made people not care or blind. The Filipino culture is one that is traditionally conservative. I say traditionally because I am not very sure if this holds true now. We are deeply religious and this has a great effect on how we conduct ourselves. As a result sex and pornography are taboo in polite company. We do not tolerate bastos things in public. But this is not always true behind closed doors We see so many instances of raids being conducted by XXX or Bitag or Saksi that show how massage parlors become prostitution dens, how police officers are some of the actual solicitors of prostitutes, or how mothers let their daughters conduct live shows via webcam in their own homes to get money from foreigners. These instances, in my opinion, are somewhat attributable to pornography. However, the remedy proposed by MacKinnon and the other feminists opposing pornography does not sit well with me. Damages alone, is not that strong a deterrent. Considering their definition of pornography as being anything abusive or degrading of women, I believe it calls for a more aggressive kind of penalty. Admittedly there will be constitutional obstacles if they push for anti-pornography legislation, but the times have

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changed and public interest might be better served by stricter censorship. For example, the Anti-Voyeurism Law of the Philippines is far better than mere damages alone. Reflections On The Pro-Pornography Stance Those feminists who are pro-pornography raise equally valid points. Pornography, though it may be considered as immoral by some members of society, is sometimes just a means to an end. Not all of them depict violence or degradation. Not all of the actors or actresses have experienced coercion or rape. It is often overlooked that those actors or actresses in the porn films are just trying to earn a living. In essence they are just like George Clooney and Julia Roberts, in that they only play roles. The difference is that the former make films for the masses with content that is tolerable or acceptable under community standards, plus they earn more. The latter on the other hand cater to a more specific audience, and their plots all generally have one goal to arouse the sexual appetites of people, not to mention the fact that some of them earn little to nothing. I agree that sometimes because of the stigma attached by the society to this industry they are more prone or susceptible to exploitation and abuse. They cant exactly go to the NLRC and claim any form of employer-employee relationship or Unfair Labor Practice, for the very reason that they are not considered as engaged in a legal form of employment. I firmly believe that the rapists and murderers who commit such crimes did not need the pornography for them to have committed their crimes. A person prone to violence little prodding to commit his violent acts. I agree that those criminals who say that the pornography made them do it, are highly suspect. As far as I am concerned, these

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statements are self-serving and do not deserve much credit. The pornographic movie did not physically hold them at gun point to make them perpetrate their crimes. In short, it was still their choice to commit their crimes. And even if we applied our Criminal Laws, the elements of the crime, alone, will be sufficient to sustain conviction. Consolidation It has been said that the oldest profession in the world is prostitution. In my opinion, pornography is basically a form of mass-prostitution. If we were to dissect and define the activities entailed in prostitution I would define it to be a means of earning a living which has for its purpose the sexual gratification of one or all parties involved. Pornography is not very far off. From how I understand pornography, it is a form of expression that is very sexually graphic and designed to sexually arouse its viewers or audience. The former is on a one-to-one basis, in general, whereas the latter has a wider reach and more rapid result. My observation is that basically the latter is a sort of improvement of the former. However their effects and how society views them is the same. Some say it is immoral, others say it degrades and promotes the abuse of women, while others still view it as a form of expression and empowers rather than demeans. From the reading I noted that the views of the anti-pornography feminists, as presented by Jennifer Saul, was generally that of a single person: Catharine MacKinnon. I believe her to be a radical feminist because I feel her views to be very anti-male. She is very adamant in discouraging the subordination of women by men. This is not wrong in itself, though I am of the opinion that it greatly diminishes or adversely affects her cause.

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By being very anti-male, I see that her views on what pornography is and how it affects women becomes very narrow minded and thus it does not really achieve her goal of feminine empowerment and eliminating discrimination. You cant fight discrimination with discrimination, in the end everyone just becomes discriminated against. I suggest that in order to address the discrimination and sexually abuse perpetrated against women, legislation empowering those within the commercial sex industry is needed. The current laws generally scream protectionist views. They penalize and regulate without fully understanding the problem and without thoughtfully considering all the possible solutions. This results in half-baked solutions which provide superficial remedies that do not address the underlying issues. For example, if the prostitutes and porn stars claim they only do it because of the money, then it is not pornography which is the problem but the economy. If pornography is illegal (as I believe that it is), then it is for the police or law enforcers to better implement the law by going after the producers and financiers of these pornographic films. At the end of the day it is freedom of choice which guides the actions not only of those people who are in the pornographic industry, but also that of society. The law of supply and demand dictates that when there is demand, there will sure to be a supply. There will always be pornography if people still want to watch it. In terms of the harm or tendency of violence being linked to watching pornography, I agree with the Lynne Segal4. According to Segal:

Pornography and Violence: What the Experts Really Say, http://www.palgravejournals.com/fr/journal/v36/n1/full/fr199043a.html, Last Accessed: March 25, 2012.

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Despite repeated exposure to slides showing highly 'deviant' sexual activity, subjects showed no tendency to copy such practices, that is, there were no changes in subjects' own customary sexual practices. (Those happily enjoying missionary sex remained untempted by titillating representations of its alternatives!) Those with less guilt, and more liberal attitudes around sexuality, found pornographic material more arousing. The greater the exposure to sexually arousing material, however, the less the arousal. And the greater the exposure to such material, the more liberal and tolerant of it consumers became. These studies thus reported no antisocial changes in sexual behaviour after short- or long-term exposure to sexually explicit material. (Byrne and Lamberth, 1970; Davis and Braucht, 1970; Mann et. al., 1970; Kutchinsky, 1973; and Donald Mosher, 1970) This supports my opinion that it is always the choice of the person on what he or she wants to do. No matter what other people do or expose you to, if it is not in your nature and if you can withstand it, you can always choose not to perpetrate violence against your fellowman. If ever we do commit a wrong or harm another person, we have only ourselves to blame, short of coercion or force or inducement. Placing the blame on others is a basic human trait of survival but it does not change the fact that it was our own actions. I do not mean to oversimplify the issue, for these are just my opinions. Sometimes it is the simple solutions that fix a problem or lead to a better solution. There seems to be no quick fix to the problem presented, and legal or societal remedies will not be easy to achieve without an overhaul of perception and traditions.